Christian Roots of School Voucher Movement Still Pretty Obvious
| Thu Apr. 4, 2013 10:20 AM PDT
The hits just keep coming from the Tennessee legislature. This time it's the sudden realization that if you provide state money to religious schools, you can't just limit it to Christian schools:
In Tennessee, [] a plan to transfer taxpayer money to religious academies is running into trouble as GOP lawmakers slowly realize that all religions will be eligible for public funds.....For voucher proponents, the first thought tends to be, "Never mind the separation of church and state; let's use taxpayer money to finance religious education." Which isthen followed by a second thought: "Wait, you mean religions I don't like might get my money?"
Conservative intellectuals like to make the case that they support school vouchers because the free market will produce better educational outcomes, especially for inner-city kids stuck in terrible schools. And I suppose that maybe conservative intellectuals really do support vouchers for that reason. The problem is that those of us who are over the age of 40 and have three-digit IQs remember where this all started: with segregated Christian schools in the South who were denied tax-exempt status in the 70s. This was one of the formative protest issues for the Christian right, and led directly
| Wed Apr. 3, 2013 10:53 AM PDT
Former Atlanta superintendent of schools Beverly Hall is now the poster child for cheating on standardized tests. But Hall claims that Atlanta schools really did perform better under her leadership, and as evidence she points to gains on the national NAEP test, widely considered to be reliable and not easily gamed. Dana Goldstein comments:
Although NAEP security procedures are generally considered more stringent than those used in state and district-level testing, there are reasons to be skeptical of Atlanta’s gains on the national exam as well. Between 2002 and 2009, the demographics of Atlanta NAEP test-takers changed considerably; the number of white students taking the test doubled, and the number of Hispanic students also went up. In Atlanta, white and Hispanic children tend to score higher than black children, which led Professor Mark Musick, a former NAEP chairman, to estimate that as much as 40 percent of Atlanta’s
| Mon Jan. 28, 2013 9:55 AM PST
Do high schools with higher standards get better performance from their students? If you require everyone to take college prep classes, will more kids go to college? The San Jose school district has long been a poster child for this notion, but guess what? It turns out it was all a crock:San Jose Unified has quietly acknowledged that the district overstated its accomplishments. And aTimes analysis of the district's record shows that its progress has not, in fact, far outpaced many other school systems'....In 2000, before the college-prep program took effect, 40% of San Jose graduates fulfilled requirements for applying to University of California and Cal State University. In 2011, the number was 40.3%.
My cynicism about the ed reform community grows by leaps and bounds every time I read a story like this. And that's pretty often. Here's my advice for what you should do whenever you read an article about a school that's shown miraculous results by applying some reform or