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The Policy Circle 5/6/2015 The Policy Circle K-12 EDUCATION REFORM Education is the pathway to a productive life. All people need basic literacy, math skills, and knowledge of the world around them to function in today’s society and to be informed citizens. How well is our educational system preparing young people for successful adulthoods and careers? And how could we make the system perform this vital task better? TABLE OF CONTENTS Issues with American education and What do we need to do to fix American education? Facts to Know History Question: What role should government play? Engage: Solutions for your elected representatives Thought leaders in education Questions for discussion Issues with American education and What do we need to do to fix American education? Students First (https://www.studentsfirst.org/), an education reform organization, has outlined five principles for promoting great schools that provide a good basis to begin: Transparency: Great schools openly engage their community. Parents deserve high-quality, easy-to-understand information about school performance and finances. Choice: Every child is different. Parents should be able to choose a school that meets their child’s unique needs. Accountability: Schools should be expected to effectively serve all of their students. When they don’t, they must improve. Equity: Every child—regardless of background, ZIP code, or family income—should be able to attend a great school. Flexibility: Schools and districts must be encouraged to innovate—not held back by needless bureaucratic restrictions. Watch (http://valuesandcapitalism.com/education-opportunity/) AEI scholar Michael McShane explain how a market-based education system would yield tremendous results for all students, but particularly those who are falling through the cracks of the current system. You can read his short book, Education and Opportunity (http://valuesandcapitalism.com/education-opportunity/), to learn more about how a wiser use of technology and a “marketplace of education options” can help https://www.thepolicycircle.org/brief/k-12-education-reform/ 1/6 5/6/2015 The Policy Circle today’s students succeed in tomorrow’s economy. Facts to Know Investment vs. Outcomes: States and localities are the largest funders of public education, although the federal share has increased in recent years. In the 2012-2013 (http://www.nea.org/home/rankings-and- estimates-2013-2014.html) school year, K-12 public education funding was divided fairly evenly between local governments (43 percent) and state governments (46 percent), with the federal government making up the remainder (10 percent). The federal budget for K-12 education in 2014 was roughly $14 billion (http://febp.newamerica.net/background-analysis/no-child-left-behind-funding). State budgets for education vary widely (http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post- nation/wp/2014/05/23/heres-how-much-each-state-spends-on-public-school-students/): New York spends the most per pupil ($19,552), more than three times the per-student amount spent in Utah ($6,206), the last state on the list. The national average for per pupil spending in 2012 was $10,608. Nearly half (http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2014/02/09/michelle-rhee-susan- combs-wise-school-spending/5259291/) of all education spending is currently going to administrative costs, and not to classrooms. But perhaps most important, recent studies (http://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/pa746.pdf) have found no link https://www.thepolicycircle.org/brief/k-12-education-reform/ 2/6 5/6/2015 The Policy Circle between education spending and student achievement. As CBS reported (http://washington.cbslocal.com/2014/04/07/study-no-link-between-school-spending- student-achievement/), “American students have remained internationally mediocre since 1970, even amid a tripling in inflation-adjusted dollars being spent per student. A National Public Radio analysis finds that U.S. students are not in the global top 20 for math, reading or science scores.” In 2015, the size of the education market is projected to be $788.7 billion (http://www.thenation.com/article/181762/venture-capitalists-are-poised-disrupt-everything- about-education-market#). Teachers unions exert a huge amount of influence over education policy on the state and national level. According to the New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/23/magazine/23Race-t.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1), “If unions are the Democratic Party’s base, then teachers’ unions are the base of the base. The two national teachers’ unions — the American Federation of Teachers and the larger National Education Association — together have more than 4.6 million members. That is roughly a quarter of all the union members in the country. Teachers are the best field troops in local elections. Ten percent of the delegates to the 2008 Democratic National Convention (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/d/democratic_national_convention/index.html? inline=nyt-org) were teachers’ union members. In the last 30 years, the teachers’ unions have contributed nearly $57.4 million to federal campaigns, an amount that is about 30 percent higher than any single corporation or other union. And they have typically contributed many times more to state and local candidates. About 95 percent of it has gone to Democrats.” The American Federation for Children (http://www.federationforchildren.org/) compiles data on which states have private school choice programs and public charter schools in an easy-to-use map (http://www.federationforchildren.org/ed-choice-101/) format. According to a recent Harvard study (http://obs.rc.fas.harvard.edu/chetty/value_added.pdf), if 5% of the worst performing teachers were replaced by average ones, kids in those classrooms would on average make $130-190,000 more in income over the course of their lives. History As the “The ABCs of School Choice (http://www.cblpi.org/ftp/School%20Choice/EdHistory.pdf),” published by the Friedman Foundation, explains, Early American education was primarily private or religious, and it brought mass schooling and literacy to the nation well before the public school system we know today was legislated into existence. Public schooling arose in response to an influx of immigrants who had different religions or https://www.thepolicycircle.org/brief/k-12-education-reform/ 3/6 5/6/2015 The Policy Circle cultures. Its primary focus was to establish social order and mainstream vast numbers of immigrant children into a common school setting. A mistrust of parents was common during the birth of public schools. As an 1851 article in The Massachusetts Teacher reported: “In too many instances the parents are unfit guardians of their own children … the children must be gathered up and forced into school” Over the past 150 years, mistrusting parents and forcing children into common schools has produced mixed results. Today, while some children receive a decent education, many, particularly those in urban areas, receive a poor quality education. In many instances, public schools have actually segregated the population more deeply between the have’s and have-not’s, creating a gulf of learning opportunities that is simply too wide for many parents to cross. School choice bridges these gaps and returns education to its American roots by empowering all parents, regardless of economic circumstances, with the freedom and opportunity to choose a better education for their children Question: What role should government play? State and local governments have long had primary responsibility for K-12 education, and it is their duty, above all, to make sure that all children receive a high-quality basic education. States fund education primarily through local property taxes and children are assigned to public schools based on geography. Most liberals support this geographic assignment and advocate for additional resources, higher teacher pay, and smaller class sizes as the pathway to improve education. Free market conservatives believe that the existing K-12 system should be reformed to create more choice and accountability. [Leave open for state partners to elaborate] The federal government’s role is less direct. Liberals believe that the federal government should commit more financial resources with less accountability. Free market conservatives do not believe that our education system can be fixed from Washington. They believe that the federal government should support and enable reform at the state and local level. It should create the conditions that will allow state and local policymakers, educators, and administrators to build better schools. Engage: Solutions for your elected representatives Federal As AEI’s Frederick Hess argues (http://conservativereform.com/wp- content/uploads/2014/05/RTG_handout_final.pdf), conservatives should seek to increase transparency by requiring schools and districts to report per-pupil spending to enable various “return on investment metrics,” and to remind K-12 administrators that they have an obligation to use taxpayer dollars wisely. Shifting a small fraction of the money the federal https://www.thepolicycircle.org/brief/k-12-education-reform/ 4/6 5/6/2015 The Policy Circle government now wastes on professional development to basic research would go a long way towards steering investments into areas that offer generous promise. And most important, the Right should take the lead in liberating teachers from regulations that make it extremely difficult to do their jobs well — a step that will help demonstrate that while conservatives often oppose teachers unions, they are not opposed to the interests of teachers. State (state partners can provide ideas that include the following) expand charter schools, private school choice, create new pathways for teachers to reach the classroom, make it easier to dismiss poorly performing teachers and reward high performers; giving principals more flexibility to hire and fire; to set school schedule; etc Thought leaders in education The Ticket that outlines the different ways school choice is developing across the country: http://www.theticketfilm.com/#!watch/c19v2 (http://www.theticketfilm.com/#!watch/c19v2) Howard Fuller, who helped create vouchers in Milwaukee.
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