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4401-A
Connecticut Avenue, Box 294, Washington, DC
20008
Tel: (202) 244-7535, Fax: (202) 244-7584
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Education Exchange
Volume 3, Issue 11 -- November
1999
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Focusing on
Education Reforms at Your School, in Your State
Legislature, and in Congress
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New Poll
Finds Public In the Dark About Charters and Vouchers
A summer 1999 national opinion survey of 1,200 members of
the general public and 833 "community leaders," developed by
Public Agenda, finds that a vast majority of the American
public claims to have little or no knowledge about charter
schools, education vouchers, or for-profit schools. Noting
that the "debate at the top levels of national leadership is
crisp and well-defined," the study demonstrates a lack of
conceptual understanding on these issues by the public.
On Thin Ice, the report based on this survey, "suggests a
challenging job for leaders in education, politics and the
news media &endash; bringing the debate that now engages
them to communities and families nationwide." According to
Institute for Justice Litigation Director Clint Bolick, the
survey "demonstrates why it is easy for defenders of the
status quo to distort reality. There is a lack of concrete
information out there, so it creates an opening for scare
tactics and distortion."
NEA President Bob Chase, on the other hand, claims that
the survey's use of terms like "opportunity scholarships" in
regard to vouchers was intended to influence the opinions of
respondents.
Even in two of the states most heavily involved in the
charter school movement, Arizona and Michigan, 52 percent of
parents felt they knew little or nothing at all about
charter schools.
Similar statistics occurred with regard to parents living
in Milwaukee and Cleveland, cities which currently operate
local voucher programs. There, a full 60 percent claimed to
know "very little" or "nothing" about school vouchers.
Three-fourths of survey participants from the "voucher
communities" felt they need to learn more before they can
adequately form a thoughtful opinion. The report states that
"in the case of vouchers, we found that even the concept of
using free market competition to improve schools was
unfamiliar to most people."
Statistics grow even more top heavy when the entire
public sampling is reported. With 63 percent claiming to
know very little or nothing about vouchers, and 81 percent
feeling that way about charter schools, there seems to be a
dichotomy at play in the collective mind of the public.
For instance, "most [Americans] would expand a voucher
program to include all families, regardless of income, and
to include religious schools." These concepts garnered 72
percent and 78 percent positive responses, respectively. At
the same time, "the public has almost no grasp of a pivotal
issue in the debate over vouchers: Will increased
competition spur the public schools to improve?" To this
question, only 49 percent of respondents agreed that
competition would have a beneficial effect on public
schools.
Deborah Wadsworth, executive director for Public Agenda,
writes that "voucher and charter school advocates need to
wrestle with the public's sense that while such approaches
may have merit, they represent a partial solution at best."
Sixty-seven percent of respondents agreed that vouchers are
"a good idea, but they cannot solve the nation's education
problems."
Wadsworth adds, however, "public education's defenders
should recognize people's frustration with business as usual
-- their belief that too many public schools seem fully
prepared to accept poor achievement and troublesome behavior
as inevitable."
Perhaps most important among the findings in On Thin Ice
is the advice it provides for journalists and political
leaders at all levels. "Don't take the polls literally --
and don't assume that a sentence or two about an unfamiliar
concept will be the silver bullet that makes the results
more trustworthy." According to the study, most Americans
simply don't yet know how they want their educational
systems organized. And "off the cuff" poll answers may be
just that.
Lieberman
Says Teacher Union Monopoly Still in Business
In a Capitol Hill conference the last week of October,
Dr. Myron Lieberman received a Leadership Award for his
outstanding service in the field of school choice. Lexington
Institute CEO Merrick Carey presented the plaque amidst
accolades for "Dr. Lieberman's years of dedication and
never-failing interest in recognizing the obstacles and
proposing solutions for improving education."
In his acceptance remarks, Dr. Lieberman said a
continuing problem is that "the unions have managed to
convince us that union interest is the same as public
interest." By using the example of strikes, he reminded the
audience that when teachers strike, their public relations
messages suggest that the strike will benefit children. The
reality is that teachers strike to change a public policy
they want to change (i.e. raise teacher salaries, increase
benefits, or shed responsibilities). No such obfuscation
exists when the Teamsters strike; everyone knows they are
striking for teamster benefits!
Dr. Lieberman then pointed out that there is progress in
the public's awareness of the power and influence of the
teacher unions -- the National Education Association and the
American Federation of Teachers. However, he reminded the
audience that there are still "miles to go" before the
conference theme, "The Teacher Unions: How School Choice is
Breaking Their Monopoly," becomes a widespread reality.
Washington
Education Association Finds Itself Back in State Supreme
Court
On Thursday, November 18, the Washington State Supreme
Court heard arguments on the question of whether the WEA
must get permission before using teachers' dues for
political campaigns.
This state Supreme Court case will decide the future of
"paycheck protection" for union workers. At the heart of the
debate is whether Initiative 134 is violated when teachers'
money is taken and given to union leaders who then divert it
to political campaigns.
WEA argued that the union has no obligation to workers to
gain their permission, and that union leaders actually have
a right to compel all members to give to the political
causes of the leaders' choosing.
Agencies subject to political influence have declined to
interpret the law as the voters intended. Instead, both the
Public Disclosure Commission and the Washington Attorney
General have granted unions an exemption from this law.
The attorney representing "Teachers for a Responsible
Union," and the Evergreen Freedom Foundation (EFF) argued
that Initiative 134 was written to protect workers from
political exploitation by their own union.
According to EFF, "the Washington State Labor Council
noted that a victory for EFF and Teachers on this claim
would be 'a watershed regarding how unions may finance
political activity in the state...the balance of political
power in this state could be shifted dramatically as a
result.'"
In continuing battles over paycheck protection, the
outcome in Washington could become a bellwether for other
states to follow.
NTUF
Reports on NEA's Break-the-Bank Legislative Wish
List
The National Taxpayers Union Foundation (NTUF) analyzed
the National Education Association's Legislative Program for
the 106th Congress, "the main vehicle for new unionism," and
found a call for "massive increases in federal spending."
Noting that "the federal budget would bloat by $906 billion
per year" if the program were enacted in its entirety, NTUF
found the NEA's legislative agenda to be 15 times larger
than the average agenda of Members of the 105th Congress. In
fact, only three Members came within $300 billion of the NEA
agenda.
Among the causes supported in the NEA program are
government-run health care, nuclear disarmament, campaign
finance [reform], and gun control. Three percent of the $906
billion program is dedicated to education issues.
Archway-Mother's
Cookies® Partners with PTA
Archway-Mother's Cookies has become an official sponsor
of National PTA and is heralding the relationship on bags of
its "1,2,3" and "A-B-C" brands of cookies. Information
promoting membership in National PTA appears on product
packages and on in-store displays.
Archway-Mother's also made a contribution to each state
PTA to help cover the cost of upgrading existing computer
software and hardware. Free cookie samples were provided to
2,000 attendees at National PTA's 103rd annual convention in
June.
Stotsky's
Losing Our Language Convicts Multiculturalism
Sandra Stotsky, Research Associate at the Harvard
Graduate School of Education and author of Losing Our
Language: How Multicultural Classroom Instruction Is
Undermining Our Children's Ability to Read, Write, and
Reason commented on her book at a November 12 luncheon
sponsored by the Center for Equal Opportunity and the
Institute for Research in English Acquisition and
Development.
Stotsky's research focused on a review of the leading
readers published in 1993 and 1995 and used by teachers to
foster reading instruction in English for 4th, 5th, and 6th
grade students.
Criticisms prompting changes in reading instruction books
came from several sources. Teachers complained that the
reading selections were not high-quality literature, and
that this had a negative influence on children's motivation
to learn to read -- especially on minority children.
Feminists and others charged that the reading selections did
not adequately portray a broad enough range of role models
for girls, or for ethnic and racial diversity, including the
cultures of non-Western people.
Stotsky reports that as changes were made to accommodate
the demands of the multiculturalists, the readers "Šnow
foster an animus against what are perceived as Western
values, particularly the value placed on acquiring
knowledge, on analytical thinking, and on academic
achievement itself. Its educational goals are now almost
completely social and political, not civic and
intellectual."
Almost completely absent from contemporary basal readers
are selections about people who have made globally
significant achievements, discoveries, or inventions such as
the first airplane flight, the discovery of the South Pole,
penicillin, or the steamboat. Stotsky suggests these
achievements have been banished because "they portray the
accomplishments of white males."
Very often, the stories and follow-up questions from the
teacher's guide focus on feelings and the emphasis for the
students to identify with a victim group. No longer is the
goal of basal readers to facilitate usage of the most common
multi-syllabic words in the English language to prepare
students for comprehending and using more technical language
in high school. Ironically, those most damaged by the
decline in the English language &endash; in both content and
in the vocabulary -- are minority students who may not have
access at home to appropriate literature.
Although large-scale research is lacking, Stotsky's
findings have led her to conclude that "it is quite
reasonable to believe that there is a strong connection
between the low level of reading achievement in American
students and the intellectual limitations of their current
reading programs." Standardized test scores showing a
decline between grades four and eight provide corroborating
evidence to support her conclusion.
None of this is good news for parents, but Stotsky
suggests that parents and other citizens should "Šexamine
their children's reading instructional textbooks, contact
responsible authorities, and promote changes in teacher
education. They can also develop alternatives to regular
public elementary schools that will enable them to upgrade
curricula in all subjects."
In addition, Stotsky suggests contacting the local school
board textbook evaluation committee, publishers' sales
representatives, and officials responsible for textbook
guidelines in textbook adoption states.
Stotsky believes that the low-level basal readers reflect
the fact that educators do not believe that minority
children can learn standard English and achieve at academic
levels similar to the range found in non-minority children.
"Thus," she writes, "the basic social problem they foresee
is not that there will always be differences in ability and
motivation among adults. The problem they envision is that
adults will not be able to communicate with each other
because they have not learned to 'negotiate' the dialect
differencesŠ. And if these educators are successful in
convincing elementary school teachers that 'justice' or
'equity' lies in abandoning a common language and
encouraging language differences among their students (in
the name of group identity and group respect) so that these
differences become the basic social problem we confront as a
society, where else could the solution to our inability to
communicate with each other lie, if not in a strong, central
government?"
Buckeye
Institute Says Voucher Program Promotes Integration
A new Buckeye Institute study reports that students
currently enrolled in the Cleveland Scholarship Program
(CSP) attend schools that are more racially integrated than
those in the Cleveland public school system.
Nearly one fifth of the participants in CSP attend
private schools that have a racial composition that
resembles the average racial composition of the Cleveland
area. Only 5.2% of public school students attend similarly
integrated schools, defined by the study as schools where
the proportion of minority students is within 10 percent of
the proportion of minorities in the Cleveland area.
Michael Charney, education issues director for the
Cleveland Teachers Union, complained "This has nothing to do
with looking at the benefits of racial integration and
everything to do with promoting private school vouchers."
EPI's
Education Quick Facts
- Public school technology expenditures exceeded $5.5
billion in 1998-99, or $119 per child, Market Data
Retrieval reports. Of that amount, 69 percent was spent
on hardware, 17 percent on software, and 14 percent on
staff development. (Source: School Board
News, National School Boards Association, November
9, 1999)
- Of the 8,019 students enrolled in the Milwaukee
Parental Choice Program during the current school year,
6,100 enrolled in private and parochial schools while
1,909 attended a public school. (Source: CEO America,
November 17, 1999)
- The annual total of women receiving Ph.D.'s has
increased by more than 50 percent in a decade, growing at
over twice the rate of the number of men getting the
degree. As a result, a record 40.6 percent of more than
42,000 research doctorates awarded by universities in the
United States for the 1996-97 academic year went to
women. There were 17,322 Ph.D.'s awarded to women in 1997
compared to 11,432 earned by women in 1987. (Source:
The New York Times, November 4, 1999)
- With political representation and billions of dollars
at stake, governments at all levels are pulling out the
stops to see that everybody gets counted in Census 2000.
Because children overall accounted for half of the
undercount in previous years, the Census in Schools
program lessons target K-12 students in lower
socio-economic areas, although any school can request the
program. Census Day is April 1, 2000. (Source:
Governing, September 1999)
Copyright 1999
Education Policy Institute, PMB 294, 4401-A Connecticut
Ave., NW, Washington, DC 20008-2322 202/244-7535, Fax
202/244-7584 http://www.educationpolicy.org
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