New DOE Data Out
February 8, 2011Quote of the Day
February 9, 2011Voucher Flag-Waving
“I am shocked – shocked! – to find that gambling is going on in here!”
“Your winnings, sir.”
Check out today’s NJ Spotlight for a discussion of the wheeling and dealing behind the evolving list of school districts where children would be eligible for vouchers to attend private and parochial schools. Example: Atlantic City Public Schools, with a DFG of A, isn’t on the list and “[Senator Ray] Lesniak conceded that the decision had something to do with it being represented by state Sen. Jim Whelan (D-Atlantic), an outspoken opponent of OSA.” East Orange is on the list, but “may not be for long” because it’s represented by Sheila Oliver, a foe of the voucher bill.
Happens all the time, right? Shameful nonetheless. Here’s an idea: keep the list to our poorest districts, those with DFG’s of A’s (our poorest communities). Keep East Orange and boot Lakewood, which waves its own flag of special interests due to the plethora of private Jewish day schools there.
Meanwhile the politicking over the controversial voucher bill continues in the form of a pair of shrill editorials that have appeared over the last couple of days. Gordon MacInnes in NJ Spotlight sees a conspiracy theory among OSA advocates to trick the public into “drain[ing] our treasury” by rushing the bill through the Legislature. While MacInnes makes some fair points, he could use a fact-checker. For example, he alleges that the Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee increased the maximum payment to private schools — $8K for elementary students and $11K for secondary students – to “increase the cost to taxpayers.” In fact, the difference between the voucher value and actual tuition costs go right back to the local public district, which alleviates the tax burden (though cynics may regard it as a sop to local districts panicking over lost revenue).
Another example from the editorial:
Eligible schools must give the state tests to their voucher students, but that information will not be available if there are fewer than 10 voucher students in any grade. In short, there will be no information about how well voucher students are performing. Why not require that any eligible school demonstrate that its instruction is consistent with the New Jersey core curriculum standards and that all of its students take the state tests?
In fact, information is withheld for any cohort of that size in public schools in order to protect the identity of the students. All voucher students, according to the current draft bill, will take the regular standardized tests administered to public school students.
And then there’s Bob Braun of the Star-Ledger, apoplectic at this “slap at public education…another gimmick masquerading as school reform.” He dismisses “the obligatory, irresistible schoolgirl who tugged at everyone’s hearts as she talked about how her parents worked hard to send her to a Catholic school so she could escape a terrible public school – Newark’s East Side, not a bad school at all.”
Really? Would you send your kids there? East Side is in its 7th year as a School in Need of Improvement under the strictures of No Child Left Behind and half the graduating seniors can’t pass either the math or language arts portion of the high school standardized tests, which top out at an 8th or 9th grade level.
Braun quotes Assembly Education Chair Patrick Diegnan, who claims that the voucher bill is “un-American” and, later in the piece remarks that on the urban education front
Progress has been too slow. That frustration has been fueled by those who embrace a right-wing market ideology that blames unions, public employees, and government generally. In New Jersey, it coincides with an extraordinary political détente between a conservative Republican governor and urban Democrats.
But he’s got it wrong. The education reform movement — school choice, accountability, tenure reform — isn’t a right-wing ideology, and there’s nothing extraordinary about the détente between our “conservative Republican governor” and NJ’s urban Democrats. It’s happening all over the country as recognition grows that we fail our most vulnerable students. Doesn’t sound very “right-wing,” does it? How much more American can you get than a civil rights movement challenging a failing status quo, a post/bi-partisan alliance of grassroots activists and entrepreneurs, of minority leaders and educators, of urban parents and public policy makers. Now that’s something to salute.
3 Comments
hi Laura… hope this finds you well.
Thanks for the link to the school finance blog… had not seen that one and it is very good!
My reaction to this….after watching this for around 30 years is that we do not have the moral will to do what we know would be best in NJ's poorest school districts and that is to re-draw district lines and create middle class schools.
All our poorest performing schools are our poorest and most diverse schools.
We should be looking creatively at magnet schools that would allow choices as well as begin to balance the poverty level with-in the school districts.
We should attempt to keep the school poverty percentage below 40% as measured by free and reduced lunch and we should expand choices so that students and families have many alternatives…that are public.
We can no longer create or afford to create “seperate but unequal” public school systems that segragate the kids of this state.
Until we have the courage to address this issue we will not solve our public school problems…
So… although i hear terms like “public school reform is the civil rights issue of our times”… how can we continue to justify Apartheid schooling in NJ.
as always…thanks for your blog..
be well… mike
“How much more American can you get than a civil rights movement challenging a failing status quo, a post/bi-partisan alliance of grassroots activists and entrepreneurs, of minority leaders and educators, of urban parents and public policy makers. Now that's something to salute.”
You left out the hedge fund dead-enders, parochial school subsidizers and run-of-the-mill political hacks who smell easy cash here.
Just the crew most likely to wrap themselves in the flag while ignoring the real obligation to deliver successful public schools contained in Article VIII, Section 4 of our Constitution.
hi Kallikak…
hope this finds you well and you are correct…probably did leave out many folks…
Who i am interested in is the rest of us…who ever we are… and recognizing that the issue of NJ failing public schools is all our responsibilites and will require of us more than just money.
Are we…willing to open up our successful schools and create middle class schools???
As i look around our state… at the district that did apply to become choice districts and those that did not… the answer i find is no…. most successfull public schools that surround our schools with the largest need did not apply for choice….hmmmmm
This is not just hedge fund dead-enders and parochial school subsidizers … it is all of us.
American schools are more segregated by race and class today than they were on the day Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed, 43 years ago.
The average white child in America attends a school that is 77 percent white, and where just 32 percent of the student body lives in poverty.
The average black child attends a school that is 59 percent poor but only 29 percent white.
The typical Latino kid is similarly segregated; his school is 57 percent poor and 27 percent white.
Overall, a third of all black and Latino children sit every day in classrooms that are 90 to 100 percent black and Latino.
This is a sad state of affairs in a pluralistic society, and it is borne of two factors:
1) residential segregation and
2) purposeful drawing of school district boundaries to isolate middle class and white families from poor families of color.
To me… if we are serious about helping schools most in need… well to ignore this is crazy… yet i never hear anyone in NJ speak to this truth that is really very easy to “see”.
Who will start this discussion?
be well…mike