Part 2, Why There Is Hope To Better Educate Our Kids, Something That The Political Class Never Provided, Hope and Good Educations

It is no secret to anyone in the know that we are doing a terrible job of educating our kids in this country. On international achievement tests, there are usually kids from dozens of countries who score better on all different types of tests than American kids. It is truly a national disgrace.

A national disgrace especially when you consider that we have spend more and more on public education in this country over the years and have seen no improvement of positive return on that spending. This embarrassment was captured by the following graph from the Cato Institute, using California as an exmaple:



It is not as if the American political class has not tried to fix the problem, they have just proven they do not know how to fix the problem, as witnessed by the graph above. Their solution always involves spending more money which in turn has gotten us nothing. Their latest attempt, via the so-called Common Core effort, has also proven to be a disaster. Where Common Core has been instituted, in states like Massachusetts and Maryland, the results have been a disaster. 

At one time, Massachusetts turned out the smartest kids in the country. Under common Core, they have slipped to seventh place. Several years after Common Core was established in Maryland, test scores have plummeted:


Step 27 proposed a solution to this problem that did not include any input from the American political class. Over the past several decades they have proven themselves incapable of not injecting politics, greed, and their lack of knowledge of education principles and strategies. As a result we have wasted hundreds of billions of dollars funding the Federal Department of Education and lord knows how many billions of dollars developing Common Core, of which both investments have failed horribly and disgracefully.

But that does not mean that we cannot heal our education processes and start turning out smart kids again. In fact, there are success stories in this field all across the country, a few of which we will shall over the next two days. One of the common themes underlying these success stories is that the political class has been cut out of the education process, resulting in tremendous successes without tremendous costs.

1) Yesterday we showed two examples where it is possible to give our kids a high level of quality education without excessive or with no input from politicians. We discussed the high school in Watts in Los Angeles where the entire senior class from this all boys schools were accepted into college, a record that very few schools anywhere in the country can match.We also discussed an article from the website, www.sfbayview.com, from a few years ago that showed how ten African-American kids were thriving academically in so many artistic and academic fields. 

Let’s start today’s continuing examination of kids in America getting a good education with an article from the Heritage Foundation that was written by Lindsey Burke. The article, “How Charter Schools Spend Less Than Public Schools But Achieve Better Results,” examined recent research on how charter schools, the bane of teacher unions and the politicians that depend on those unions for their perpetual electioneering, are outperforming public education processes at a lower price.

Details and research from the article include the following:

• In America, there are about 2.5 million kids enrolled in 6,500 charter schools in the U.S.
• Enrollment rose almost 100% from 2001 through 2011.
• Burke assumes that this incredible growth rate is because “may be due to the schools’ productivity and ability to improve learning outcomes on a more limited budget than traditional public schools enjoy."
• Burke backs up this assertion by quoting recent research on charter schools: “…the public charter school sector delivers a weighted average of an additional 17 [National Assessment of Educational Progress] NAEP points per $1,000 invested in math, representing a productivity advantage of 40 percent for charters. In reading, the public charter sector delivers an additional 16 NAEP points per $1,000 invested, representing a productivity advantage of 41 percent for charters.”
• The research also dispelled the myth that charter schools perform better because they get smarter and more motivated kids to begin with: “Any claim that the higher productivity of charters relative to [traditional public schools] TPS is because charters serve a more advantaged population would be undermined by these findings, as all charter sectors outperform their [traditional public schools] TPS on productivity measures even though half of the charter sectors enroll a more low-income population of students than their TPS.”
• Although counter intuitive, the researchers conclude that charter schools are more efficient because they have LESS financial support and budgets: “It appears to be likely that much of the basis for the higher productivity of public charter schools rests on the fact that they receive less funding and therefore are highly disciplined in their use of those education dollars.” 
• A Stanford University researcher, Caroline Hosby, found that going to a charter school from kindergarten through eighth grade brings lower socio-economic kids’ academic performance up to the level of affluent suburban schools in math and would close 66% of the gap in English achievement levels.
• A 2010 Department Of Education survey found higher levels of satisfaction among parents with both the quality of schools and their child’s development.
• The average charter school has a waiting list of 300 kids trying to get in, indicating a high level of acceptance and desire in the communities they serve.

So charter schools deliver high academic performance at a lower cost that attracts high levels of enrollees and provide high levels of satisfaction to parents relative to their kids’ education. This all proves that all kids from all segments of society can get a great education. But somehow along the way American politicians find a way to not accomplish what is doable despite spending hundreds of billions in a vain attempt to do so.

2) New Orleans is a city which has had good education results with charter schools. Nine out of ten kids in that city attend charter schools, a reality driven by the destruction of Hurricane Katrina. This makes New Orleans the city with the highest level of charter school penetration in the country.

How has that effort worked out for their kids? Stacy Telcher Khadaroo writing for ChristianScience Monitor on March, 2014 went looking for those answers:

• In New Orleans, there is no longer a traditional central district office that dictates what schools students will attend, a central office that usually hires and promotes teachers in negotiation with a union, and controls everything from budgets to textbooks. 
• In New Orleans, families get to select among charter schools citywide that have to meet certain benchmarks in order to have their charters renewed.
• Although 82% of the students in New Orleans schools are considered low income, charter schools’ test scores and graduation rates have climbed steadily over the past decade or so.
• Andy Smarick, a partner at the nonprofit Bellwether Education Partners in Washington believes that New Orleans has shown that "we can move government out of running schools" and have it focus on oversight instead.
• A charter superintendent, Patrick Dobard, gave some insight on why New Orleans charters have been successful: "Our model is about empowering educators that are closest to the children, to give them the autonomy to have great schools, but to have a strong accountability system in place...ensuring there is equity and access throughout the whole system."
• Academic results in New Orleans schools have moved ahead of the state average for high school graduation by several points, with 77.8 percent for the class of 2012 graduating within four years – up from just over 54 percent in 2004.
• Based on a state based academic performance school, in 2004-05 only 12 percent of students in New Orleans attended 'A' or 'B' schools while nearly 75 percent attended 'F' schools. By 2012-13, just 17 percent of students were in 'F' schools, while 34 percent were in 'A' or 'B' schools.
• Even better, the percentage of New Orleans students qualifying for college scholarships prior to Katrina was less than 6 percent of students in 14 high schools that were later taken converted into charter schools. By 2013, that 6% had increased over four fold to 27%. by the RSD qualified for these scholarships, NSNO reports. In 2013, 27 percent did.

The entire article can be viewed at:

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2014/0301/New-Orleans-goes-all-in-on-charter-schools.-Is-it-showing-the-way

The writer goes into much detail on the mechanics of education in charter schools that helped attain the tremendous improvements listed above. Regardless of how they do it, the results are what any parent would want for their kids: high and improving academic performance, better chance for college scholarships, etc. 

More proof today that we as a nation can do a much better job educating our kids. But somehow the political class gets in the way of allowing that improvement to happen. That is why Step 27 from our book, “Love My Country, Loathe My Government,” along with the track records of the education endeavors we have reviewed over the past two days, are needed to finally give our kids the education they deserve in an efficient and cost-effective manner. 

Allowing national politicians and Federal bureaucrats have given us the exact opposite: inefficient and lower education levels in a high cost manner.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernment.com

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w