National Coalition for Public Education
The Federal Title I program provides funds to school districts in order to improve the education of economically disadvantaged students in grades K-12. Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN) wants to amend Title I funding so that the money is “portable,” allowing the funds to follow low-income students to their new public school.
The National Coalition for Public Education strongly opposes this idea and provides three reasons in an open letter to the Senator:
1) Ensuring the Title 1 money goes to the school where the impoverished child enrolls will lead to vouchers.
Put the tinfoil away. Ensuring that schools enrolling poor kids receive extra funding does not lead to vouchers.
2) It hurts the district’s ability to take advantage of “Economies of scale” to combine resources and help students.
Title I funding was created because there are serious problems in schools with high concentrations of poverty. To take maximize of “economies of scale” (the way the coalition argues) districts would need to keep economically-disadvantaged students concentrated in high-poverty schools, sustaining the problems Title 1 hopes to address.
3) It takes away from district’s ability to direct resources to public schools with high concentrations of poverty.
According to the left-of-center New America Foundation, $6.4 billion (or 45 percent of Title I funding), is distributed through the “Basic Grant Formula.” That formula requires districts to have a mere 2 percent economically disadvantaged student population. That low threshold means that pretty much every district is eligible for Title I funding. If funding high-poverty schools was the coalition’s real priority, why send the money through the districts first? The money should go where the needs are.
It makes one wonder if public-school organizations are less concerned with whether this money helps kids than they are with who (them) decides what to do with it.
Grade: Needs Improvement
Gov. Andrew Cuomo
Last week New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo gave the State of the State address announcing he plans to push for more charter schools and even tax credits for donors of non-profits creating scholarships for K-12 students to attend private schools. The speech highlighted a growing Democratic Divide as one of the nation’s top Democrats in a heavily blue state takes on the teacher union to push for school choice (read more in the New York Times, New York Daily News, and Wall Street Journal).
Last week he even rebuked a teacher union member for claiming the teacher union represents students. “You represent the teachers. Teacher salaries, teacher pensions, teacher tenure, teacher vacation rights. I respect that. But don’t say you represent the students,” Cuomo said.
Cuomo understands the unfortunate political reality: the teacher union’s priorities do not always line up with the needs of students. It’s possible to envision a model for a professional service organization that aligns the interests of teachers and students, and we’ve aired some of those ideas on this blog. Time will tell if the teacher union will adapt and evolve.
Until that time, more Democrats should stand and deliver for school choice as Gov. Cuomo did last week.
Grade: Satisfactory
Marlene Davis: Lexington Herald-Leader
Marlene Davis is a columnist for the Lexington Herald-Leader who wants to close the achievement gap improve public schools. Though she’s a traditional district school supporter, she also recognizes that charter schools typically perform better for low-income and minority children.
Despite acknowledging this fact, Marlene falls for the old “let’s fix our public schools first” trap. Citing Stu Silberman, a former superintendent in Kentucky, she wants to focus on public schools only. He told Davis, “if we focus on what’s best for students achievement-wise, then we need to do it for all the kids.”
But that remark echoes the“one-size-fits-all” approach we know doesn’t meet the needs of all students. In fact, school choice and improving public schools aren’t mutually exclusive. We can have school choice and great public schools, and those two aims might actually support each other.
Grade: Needs Improvement
