|
Heritage
Foundation…
Morning
Bell: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
of a New School Year
By Amy Payne
September 4, 2012
As
of today, the vast majority of American
students have begun a new school year. As lunches are packed and
carpool lines
grow, Heritage reviews the good, bad, and ugly in education.
The
Good
Support
for school choice is at an all-time
high. In a poll released in August, school choice
favorability jumped10
percentage points since last year, a sign that the proliferation of
options
such as vouchers, education savings accounts, and online learning is
creating a
welcome choice for families across the country.
Options
like the education
savings
accounts implemented in Arizona,
statewide vouchers in
effect in
Louisiana,
and tuition
tax credits
benefitting children in Florida provide
families with
greater control over education—something more and more parents are
expressing
they want.
Social
promotion is becoming less
popular. In North Carolina, legislators approved a measure
to end
social promotion.
Rather
than automatically passing students on to the next grade, all
third-grade
students will be required to read at grade level before advancing to
the fourth
grade. Other states that have implemented this policy suggest that it
is
helpful in boosting student achievement.
Online,
customized learning is on the
rise. Individualized
online learning options allow
more emphasis on areas where
students are struggling, without holding back their peers who may be
ready for
the next level.
Teachers
union membership is
declining. The National Education Association is projecting a
loss of
308,000 members since 2010. One of the union’s top officials, treasurer
Becky
Pringle, blames “stupid”
education reform: “We’re living with a recession that just won’t end,
political
attacks that have turned brutal, and societal changes that are
impacting
us—from stupid education ‘reform’ to an explosion of technology—all
coming
together to impact us in ways that we had never anticipated.”
The
Bad
The
Administration is singling out minority
students for government “help” instead of raising them up through
increased
options. Over the summer, President Obama signed an executive
order to
form the new White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for
African
Americans. According to the White House, the new initiative, which will
work
across federal agencies, “aims to ensure that all African American
students
receive an education that fully prepares them for high school
graduation,
college completion, and productive careers.”
Parents
and taxpayers would be correct to be
skeptical of a new Washington initiative to improve student outcomes. A
new
evaluation by Matthew Chingos of the Brookings Institution and Paul
Peterson of
Harvard shows a far
more promising
route to
improving academic opportunity for the
students the President’s initiative aims to help: school vouchers. The
study of
low-income students in New York City found a 24 percent increase in
college
enrollment among African-American students who were awarded and used
vouchers
to attend private schools.
Read
the rest of the article, including The Ugly,
at Heritage Foundation
|
