Chicago’s Solution to Its Failing School System: Stop Grading Schools on Performance

In 1987, U.S. Education Secretary Bill Bennett famously traveled to Chicago, where he ruffled feathers by telling a closed-room group that the Windy City’s school system was “the worst in the nation.”

Local parents and educators bristled at the charge, which resulted in an awkward New York Times story. But decades of data would subsequently prove that Mr. Bennett was basically correct: Chicago’s schools were a total mess.

The city’s own accountability report card would later demonstrate that huge majorities of students in the city’s worst schools—75 percent in elementary and 95 percent in high school—failed to meet the state standards.

Things hardly improved during the pandemic, even though the Chicago Public School (CPS) system was spending roughly $28,000 per student (partly thanks to federal bailout cash).

“Just 30% of Black students meet or exceed reading standards in the third grade, and the number falls to 14% for 11th graders, according to data from the Illinois State Board of Education,” The Chicago Tribune pointed out last year.

Chicago schools clearly aren't getting the job done, but political leaders in the city have discovered a solution to the problem: stop grading schools.

“I personally don’t give a lot of attention to grades,” Mayor Brandon Johnson said during a recent interview. “How do you grade a system, when the system has not fulfilled its basic obligation of providing an equitable system that speaks to the needs [of students].”

Mr. Johnson went on to explain a better way to evaluate Chicago’s school system.

“My responsibility is not simply to just grade the system, but to fund the system,” he said. “That’s how I’m ultimately going to grade whether or not our public school system is working: based upon the investments that we make to the people who rely on it.”

This isn't mere idle chatter.

Earlier this year, the Chicago Board of Education scrapped its school rating policy, which was designed to rate schools on a range of performance goals, including how students performed on state tests.

WBEZ, an NPR-affiliated Chicago radio station, reported that Chicago’s system had been criticized for “relying too heavily on test scores and unfairly branding schools,” adding that the “new accountability policy veers away from any rating.”

One can see why leaders in Chicago favor grading schools by the amount of money they receive versus the academic performance of students.

Data from the Illinois State Board of Education show that not one student in the 22 schools analyzed in a widely read report can read at grade level. In 18 of those schools, there wasn't a single student who demonstrated proficiency in math or reading. (Despite this, some of these schools were given the rating “commendable.”)

Again, this is the state of Illinois’ own data.

If you grade these schools by funding, it’s a different story, of course. Per-student funding at Chicago Public Schools is now approaching $30,000 ($29,400, according to WBEZ). That is nearly double the national average ($14,347), according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Just like that—simply by grading schools by the funding they receive instead of their actual performance—CPS goes from one of the worst school districts in the United States to one of the best.

We all know this is no way to judge schools, of course. Accountability matters, and it’s hard to think of a worse solution than simply sending more and more money to failing systems and demanding less accountability for how that money is spent.

Indeed, it's this paradigm that has brought us the failed, bureaucratic education system America sees today.

More than 30 years ago, John Hood, the author and president of the John W. Pope Foundation, explained why the government was wholly unsuited to teach America’s students, and predicted U.S. schools would continue to decline despite steadily increasing government spending:

“When every call for fundamental change in American education is rebutted not by arguments about student achievement but by arguments focusing on race, class, social mixing, and other social concerns, it is difficult to imagine real progress.

"When teachers spend much of their day filling out forms, teaching quasi-academic subjects mandated from above, and boosting student self-esteem (as contrasted with serf-respect, which is earned rather than worked up), learning is difficult if not impossible.”

Mr. Hood had gleaned the same truth the famous educator John Taylor Gatto (1935–2018) had learned.

Mr. Gatto, the Teacher of the Year in New York State in 1991 and author of "Dumbing Us Down," understood it wasn't “bad teachers” or a lack of funds responsible for America’s failing schools. It was the system itself, which was built on coercion, bureaucracy, and obedience instead of actual learning, discovery, and collaboration with families.

“Independent study, community service, adventures and experience, large doses of privacy and solitude, a thousand different apprenticeships—the one-day variety or longer—these are all powerful, cheap, and effective ways to start a real reform of schooling. But no large-scale reform is ever going to work to repair our damaged children and our damaged society until we force open the idea of ‘school’ to include family as the main engine of education," he wrote.

"If we use schooling to break children away from parents—and make no mistake, that has been the central function of schools since John Cotton announced it as the purpose of the Bay Colony schools in 1650 and Horace Mann announced it as the purpose of Massachusetts schools in 1850—we’re going to continue to have the horror show we have right now.”

Mr. Gatto wrote these words more than 30 years ago. And though I wouldn't have described U.S. schools as a “horror show” in 1992 (I was only 13), I certainly would today.

Despite an objective decline in U.S. schools, which has resulted in a mass exodus of students, politicians seek to continue pumping more and more money into struggling schools.

This wouldn't have surprised Mr. Gatto, who observed years ago that the primary purpose of schools in modern America was no longer education (if it ever was).

“We must wake up to what our schools really are: laboratories of experimentation on young minds, drill centers for the habits and attitudes that corporate society demands,” he wrote.

Years ago I would have brushed off Mr. Gatto’s words as fanciful hyperbole. I don’t today.

Moreover, I think it’s become abundantly clear that the greatest obstacle to educational reform is the government itself—and politicians who want to grade schools by how much money they receive from taxpayers instead of whether students are actually learning.

This article originally appeared on The Epoch Times.

Jon Miltimore

Jonathan Miltimore is the Editor at Large of FEE.org at the Foundation for Economic Education.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

Chicago’s Solution to Its Failing School System: Stop Grading Schools on Performance

Toronto’s Largest School Board to Drop Auditions, Aptitude Requirements for Specialized Programs in the Name of Equity

“The year was 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren't only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General.”

Thus begins Kurt Vonnegut Jr.’s famous short story Harrison Bergeron. The satire story paints the picture of a dystopian future where absolute equality has been achieved thanks to various handicapping devices that force all the smart, good-looking, and talented people down to the same intellect, looks, and skills as everyone else. The rationale, of course, is that it wouldn’t be fair to let them get ahead because of their privilege while others are left behind.

The story has enduring appeal because it asks a question that strikes at the heart of our culture, namely, how much are we willing to sacrifice excellence in the name of equality? Should those who are endowed with more privilege or talent be allowed to reach their potential, even if it means others have fewer opportunities, or should those who are less gifted be given an equal chance at success, even if it means holding the gifted back?

The Toronto District School Board (TDSB) seems to have chosen the latter approach. In May, the board’s Trustees voted to approve the Student Interest Programs Policy, which will change the way students are admitted into specialized arts, athletics, and STEM programs. Currently, admission into most of these programs is based on various “assessments of ability” such as auditions, portfolios, and report card marks. But starting in September 2023, these assessments will be scrapped and replaced with a random selection from students who express interest in the programs. In short, equality will take precedence over excellence.

“It is our responsibility to take action to improve access for all students where we identify systemic barriers,” said Alexander Brown, Chair of the TDSB. “This new policy will ensure a greater number of students have access to these high quality programs and schools while reducing barriers that have long-prevented many students from even applying.”

Unsurprisingly, the move was first proposed by the board’s Enhancing Equity Task Force.

“The idea that your child entered one of these programs because of his talent, which he had the privilege of cultivating, I don’t think is appropriate in a public school system,” said Trustee Robin Pilkey. “We need to make sure people have access to all programs.”

To paraphrase, “it wouldn’t be fair to let them get ahead because of their privilege.” Sound familiar?

Many students, teachers, and parents who are involved with the specialized programs are concerned that this change will lower the quality of the programs. A small protest was held in mid-May, and hundreds of students walked out of class to attend.

“It’s going to water down the program and it’s just going to blend into nothingness,” said Essien Udokang, a parent whose son is in an arts program.

He’s also concerned that the new policy will leave behind talented kids from underprivileged backgrounds who would otherwise have a chance to prove themselves.

“Folks like me, who can afford it, we’ll just put our kids in private school or pay thousands of dollars a month for private lessons instead of wasting their time in a program like this. If there are students who have capability and through lottery don’t get picked…I think those will be the most hard done by. Because they will have talent that could have been cultivated through a high quality of teaching, instruction and opportunity, but now they would have just been randomly selected out of the process. But they can’t pay for private lessons.”

The whole debate over these programs hits close to home for me. I attended one of these specialized arts schools from grade 4 to 8, and another one from grade 9 to 12. For nine years, these programs were my life, and they helped me get through the otherwise tedious system that is government schooling.

Speaking from personal experience, I can tell you that removing audition requirements will be absolutely devastating for these programs. We had nearly professional-level productions at my high school and some fairly high-profile gigs. But without auditions, that all changes.

Kids who have less aptitude will get into these programs while kids with more aptitude will be left out. The efforts of the teachers, many of whom are specialists in their respective fields, will be wasted on those who simply don’t have the capabilities to really succeed. Meanwhile, many of those who do have the capabilities to succeed will be stuck in “normal school,” where it will be much harder to cultivate their skills.

The result is that teachers in these programs will be forced to teach to the lowest common denominator. The gifted kids that manage to make it in will get bored and won’t come close to reaching their potential.

Fostering Excellence

In some ways, this story reminds me of a scene from The Incredibles. In the scene, Bob and Helen get into an argument over whether to let their speedster son Dash compete in sports.

Helen: I can’t believe you don’t want to go to your own son’s graduation.

Bob: It’s not a graduation. He is moving from the fourth grade to the fifth grade.

Helen: It’s a ceremony.

Bob: It’s psychotic. They keep creating new ways to celebrate mediocrity, but if someone is genuinely exceptional then they…

Helen: This is not about you Bob. This is about Dash.

Bob: You want to do something for Dash? Then let him actually compete. Let him go out for sports!

Helen: I will not be made the enemy here. You know why we can’t do that.

Bob: Because he’d be great!

Helen: This is NOT ABOUT YOU!

Dash clearly has outstanding abilities. And Bob’s right, he would be great if he were allowed to compete. Now, we may not have super heroes in our world, but we do have many kids who, like Dash, are genuinely exceptional.

The question we need to ask ourselves, then, is how should we deal with the Dashes of the world? Do we tell them to hide the parts of them that are “incredible” because flexing their ability would be unfair to others? Do we give them a random chance at a specialized program, one that likely won’t push them because the coaches will have to constantly attend to the slower kids? Or do we set up programs that cater to those with exceptional abilities so that their talents can be fostered and their skills developed?

The answer seems obvious to me.

There’s a reason why admission to medical school is reserved for the top students. It’s the same reason why the best ballet schools only accept the best dancers, and why the best hockey teams only accept the best hockey players. Simply put, they recognize that admission based on merit is the only way to foster excellence. Filling our top institutions with amateurs is a recipe for society-wide mediocrity.

The only way to achieve excellence as a society is to allow the best to rise to the top of their respective fields, regardless of whatever good fortune may have helped them get there. And if that means tolerating a certain degree of inequality along the way, then maybe that’s worth it.

After all, the alternative is a dystopian nightmare.

This article was adapted from an issue of the FEE Daily email newsletter. Click here to sign up and get free-market news and analysis like this in your inbox every weekday.

Patrick Carroll

Patrick Carroll has a degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Waterloo and is an Editorial Fellow at the Foundation for Economic Education.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

Toronto’s Largest School Board to Drop Auditions, Aptitude Requirements for Specialized Programs in the Name of Equity

Struggling to Pay Back Your Student Loans? These States Will Revoke Your Job License

 

Student loan debt is one of the biggest burdens to young Americans, recently ballooning to $1.5 trillion and topping car and credit card debt. Millions are struggling to repay money they borrowed for an education they were told would set them up for financial success, but many states across the country have barred individuals from working if they have not yet paid off their loans.

Fourteen states across the country currently impose policies to suspend, deny, or revoke occupational licenses from borrowers, preventing them from working and, ultimately, fully paying off their loans. This practice applies to a wide range of professions, from massage therapists, barbers, and firefighters to psychologists, lawyers, and real estate brokers.

License Revoked

With over 8.9 million recipients of federal student loans reportedly in default and as much as 40 percent of student loan borrowers at risk of defaulting on their payments by 2023, these restrictive policies only make it more difficult for them to work their way out of debt.

In one recent example, last month 900 Florida health care workers received notices from the Florida Board of Health notifying them that if they didn’t repay their student loan debt, they would have their licenses suspended. Denise Thorman, a former certified nursing assistant in the state, lost her license last year because she fell behind on her payments.

“Your license is gone, your livelihood's gone, the care of your patients is gone. How fair is that?” she told local ABC affiliate WFTS last month.

The degree of enforcement of these laws varies from state to state, but those with such rules nonetheless claim the right to revoke professional licenses. In 2017, The New York Times reported there were “at least 8,700 cases in which licenses were taken away or put at risk of suspension in recent years” due to student loan defaults, “although that tally almost certainly understates the true number.”

Fourteen states currently assert their authority to rescind occupational licenses over unpaid loans: California, Hawaii, New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Georgia, Florida, Arkansas, Minnesota, Tennessee, Massachusetts, Iowa, and South Dakota, Iowa, and South Dakota. Iowa’s laws allow the revocation of all state-issued licenses, like driver’s licenses, while South Dakota can revoke driver’s, hunting, and fishing licenses, along with camping and park permits.

A National Burden

For many Americans, the opportunity to work in a specialized field was the reason they opted to go into debt in the first place. A bipartisan effort in the US Senate now seeks to prevent states from denying borrowers the ability to work because of delinquent loans.

Sens. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) recently partnered to introduce the Protecting Job Opportunities for Borrowers (Protecting JOBs) Act (S.609). This is the second time they have proposed this type of legislation. The bill would “prevent states from suspending, revoking or denying state professional licenses solely because borrowers are behind on their federal student loan payments,” according to a press release issued last week by Rubio’s office. The legislation, which would give states two years after its passage to comply, offers protections for driver’s licenses, teacher’s licenses, professional licenses, and “a similar form of licensing to lawful employment in a certain field.”

“It is wrong to threaten a borrower’s livelihood by rescinding a professional license from those who are struggling to repay student loans, and it deprives hardworking Americans of dignified work,” Rubio said when announcing the legislation.

State policies revoking or suspending the licenses of delinquent student loan borrowers affect a surprising number of workers, largely because the number of occupations requiring a state-issued license has quadrupled since the 1950s.

“At the national level, nearly 20 percent of workers are now licensed, up from just 5 percent in the early 1950s,” researchers at the Institute for Justice (IJ) said in a recent report.

IJ authors analyzed data from 36 states to calculate the burden of these government-issued licenses, estimating they cost Americans two million jobs annually. Further, they reported that “[b]y a conservative measure of lost economic value, licensing may cost the national economy $6 billion. However, a broader and likely more accurate measure suggests the true cost may reach $184 billion or more.”

To their credit, some states have already moved to do away with these restraints on economic freedom. Forbes reports that last year, “Alaska, Illinois, North Dakota, Virginia, and Washington all eliminated their default suspension laws for job licenses,” and eight more are considering similar legislation this year. The Kentucky legislature just passed a bill to prevent licensing agencies from suspending borrowers’ professional credentials.

The Root of the Problem

The federal government has played a central role in the student loan debt crisis and exploding costs of higher education. As FEE recently explained, the Higher Education Act of 1965, which put taxpayers on the hook for the loans made by private lending institutions, helped create the higher education bubble, which has seen a 1,600 percent increase in costs since its passage.

Tuition data from National Center for Education Statistics and inflation data calculated using 1963–1964 tuition and tuition increase at rate of inflation from CPI Inflation Calculator. Graph by Noa Maltzman.

By the 1980s, student loan defaults were already becoming a problem. In 1990, the Department of Education followed the lead of a handful of states, like Texas and Illinois, which had already started imposing laws to restrict borrowers’ licenses if they fell behind on payments. “Deny professional licenses to defaulters until they take steps to repayment,” the department said in its lengthy guidance entitled “Reducing Student Loans Defaults: A Plan for Action.”

Nearly 30 years later, student loans continue to weigh down individuals and the economy as a whole. That the federal government issues loans to people, assisting their plunge into debt, and then advocates barring them from working to pay them off only adds insult to injury.

Carey Wedler

Carey Wedler is a video blogger and Senior Editor for Anti-Media.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

Steve Jobs Wanted to Break Up the Education Monopoly

Steve Jobs Wanted to Break Up the Education Monopoly

Steve Jobs said in a 1995 interview, “The unions are the worst thing that ever happened in education.”

Jobs spoke with Computerworld’s Daniel Morrow in a 1995 interview, which covered a wide range of topics, but frequently delved into Jobs’s views on the American education system. As he said, “I’d like the people teaching my kids to be good enough that they could get a job at the company I work for making $100,000 a year.”

But Jobs blamed teachers unions for getting in the way of good teachers getting better pay. “It’s not a meritocracy,” said Jobs. “It turns into a bureaucracy, which is exactly what’s happened. And teachers can’t teach, and administrators run the place, and nobody can be fired. It’s terrible.”

He noted that one solution is school choice: “I’ve been a very strong believer that what we need to do in education is go to the full voucher system.” Jobs explained that education in America had been taken over by a government monopoly, which was providing a poor quality education for children.

He referenced the government-created phone monopoly, broken up in 1982: “I remember seeing a bumper sticker with the Bell logo on it and it said, ‘We don’t care, we don’t have to.' That’s certainly what the public school system is. They don’t have to care.”

Jobs said that one way to open up a free market in education would be to offer a voucher to families. He gave an example of the California public school system, which in 1995 spent $4,400 per pupil: “I believe strongly that if the country gave each parent a voucher – a check for $4,400 that they could only spend at any accredited school – that several things would happen.”

First, “Schools would start marketing themselves like crazy to parents, to get students.”

Second, many new schools would begin popping up. “You could have 25-year-old kids out of college – very idealistic, full of energy – instead of starting a Silicon Valley company, they would start a school, and I believe they would do far better than many of our public school teachers do.”

 

Finally, the quality of education would rise in a competitive market: “A lot of schools would go broke, there’s no question about it. It would be rather painful for the first several years, but I think far less painful than the kids going through the system as it is right now.”

Jobs said that the main complaint against school choice is that schools would cater only to rich kids, and the poor kids would be “left to wallow together.”

However, he said, “that’s like saying, well, all the car manufacturers are going to make BMWs and Mercedes and nobody’s going to make a $10,000 car. Well, I think the most hotly competitive market right now is the $10,000 car.”

In other words, Jobs said, all students would benefit from more school choice, as the monopoly in education was broken up.

“The market competition model seems to indicate that where there is a need, there is a lot of providers willing to tailor their products to fit that need, and a lot of competition which keeps forcing them to get better and better.”

Joe Kent


Joe Kent is the Vice President of Research at the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii, a free market think tank. Joe previously worked as a public school teacher for eight years, both in Hawaii and in Minnesota.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

Education Bills Solidify Federal Control of Schools, Children

Education Bills Solidify Federal Control of Schools, Children


In brazen defiance of the enumerated powers listed in the U.S. Constitution that all lawmakers swore an oath to uphold, both houses of Congress passed massive “education” bills packed with attacks on real education, local control of schools, student and family privacy, and the rights of parents. Despite false campaign promises by Republicans to rein in the Obama administration, the legislation passed by the GOP majority purports to reauthorize a dizzying array of unconstitutional federal “education” schemes — including draconian tools Obama has lawlessly used to nationalize education through the hugely unpopular Common Core standards. The White House has already indicated that it supports the legislation and will sign it, but critics are up in arms.

Perhaps the most important element of the legislation is that it reauthorizes the anti-constitutional Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 — the primary mechanism used by Washington, D.C., to usurp control over education from parents and communities. In essence, the measure opened the floodgates of federal funding for government schools, and with those funds, which come with “strings” attached, D.C. politicians and bureaucrats formally launched their plan to federalize public schools. The ESEA scheme was amended and made even more draconian by the almost universally reviled “No Child Left Behind” Act, implemented by a coalition including Ted Kennedy and George W. Bush. That program was crucial in forcing states to impose a radical testing regime that was ultimately used to federalize what is taught in schools.

Legal authorization for No Child Left Behind actually ended in 2008, yet Congress continues to appropriate funds for it. Just as importantly, the Obama administration continues to exploit the non-existent authority to usurp even more control over schools and the minds of children — offering “waivers” from the “mandates,” along with bribes, to state governments that agree to impose the Obama-backed Common Core regime.

In Ronald Reagan’s day, abolishing the federal role in education was the Republican position. By contrast, the GOP majority in Congress today seems determined to expand that giant D.C. boot print, as is shown clearly by the “education” bills, which further empower Obama. The latest bills even purport to legitimize the White House’s previous usurpations of power in violation of the law.

Ironically, much of the present Republican establishment’s rhetoric focused on pretending that the legislation would “give” states authorities and “flexibility” on education — powers the states already had and still have under the U.S. Constitution and the 10th Amendment, and powers that are not the federal government’s to “give” in the first place

Federal Aid Is Likely Driving College Costs Up

Federal Aid Is Likely Driving College Costs Up


Federal financial aid for higher education was supposed to grow the market, bring down costs and help families afford this critical step to financial security.

But a recent report finds the effort to provide educational assistance to students has turned into decades of unaccountable federal spending on higher education.

According to the report from the Center for College Affordability and Productivity, the federal student aid system “contributes to skyrocketing costs, finances a wasteful academic arms race, weakens academic standards, lowers educational opportunity, and worsens the underemployment/overinvestment problem.”

Brevard School Board candidates differ on cost-cutting

Lewis, a self-described fiscal conservative, has come down hard on a proposed half-cent sales tax that will be on the November ballot.

Explaining her vote on the proposed half-cent sales tax, Henderson said she felt “voters should tell us how we need to move forward.”

via megalextoria.com

I believe education is extraordinarily important but economic times are tough for everyone. Government needs to start saving for a rainy day instead of trying to raise taxes on people who are already hurting economically whenever there is an economic downturn. I will NEVER vote for a candidate or a ballot measure that raises taxes. Taxes are already way to high and spending is out of control. Find the money elsewhere if it is truly needed for education but given the amount per student that is already invested I find that doubtful.

This article should be re-titled 'Brevard School Board candidates differ on taxes'.