The school “choice” movement was originally embraced by the right side of the political aisle; today, for the most part, it is bipartisan. Four years ago, I was on the fence relative to the role charter schools can play in achieving results for students. Now, I am a staunch advocate for the high quality charter school movement in Santa Clara County as a proud Democrat.
That said, the choice movement gets me a little queasy when states and their elected leaders advocate for the next leap: utilizing public tax dollars as parent vouchers for private schools. This is where I draw the line. I am adamantly opposed to a school voucher system for private school choice. And yet, I wonder if what is happening in Alabama and Wisconsin today can happen in the Golden State in the not too distant future.
The answer is “yes” from my vantage point. With one watershed election, all things and calculations can be thrown on their proverbial head. The public and California’s teachers unions should carefully pay attention to what is transpiring in Alabama and other states.
In an article published on Huffington Post, Bill Barrow chronicled a dawning of a new age in Alabama. The GOP won a supermajority in the statehouse in the 2010 election. Barrow writes that legislators “frame their efforts as improving a broken system more concerned with public employees than with children.”
Henry Mabry, president of the Alabama Education Association (AEA), accuses Republicans of hurting schools with changes to teacher tenure, tax breaks for private school tuition and limits to the collection of union dues. AEA’s former lobbyist Paul Hubbert says the AEA was a predictable target for the new supermajority, because they always supported Democrats. Sound familiar?
If we get the same education results five years from now for low socioeconomic Latino and African American, we could have a political turning point in California. And we Democrats will deserve it. We can no longer stay quiet when the results in student achievement are so bleak.
If teachers unions continue to wield vast amounts of political power in Sacramento and in our local 58 counties, and 31 districts in SCC and student achievement results do not improve dramatically, the war will be fought at the ballot box. It’s the right place to fight the battle, but I do not want to live in a state where Republicans have a majority, let alone a supermajority. CTA and CFT will bear the brunt of the responsibility.
Tenure as we know it must go, and pay for performance must be the norm for teachers. My fellow Democrats must champion these changes now more than ever.
High quality public charter schools are a disruptive innovation that is helping increase student achievement for each and every child in Santa Clara County. This is happening through high quality competition in an imperfect system of traditional public school education. Charters are demonstrating that quality results can come without tenure and seniority. From what I have learned, charter school teachers actually appreciate pay for the real performance of their student results, rather than a handout for longevity.
On April 19, the Palo Alto Education Association ratified the newly negotiated collective bargaining agreement between the District’s Board and its union. At the May 7 meeting, the Palo Alto Unified School District’s trustees will be asked to approve a 3 percent salary increase for the teachers and all other staff members. All 760 teachers, if the new contract is adopted, will receive a 3 percent increase plus a one-time “payment” of 1.5 percent.
This is the manner in which school districts, unions and their elected boards have done business for decades. Will any local school board members have the courage to take the lead and begin the critical conversation before it is too late? Is this not why the charter school movement is alive and well in Silicon Valley?
If we wait much longer, California and Santa Clara County will have a voucher system where our public tax dollars go to private schools. This is a very, very bad idea.
Joseph Di Salvo is a member of the Santa Clara County Office of Education’s Board of Trustees. He is a San Jose native.
This all makes sense until you have to send your child to one of the crappy schools in Downtown San Jose or other parts of San Jose. The schools are horrible and getting worse. I am not sure I want my child going to a place where all the effort is spent on trying to get others up to a minimum educational bar and at the same time subject them to the abuses of the non involved parents whose children dominate the playgrounds. You are on the board of education… This is your responsibility to fix this. Get it cleaned up. The easiest way to not have this happen is serve your “customers”, the parents with a good product. Something that is not there now.
School choice is a common sense idea that all parents are given the power and freedom to choose their child’s education. There isn’t a district in San Jose that makes the grade and or giving taxpayers their return on investment. It’s a smart policy that allows parent/guardian or student to choose a district, charter, or private, regardless of residence and location. It’s a shame Joe, like those prochoice folks you are not the one having the babies. Parents will always have a choice when it comes to choosing what’s best for their children. Many and many school board members I know have their kids in private school or charters, unfortunately, they won’t say that in order to tow their political line and get re-elected. And who cares if you’re a democrat. How about doing some work now.
What about the Cupertino Union and Fremont Union High School districts?
Great news for Liccardo’s girlfriend and her Rocketship school scheme. Non Profits never had a chance to make so much money.
> The school “choice” movement was originally embraced by the right side of the political aisle; today, for the most part, it is bipartisan. Four years ago, I was on the fence relative to the role charter schools can play in achieving results for students. Now, I am a staunch advocate for the high quality charter school movement in Santa Clara County as a proud Democrat.
Joe:
I think you are unclear on the concept of “choice”.
If it doesn’t include private schools, it’s not a choice.
It’s harkens back to the old Ernie Ford song “Sixteen Tons”:
“I owe my soul to the company store”.
If you’re a powerless coal miner, paid crappy wages for dangerous work AND you have to spend your crappy wages in the company store, that’s not choice, it’s exploitation.
I think “proud Democrats” figured that out long ago.
How come proud Democrats have such a hard time figuring out that having to spend your education dollars in the government’s “company store” is just as exploitive as the coal company robber barons’ store?
The huddled masses in the crappy government schools are yearning to breathe free, Joe.
You’ve got your foot on their windpipe.
School vouchers aren’t going to guarantee that your children are going to get accepted into Harker or Bellarmine. If you have money, your child is still going to have a better chance getting into one of these schools than the hoi polloi. School vouchers become just another tax break for the rich.
What’s happening now is that people are moving to areas that have good schools. When people that care about schools populate an area; they tend to vote for parcel taxes to fund education; they are active in the PTA; they pay attention to what happens on the school board; the schools tend to continue to do well. I suppose the flip side is that the areas that those people move away from will tend to do relatively worse.
> School vouchers aren’t going to guarantee that your children are going to get accepted into Harker or Bellarmine. If you have money, your child is still going to have a better chance getting into one of these schools than the hoi polloi. School vouchers become just another tax break for the rich.
In case you haven’t figured it out yet, boys and girls, this is called “The Narrative”.
Out rulers, whoever they are, see to it that “The Narrative” as they have shaped it, is on as many tongues as possible. The cumulative effect is that the masses hear “The Narrative” constantly and from all directions and conclude that it must be “reality”.
“The Narrative” is not reality. It’s what the rulers,—the “elite”, the “Man Behind the Curtain”, whatever their real identity—it’s what the rulers want the masses to believe.
“The Narrative” is NOT reality.
“The Narrative” is NOT truth.
“The Narrative” is simply a script prepared by the rulers to be recited mindlessly by the ignorant parrot masses.
“The Narrative” is what Obama reads from his teleprompter.
Freedom means recognizing and rejecting “The Narrative”.
Sure. In the South it’s a way to circumvent the separation of church and state. People care more about prayer in the classroom than about the quality of education.
I suppose that’s how you get a coalition.
> In the South it’s a way to circumvent the separation of church and state.
“separation of church and state” is part of “The Narrative”.
It’s not in the Constitution.
It’s a classic example of something that the Rulers have told the masses is “reality”, but it’s not an objective reality.
Perhaps you need to go back and read the text of the First Amendment, and then read the Originalist literature about the intent of the founders in writing the First Amendment. The point isn’t to give power to the government to place limitations on when where and how a person – child or not – expresses or practices their faith. In fact, the point is the exact opposite: that the government should have no say whatsoever in how people practice their freedom of religion or conscience so long as that practice does not directly and affirmatively hinder the freedoms and liberties of other individuals or groups. The intent of the First Amendment was to prevent the establishment of a state religion as had been done in colonial-era England. THAT is the true intent of the First Amendment, not the bastardized interpretations of all too many court precedents.
Should children be allowed to pray in school? Of course, so long as that prayer does not create a meaningful obstacle to the learning process or interfere with another individuals’ freedom to pray or not pray as they choose.
Finally, if you were genuinely concerned about separation of church and state, you would encourage the voucher system so that parents – and not the government – have the option of the type of the school to which their children go whether secular or parochial. The Constitution and the Bill of Rights are about individual liberty, not government control of how we enjoy our individual liberties.
I’m actually not that concerned about the separation of church and state here in California.
I don’t like the way a lot of my tax dollars get spent here in California though. Giving money to people so that their children can attend private schools would not be a good use of my tax dollars.
School vouchers indeed may not guarantee admission to those fine educational institutions you mention. Congratulations. You get the red herring award. The point isn’t that anyone could get into *those* institutions, but that parents could choose the best school they can manage, as opposed to being forced to deal with the bureaucracy, red tape and hassles of trying to get their kid out of one lousy-performing school into the better school across town.
Furthermore, while the value of the voucher may not entirely offset the cost of tuition at a good private school, it would make such tuition attainable for many and less of a hardship for others.
Finally, your comment about the vouchers being a tax break for the rick is a major canard. Plenty of wealthy people send their kids to great public schools because they live in towns with high-performing schools. Others can and do send their kids to private institutions. Plenty of people of average income (among whom I count myself) scrimp and save so that their child(ren) can attend a private school.
The point is that the state is supposed to set aside a certain amount of money for every school-age child in the state on a per child/day basis. All that the voucher would do is connect the tax dollars to the child as opposed to the school district or to the state’s coffers. Because of that, low-income and middle-class parents, especially, would enjoy far more diverse educational options for their children than they do presently. Personally, I’m praying for the day I can apply for a voucher for my daughter and offset the cost of sending her to her current, excellent, school.
I think we can see a clear divide between those who might try to use vouchers to improve education for all our kids, and those who want it to be a middle class subsidy.
The key thing is that the voucher should cover the entire cost of the school. Maybe surprisingly, Sweden has vouchers – and if schools accept the vouchers, they can’t charge any additional fees.
If vouchers can be used as part payment for a more expensive school, poorer kids are shut out. Then, with the middle classes paying the top up fees, there would be increasing pressure to just keep cutting the voucher value so as to keep taxes low.
If the voucher isn’t enough to pay for the excellent private school that your child attends, maybe the value ought to be higher – for all our children.
Azul_R,
Your comment suggests that you think that the same, equivalent education is something to which all children are entitled, regardless of ability to pay for the education type of choice.
It would be nice to be able to agree with you. In a perfect world, the question of how to go about getting the best education possible would be simple: send your child to the neighborhood public school. Unfortunately, we have seen the result of this sort of egalitarian approach.
There are so many problems with our public school systems as they currently exist that, really, the best thing that could be done is to scrap the whole system and start over.
An off-the-cuff list of some of the toxins poisoning our school system: teacher tenure, school subjects which have nothing to do with math, linguistics, history, civics and science; far too many schools which are inundated with the children of illegal immigrants who bring with them their own set of challenges which inevitably slow the progress of educating other kids, mismanaged retirement systems, too much mid-level management and too few teachers, and, frankly, far too much influence and revisionist history courtesy of the Left.
Once upon a time in America, schools and teachers were directly supported directly by tuition paid by parents. Parents were free to choose the school to which they sent their children. Vouchers would get us a bit closer to that older system of education, force schools to be more competitive in terms of the quality of education they provided, indirectly hold teachers more accountable for the quality of education they provide and still stay close to that egalitarian ideal of universal education for all children.
So what if some kids don’t get to go to Bellarmine or Harker? They still can have more options than to be stuck going to the crappy school around the corner. And, so what if some kids’ parents might pay a bit more than the voucher offers in order to send their kids? It still gives the free market a bit more room to work and forces schools to compete with one another in order to attract students and the voucher dollars which come with them.