Remember that statewide vote Arizona held on vouchers? No? I didn’t think so, because no such vote ever took place. There’s a reason for that. Every time voters in other states have been asked the question, they’ve voted against vouchers. Our Republican-led legislature created our two voucher-like programs on its own. The first program was the tax credit for donating to a School Tuition Organization, which then gives out money to pay for private school tuition. The more recent was the vouchers-on-steroids program, called Empowerment Scholarship Accounts in Arizona but usually referred to as Education Savings Accounts. Bit by bit, year by year, the lege has added more students to the ESA program. This year they’re fast-tracking a bill that would make the vouchers available to every student in the state.
Remember the evidence showing that vouchers improve student achievement? No? I didn’t think so, since most studies have concluded there is little measurable difference between the achievement of similar students in district schools, charter schools or private schools. And on a country-to-country comparison, voucher programs appear to have harmed the overall quality of education.
The most glaring difference between the public education and voucher models of education is a comparison of Finland and Sweden. In the 1970s, Finland put together a comprehensive program to improve its public education system. Today, Finland has the best scores on international tests in Europe, scores that rival Asian countries which get the most attention for their high scores. In the 1990s, Sweden began a voucher system. Its scores on the international tests have fallen significantly since then.
That example doesn’t prove anything in itself, but it’s part of a trend pointed out in a recent article in U.S. News & World Report, Worldwide, School Choice Hasn’t Improved Performance.
Some have argued that competitive incentives induced by school choice will lead to better educational outcomes. However, there is little evidence to support this claim.
Sweden has had an educational voucher system since 1992, but its achievement levels on international tests have been falling for two decades. Chile has had such a system since 1980, and there is little evidence of improvement in achievement relative to countries at similar levels of income. Cleveland, Milwaukee, and the District of Columbia have issued vouchers to low-income families, but sophisticated evaluations find no difference between achievement in private voucher schools and public schools with similar student populations. Students from low-income families in Louisiana who have used vouchers to shift from public to private schools have experienced striking reductions in achievement gains relative to similar students in public schools.
In England there has been a dramatic shift from schools governed by public councils to academies run by private groups with great autonomy and the ability to select their own students. The results on student achievement show no distinct advantage, and there are similar results for U.S. charter schools based upon careful statistical comparisons.
The article goes on to say that at the same time voucher systems don’t help, and often hurt, student achievement, they manage to increase segregation. The same is true of charter schools.
Where school choice has shown powerful effects around the world is the systematic separation of students by ethnicity, social class and religion.
Sweden’s vouchers have increased segregation by social class and immigrant status. Chile’s voucher system has produced one of the most segregated system of schools in the world by family income. In the Netherlands, studies of the school choice system have pointed to school separation of students by ethnicity, immigrant status and family income. A Brookings Institution study found that U.S. charter schools are more segregated racially and socio-economically than public schools in surrounding areas. The Program for International Student Assessment, an important triennial study of international student performance, finds school segregation by social class is associated with school choice.
So Arizona wants to adopt a universal voucher system . . . why, exactly? Based on the best academic evidence, it’s not to improve the overall quality of student achievement. However, it’s a great way to increase social and economic inequality, and that’s something our Republican legislators and governor can get behind.
A What-Finland-Did-To-Improve-Education Bonus Feature: Entire books have been written about the Finnish way of education. Here are some highlights.
Students don’t take standardized tests until they’re finishing high school (yet they score extremely high on the international tests. Go figure). Teachers are mainly left alone to teach their classes, without lengthy common curriculum requirements and mind-numbing rubrics. Students don’t begin formal reading instruction until they’re seven years old. Elementary students have what most U.S. schools would consider a ridiculous amount of recess time. And teachers? Finland turns away many more applicants to its teaching programs than it accepts, so it ends up with teachers who are among the country’s top college graduates. Those accepted into the program receive a few years of free teacher education—with a living stipend so they don’t need to take part time jobs or loans—which includes lots of time for individual research into educational theory and practice as well as a great deal of teaching experience under the guidance of skilled mentors. Finland does have a few private schools—not many, but a few. They’re free, funded by the government. Most are religious. They have the same admission standards and the services as the public schools. They’re a bit like more carefully monitored versions of our charter schools, if we were allowed to fund religious education.
This article appears in Feb 9-15, 2017.
It appears that your vision is to lower all the standards to equal the failing public schools.
Like the Beatle song. “give choice a chance.”
Silly infidels. ‘Choice’ is only allowed to kill yet to be born children, not to allow you to choose the education for your born children.
In Arizona we are allowed to fund religious schools, through STO’s and tax credits, individual and corporate. That seems appropriate in a country whose Constitution guarantees freedom of religion. However, an odd interpretation of the separation of church and state (which was framed to try to prevent the state enforcing membership in a state-sponsored church, like England’s) has encouraged a class of people in this country to froth at the mouth when they think of tax dollars going to schools affiliated with the Roman Catholic Church — and to believe their prejudice can be justified through reference to the Founders’ principles.
Why the hatred of public funds supporting religious schools, especially Catholic schools, which, as David has written previously, are the primary beneficiaries of tax credits in Arizona? There are a number of reasons given, and a number of reasons cloaked, but you don’t have to dig too deep in American history to find a strong strain of anti-Catholic prejudice. Sometimes, in this region, it’s mixed with anti-Hispanic prejudice.
David: I know you’re a fan of desegregation and social justice, which, one would hope, would have something to do with minority families having easy access to forms of schooling that meet their children’s academic needs while being respectful and supportive of their values, their traditions, and their beliefs. What would a survey of the Hispanic residents in Southern Arizona find: what percent of that cohort would prefer to send their children to a public district school, or to the Catholic school of their choice, if the cost and convenience were the same?
The Catholic schools I know in Tucson are more, not less racially integrated than the public district schools I know. They are more, not less, socio-economically integrated as well — and that datum has made progress in the right direction BECAUSE OF the introduction of tax credits, which enable thousands of students who would not otherwise have been able to attend to do so.
Stop deriving your commentary from US News & World Report, and / or PCDP and TEA talking points, and / or Diane Ravitch and NPE. Come down from Cloud-Cuckoo Land and look at the world and the people around you in Southern Arizona. Perhaps if you did, you would see that YOU are the cultural imperialist, determined to impose your inaccurate idea of what is BEST on other people’s children. They don’t want what you want, David. They don’t believe what you believe. And when it comes to TUSD vs. Diocese of Tucson schools, what you are trying to force on them is a distinctly inferior form of education in every respect.
We don’t live in Finland, David. Conditions are different there in so many ways it would be difficult to count them all.
And let’s be clear, this is what anti-choice advocacy supports, in practice, in the here and now, with conditions as they are:
–If you have enough money, you have the full range of educational choices: a public district school in a safe, affluent neighborhood, or an Independent school, a Catholic school, a Jewish school, a Waldorf, school, a Montessori school…whatever.
–If you don’t have disposable income to spare and / or the means of transporting your child to a site remote from your neighborhood, your only option is the public district school in your neighborhood. And many public district schools in poor urban neighborhoods are poorly supplied, poorly staffed, and sometimes dangerous.
It really baffles me how it is that supposedly “liberal,” compassionate people earnestly desire to return to this way of structuring options for the rich and the poor — and some of these people, the worst among them — advocate for it when they themselves have used private rather than public schools for their own children.
(Perhaps “Frances Perkins” will materialize and find some way of explaining this that doesn’t make it seem like a form of oppression of the disadvantaged. Tell us, Frances: what would you recommend to parents who live in the immediate neighborhood of one of the recently de-magnetized schools in TUSD? “Your kids may not be able to learn anything in classrooms staffed with long term subs rather than fully qualified teachers, and the discipline problems that occur when teachers have not been given the behavior management training the desegregation plan requires certainly don’t make it any easier, but at least this public school is conveying the right ideas about WOMEN’S REPRODUCTION?”)
But the most damning aspect of most anti-choicers I know is this: when it comes to the lies, the abuses, the misapplications of funds, the numerous violations of professional protocols from hiring to bidding to safety protocols…you name it…in our largest local fabulous PUBLIC SCHOOL DISTRICT, the strongest anti-choice advocates, who want to lock kids into these malfunctioning schools, are SILENT. Their advocacy for the decent functioning of the public district system is 100% MIA.
…and no, just advocating for increased funding is NOT advocating for the decent functioning of the public district system. The system has many, many problems that cannot be fixed — and may be exacerbated — by increasing funding without simultaneously increasing responsible oversight.
Fetish. I hate TUSD. I Hate TUSD. To some here this hatred justifies every illegal, irrational, unconstitutional act by the bought and paid for Arizona legislature. This biggest lie they use to justify these illegal acts, is that they are helping low income students. They care not one iota about poor kids. I demand you help me pay my Salpointe or Brophy tuition with public money, is the real message.
False, false, and false, “Frances Perkins.”
0% correct, you flunk.
Those who comment in these streams providing information about what is actually going on locally — as opposed you and others who live in an “ANTI-PRIVATIZATION!!!” fantasy land and provide nothing but falsehoods and ideologically-driven prejudice against a religious group and its institutions — don’t “hate TUSD.” We hate lies, the misapplication of funds, filthy quid-pro-quo politicos and the bidders who donate to their campaigns, and we hate the FACT that children are being poorly served by institutions that receive hundreds of millions of tax dollars every year that are supposed to benefit STUDENTS and TEACHERS.
How many TUSD Board meetings and Site Council meetings have you attended in the last 3 years? I’m guessing zero, because your commentary reveals NO knowledge of real events, real policy and funding allocation decisions — just ideological bullshit in post after sad post. I believe you did reveal at one point that you had attended Salpointe. What’s the matter, did you have a bad experience there, and did it fuel a life-long hatred of the Church and a desire to undermine and handicap the high functioning schools it runs locally, which have at this point provided excellent educations to hundreds of thousands of people, Catholic and non-Catholic, who unlike you remain grateful for what they have received?
(By the way, you forgot to answer the question asked above: what would you say to parents in the sadly mismanaged, recently de-magnetized TUSD schools: “Conditions here are as good as you deserve, you definitely shouldn’t use vouchers to transfer your kids to a Catholic school — they might learn reading and math, but they could also pick up the wrong ideas about WOMEN’S REPRODUCTION”?)
Bulletin from the real world, Frances Perkins. Individuals decide for themselves whether they will follow or reject the values they are taught in school. But if they move from one grade to the next without the knowledge in each content area they need to succeed at the next level, they will be permanently handicapped in their educational prospects. And whether or not their parents’ choices conformed to the prejudices of the ANTI-PRIVATIZERS!!! will not do them a damn bit of good in making up for academic deficits.
Frances Perkins – why do you hate Catholics?
I personally witnessed the rot and decay of TUSD in the 80s. And I couldn’t imagine it could get any worse. How wrong I was.
Give the parents a chance to help their own children. Anything less is brutally selfish. Why?
Wrong again, flunked, rat and again. I went to a Catholic school for 12 years, and my parents paid for both systems, without taxpayer handouts for tuition, and sacrificed for the choice, and did it gladly. They didn’t have millions from DeVos to lobby for handing over taxpayer money to the schools. I spent time volunteering at an central city Tucson school with kids from all over the world. They are great kids, lovely kids, with parents dedicated to education PAID BY TAXPAYERS AS THEY SHOULD. when was the last time you geniuses volunteered in a PUBLIC school and read to kindergarteners?
Yep – Frances hates Catholics. Sorry you had a failing experience.
As a ’74 graduate of TUSD I can attest to the degradation. From a strong, proud district to nothing more than a liberal indoctrination center enriching the likes of H.T. Sanchez under direction of the Grijalva’s by exploiting illegals to fill the seats. Make no mistake, the Grijalva’s have transformed TUSD into their personal radical chicano indoctrination center. I knew my priority as a parent was to insure my children did NOT attend TUSD, to use my CHOICE for their education.
And thousands and thousands of others made the same decision.
Wrong again, Frances Perkins.
I student taught in TUSD and taught in a Catholic school. As a parent, I have volunteered in (and raised money for) both private schools and TUSD schools.
At this point I have probably donated more free labor to benefit TUSD than most. This is what people who know the district’s schools, Board and current administration understand: there is nothing wrong with the students in the district. The problems are with the Board and administration and the political machine surrounding them, which do not serve students’ best interests.
As for your perspective on how a Catholic education should be funded: a lot has changed since your parents put you through Catholic school. The current estimated cost of attending Arizona public universities for in-state residents is $25K per year. The current cost of private colleges and universities is more than $60K per year, 300% more than it was 30 years ago. That means the cost is $100K per child for a public university degree, $250K per child for a private university degree. Catholic families are not as large as they used to be, but how many families can afford to pay private tuition for K-12 in a context where this much must be saved for college? Catholic schools risk extinction unless they can find ways to make themselves affordable in a context in which real wages and job security for the middle class have stagnated or declined and the cost of higher education has skyrocketed.
Public policy on education needs to be formulated based on real data and the real needs of students and teachers, not utopian fantasy, not hysterical anti-privatization rhetoric, not the desire to line the pockets of the local political machine, and not anti-Catholic bias. There are other Western nations that cover the full cost of education in both “public” and “Catholic” schools — it is the parents’ choice where those tax dollars are applied. In these countries, both systems are properly overseen to guarantee quality academics and both systems are fully financially transparent, as all institutions using public funds should be.
Why don’t we have a system like this here? There is no valid reason. This is the invalid reason that forms the sub-text of policy and funding debates surrounding Catholic schools: the persistence in America of various types of anti-Catholic, anti-immigrant bias (Irish, Polish, Italian, Mexican and others — they’ve all been made to suffer at various points from the WASP establishment’s disdain for their traditions, their beliefs, and the educational institutions that have been understood to perpetuate them).
The last time I read to a TUSD Kindergarten class the teacher told me the reason the children were so poorly behaved was because they were children of alcoholic parents. Took my child and left. I graduated TUSD but am ashamed of the level to which they have sunk.
The bottom line is taxpayer money to private religious schools are prohibited by the State constitution. The legislature is essentially laundering money to get around the prohibition. If all you advocates of money laundering had the courage, put it crystal clear in the ballot,”Should public taxpayer money be used to support private religious schools,” and it’s corollary “Will you pay a dedicated tax to do this?” Somehow I believe you want to avoid the likely answers.
You forgot this part, Frances:
“In Southern Arizona, where:
–a school district serving tens of thousands of students is chronically malfeasant and / or insufficiently transparent in matters relating to how it applies funds
–more than 40 years into an ongoing desegregation order the schools have still not achieved UNITARY STATUS (uniformly good services offered to all populations throughout the district)
–the Department of Education is chronically negligent in enforcing the proper use of bidding and hiring practices and financial reporting that should be utilized in any public institution
–qualified teachers are fleeing this district in droves and too many classrooms are staffed with underqualified long-term subs who cannot meet students’ instructional needs
…do you support taxpayer money being used to provide children with sound academic instruction in alternative settings, including the network of schools run by the Roman Catholic Church.
That’s the REAL context here. You can’t suppress the knowledge of the first part and frame the question to get the answer you want.
FYI, I’m no fan of the way state level policy has been constructed in Arizona. I agree with the ADE official who was recently quoted in these streams thus: “Among the key lessons taken from Arizona’s experience with many various forms of school choice is that in nearly every instance, the haste to enact a program was not accompanied by a prudent investment in the necessary infrastructure to oversee it.” All schools receiving public funds need to be properly overseen and required to be financially transparent, and the current framing of voucher and charter legislation does not accomplish this.
But the “best of all possible worlds” is distinctly not what we’re living in here, and the real “bottom line” — contra what you wrote above — is that STUDENTS NEED A SOUND EDUCATION, AND THEIR FUTURES WILL BE MARRED IF THEY DON’T RECEIVE ONE. It appears that with the current political lay-of-the-land in Arizona, we can’t have sane education policy. We can only have damage control. And to remove vouchers now — imperfect as their current framing may be — would be like kicking the crutch out from under a crippled patient who can barely walk with the crutch. Our students need the successful delivery of academic content. When the largest public school district, serving almost 50,000 students in this region — 1 of every 3 students in public schools in Pima County — is having such grave problems with achieving the successful delivery of academic content, we’re simply not in a position where we can afford to eliminate public subsidies for academically sound alternatives. And that is the case even when it’s a Church you and others appear to hate that provides those alternatives.
It’s uncanny how much these anti-Catholic-school people sound like the rabid anti-immigration people:
“It’s illegal !! It’s unconstitutional !!! Ban the use of public funds in Catholic schools !!! Deport them all !!!”
In both cases what comes across is the irrational, abusive use of somewhat arbitrary MAN-MADE RULES to cut off access to a basic human need: in one case, a good education; in another case, a living wage for labor.
RE the school voucher case: Kids do better when their parents are happy with the school in which they’re enrolled and fully supportive of its values. If people want their tax dollars applied in a Catholic school, why not, as long as it’s academically sound? If you want to be scrupulous about it, you could pro-rate the public funds and apply them to all the academic subjects taught in public schools but not to the one hour a day or less when religion class is taught.
Why not? What exactly is wrong with it? And please give a real reason, related to how it does or does not serve the needs of the families in students in question, not just the standard-issue hysteria, which makes it sound a lot like “constitutionalism” is serving as a cloak for prejudice and bigotry.
Frances Perkins – so schools that teach liberalism, that teach man made global warming could not receive taxpayer funding?
“It’s uncanny how much these anti-Catholic-school people sound like the rabid anti-immigration people:”
They have absolutely nothing to do with each other. Personally I don’t know of or heard anyone that are any anti-immigration people. Could you be referring to illegal aliens that violate the laws of our country to take advantage of the citizens and legal residents of America? Steal seats in our strained public education system at the cost of taxpayers and detriment to their children?
Immigration policy, like education policy, needs to be formulated on the basis of relevant facts and data. One relevant piece of data when it comes to immigration is whether we have sufficient resources to provide the services immigrants need to make a successful transition into citizenship and employment here. (Having volunteered with programs in support of both East Asian immigrants and African immigrants in the past, I know that quite a bit of support is needed as people learn the language and how American systems function).
What I have trouble with is trying to shut down discussion of a policy issue simply on the basis of “IT’S UNCONSTITUTIONAL !!!” As has been pointed out in these comment streams before, slavery was constitutional before the 13th amendment. Barring women from voting was constitutional before the 19th amendment.
When it comes to issues like vouchers and immigration, I’d like to hear arguments for whether it’s sustainable or unsustainable, humane or inhumane, just or unjust, a positive or negative addition to our current economic and educational situation in Southern Arizona. Where the issues currently stand in terms of the Constitution and Supreme Court rulings is one thing to take into account, but discussion doesn’t end there.
Frances Perkins – “They didn’t have millions from DeVos to lobby for handing over taxpayer money to the schools.”
How many millions do the teachers’ unions lobby to take choice away from parents and imprison our children in public education?
U r absolutely correct! Thank u for sharing, David. A problem I have noticed about Charter schools in Tucson, is that they seem to attract problem children w/problem parents. The kids learn little, yet pass with flying colors, n their parents are delighted. The few good kids who end up in charter schools, learn all the problem kids’ bad habits, which are even worse than the habits they would pick up at public school!
At the national and state level, politicians supporting choice policies have won.
We will not be returning to a state of affairs where large, monolithic, centrally administered “public school districts” — many of these districts, in poor urban areas, in the grips of corrupt political machines — once again enjoy an inappropriate monopoly on the use of public funds to educate American citizens. This changed circumstance in the field of education is entirely appropriate, given our political, cultural, and demographic situation as a nation: we live in a pluralist society that guarantees freedom of religion, and we’ve long since lost our faith that there is any such a thing as a value-neutral perspective that can be reliably conveyed in impersonal, centralized, state-controlled educational institutions. You can read any number of political scientists, cultural anthropologists, and literary critics to bring yourself up to date on this topic, if you higher education came in the days before Post-Modernist epistemologies resoundingly defeated the Modernist project: James C. Scott. Clifford Geertz. Marshall Sahlins. Stanley Fish.
Memo to the “anti-privatizers”: if your involvement in policy debates on these issues is actually motivated by a concern for student well-being, it’s time to shift your policy advocacy emphasis to putting legislation in place that supports fiscal transparency for all institutions using public funds and a suitably flexible (not Common Core-style) agreement about what constitutes academic competence in each of the disciplines.
Some seem to believe that “religious” schools don’t accept appropriate academic standards in the sciences, but this is not uniformly true. Some do, some don’t. Salpointe recently installed a state-of-the-art STEM center and it teaches the same AP science curricula other college preparatory high schools do. As for the “hot button” politicized science issues: recently a Carmelite scientist from South America whose research on climate change contributed to the formulation of the pope’s encyclical on the environment, Laudator Si, gave a talk at Salpointe. He was not a climate change denier.
Some seem to believe that all “religious” schools limit women’s opportunities and perpetuate outmoded gender stereotypes. Once again: some do, some don’t. Salpointe’s first Rhodes Scholar was a Hispanic young woman, a varsity athlete, and a top student.
If there are young people right now in Tucson who could benefit from the opportunities Salpointe and other schools like it can provide, their parents’ income levels should not be an obstacle. We are fortunate that our public policy in this country is starting, in a very small and limited way, to rectify some of the gross injustices we have tolerated relating to income-discriminatory access to educational opportunity.
What again, why do you support pedophiles?
Article 2, Section 12. Arizona State Constitution. NO PUBLIC MONEY SHALL BE APPROPRIATED OR APPLIED TO ANY RELIGIOUS WORSHIP, EXERCISE, OR INSTRUCTION, OR TO THE SUPPORT OF ANY RELIGIOUS ESTABLISHMENT. Of course conservatives genuflect to the Constitution when convenient and ignore it when their private interests benefit.
So do you, Frances. (Genuflect to the Constitution when it supports your discriminatory anti-Catholic school funding policy agenda, while conveniently ignoring other law-based and constitution-based arguments that don’t conform to the ideological points you want to push.)
I’m asking you again: what’s your message to the parents of students enrolled in the recently de-magnetized TUSD schools:
“This form of mis-managed, insufficiently professionalized ‘education’ is good enough for you because the money that flows through this district, unlike the money that flows through charters and voucher-supported private schools, conforms to the Arizona Constitution, which happens to coincide with my ideological priorities on this particular point, and, not coincidentally, benefits the political party / machine with which I affiliate?”
The kind of differential acces to quality educational opportunities that happens in mismanaged districts like TUSD is an ongoing shame and injustice. Their chronic inability or unwillingness to address inequities in the quality of services offered from one site to the next is the reason a 40 year old desegregation order is still unresolved. I would not wish on my worst enemy the misfortune of having to enroll a child in ANY of this district’s schools — even the supposedly “high functioning” ones — especially not while the district continues to suffer under its current incompetent and venal administrative management. And that statement is based on direct and extensive experience as a parent and volunteer and direct and extensive experience as a participant in and observer of governance meetings. Unlike other arguments made in this stream, what I have written here is not based on utopian fantasy about what our local public schools SHOULD BE in theory but ARE NOT in practice.
Frances, faith in God is not a private interest. The only real gain occurs after death. many people have decided to smear faith with some sort of broad religious brush to cover up for some other fear or inadequacy.
I believe the original intent mirrored the USC that the government shall not establish a religion. I also believe if the federal government chooses to solve education problems by allowing it, the states may follow.
Both sides use the USC as a security blanket, and even at that neither finds much security. But continuing to try to solve education issues by doing the same thing we have been doing will provide the same results we have been getting.
And that is the definition of insanity.
First of all, Frances cited the ARIZONA Constitution — not the US. Different documents — y’all should read them sometime.
Second: As far as I’m aware, NOBODY in this argument is anti-Catholic, anti-private or anything else (though many of the commentators seem to be anti-TUSD). You want choice? Choose. Be happy. Conservatives want to conflate this issue with abortion, for crying out loud!
If you want to pay to take your kids to a private religious school, fine. I have no objection to that at all. Just don’t ask me to pay for it. The principle doesn’t seem like it would be this hard to grasp: TAX dollars go to PUBLIC schools that are accountable to TAXPAYERS. PRIVATE schools should be funded by those to whom the schools are accountable — meaning those who PAY for them. See how that works?