No Way Out

My October 2004 Reason magazine article on the No Child Left Behind Act and school choice is up at Reason Online.

Here's the opening:

Like every junior high school student in Camden, New Jersey, 12-year-old Ashley Fernandez attends a school that has been designated as failing under state and federal standards for more than three years. But low expectations were the least of this seventh-grader’s problems. In 2004 Ashley’s gym teacher became irritated by his unruly class and punished all the girls by putting them in the boys’ locker room. Two boys dragged Ashley into the shower room. One held her arms and the other held her legs while they fondled her for more than 10 minutes. The teacher was not present, and no one helped Ashley.

Ashley’s principal, who has refused to acknowledge the assault, denied her a transfer out of Morgan Village Middle School. Since the gym incident, Ashley has received numerous threats, including repeated confrontations with male students who grab her and then run away. When Ashley’s mother began keeping her home from school, she got a court summons for allowing truancy.

Free Market Education Conference

On September 28th the Cato Institute will host a 1/2 day conference on "Creating a True Marketplace in Education."

Here's the link to the conference information.

I'll be in the first panel titled,"What is an Education Marketplace?", talking about the current education marketplace and the role of for-profits.

ACLU Misses One

This dispatch comes from Dad (Michael Snell). . .

In Southern California the Labor Day weekend doesn’t mark the demise of summer but instead it marks the onset of the searing heat of September, which is often the hottest month of the year. And so, with temperatures already pushing into the nineties, at 9:30 this morning the students of Woodrow Wilson Elementary School gathered in front of the flagpole to memorialize those whose lives were forever altered by the events of what has become known as 09/11.

My eight-year-old, Jacob, has been ecstatic all week because his third grade class planned to sing his favorite song for the special September 11 observation at school. Make no mistake about it; this is not just his favorite patriotic styling but also his favorite song, hands down, even edging out that really cool Brian Setzer rockabilly stuff.

Jake and the House Blond (Katie) share a singular love of this tune and rest assured that you just ain’t lived until you’ve watched the car windows bulge outward to that point just before the safety glass explodes as they belt out Lee Greenwood’s God Bless the USA. The intensity and sincerity of the kid’s performance can sometimes bring tears to your eyes, although sometimes the tears are merely the result of a dramatically off key rendition that leaves you bleeding from the ears.

Where they ever heard this song and why it has the effect on them it does remains an unexplained mystery. What is apparent to me however, is that even at the tender ages of six and eight my kids understand the various implicit and explicit messages contained in the lyrics and its stylized promise of what it means to have been born American.

As remarkable as that is to me as a parent, I find it even more remarkable that despite the politically charged and politically correct social movement that at times seems to have a chokehold on public education, this performance took place in a public school in California and nobody heard from the ACLU. Yet.

California Charter School Performance Update

The Sacramento Bee's Daniel Weintraub reports on the performance of California charter schools in the 2003-2004 school year.

According to the California Charter Schools Association, the latest numbers from the Academic Performance Index - the official measure of how well schools are progressing toward state goals - show that 64.4 percent of charter schools achieved gains from 2003 to 2004, compared to 61.1 percent of non-charter schools.

Charter schools, meanwhile, increased their scores on the index by an average of 12.9 points, compared to 7.3 points for non-charter schools.

The improvement was most dramatic in San Diego, where charter school gains were three times greater than their traditional counterparts, and in Oakland, where charters with at least two years of scores had an average increase that was nearly five times the growth in regular district schools. In San Diego, three of the four public high schools showing the most gains were charters.

Nice Gig If You Can Get It

The U.S. Department of Education gave more than $5.7 million last year in bonuses to its employees, including a student-aid official who got $71,250.

In the 2003 calendar year, more than 75 percent of the department’s employees received bonuses, with political appointees among the recipients.

Each year, the department gives some employees cash awards on top of annual raises, a practice that spans federal agencies. While officials say bonuses are a way to reward performance and help lure employees from the private sector, critics say the practice smacks of favoritism and isn’t based on measurable criteria.

I'm not sure this is what President Bush's Performance Management Agenda had in mind, when it prescribed linking performance to funding.