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October 27, 2011 | Commentary by CARA DOCHAT, PRIYA ABRAHAM
Government Unions Steal Worker Freedom
Pennsylvania is one of 28 states in which workers can be compelled to give part of their paycheck to a union just to keep their job. Moreover, even non-membership is costly. Those able to evade union coercion are still compelled to pay hundreds of dollars in fair share fees, or agency fees, to cover their supposed share of benefits gained from collective bargaining.
October 10, 2011 | Policy Report by PRIYA ABRAHAM, NATHAN BENEFIELD
The Learning Revolution
How Cyber Schools and Blended Learning Transform Students' Lives
Online learning serves a significant and growing number of students, and represents a significant shift in how we educate Pennsylvania's children. In light of the growth of cyber and hybrid schools and the debate over their accountability, this Report seeks to help Pennsylvania residents understand more about cyber charter schools, whom they serve, and how they operate.
July 13, 2011 | Commentary by PRIYA ABRAHAM
Government Transparency in Pennsylvania Becomes a Reality
The last few months saw immense partisan animosity and demeaning comments during numerous spats under the Capitol Dome. But amid the fiscal fist fights over school choice, a natural gas tax, university subsidy cuts and really, everything concerning the FY 2011-12 state budget, one important bipartisan pact emerged: creating transparency in state spending.
Recent Blog Posts
FEBRUARY 15, 2012
Attacking Cyber School Funding
The House Education Committee held an informational hearing today with administrators from several of Pennsylvania's cyber schools. The school officials mainly addressed myths about cyber school funding and performance, in light of a new bill introduced by Rep. Michael Fleck in December, HB 1973. One testifier described the bill as "a wolf in sheep's clothing, purporting to reform charter operations with the true intent of killing cyber charter schools."
Why such strong language? Cyber schools are public, taxpayer-funded online schools that began a decade ago. They offer parents an alternative to their local brick-and-mortar public school, without the cost of a private education. And they are proving immensely popular, with nearly 28,000 students enrolled today. When a student leaves her school district for a cyber school, public funding—76 percent of the per-student cost, on average—follows the child. Faced with a loss of funding—though it is a minuscule 1 percent of public education spending—school districts are crying foul, and demanding that lawmakers "fix" how cyber schools are funded.
The main funding element of HB 1973 is a restriction: It would mandate that cyber schools keep their "fund balances" —essentially the school's reserves—at 8-12 percent of their budgeted expenditures. Lawrence Jones, President of the Pennsylvania Coalition of Public Charter Schools, explained why this is a problem:
Half of the 400 school districts refuse to pay for their students enrolled in cyber charter schools, forcing cybers into the four-month long redirection process and often into procurement of loans to cover operating costs...Cyber charters need to retain a fund balance so that taxpayer dollars that currently go to lending institutions and attorneys can instead be used to educate children. Imagine what it would be like to run the government if half of Pennsylvania's taxpayers simply refused to pay their taxes and there were absolutely no recourse to force them to do so.
So, yes: Cyber school officials agree that funding for their schools needs fixing and should be more equitable. But there is no one-size-fits-all "actual instruction expense" for every cyber school. Furthermore, questions such as "How much does it really cost to educate a child?" could equally be asked of a traditional public school.
In reality, having a competitive education marketplace in the form of charter, cyber, private and public schools is what keeps costs down and learning effective. Burdening cyber schools with needless regulation serves only to smother the innovation our public education system so desperately needs. In the end, public education funding should serve children, not a system.
posted by PRIYA ABRAHAM | 04:49 PM | 0 comment
FEBRUARY 14, 2012
Who Would Oppose Reforming a Costly, Unnecessary Law?
The Pennsylvania House of Representatives may vote today on a bill to reform the 1961 prevailing wage mandate. The prevailing wage requires government to pay higher wages and benefits for construction projects than the private sector for the same work, costing taxpayers upwards of $2 billion each year.
The state prevailing wage law is based on the federal Davis-Bacon act, which was passed with the expressed intent of limiting competition.
The legislation being considered today—HB 1329—would not repeal this costly, unnecessary law, but simply increase the threshold above which projects are subject to the prevailing wage mandate. The current level, $25,000, has not been increased in 50 years. When the prevailing wage law was created, $25,000 was double the cost of the average family home.
Even this modest reform would save taxpayers and help local governments complete important and routine projects. Here are some examples, from the County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania:
- A $42,000 bridge repair project in Carbon County.
- A $46,500 roof replacement in Adams County.
- Spending $44,000 to replace exterior lights and posts at the Westmoreland County Courthouse.
Cumberland County's director of facilities estimated that 90% of the county's contracts would fall under the threshold if it were raised to $185,000. For more information, see this policy points on the history and impact of Pennsylvania's Prevailing Wage.
Click here to take action.
posted by NATHAN BENEFIELD, PRIYA ABRAHAM | 04:56 PM | 0 comment
FEBRUARY 10, 2012
School Choice Gives Students Hope
Chester-Upland School District in the Philadelphia area is in deep financial trouble, and it made news recently for suing the state for emergency funding to keep going. In a piece entitled, "This District Had It Coming," University of Arkansas Education Professor Robert Maranto remembers his research visits to Chester-Upland in the early 2000s, and the lessons he took away from a district that had already been failing for decades:
Years back, a Pennsylvania Department of Education official overseeing Chester Upland told me it's "kind of a lost school district. . . . One of the things I found most frustrating was that some of the administrators—not the teachers—like being the worst in the state because they can ... use it as an excuse, and as administrators, they're concerned about their jobs." The district exemplifies what Charles Payne noted in So Much Reform, So Little Change: Once educators believe their children cannot be taught, there is little outsiders can do to convince them otherwise. Failure becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Chester Upland is in trouble because some charter operators believed most of the district's kids can learn, while most district leaders did not. Charters offered a safe environment—and in some cases—a safe learning environment while traditional public schools did not.
It's this kind of fatalism—these kids in violent, failing schools can't learn—that often underpins arguments against school choice. And it could not be more wrong. Take the cases of Olney East and Olney West High Schools in North Philadelphia, where the school district gave control to Hispanic educational organization Aspira Inc. last year. The Olney schools were consistently among the most violent in the city, with dismal academic scores that placed them in Pennsylvania's bottom 5 percent of failing schools.
Olney's 1,700 high schoolers were truant, defiant and sometimes violent. When they should have been in class, they played handball in the gym or spades in the cafeteria. Chaos reigned. But within months of Aspira taking over, and combining the two high schools into one charter school, suspensions and expulsions dropped dramatically.
The difference? Aspira instilled order and made expectations clear to students. They hired 29 safety officers, installed 350 cameras, required school uniforms, replaced the old teachers, and even improved the food service. But the "game-changer" was the way Aspira separated students with disciplinary problems from the rest of the student body into a "Success Academy." Apart from knowing there are immediate consequences for bad behavior, Success students such as 12th-grader Justin Powell have found something else: Hope.
Powell is thriving in the Success program he was named Success' first student of the month and plans to get post-graduate training in maintenance and landscaping. "The first day, everybody knew my name. Wow! Mr. Esposito pulled me to the side, and he said to me, 'Mr. Powell, you think you can follow the rules?' And I'm thinking, who's this guy who knows my name?" Powell recalled.
The lack of hope is the crucial difference between schools of choice and persistently failing school districts such as Chester-Upland. Given the right opportunities and dedicated adults, even troubled kids can succeed. Yet another reminder that school choice saves.
posted by PRIYA ABRAHAM | 01:30 PM | 0 comment
