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JANUARY 11, 2012 | Commentary by MATTHEW BROUILLETTE
A Decade Left Behind
My first career started a few decades ago in the classroom as a high school history teacher. While much has changed since then – including the use of technology and smaller class sizes – the one constant is the need for "reform" to improve our education system.
DECEMBER 22, 2011 | Commentary by NATHAN BENEFIELD
Why Gov. Corbett Didn't Get His Christmas Wish List
For Christmas this year, Gov. Tom Corbett hoped the legislature would gift wrap three things he could tie a bow on: An education reform package that included school vouchers, state liquor store privatization and legislation addressing gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale.
DECEMBER 13, 2011 | Policy Points by COMMONWEALTH FOUNDATION
Charter School Reform
Pennsylvania charter school enrollment grew from 982 students in 1997 to 91,000 in 2010, as more parents exercised choice in their children's education. On average, charter schools receive and spend only about 83 percent of what school districts spend for each student. Allowing alternative charter school authorizers would increase opportunities
Recent Blog Posts
MAY 23, 2012
Why Families Like Cyber and Charter Schools
Nine-year-old Ashley Matunis and her sister, 6-year-old Anna (pictured right), are typical girls who enjoy pizza and pretzels. They are also typical of the kind of students who attend cyber schools. They go to Pennsylvania's largest such school, PA Cyber, which now educates more than 11,000 students across the state.
As the girls' mother Sarah Matunis notes, cyber school meets her daughters' needs in a way regular schools cannot: Third-grader Ashley is learning quicker than average in math, and is now freely learning at the 4th-grade level. Anna was diagnosed with Type I diabetes before she turned 5, so cyber school allows her to keep up with school at home while her mother keeps tabs on her health. "We finally feel like our tax dollars are being used well," she said.
The Matunis girls are just two of some 90,000 students in Pennsylvania in charter schools, which include cyber schools. And the waiting list is 30,000 strong. They and other charter school families gathered in Harrisburg yesterday for their annual day on the hill to remind legislators why school choice is so important: It gives families like the Matunis a chance at an education best-suited to how their children learn and function. Pennsylvania families want lawmakers to protect school choice, and provide more of it.
As for Ashley and Anna, school choice means they could be the next Hannah Tuffy, a Scranton native who is the first graduate of PA Cyber to be accepted to the prestigious U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Let's give more families the schooling options they need to succeed like Hannah.
posted by PRIYA ABRAHAM | 11:30 AM | 0 comment
MAY 22, 2012
How to Fix What's Broke in Education
Harrisburg Patriot-News columnist Nancy Eshelman rightly sounded the alarm Sunday on Pennsylvania's public education system:
It's the same old story. Every spring, threats of higher taxes, slashed programs or both hang over our heads like thick black clouds.
It's time to yell, "Enough!"
This isn't a midstate problem. Schools across Pennsylvania are slashing and burning programs while jacking up taxes. What we need is someone in power to step up and lead the charge to fundamentally change the way we do business. Our system is broken. We need a better one, one that doesn't rely on property taxes, one that treats education with the importance and respect it deserves.
Ms. Eshelman is correct when she points out that Pennsylvania's public education is broken. But there is a proven policy solution that allows teachers, schools and families to do more with less: School choice. Twenty states have passed education reform that includes opportunity scholarships, or vouchers, to low-income students, and scholarships through tax credits.
The results speak for themselves. After 20 years of trying school choice, our best studies show all or some voucher students improve academically through the policy. The best part? Nineteen of 20 studies show that competition through school choice improves public schools, too. By contrast, simply increasing funding for flagging school districts does not fix the entrenched problems driving persistent failure.
School choice is the new solution Pennsylvania needs to fix its broken education system. With school budgets strained and taxpayer dollars stretched, it's also the remedy that will help students, families, teachers—and our public schools.
posted by PRIYA ABRAHAM | 10:00 AM | 0 comment
MAY 2, 2012
The Patriot Can Do Better Than This...
Our friends at The Patriot-News here in Harrisburg just posted an online poll that asks the following question:
The state Senate has passed a school voucher bill that would allow parents to move their children to better schools at taxpayer expense. Do you support that?
With all due respect to a fine newspaper, that is just not neutral language.
First of all, Senate Bill 1, the piece of legislation in question, is not just about vouchers. It would also expand the Educational Improvement Tax Credit, which is no minor issue, with this program having awarded more than 284,000 scholarships worth $335 million during its first decade.
Secondly, by alluding to doing something new and different "at taxpayer expense," the question implies that vouchers cost taxpayers extra money, but they don't. The money students would take with them from violent, failing schools—to remind you, an act of violence occurs every 17 minutes in one of our lowest-performing public schools—would get spent no matter what, as it would come out of the state subsidy to their original schools. The question is not whether taxpayers have to fork over the cash or not; it is whether students and their parents are forced to use it at a failing, violent school or take it elsewhere. And, of course, in the long run, school choice saves money.
Thirdly, while I would certainly advance the argument that the schools voucher recipients would choose to attend are indeed better than those where an act of violence occurs every 17 minutes, that is also a non-neutral term. "Different" would be more appropriate.
A better way to ask the question would be something like the following:
The state Senate has passed a "school choice" bill that would allow parents to move their children to different schools and have some taxpayer money follow them from the old school to the new. Do you support that?
Thanks to the Patriot for being part of this important discussion. Let's make it as factual as we can.
posted by CHARLES MITCHELL | 03:30 PM | 0 comment
