A Strike Against Charter Schools

This argument is one that I've made several times and I'm glad that it's resonating in some places, though I certainly couldn't claim any credit.

"The Washington State Supreme Court has ruled that charter schools are unconstitutional, reported the Seattle Times. Conservatives push charter schools as part of their mission to dismantle public education.

It's not just conservatives, but it does seem to be dominated by that point of view.More specifically, it seems to be dominated by a desire to filter out "the bad students", a desire that at first seems like it might be reasonable but that falls apart when examined logically.  It also, strangely, seems to come flavored with class and socio-economic discrimination.

Late on Friday, the state Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that charter schools are unconstitutional because they aren’t “common schools” in that their boards are appointed, rather than elected, said Washington Chief Justice Barbara Madsen. Charter schools are publicly-funded but privately-owned.

This fact is key, in my mind ... how can it be justifiable to allow a private school to be paid out of public funds when the public is paying for a local school already? 

The ruling stems from a 2013 lawsuit in which a pro-public education coalition claimed that charter schools “improperly divert public school funds to private organizations that are not subject to local voter control.” Kim Mead of the Washington Education Association praised the court’s ruling. “The Supreme Court has affirmed what we’ve said all along — charter schools steal money from our existing classrooms, and voters have no say in how these charter schools spend taxpayer money,” said Mead.

Right. I can run for the local school board (and have served on it), I can ask to see their budgets and accounts (and have), I can know about and criticize their hiring practices and salaries and policies. I can't do any of that for the local Catholic school, or any of the local private schools. If taxpayer money is being REQUIRED of me for tuition payment, then I have the right to have a say in how it's spent. Charter schools do not have to tell me any of that.

The ruling is a great victory in the fight against conservative privatization and the attack against public education. Private companies should not be allowed to use taxpayer money to run private, issued based, schools in a pursuit of profit.

The only thing a charter school can offer that public schools don't is the removal of all weak students from nearby classrooms.

source.

The only voucher system I have ever supported is one in which students are allowed to choose a different PUBLIC SCHOOL than the one in their neighborhood. Public money should stay in the public schools.

Just as important, charter schools don't actually offer anything that the local public school doesn't.  The pro-charter reformers always tout low test scores as a reason to allow the best students to go somewhere else, but that's a straw-man argument.

Those top students aren't being forced to take remedial classes, or being ignored and forced into doing poorly because other kids in that same school are doing poorly. Those top kids are taking challenging classes in the public school. They're taking AP courses, college level courses (and receiving college credits from the University of Vermont system), and online courses through UVM and VHS. They're doing well on the SAT, ACT, and others. They're going to Dartmouth and the Ivies, state colleges and Universities. They're not being held back by their peers.

The only thing a charter school can offer that we can't is the removal of all weak students from other classrooms. That's not appropriate for a public school system.

• Charters don't offer anything better than we do. 
• Charters don't improve students; they improve averages. 
• Charters don't improve school offerings; they remove the very students that allow us to offer AP calculus.
• Charters don't help students; they offer the exact same courses to the same kids that I would.
• Charters don't have better teachers, either. They have younger teachers, or those who weren't good enough to get a job in the public school, or those who weren't certified to teach in public school (and that's a pretty low hurdle), or those who want to work many more hours for less pay.

Academic Xenophobia.

NPR is reporting on school districts who are cracking down on residency issues.

Why?

1. Those parents who are going to go out of their way to "work" the system and exert extra effort to get their kids into your school are statistically more likely to have better motivated students.That's the KIPP difference, the charter difference.  Why not use it? Helping your AYP is nice.
2. It's not like the kid is free-loading. You get the money for every kid who attends regularly and these kids are already going out of their way to get there, so they'll probably have better attendance.
3. The kids are more likely to behave because calling the parents would expose the scam. 
4. District lines are very often arbitrary at best. Gerrymandering the lines doesn't make the bus ride shorter, the school better or the environment safer.

In my mind, I think the best thing would be to make noise publicly. "We're cracking down in the best interests of our community" while making sure that only the troublemakers who try this get caught at it.

Besides, I never quite figured out why it was so important.  We have to educate every kid somewhere and isn't it a compliment that family after family wants to be at YOUR school? I'd be rolling out the red carpet for kids who wanted to come and bragging about it if I could, but maybe that's the private school experience coming out of me.

How do I square this with my stand against vouchers? Because it is a switch between public schools. Most often, vouchers are touted as a transfer of funds from the public school system to a private school and that's the part I don't like.

I can be a member of the local school board (actually have been). I can pick up the phone and directly effect what is going on at the public school in my town. Even as a private citizen, I can walk into the principal's office and ask a question directly - and get an answer (okay, yes, make an appointment and wait a little but you get what I mean). If I am calm, dispassionate, and right, the school will make a change to its policy because I am a taxpaying member of the town and the school is being run by the town for the benefit of any citizen who wishes to take advantage of it.

The Catholic Schools and the private schools won't do that. Why should they?

I do not have a problem with the public - public voucher system. It works well here in Vermont.  I really have a problem when money goes to private institutions which don't follow the same testing and accountability requirements that the rest of the schools do.

Thanks for the Help

Gee, thanks Bill.

Joanne Barkan, writing in Dissent, argues that three big nonprofit foundations (the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, and the Walton Family Foundation), working together, exert a “decisive influence” on public-school education. ”Whatever nuances differentiate the motivations of the Big Three, their market-based goals for overhauling public education coincide: choice, competition, deregulation, accountability, and data-based decision-making,” she writes.(h/t to the Freakonomics blog, Dubner and Leavitt.)

Unfortunately, this is not just about Bill, Eli and Sam wasting their own money.  It's about three foundations that are pushing an anti-public school agenda that aims to destroy the teachers' union and reduce the educational possibilities for the public. It's about the capitalization of an "industry" at all costs, using tactics that sound good on the face, but are mainly aimed at money.

But, Barkan warns, these market-based reforms are hardly a panacea: “[E]vidence is mounting that the reforms are not working. Stanford University’s 2009 study of charter schools—the most comprehensive ever done—concluded that 83 percent of them perform either worse or no better than traditional public schools; a 2010 Vanderbilt University study showed definitively that merit pay for teachers does not produce higher test scores for students; a National Research Council report confirmed multiple studies that show standardized test scores do not measure student learning adequately. Gates and Broad helped to shape and fund two of the nation’s most extensive and aggressive school reform programs—in Chicago and New York City—but neither has produced credible improvement in student performance after years of experimentation.”

Misguided reform coupled with tragically misguided legislation has left us with the same problems we had before coupled with many new ones.

• We have public schools in which the teachers at the top of their payscale (e.g., here in Vermont) with all the bells and whistles, degrees and seniority, still are earning less than the state median wage. 
• You have charter schools opening up on the cheap, closing down significant public options, simply so that Green Dot and other groups can make a profit. The principal of such can look super while pulling in $200k to $500k but apparently a teacher making more than $30k is the AntiChrist.
• You have organizations like Teach for America, set up solely to destroy teachers who want to make a career of teaching. How? By making it harder for serious candidates to get into places to establish themselves.  Why would a school want a career teacher when it can hire a fancy thoroughbred that will seem flashy and pretty and fast, but ultimately flame out in two years? Instant gratification writ cynical.
• You have reforms that are directly counter-productive, that "everyone knew were going to revolutionize education" but that really wound up wasting a significant portion of that budget that the pro-voucher, pro-private school advocates were pointing to as a problem in the public schools.
• Think: Small Schools Initiative. (Break big schools into smaller ones and then bitch that the smaller ones don't have economy of scale.)
• Think: Technology Uber Alles. Microsoft is the Education King! Every kid should have a laptop! Every kid should have a smartphone! iPod! iPad! Netbook!
• Think: Parochial, Private, Charter, KIPP! Profit is better.
• Think: Merit Pay!
• Testing, testing, testing. Test them in October, release the scores in May. And I'm supposed to do what in the last six weeks of school to change my curriculum to help this kid?

Like I said, Thanks. Now would you all please go somewhere and stop helping?

PJ O'Rourke gets Stupid

So PJ O'Rourke, who used to be funny, has deflated into a wizened, cranky conservative who's drunk the anti-public Koolaid. He has forgotten his basic economics, his basic statistics and his basic humanity.

Oh Well.

"What’s been learned is that it costs a fortune to send kids to school. Figures in the Statistical Abstract of the United States show that we are spending $11,749 per pupil per year in the U.S. public schools, grades pre-K through 12. That’s an average. And you, like me, don’t have average children. So we pay the $11,749 in school taxes for the children who are average and then we pay private school tuition for our own outstanding children or we move to a suburb we can’t afford and pay even more property taxes for schools in the belief that this makes every child outstanding."
"Close all the public schools. Send the kids home. Fire the teachers. Sell the buildings. Raze the U.S. Department of Education, leaving not one brick standing upon another and plow the land where it stood with salt."
Opinion: End Them, Don’t Mend Them: It’s time to shutter America’s bloated schools, by P.J. O’Rourke, The Weekly Standard, June 21, 2010

Okay, let's take a few of these:
We all pay between $1000 and $5000 towards education every year, kids or not. That tax money covers the tuition for any child or dependent, for twelve years, maybe thirteen. PJ seems to think that the entire cost of a single kid's education comes out of his pocket and therefore should go back into his pocket. Frankly, PJ, you're getting a deal but you're too stupid and you insist on getting your little moppet into Miss Porters. Too bad.

Very funny, the jibe about teachers only working part-time. I have no answer to that except to feel good that I work for much more of the year than a columnist does. What does PJ get in exchange for writing 10 inches, 100 times per year? Much more than I do and he works a grand total of four days a year.

Yep, PJ you're right that scores on AEP haven't risen much. What's your point? That kids should be getting more and more intelligent? Try this on for size, PJ. New England prep schools have identical results as their in-town Public competitors on SATs and ACTs when you look just at those who are taking college-prep and AP courses. In fact, more millionaires' kids in Mass go to public schools than to private ones.

Teacher:student ratios - well, you got me there. 15:1 is the average. Of course, a basic statistics course will also tell you that for every class of 10 there's a class of 20 and for every one-on-one, there's a group of 30. Trust me, there are a lot of 1-1s.

PJ doesn't like 1-1 teaching. Those kids who need specialized help are apparently trash to be thrown out, according to his scheme. "A yearly benefit of $26,000 should provide some tutoring and therapy—or a pocket full of Ritalin." Maybe, but that's not an education and it falls far short of what a private school would charge for a disabled student.

What public education does, unfortunately for the conservative blowhards, is provide a good education for a majority of its students. Parents know that. That's why they continue to send their kids there. That's why school budgets (in Vermont at least) have a 98% record of being passed by their towns. It's also why there are very few private schools - and the ones that are here are having terrible enrollments.

Capitalism at work?

Don't tell PJ.

Closing Schools and the Law of Averages.

Pissed Off Teacher has it right.

When you try to raise scores by closing schools, you don't eliminate the problem, you sweep it under someone else's rug. You can pretend that the bump in the middle of the new rug isn't there and you can safely ignore for a while but sooner or later, like a Ponzi scheme spirally out of control, you have to address it.

Unfortunately, the rug in question isn't on Bloomberg's head, it's another school.

In some ways, it's like debtor's prison - your problem is your fault and you deserve punishment for having it, even if it's not your fault and you had no control over any of the decisions leading up to it. You still get punished even though the punishment makes the whole situation worse.

Closing School A does not teach it's students any lesson other than "Money talks and you have no voice." NCLB, vouchers, and many of Bloomberg's policies might not have been INTENDED for the purpose of closing public schools and replacing them with private schools, but the effect is shaping up that way.

What a sorry country this would be if all the public schools closed. The charters could ignore all those students who don't "meet the criteria."

I've said it before and I'll say it again: If the solution is "Schools without Restrictions" then lighten those restrictions. Don't eliminate the schools, unless you don't want THOSE people's kids to get an education.

Closing Schools - Now what?

Pissed Off: Out Of The Mouth Of Babes says:

The kids were all abuzz about some of the borough's schools being closed. They were worried that these kids will now be coming to Packemin. They didn't understand why these schools were being eliminated. I told them about the school's poor academic records and their failure rates. The kids immediately piped up with "Bad kids are bad kids. So now they will all come here and bring our school down too. I bet we will be the next school closed."

Toles had it best:

Homeschooling without all the effort

Florida has upped the ante on stupidity. They've started on-line courses that will essentially relieve the State of costs, teachers, students, need for school buildings and other apparently unnecessary things.

If you don't like the other children at school or disapprove of the minorities who might contaminate your little precious but are unsure of how you could teach her? Plop her down on the living room floor and a Florida-certified teacher will teach her online.

"A teacher working out of her home at an undisclosed Florida location supervises instruction for Taylor and dozens of other elementary students across the state. She monitors their work, talks with students individually online and holds virtual class meetings to discuss particular topics."

Instead of holding actual class meetings, she supervises education and monitors their work? Instead of 18 kids in a room where a physical teacher can see that Johnny is bored or misunderstanding and do something about it, we now have dozens of kids in their own homes possibly supervised by their parents. This is an improvement?

"What's missing is 18 kids competing for one teacher's attention, boring downtime in the classroom, distracting discipline incidents and playground bullying."

Now your little darling can be homeschooled and you don't have to do anything or know anything except be a presence in the building. The elementary school teacher now has dozens of students instead of 18. Little kids with no self-control and little motivation are treated just like highly motivated ones. There is no teacher, no one to explain or instruct or motivate, only

"boxes of textbooks, work sheets, study materials and other classroom supplies, right down to a compass, magnifying glass and other nifty items for basic science experiments. Older kids even get microscopes."

That'll help the little darlings. Unsure of something? Ask your computer screen and when the online teacher gets around to it, she might explain it. An adult is required in the home to help with instruction - yeah right, that'll work. The whole point of this program is to provide homeschooling for parents too lazy, too stupid or too unmotivated to provide it.

Back in the kitchen, Joni Fussell keeps Taylor on task, although there is flexibility for running errands or doing chores, as long as Taylor spends about five hours a day doing schoolwork. The program requires an adult at home to aid with instruction.

I love the "flexibility for running errands" thing. Like anyone will check if the only adult is gone for 4 hours. Like the adult is truly expected to do anything or is responsible for anything. At least true homeschool parents make a commitment to teaching and guiding their children. Essentially, the state is pawning off it's responsibilities onto parents in guise of giving them choices.

But wait, there's more. You can't do a partial program. No clubs, sports, computer classes, proms, languages. No attending school for part of the day to take a gifted and talented program. The teacher is not negotiable.

The final oxymoronic part of this new wave of homeschooling? People who have been homeschooling already are not welcome in this program. I guess that "once jilted, forever angry" is the stance Florida is taking.

Here's the link.

16-year-old drops out of school to play Guitar Hero

It happens, it's stupid, but it's the parents' right to make asinine decisions for their minor child. (Not dangerous ones, mind you, but asinine ones) He "hadn't been doing well in school and wasn't liked." So the obvious answer is a variation of school choice? This kid exemplifies why I don't follow every whim and wish of my students, why I don't like school choice (too many decisions are based on flimsy junk like this) and why I don't like the trend of catering to "the 21st Century student" and his odd little educational quirks.

Let's get beyond the question of whether any adolescent feels that he is doing well and is well-liked. Whether you believe that the gaming is the cause or effect of his loneliness or that both were caused by a third unmentioned factor as I believe, you probably can agree that this kid would be okay in a big public high school where there are lots of kids just like him and amongst whom he'd be liked and admired. His helicopter parents are screwing him up.

It's that third factor, a parental obsession with easing the daily details of their kid's life, has to be a big contributor. This is complete conjecture on my part, of course, but the fact that they are getting him a tutor for his entire education means they're not the homeschooler type of parents. They're not improving his schooling out of principle. Instead the kid wasn't "happy" and they're paying for his every whim. They're going to subsidize his gaming fad-hobby in the face of truly unrealistic images of financial return, which reeks of a spoiled child to me.

From Yahoo!Tech:
In fact, young Mr. Peebles is dropping out of high school... in order to focus on Guitar Hero full time. Peebles hopes to join the small but growing crew of players looking to make gaming a job. Citing his victories in Guitar Hero tournaments, which include "gift certificates, gaming equipment, and chicken sandwiches," Peebles thinks he has the chops to play competitively and earn actual money in the process. As the story notes, top gamers on the competitive circuit can earn up to $80,000 a year (though $25,000 is more common). Peebles, of course, can count his 52 Chick-fil-A combo meals toward that total.

I love that he "thinks he has the chops" and "earn actual money" phrases. Part of me wants to explain that "earn actual money" means "spend that actual money on everyday necessities like gas and still require a lot more" and part of me wants to let the kid and his parents make the decision and waste their money.

Then there's my favorite: lead them on with the promise that some other guy gets paid a lot of money collected from all the rubes. "Of course, kid, you're one of the elite, not a rube contributing entrance fees to pay the real winner."

The money quoted was for "some top gamers" and "up to $80,000 a year (though $25,000 is more common)" which implies that he has a reasonable chance at $25000 per year and an outside chance at $80,000, not bad for a kid playing games and easy enough to live on with no dependants and sleeping in his van. Later in the article, that's corrected to "in eight years his total earnings are about $25,000 total" -- a slightly different set of circumstances. Not to mention that it's only ONE top gamer who makes $80,000 - but that lets them bring in the suckers.

So far, he's won "gift certificates, gaming equipment, and chicken sandwiches." This set of giveaways is worth exactly zero in real money but sounds like he's won a lot. This is his ticket to financial independence? Later the Tech Blogger mentions training and the cost of travel and expresses a worry about the difficulties of breaking into the professional ranks. He's wrong to worry - it's easy to get in and stay in if your parents are right there to pay for everything. He won't win but he doesn't care. Churchill's maxim does not apply to him: "Play for more than you can afford to lose and you will learn the game." He's playing with house money now and it'll only be a shame when he hits the big 2-1 and his money supply dries up. (excuse me, his ChickFilA chicken sandwich certificate supply) Then what?

At least with a football player, there's a degree as athletic trainer or jobs as coach to fall back on. That'll make you a good living and be a lot more secure than playing a fake guitar.

I was at first inclined to disparage the decision by his parents to let Peebles drop out of school, but it seems a little less ridiculous when you delve into the facts. Peebles hahdn't been doing well in school and wasn't liked, and even now he isn't gaming full time. He has a tutor that provides a private education, and his parents say he's doing well with the more focused instruction and that their son now even does his homework without complaint. (Presumably he can hit the axe sooner after he's finished his studies.)

However, I worry that Peebles, who's just 16, may have a tough road ahead trying to break into competitive gaming. The costs of traveling to tournaments alone can totally outstrip earnings, and the amount of training can be grueling. Sponsorships are often a pipe dream. And then there's the issue of games going out of date and being replaced by something new. Traditional athletes never have to worry about, say, distance running being upgraded with a new version, but many games can go out of style, fast. In the end, there's just not much cash there: One gamer, quoted at the end of the linked article, says that in eight years his total earnings are about $25,000 total, and that's including a national championship in Halo 2.

The 65% solution is 100% B.S.

From Schools Matter:

TALLAHASSEE | In a stunningly swift move, the Florida Supreme Court on Wednesday knocked three politically contentious constitutional amendments off the November ballot, with the most important ruling eliminating a complicated plan to cut property taxes by 25 percent that was linked to an uncertain promise to increase sales taxes.
Amendment 5 would have traded a huge property tax cut for other tax increases, amendment 7 would have provided a basis for reinstating a public school voucher program, and amendment 9 would have required public school districts spend at least 65 percent of their money directly on classroom activities.

It's funny how this shell game keeps popping up all over. The first one is just political gamesmanship trading a tax break now for a tax hike later, the second is just a bad idea floated by people who hate public schools and the last one is just amateurs looking at statistics and pretending they understand what makes a school successful.

The 65 percent thing is a national movement started by the founder of Overstock.com. Another outsider who has been successful in business and who is now convinced that he knows the secrets of the Universe and has all the answers to our educational blues. ^TM

When will these guys learn that just attending school thirty years ago does not mean you can translate your business sense to the local public school?

At first blush, he seems to have a good idea, until you start looking at the definitions of what is and isn't considered "classroom related" and you realize that the game-playing is pervasive and essentially ruins the whole argument. Library books, librarians, and library media are not considered classroom expenses but athletic uniforms and equipment is. How screwed up is that?

Anyone can teach, therefore Education is Broken

Well, at least he can multiply ...

Thomas Sowell has decided that everyone can teach:

When amateurs outperform professionals, there is something wrong with that profession.

If ordinary people, with no medical training, could perform surgery in their kitchens with steak knives, and get results that were better than those of surgeons in hospital operating rooms, the whole medical profession would be discredited.

Yet it is common for ordinary parents, with no training in education, to homeschool their children and consistently produce better academic results than those of children educated by teachers with Master’s degrees and in schools spending upwards of $10,000 a year per student — which is to say, more than a million dollars to educate ten kids from K through 12.

Sowell's use of a few particular people's success to claim that education is flawed misses the point that those people who succeed at homeschooling are probably the ONLY people who could have succeeded. The educational system isn't flawed because a relatively small portion of the population is different. Homeschool parents who succeed are not "ordinary people" but rather quite extraordinary.

It's necessary to point out that not every family has the
1) time available & monetary ability (one spouse not working)
2) the wide-ranging intellectual interests that go into education
3) the ability to teach.
4) the inclination to spend the time and money necessary.
5) the knowledge.

I heartily support homeschooling. If parents have the initiative and desire to jump through all of the state hoops and can play the legal game enough to satisfy the educrats, then I feel their kid's education will go well enough that I can say "They're your kids, do what you will." Whatever the reason, the choice to homeschool is big enough that the sample is limited to those who will probably succeed, rendering Sowell's argument silly. It doesn't even seem to matter how tough that first step is.

That first step, in my state at least, is a low one. There's a long history of rural homeschoolers here. They tend to rejoin the public schools for high school because of the specialized subjects and for athletics (Homeschoolers are allowed to play but it is easier if kiddo is right there.) Many of these have come into my class behind in their math skills, and desperately wrong about many things, but overall the old saying about teaching and teachers still holds true whether it's Mom, a tutor, or a middle-school teacher.

"Bad teaching has less of an effect on students than we fear; good teaching has less of an effect than we should wish." Wish I could remember who said it.

Choice

So the Senator has weighed in on education:

"When a public system fails, repeatedly, to meet these minimal objectives, parents ask only for a choice in the education of their children." Some parents may opt for a better public school or a charter school; others for a private school. The point, said the Senator, is that "no entrenched bureaucracy or union should deny parents that choice and children that opportunity."

Since when does public money pay for a private choice? Since I include the federal government in his definition of "entrenched bureaucracy," I have to ask where does he get off saying that we should demand that schools with no accountability should be a choice over schools that his entrenched bureaucracy won't let go of? Charters are free of the rules and regulations that tie teachers’ hands in traditional public schools. How about we loosen some of those rules?

Where does choice fail?

(1) Who's the customer? If you take taxes from every person, regardless of whether they have children, then the taxpayer is the customer not the parent. If that money is sent to a public school then I can stand up in School Board meetings, Town Meetings, etc and have my say as to how that money is spent, or misspent. (New football stadium, anyone?) I can vote for or against that budget (and many towns around here did just that). I can run for the School Board and have an even more direct say. If you send my tax dollars to a charter, parochial, or other private school I cannot.

(2) "It's my money, dammit." I pay a couple thousand per year in property taxes (renters do too, it's just part of their rent). For that couple of thousand, I can have as many kids in the school system as my house will hold, whether my own, step-kids, adopted kids, foster kids, extended family. For just two kids, I would pay roughly 1/12th of their education costs in taxes every year. The trade-off is that I will pay until I die (minus the low-income exceptions built-in by my State). I figure I would break even after the 120th year of paying property taxes. I'll take that deal anytime.

(3) Taxes != tuition. I used to run a private school. We would typically figure out how much to charge someone based on income. Of course, we called the difference a "scholarship." When the tuition is listed at $15000, say, the real cost of educating a kid might be around $9000. If the kid is the last one, the costs might be as low as $3000. (It doesn't cost much if you can just slide him into classes without hiring a new teacher).

If a family can pay $5000, the scholarship has to be "$10000." The school collects $5000 and figures that $4000 can be scrounged from donations and sources (i.e., other tuitions), won't break the bank and the kid is a good one.

New calculation runs this way: family can pay $5000, voucher is $7500, therefore scholarship is "$2500." The school now is receiving $12500 for a kid whose education costs less than that. Raise your hand if you think that the schools are going to lower the family cost. Didn't think so either. All that vouchers really are is a giveaway to the private schools. I can tell you firsthand that every private school is quietly LOVING the voucher system.

(b) For those districts that negotiate set fees with a private school to be the local public school - those tuition fees are higher than the true cost of the education. We're talking $11000 per. That's guaranteed money. Do you realize how incredible that phrase is to a private school? And those fees are higher than you would have charged the family anyway. If you can get the star quarterback, that's even better. (This is how the local Catholic school competes athletically - skimming. Not too surprisingly, vouchers have become a hot issue around here. I wonder why?)

(4) Room. Take the five schools within this local area. The best one (if you can call it that) is already overcrowded to the point where the freshmen don't have lockers and sophomores have a lottery system. Where exactly are the "choosy" kids going to go?

(5) Driving. Again, take the five schools within this local area. The closest could be next door, obviously, but the farthest would be 15 miles away. Not a big deal here but take any part of this rural state besides the three larger cities and you'll find distances of 40 miles between schools. That means daily commutes of 1.5 hours. Not feasible.

(6) Expulsion. If the kid screws up, the charter school or private school can send him away - with much greater ease than local HS, which also has to take him back. True: local private school expelled the star football player (after the season) for swearing at the refs. By the time the next year came around, they offered him a spot again so he could come and play.


Sorry, Senator. I just don't agree with you.