Reasons the poor are not getting a good education.

@Z_AC_Tech this country is not fare people in poor hoods don't get good educations people without good educations don't get good jobs

This was a question posed to me by  @JAMSRIDE on twitter recently. This was a good example of a popular misconception propagated by Big Government Pro Union Progressive Democrats in their talking points. The Democratic lie is that they are helping the poor but in reality they are most responsible for the continuing decay of the Public Education System. I must devote some space to this subject. The lack of competition is the reason public schools are so expensive and also bad. That is why we need alternatives like vouchers and charter schools. See the articles below for yourself. The government Monopoly of Public Schools is the source of the problem and this must be corrected.

Conservative education policy empowers parents, not administrators

By

Inez Feltscher

Who knows best what will help a child succeed in school? Is it the government or is it the parents, who are closest to their child’s educational needs and desires? This is the fundamental question that conservative education reformers are asking the public school system.

George Miller

Rep. George Miller visiting Manzanita Charter School in Richmond, Virginia, on April 27, 2010.

The one point that all sides seem to be able to agree on is that the American education system is failing our kids. NAEP assessments have concluded that fewer than one-third of our fourth graders are proficient in math, reading, science, and American history. U.S. eighth graders ranked 19th out of 38 countries in math and 18th in science, a failure that will undoubtedly impede our competitiveness in a 21st century global economy. Worse than these statistics, however, is the fact that the failures of our education system are imperiling the American Dream itself. With many failing school districts in urban and minority communities, education as a means to launch the disadvantaged into the middle class and beyond is quickly becoming a pipe dream.
Given these results, all Americans must ask themselves what it is that the public education system lacks. One popular answer from the left has been that our schools are chronically under-funded, but is this true? In the last 50 years, we have tripled federal spending per student, adjusting for inflation. Since the 1970s, education spending has increased by 138 percent, adjusted for inflation. Meanwhile, national test scores have remained stagnant since the 1970s, with graduation rates remaining at around 73 percent. Even worse, some of the best-funded school districts have some of the worst results: In the District of Columbia, where I live, only 49 percent of students graduate from high school in the public system. Yet D.C. spends roughly $24,600 per student annually — more than the average cost of private school tuition in the District.
Instead, conservatives believe that the answer lies in accountability. Merit pay and tenure reform for teachers are good places to begin. Ultimately, however, we get accountability by empowering parents to hold their children’s schools responsible. Parents know best what their child needs from educators and schools in order to succeed, because they are the ones closest to their child’s particular learning needs; anyone who has ever been in a classroom knows that each student learns differently and needs different tools to succeed.
Conservatives espouse a menu-like approach to education, envisioning a future in which students and their parents may pick and choose amongst many options. For example, we could implement public school choice, allowing children to attend public schools outside of their zip code. Or we could expand the types of public schools through charter school programs, in which certain public schools are permitted by school boards or states to operate on a different model from traditional public school, often exempt from teacher union work rules. Alternatively, we could enable students to exit failing public schools with voucher programs that apply some or all of the education dollars spent on a child to offsetting the cost of private school. Beyond these options are virtual education, home school, and more.
When a variety of options become available, many parents will choose to craft a custom-made education plan for their children. What could be more appropriate in the age of “there’s an app for that” than a customizable model for American education?
Florida offers a case study in the success of comprehensive school choice reforms. In 1999 Florida enacted a series of K-12 school reform bills, including public school choice, limited vouchers, an expanded charter school network, merit pay for teachers, virtual education (Florida currently has far and away the largest number of children enrolled in online education), and an A through F grading scale for Florida’s schools that brought transparency and informed parents about the quality of their neighborhood schools. As a result, more than ten years later, the quality of Florida’s education has skyrocketed.
The percentage of students passing the NAEP exam (the national assessment that compares students in all the states) in Florida has increased from 53 percent in 1998 to over 70 percent in the last several years. Every year, Florida uses performance on state tests, among other measures, to grade the performance of all its schools. In 1999, the first year of the reforms, there were 616 schools that received an A or B grade, and 677 that received a D or an F; the state had more failing schools than schools that were successful in educating students. In 2010, Florida had 2044 A or B schools and only 181 failing schools, a tremendous improvement that was achieved despite the fact that Florida raised its standards four times over that period of time. Over 40 percent of Florida students have taken and passed an AP exam. Additionally, Florida has also had tremendous success in closing the racial education performance gaps that have plagued American schools for decades: Black students in Florida now outperform or tie the reading average for all students in 8 other states, while Hispanic students in Florida now outperform or tie the average in 31 states.
The conservative solution, school choice, gives parents the ability to control the tax dollars that their state spends on educating their child. Empowering parents with control over their student’s education dollars introduces strong accountability to the system by giving unhappy parents the ability to take their business elsewhere, just as they would with any other service. This approach holds schools, administrators, and teachers responsible for the success of the students they are being paid to educate. School choice also enables parents of all socioeconomic backgrounds to choose from a host of options (traditional public schools, charter schools, private schools, online schools, or home schools) in order to best serve the learning needs of their child, preserving upward mobility through education.

Below is some great math showing how a Conservative solution to the failed Democratic model could work.

DC Vouchers Solved? Generous Severance for Displaced Workers

Posted by Andrew J. Coulson

Colbert King argues that DC should continue the opportunity scholarships private school choice program on its own dime, instead of complaining that Congress is killing it off. He starts off with a refreshing dose of realpolitik: “It should come as no surprise that Democratic congressional leaders are effectively killing the program. They, and their union allies, didn’t like it in the first place.” Too true. This is what disgusts many Americans about politics, but hey, that’s the reality.
But then he seems to descend into uncharacteristic naivete with this:

If the city likes vouchers so much, why shouldn’t the District bear the cost? The answer is as clear as it may be embarrassing to voucher proponents: D.C. lawmakers don’t want to ask their constituents to shoulder the program’s expense.

That is NOT the answer. DC lawmakers are familiar with DC’s budget. DC’s FY 2009 budget, as I show in this Excel spreadsheet file, allocated $28,170 per pupil for k-12 schooling. And the average voucher amount is not $7,500, as King claims. That’s the maximum. The average is $6,620 – one quarter of what the district is spending on k-12 schooling. So operating the voucher program entirely out of the District of Columbia’s own budget would not cost a dime. And if expanded, it would save DC tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions, of dollars.
So DC lawmakers are most certainly NOT afraid of asking constituents to pay for it — it would more than pay for itself. What DC lawmakers must be afraid of is that DC schools have become a massive jobs program instead of an educational program. They must fear that if the voucher program were expanded it would put many non-teaching staff out of work — including perhaps some of their own supporters.
Well how about a realpolitik solution to that problem: offer displaced workers 18 months of severance pay at something like 75% of their current salary. That would give them plenty of time to find other work, and it could be paid for from the savings of students migrating from public schools to the voucher program. This would mean that taxpayers would not see savings in the first couple of years, but after that the District would be able to offer taxpayers generous tax cuts while also offering kids significantly better learning opportunities.
Surely the details of such a deal could be hammered out by experienced politicians and negotiators. Because, really, the status quo is insane. Why keep paying $28,000 for a worse education than the voucher program is providing for $6,600? That is sheer madness.

Below is a quote from an  Scot Cerullo email published on his blog http://www.thepersistentconservative.com/ and I could not say it any better.

American schools don’t teach as well as schools in other countries because they are government monopolies, and monopolies don’t have much incentive to compete. In Belgium, by contrast, the money is attached to the kids — it’s a kind of voucher system. Government funds education — at many different kinds of schools — but if a school can’t attract students, it goes out of business.
Belgian school principal Kaat Vandensavel told us she works hard to impress parents.
She told us, “If we don’t offer them what they want for their child, they won’t come to our school.” She constantly improves the teaching, saying, “You can’t afford 10 teachers out of 160 that don’t do their work, because the clients will know, and won’t come to you again.”
“That’s normal in Western Europe,” Harvard economist Caroline Hoxby told me. “If schools don’t perform well, a parent would never be trapped in that school in the same way you could be trapped in the U.S.”
Last week Florida’s Supreme Court shut down “opportunity scholarships,” Florida’s small attempt at competition. Public money can’t be spent on private schools, said the court, because the state constitution commands the funding only of “uniform . . . high-quality” schools. Government schools are neither uniform nor high-quality, and without competition, no new teaching plan or No Child Left Behind law will get the monopoly to serve its customers well.
The longer kids stay in American schools, the worse they do in international competition. They do worse than kids from poorer countries that spend much less money on education, ranking behind not only Belgium but also Poland, the Czech Republic and South Korea.
This should come as no surprise if you remember that public education in the United States is a government monopoly. Don’t like your public school? Tough. The school is terrible? Tough. Your taxes fund that school regardless of whether it’s good or bad. That’s why government monopolies routinely fail their customers. Union-dominated monopolies are even worse.

Charter Schools and School Vouchers

The best way to transform the 

education monopoly is to create competition.

"On international math, science and reading exams, the United States lags behind countries such as Canada, New Zealand, South Korea and Australia despite the fact we spend far more to educate our children than every other industrialized nation. This failure in education translates into less human capital and innovation, fewer jobs, greater debt, and a growing gap between rich and poor.
But what would happen to learning if children stopped being assigned to schools based on where they live or how much their family earns?
My contention, which is supported by evidence and common sense, is that education would dramatically improve. And that is exactly what Nobel laureate economist Milton Friedman said in 1955 when he first proposed separating the government funding of education from the government management of schools.
Instead of running schools, Friedman said, government should allot parents a sum of money so their sons and daughters could apply towards any private, parochial, or public school, leaving it up to parents to choose what schools their children attended. The result, Friedman said, would be a fairer and more effective system of schools.
As the founder and chairman of Overstock.com, I understand how consumers think. They want choices. Some want the newest model. Some want a brand name. All want good value.
That is not what happens in K-12 education, which is the least innovative major industry in America today. Unless you are wealthy enough to move or can afford tuition in a private school, your children are assigned to a school based on their address and taught the same way as 150 years ago. That is, after all, the purpose of a monopoly: to sell an inferior product at high price while resisting innovation. Just because this particular monopoly happens to be owned and managed by government does not change this dynamic.
That’s why Friedman’s idea of school vouchers is so important today. The best way to transform the education monopoly is to create competition. And the only route to competition is to offer parents a choice of schools through vouchers.
When parents have more choice, kids benefit, taxpayers come out ahead, and the best teachers are freed to teach. Parents win because they can pick a school that meets their child’s needs. Taxpayers win because vouchers cost far less than government schools, leaving more capacity and funding for the children who choose to remain in government schools. And teachers win because under a voucher system, a market evolves for the hard-working and talented teachers.
The best news is that we are finally starting to see Friedman’s idea become a reality across America. The Wall Street Journal labeled 2011 the Year of School Choice. Since January, 13 states and localities have enacted 19 programs so parents can select a school that is best for their child. Eleven of these programs expand or improve existing school choice programs, and eight create brand new programs.
This includes the nation’s most expansive school voucher program in Indiana, which in less than two months has become the fastest-growing voucher program ever. More than 3,300 Indiana parents have raced to sign up their children to attend private schools. A whopping 85 percent of them are low-income, proving Friedman right again when he predicted that a universal voucher program would bring the most benefit to the poorest among us.
The simple fact is that Milton Friedman was correct in 1955 when he wrote that vouchers would create “a great widening in the educational opportunities open to our children.” These opportunities are now becoming available throughout this country as parents demand – and get – more school choice."
This is a reprint of an article by Patrick M. Byrne is Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice, the legacy foundation of Nobel laureate Milton Friedman and his wife Rose. He is also Chairman and CEO of Overstock.com.

His combative conservatism is a welcome challenge to Bush-era compromises with Democrats.

By Frederick M. Hess

Frederick M. Hess is director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute and author of “The Same Thing Over and Over: How School Reformers Get Stuck in Yesterday’s Ideas” (Harvard University Press 2010).

No one knew for sure back in November 2010 what the Tea Party tide that swamped state legislatures and swept rock-ribbed conservatives into governor’s mansions from Tallahassee to Madison would yield. It’s now clear that one of its legacies is the return of principled conservatism to K-12 school reform. And that first became evident in Wisconsin.

State leaders wrestling with gaping budget shortfalls have abandoned a decade-long willingness to embrace me-too education reform, in which the entire playbook amounted to new dollars, more testing, and kind words about charter schools.

Instead, Tea Party-backed officials have challenged collective bargaining, demanded that schools find new efficiencies and insisted that educators be held accountable for their job performance. Wisconsin, thanks to Gov. Scott Walker’s get-tough proposals, became the epicenter of this shift.

Unlike Democratic reformers, who have duck-walked around collective bargaining and teacher benefits, Walker directly challenged the teachers unions. Absent such direct challengers, the unions grew comfortable — and shameless. In his new Brookings Institution volume, “Special Interest: Teachers Unions and America’s Public Schools,” for instance, Stanford University professor Terry Moe points out that the Michigan Education Association has distributed a 40-page instructional manual to its members entitled “Electing Your Own Employer, It’s As Easy As 1, 2, 3.”

What made the Wisconsin standoff so significant? For a decade, Republican thinking on education was dominated by the Bush administration’s big-government conservatism, with its affinity for federally mandated testing, race-based accountability, new spending, and intrusive interventions in “failing” schools.

The Bush agenda made it remarkably easy to reach common ground with school-reform Democrats and progressive groups like The Education Trust. The price was that conservative thought offered little of substance when it came to challenging teachers unions, out-of-control school spending or federal overreach.

The result: The education arena was celebrated by Washington tastemakers as a rare case of healthy bipartisanship.

What this meant, in practice, was that conservatives agreed to sing from the progressive hymnal — pumping more dollars into schools, sidestepping the enormous costs represented by teacher benefits and remaining so intent on closing achievement gaps that they had nothing to say about how to improve schools serving the vast majority of the nation’s children.

For instance, per pupil K-12 spending increased from $7,380 in 2000-01, the first year of the Bush presidency, to $9,683 in 2006-07, the most recent year for which the National Center for Education Statistics has data. That’s a 31% increase in just six years. From 2001 to 2008, federal spending on K-12 schooling rose from $42 billion to $59 billion.

The resurgence of principled small-government conservatism has swept away the Bush-era conventions like so much driftwood. How much have things changed?

House Republicans are concerned not with reauthorizing the No Child Left Behind Act but with cutting federal education spending and seeing how many programs they can zero out.

Left-leaning and right-leaning reformers no longer appear to be interchangeable when it comes to collective bargaining, school vouchers or the federal role. The new, combative conservatism is bemoaned as mean-spirited by pundits and CNN anchors who want everyone to sit down and hug it out.

Of course, it was also played as big news that Walker’s efforts would hurt his political opponents. The New York Times editorial page thundered that the governor was seeking to “crush unions” and engage in “destructive game playing.”

Such hand-wringing would be more convincing if these voices had expressed similar concerns when President Obama famously reminded Republicans that “elections have consequences” while promoting health-care and financial legislation that benefited Democratic constituencies and weakened Republican ones.

The winning side always promotes policies that reflect its preferences — and those, not surprisingly, tend to advantage its supporters and disadvantage its opponents. Nothing is new here. Democrats, for example, were pleased and fully aware that passing Medicare would help tame the once virulently anti-D.C. American Medical Association.

The only real question is whether Walker’s proposals are sound, sensible and good for Wisconsin. For critics to dodge that question by suggesting that policies conferring political benefit are illegitimate is disingenuous at best. Yet by failing to talk bluntly about this reality or about the fact that curtailing collective bargaining is not geared to the short-term fiscal situation but to putting the state on firmer footing going forward, Walker managed to make it look like he was the one engaging in doubletalk.

The Democrats For Education Reform, or DFER, spent the spring crying crocodile tears about the overreaching by uncouth Republican governors. DFER is an organization founded by reform-minded Democrats who wanted to challenge both their party’s spineless orthodoxy and the teacher unions on education reform.

The thing is, DFER’s leaders are serious about school reform but, first and foremost, they are Democrats. So, when Republican reformers like Walker went after collective bargaining and state spending with guns blazing, DFER couldn’t resist a priceless opportunity to steal a page from the old Clinton playbook and triangulate like mad. DFER president Joe Williams penned a very public letter that touched all the bases: decrying wild-eyed Republicans, defending unions and positioning DFER as the voice of wisdom and pragmatism.

Williams wrote, “How do we [at DFER] keep the political focus on providing a quality education for all students at a time when some Republican leaders appear to be primarily salivating at the chance to whack a significant political opponent?” He took pains to point out that, unlike the evil Republicans, “We believe that teacher unions have a crucial voice that should be heard in education debates.” In fact, “we’re kind of creeped out by some of what we are seeing and hearing these days in the Heartland.”

So much for the vaunted bipartisanship of education reform. Turns out that DFER is all for bipartisanship on things like teacher evaluation and pay, so long as Republicans support new spending, don’t mess with the unions and take care to respect progressive priorities. Indeed, Williams bemoans the Wisconsin dispute as a distraction from talk about teacher evaluation and school improvement.

It’s not that the DFER stance is unreasonable. It’s a sensible stance for progressives interested in both school reform and Democratic electoral prospects. What’s peculiar is the befuddlement that conservative reformers might disagree with the DFER party line when it comes to collective bargaining or government spending.

The public debate in the past decade has been impoverished by the dearth of tough-minded conservatives willing to talk bluntly about public sector reform. It’s healthy to have those folks back in the mix, and unfortunate that DFER is so eager to score political points rather than seek common ground on school reform.

It’s not yet clear who emerged victorious from the sparring over Walker’s proposals this spring, though it’s clear that Democratic reformers were thrilled by the chance to do a little fence-mending with the teacher unions. The long-term winner, though, is the American people — who get to trade the stale, banal orthodoxies of the Bush years for a bracing debate about how to organize the public sector in the 21st century.

It’s hard to think of a debate that’s more urgent, or more relevant to reforming our nation’s public schools.

On average, America spends $13,000 annually per child.

A Picture Is Worth $300 Billion

"Over the past 40 years," Andrew Coulson of the Cato Institute writes, "public school employment has risen 10 times faster than enrollment. There are 9 percent more students today, but nearly twice as many public school employees."

Money Is Not What Schools Need  Competition is the answer. by John Stossel September 16, 2010. This excellent article explains how we need to expand the school voucher and school charters systems as competition is the key to a better education system for all.

The Bankrupt Agenda of the Save Our Schools Movement

True progressives would embrace school choice, not teachers' unions. Shikha Dalmia | August 16, 2011

Crazy Like a Fox: One Principal's Triumph in the Inner City 

A great book written by Dr. Ben Chavis (Author) is a book that you must read. As Dr. Chavis gets it, he has proven how you can improve over our current failed monopolistic public education system.Chavis is particularly sensitive to how students present themselves. He's aware that young people, especially minorities, are judged by their appearance. The school mandates a simple uniform of khaki pants and white shirts, and pants must be worn around the students' waists, not "hangin' off their butts."

Charters Hold Key to Saving State Big Education Dollars by Andrew J. Coulson