Sweden's and Indiana's "Choice"

In the past month the Deseret News has had several editorials supporting school vouchers or tuition tax-credits, and there are bills being written for the legislature to implement them next year. There are things we can learn from other countries as we consider adoption.

Sweden’s adoption in 1993 of vouchers, following Milton Friedman’s advice, made it universal and simple. The funding follows the student regardless of their parents’ income. Any school, non-profit, for profit, or religious can receive the government funding at the same amount as a public school. The school has to be all-inclusive, provide national standards, and have its performance monitored. They may not charge their students fees beyond the voucher. Private school enrollment has increased from 1% to about 15%. This is all according to Sweden's former State Secretary of Schools, Odd Eiken, in The Daily Caller.

This month’s Liberty Magazine, whose mission is to protect religious freedom, is reporting that there are new sweeping additions to their educational system this year. Among other things, the national curriculum will now include a very explicit sex ed. class for 11 year olds. Home schooling will be outlawed. As a result many home schoolers are fleeing the country in order to preserve their control over their children's education.

“In addition to the new home schooling restrictions, Wallqvister (Swedish Education Ministry political adviser) explained that all nongovernment-run schools—already financed by the state (vouchers) —will now be forced to adopt the national curriculum. No more praying, no more alternative teaching approaches, and no more options." What was that about vouchers providing "choice?"

After almost 20 years these private schools cannot now afford to pull out either. This certainly was not on the horizon for the private schools when it was implemented. Now their only “choice” is to obey or fold.

Indiana passed the first state-wide voucher program in the U.S. this year. According to Adam Schaeffer, Policy analyst, Cato Institute's Center for Educational Freedom (a conservative think tank) “…the voucher program will not only expand state control over and homogenize participating schools by requiring adherence to a single state-designed test, evaluation, and curriculum, it will also cut into the market for non-accredited (non-voucher) schools. The likely effect is a serious loss of education freedom and diversity of options in the medium-term and a near-total loss in the long term.

“The voucher law places private schools under the supervision of the state Department of Education, making them accountable to career bureaucrats and political appointees for performance on government standards and curriculum. It is an authorization and framework of accountability to the state, rather than to parents and taxpayers directly.”

If you read his article, you can see the absurdity of what will now be required of private schools in Indiana accepting a voucher, and how it will push out those who wish to remain free by NOT accepting the voucher.

Think of the form of government of all the countries that have adopted vouchers. They’re all socialist! Vouchers and tuition tax credits allow the governments more control over the private schools, which PREVENTS competition! Conservatives must not be taken in by the voices claiming competition and choice, for neither will be provided with vouchers or tuition tax credits.

As Schaeffer stated, “School choice is meaningless if all the choices are the same.” In countries that have adopted voucher-type programs, private schools have had to adopt the politically correct “standards” of the government in power, employee unions, and end up pushing out those who refuse the voucher. After a while, if adopted, there will be neither competition nor choice!

Tenure

I read an article called “Who Deserves Tenure” by Chester E. Finn, Jr. in the June 2011 Education Matters disparaging tenure. There were several problems I had with the article. The question is not about who “deserves” anything. Tenure is not, as the author states and popularly believed, a right to lifetime employment. “Tenure,” or the right to not be fired without a cause and due process, is a tool designed to give the same stability to teaching, when the winds of philosophy blow back and forth, that judges need. It also is a cost containment tool.

The author of this article is a strong conservative, as am I. I have seen situations where teachers with a conservative philosophy were protected ONLY because of tenure. The teaching profession, K-12 and higher ed., is very much driven by philosophies, which regularly change. Tenure protects teachers, just like judges, from pressure to fire them because their philosophy becomes unpopular in the moment. True, that can protect someone who has a faulty philosophy. More often than not however, it protects good teachers from administrators with faulty philosophies or momentary pressures from a mob-mentality group who have been whipped into frenzy.

I have seen administrators who, for instance, were pushing “new math” or “whole language” that would have fired good, experienced teachers who resisted the drive to impose that style of teaching. Many times newer principals or superintendents really believe in a purist view of a particular program or style, or they want to show how capable they are as an administrator by implementing a particular program quickly. Sometimes teachers just don’t want to change, but I believe most of the time, teachers that are resisting have seen similar programs come and go or have valid reasons why it is not in the students’ best interest.

I have observed curriculum leaders and college of education professors, who typically have a rather liberal philosophy, telling conservative legislators, board members, and others how terrible tenure is – that it makes it hard to implement reforms. Little do these policy makers realize that without tenure, these teacher trainers would more easily implement the very philosophies the policy makers oppose! Teachers are actually more conservative in general than those who train them. These trainers would dearly love to get rid of tenure, so they could strong-arm teachers into installing their ideas more fully.

It is ironic to me that conservatives are the loudest in calling for the elimination of tenure, but if tenure were eliminated, there would be many more liberal ideas than conservative ideas instituted, because curriculum leaders and professors are the ones in the key positions to do it.

It is naïve to think that administrators would get rid of all the bad teachers and keep all the good ones. We sometimes assume that because administrators are paid more or in authority that they are better or more knowledgeable than the teachers they supervise. Often they are less experienced or more focused on climbing the administrative/political ladder than on building children. To give them unrestrained power over a teacher’s future would not be dissimilar to giving the President authority to remove justices with whose decisions he disapproved of.

Tenure is also a financial consideration. The author correctly states that it “…is a valuable employment benefit that substitutes in part for salary….” Without tenure there are two scenarios that would play out in education. 1. It would become much more expensive in an attempt to convince people it was worth investing at least four years of college to become a teacher despite the likelihood of being fired when your salary increased. 2. More likely, the instability created would cause constant turnover, which has been proven to drive scores down in schools.

There will probably always be those who would be willing to step up to the plate, thinking they can teach well with no experience or training. But without some job security, who would invest years of college and honing of style to become master teachers, knowing that at any moment they could be fired, whether for budgetary reasons, a group of frenzied citizens, or most likely a philosophical difference with a new administrator?

I’ve said for years, if they will triple my salary, I’ll give up tenure and take my chances. Then I’d be an independent contractor, but I’d have to charge enough to make up for lapses in employment, moving costs for changing jobs, and managing my own retirement, etc. Come to think of it, I’d need more. Also when hired, I’d be team building only so long as I felt it was in my own career interests. The problem is teaching is not like professional sports or entertainment where one can hire an agent to represent you and where the money is because you play before thousands or millions of people who invest nothing except money to see you. Educating requires getting students to work to improve their minds, even when sometimes there is little support at home.

There are horror stories like “rubber rooms,” etc. I submit that there are other causes for these problems, particularly the size of districts. In large districts unions get too much power trying to compensate for too much power in the bureaucracy. It is in large districts that poor teachers and administrators can hide. Smaller schools and districts have much less problem with this issue, because people can’t hide. They usually remove or improve on their own; indeed they feel the possibility of improvement, which is usually lacking in large bureaucracies.

If we really want to improve governance in education, we would study the absolute need to divide in order to grow, indeed in our country, because it is not an education issue. I have research on this issue at www.smallerschools.org. The source of the problem is not tenure. It is the size of the organization, and it has implications far beyond education alone.

Tenure may not have “come down from Sinai,” but it has evolved over a couple of centuries of trial and error. Just like some who would throw out our form of government for supposed flaws they see, those who would throw out public education, yes, and tenure, despite their flaws would get something much worse.

Teaching requires the spirit.

I don't think there is any job that needs daily worthiness to receive guidance from the Holy Spirit more than a teacher. A teacher needs inspiration in all his/her communications with students, both past as well as present. This is necessary in order to communicate accurately, without misunderstanding, and to do it in a manner that will be accepted and remembered in the best light.

It is monumentally difficult to always have just the right answer, keep all things in mind about the student and what is and will be going on. There are so many things to balance and keep in remembrance, that it is humanly impossible for a mere mortal to do well without help.

I have found that when I keep myself worthy of God's guidance, things come together better, students accept and understand better, and we enjoy each other better. Things that I never thought of or planned serendipitously mesh or blend together for a much better experience than I could ever have planned on my own. When I get myself in tune with Him and do all I can to further His will, I become a much better teacher. The resulting feelings bring peace and appreciation for that help!

Saying smaller school results are mixed is inaccurate.

Recent media articles have given a mixed message about the successes of smaller schools. The trouble is two fold. First, smaller schools were never a guarantee of success. It only made success more likely – probably more likely than any other factor changeable from outside the family. Some studies say that the only higher predictor of success than school size was socioeconomics, i.e. the family. With smaller schools, success becomes possible for people who will work to create the right setting for learning to happen. Big schools make that much more difficult.

Second, most attempts at creating smaller schools have not been truly smaller schools or they changed other things in the process. Most attempts at creating smaller schools have been what used to be called “schools within a school.” These is where students continue to come to the same big school but are grouped together by a common theme in smaller “communities” within the same school. Though it has been called creating smaller schools, it is not. It is just another way of organizing a large school.

Some have even reorganized a community of schools so that, for instance, all of the sixth grade students go to one building with other grades also similarly grouped. This is also NOT creating small schools, because the magic of smaller schools is in lowering the grade level size. Smaller grade levels make it possible for all students of varying interests, at the same age to know each other well, and makes real collaboration between teachers less difficult and cumbersome.

A school of 600 6th graders would be a huge school because the grade level size is so big. A school of the same number of students grades K-6 would be a moderately sized school, because there would be somewhat less than 100 students per grade. If a school was a K-12 school with that same number of students, it would truly be a small school, again, because of the number of students per grade level rather than per building.

Conclusions that smaller schools have mixed results are not accurate, because they aren’t judging real smaller schools. They are evaluating reorganized large schools. Schools within a school are what have mixed results – not smaller schools.

Real smaller schools work. Pretending to create them confuses people. The research is already there. When will we listen and act accordingly?!

Class Discipline

A well disciplined class requires a well self-disciplined teacher.

Public Schools not Government Schools

I believe we have confused the term “public education” with “government schools.” Public education is not necessarily government education. It has just become that by government takeover.

Public education was created in the 1600s by the Puritans. It predates this country. Indeed it helped create the New England common people who were educated and independent enough to start the revolution that created our country!

For the first 250-300 years public education was NOT government education. It was a publicly held, locally owned corporation where the local property owners (taxpayers) were the shareholders. They controlled education. This changed when, first the school districts in growing cities became big. They became the flag ships that everyone looked to. Their property values (and thus tax revenues) increased rapidly, while the rural, smaller districts did not. The smaller districts coveted the revenues and begged for state revenue sharing. That led to state control, which might not be so bad, but that led in the 1960 Presidential election to Kennedy blaming schools for Soviet space advances and at the same time promising federal funding for them. That is what won the election for him, and THAT is when the change to becoming government schools started. False philosophies had been around for 50 years and more. They had some limited impact, but did not prevail until the national takeover began.

Public education isn’t the villain. The villain is government intrusion, which has been bought with tax revenue. Even the union isn’t the fault. It is rather an indication and complicator of the problem. The cancerous philosophy that government can guarantee success has grown exponentially in the last 50 years. It is destroying self responsibility and initiative. It also promotes and protects false philosophies. Actually it is amazing how good the schools are given the situation. That is a reflection of parents and teachers who have held to correct beliefs they grew up with and learned in their families and churches. Otherwise the schools would be much worse, and are in some places.

A community coming together to do the education of their children is not the problem. The problem is national interference and take over. Eliminate that, including restoring districts to community size, and education would be more likely to do a better job.

http://www.constitution.org/primarysources/deluder.html
http://www.archives.nysed.gov/edpolicy/research/res_essay_kennedy_genaid.shtml
http://www.smallerschools.org/

Group projects

Group projects, while occasionally useful in limited settings, are usually just easier for the teacher, not best for the student, despite all assertions to the contrary. They create less for the teacher to grade, and what is graded is highly subjective. The teacher also knows that SOMEONE in the group will make it happen, and this will allow the teacher to pass everyone, thus avoiding confrontations from students earning poor grades. However group projects are frustrating to those who do the work and have to put up with those who don't. By avoiding giving the grade deserved by each individual, because the teacher doesn't even know what each individual has done, it short changes the students who have not been productive. In fact it promotes the attitude of just sit back and let someone else do it, because someone WILL do it, and they'll all get the same grade anyway. It actually creates the same situation that causes communism to fail! Even the pilgrims of Massachusetts found that people work harder when they have their OWN property to take care of individually rather than collectively.

Grouping works best if it is very short-lived, not graded, and used mostly to discover or reveal some little thing, after which the lesson continues. There may be some limited success using group projects, but usually this is not the best way to teach or for students to learn.