-By Larry Sand
Scrooge-like National Education Association shows no sign of remorse.
Once upon a time, school choice became a reality in our nation’s capital. The D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, which allowed some poor kids in D.C. to go to private schools with the help of a government stipend, was ushered in by a Republican controlled Congress in January 2004. Earlier this year, Jason Richwine at the Heritage Foundation wrote,
Congress put school vouchers to the test in 2004 when it authorized the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program (DCOSP), a federally funded voucher program serving low-income students in the nation’s capital. It has awarded $7,500 scholarships to more than 3,700 students over the past six years.”
Congress mandated a formal evaluation of the program, and researchers hired by the Department of Education have now released their latest report.
Among the report’s key findings
- Parental satisfaction. School satisfaction was higher among parents of voucher students.
- School safety. Parents of voucher students were more likely to describe their children’s schools as safe and orderly.
- Graduation rates. Voucher-using students achieved a graduation rate of 91 percent, compared to 70 percent for non-voucher students.
- Test scores. On reading tests, voucher students scored slightly higher (by 0.13 standard deviations) compared to non-voucher students, but the difference is not statistically significant. DCOSP did not produce any gains in mathematics scores.
Not only do students benefit from the program, taxpayers save money. According to Kirk Johnson, also at Heritage,
What is often overlooked, however, is that choice programs are good fiscal policy, as well. Consider the example of Washington, D.C., again. The maximum opportunity scholarship-$7,500-is less than 60 percent of what Washington’s public schools spend on a student.
So, let’s see – a program that benefits students and saves the taxpayers money. Who on earth could possibly be against it? Not surprisingly, it’s School Choice Enemy #1 – the National Educational Association.
Shamelessly, in its current Education Insider, NEA brags that due to its members lobbying, it stopped multiple efforts to fund voucher programs — in the District of Columbia ….
While some NEA members probably did write and call their legislators, urging them to kill the program, the heavy artillery came from the union bosses themselves. In March of 2009, NEA President Dennis Van Roekel wrote a threatening letter to every Democratic member of Congress –
The National Education Association strongly opposes any extension of the District of Columbia private school voucher . . . program. We expect that Members of Congress who support public education, and whom we have supported, will stand firm against any proposal to extend the pilot program. Actions associated with these issues WILL be included in the NEA Legislative Report Card for the 111th Congress.
Vouchers are not real education reform. . . . Opposition to vouchers is a top priority for NEA.
Three months later, the Congress, then controlled by Democrats, dutifully voted to kill the program.
Interestingly, in the same Education Insider that bragged about killing DCOSP, NEA was very pleased that more government money had been invested in Pell Grants. A Pell Grant is nothing more than a federal scholarship awarded to college students, who may then use the grant to go to the college of their choice.
The difference between Pell and DCOSP, you ask? NEA is more threatened by vouchers on a K-12 level because that’s where the primary source of its funding is. (Public school teachers are forced to pay union dues in most states and D.C.) Any political action that favors school privatization, bringing with it more non-unionized teachers, sends the union into an activist frenzy. For an organization that claims to be for the children, this is especially cruel and hypocritical.
As Christmas approaches, one can only dream that NEA will have an Ebenezer Scrooge-like makeover. At the end of A Christmas Carol, Scrooge found religion, but the NEA never will. Not even the Ghost of Ed Reform Future could budge the cold, self-absorbed and mean-spirited teachers’ union.
Yet there is some hope. In January, a new Republican majority Congress convenes. The Republicans, typically not in the thrall of the powerful teachers’ union, are talking about reviving the popular DCOSP.
Wouldn’t it be a wonderful late Christmas gift for thousands of kids, currently stuck in lousy schools, to be given an opportunity to escape them and with it a chance for a brighter future?
January 23rd-29th is National School Choice Week, during which advocates will attempt to build support for school choice. If you would like to help the kids in D.C. and elsewhere, and at the same time let NEA know what you think of their priorities, I urge you to get involved.
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Larry Sand began his teaching career in New York in 1971. Since 1984, he has taught elementary school as well as English, math, history and ESL in the Los Angeles Unified School District, where he also served as a Title 1 Coordinator. Recently retired, he is the president of the non-profit California Teachers Empowerment Network – a non-partisan, non-political group dedicated to providing teachers with reliable and balanced information about professional affiliations and positions on educational issues – information teachers will often not get from their school districts or unions.
CTEN was formed in 2006 because a wide range of information from the more global concerns of education policy, education leadership, and education reform, to information having a more personal application, such as professional liability insurance, options of relationships to teachers’ unions, and the effect of unionism on teacher pay, comes to teachers from entities that have a specific agenda. Sand’s comments and op-eds have appeared in City Journal, Associated Press, Newsweek, Townhall Magazine, Los Angeles Times, San Diego Union Tribune, Los Angeles Daily News, San Jose Mercury News, Orange County Register and other publications. He has appeared on numerous broadcast news programs in Southern California and nationally.
Sand has participated in panel discussions and events focusing on education reform efforts and the impact of teachers’ unions on public education. In March, Sand participated in a debate hosted by the non-profit Intelligence Squared, an organization that regularly hosts Oxford-style debates, which was nationally broadcast on Bloomberg TV and NPR, as well as covered by Newsweek. Sand and his teammates – Terry Moe of the Hoover Institution and former U.S. Secretary of Education Rod Paige, opposed the proposition – Don’t Blame Teachers Unions For Our Failing Schools. The pro-union team included Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers. In August, he was on a panel at the Where’s the Outrage? Conference in San Francisco, where he spoke about how charter school operators can best deal with teachers’ unions.
Sand has also worked with other organizations to present accurate information about the relationship between teachers and their unions, most recently assisting in the production of a video for the Center for Union Facts in which a group of teachers speak truthfully about the teachers’ unions.
CTEN maintains an active and strong new media presence, reaching out to teachers and those interested in education reform across the USA, and around the world, with its popular Facebook page, whose members include teachers, writers, think tankers, and political activists. Since 2006, CTEN has experienced dramatic growth.