Education Liberty Watch Introduces New Freedom Grading Scale for Private School Choice Laws

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The concept of trying to rescue poor and minority students from failing public schools is a noble one.  However, if the private schools are forced to teach the public school standards, which are at grave risk of becoming nationalized via the Common Core and its accompanying tests in 45-1/2 states and the District of Columbia (Minnesota accepted the English standards but not the math), in order for their students to pass the state tests, private schools will no longer be a meaningful alternative to the public schools.

This danger was detailed in our 2011 alert Imposing a Federal Curriculum on Private Schools – Why Voucher Programs that Require State Tests Are So Dangerous. At that time, we mentioned Minnesota’s proposed law that has not yet passed (that would have received a D grade on our scale) and Indiana’s enacted law (that did receive an F grade) that both require state tests to be given to private school students receiving vouchers or to the entire private school.  Since then, I have reviewed the testing accountability requirements for all of the 30 school choice laws that have passed in 18 states and the District of Columbia through 2012 based on the Alliance for School Choice’s annual report  and looking at the  newest 2012 laws passed since that report was written.

And, since grading scales are becoming de rigeur, I though that Education Liberty Watch should join in on the trend and provide a freedom grading scale based on how well each statute protects private school autonomy.  My hope is that you will see where your state falls and contact your policymakers to either improve your own state law if needed, make sure that any school choice bill offered in your state is as strongly pro-freedom as possible, and if nothing else, warn the private schools in your area what may be coming and urge them to speak up as this type of legislation is considered.

Before the table with the grades is presented however, it is important to also mention the education plan of presidential candidate Mitt Romney on this issue.  Thankfully his plan is a just a plan right now that was likely mostly written  or at least heavily influenced by former Governor Jeb Bush.  Mr. Bush, whose organization is funded by the Bill Gates Foundation, is a huge fan of the Common Core to the point of trying to prevent model legislation against the standards from being supported by ALEC. He also seems to be completely tied in with the corporate interests such as the US Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable, and the Business Partnership and the Gates Foundation, which has funded his own organization, that seem not at all concerned or even determined to bring about the usurpation of private school curriculum with the national standards. The Romney plan, A Chance for Every Child, speaks of the federal government promoting and paying for both public and private school choice.  It says on pages 23-24:

Romney Administration will work with Congress to overhaul Title I and IDEA so that low-income and special-needs students can choose which school to attend and bring their funding with them. The choices offered to students under this policy will include any district or public charter school in the state, as well as private schools if permitted by state law… To ensure accountability, students using federal funds to attend private schools will be required to participate in the state’s testing system. (Emphasis added.)

Aside from the fact that the federal government has no constitutional authority to be involved in education, a fact both parties have completely forgotten, this would be an utter disaster for education freedom.  It would bring the full force of the federal government to impose the federal curriculum of the Common Core on private and religious schools.  It would also negate the laboratories of democracy in the states that have passed good state laws that do not require this public school testing accountability.  On Education Liberty Watch’s Freedom Grading Scale, the Romney education plan, as currently written, would receive a D grade for requiring students to participate in the state tests.  If the plan is meant to require that all of the students in a private school attended by voucher recipients take the state (Common Core) tests, we would give it a failing grade.

However, the good news is that Governor Romney has recently made some important and very good statements opposing the Common Core and government expansion of preschool, which we will outline in our next alert. It is therefore hoped that the more pro-freedom members of his education team are beginning to hold sway and that Governor Romney can be educated about the perils to private schools in his plan.

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Education Liberty Watch Private School Choice Freedom Grading Scale Table

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FREEDOM GRADING SCALE:

A+ = No testing requirements and accountability only to parents

A = No testing requirements

B+ = Requires only a nationally norm-referenced test and reports results to parents

B = Requires only a nationally norm-referenced test  (Not currently tied to Common Core)

C = Requires the state tests or a nationally norm-referenced test

D+ = Requires private schools to give voucher recipients the state tests but reports results to an outside entity instead of the state

D = Requires private schools to give voucher/tax credit recipients the state tests

F = Requires private schools to give state tests to all students in a private school

ABBREVIATIONS:

CSTC = Corporate Scholarship Tax Credit

ESA = Education Savings Account

FSV = Failing School Voucher

ISTC = Individual Scholarship Tax Credit

MTV = Means Tested Voucher

NNRT = Nationally Norm-Referenced Test

SNV = Special Needs Voucher

UV = Universal Voucher

*Information, except for 2012 laws, adapted from Alliance for School Choice: School Choice Year Book 2011-12

States Starting to Rebel Against Common Core

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Although education has not been a front burner issue in this election cycle, there is some evidence that word about the dangers of and problems with the Common Core national standards, about which we have warned you for a long time, is slowly getting out.

In addition to Education Liberty Watch, the group of academics, policy makers and individuals that developed and gained over 100 original signatures on a counter-manifesto against the Common Core, The Cato Institute, The Heritage Foundation, Truth in American Education, teachers, parents, and policy makers are working hard to educate and to protest this loss of autonomy, local control and academic rigor.  Stanley Kurtz, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, in interviews on Fox News and the Mike Huckabee show pointed out the constitutional and academic dangers of the Common Core in his new book Spreading the Wealth: How Obama is Robbing the Suburbs to Pay for the Cities. In it, he said:

The core of the hard-left’s education agenda – a program shared by Obama, Ayers, and Darling-Hammond alike – has three parts: 1) a politicized curriculum that promotes leftist notions of “social justice,” 2) reducing “disparate outcomes” between students in different districts by undercutting standards, and 3) a redistribution of suburban education funding to less-well-off urban schools. Achieving these goals on a broad scale requires the federal government to usurp local control of K-12 schooling.

Obama is half-way there.

How did he do it?  Instead of submitting his controversial education proposals to Congress and kicking off a vigorous national debate, Obama quietly marked $4.35 billion of federal stimulus spending for his Race to the Top education initiative. Since the stimulus bill was rushed through Congress with barely any debate on economic policy, much less education, Obama never had to go public with his plans.

By coordinating with outside groups not accountable to the voters, like the deep-pocketed Gates Foundation, the White House then orchestrated the creation of a national Common Core of education standards, with an accompanying curriculum and tests.

Supposedly, these standards have been voluntarily adopted by more than 40 states. In fact, by effectively conditioning eligibility for Race to the Top grants on participation in the Common Core, the Obama administration has forced economically pinched states to surrender control of their school curricula to the federal government. Cleverly, states have been pressed to sign on to the Common Core before the actual standards, curricula, and tests are revealed in a second Obama term. The entire scheme is arguably both illegal and unconstitutional. Yet it is moving forward, and the public knows virtually nothing about it.

In addition, state legislators and governors are also starting to respond to this unconstitutional federal takeover of education curriculum. According to the states listed or not listed on this comprehensive review table by Daniel Thatcher of the National Conference of State Legislatures, the breakdown of how states are dealing with the Common Core is as follows:

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Education & Childcare Votes of MN Legislative Incumbents in Contested Primary Elections

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INTRODUCTION: As the Minnesota legislative primary election rapidly approaches on August 14th, we thought it would be helpful for our supporters to have some idea of how legislative incumbents involved in primaries voted on bills and amendments important to academic excellence, state’s rights, and parental autonomy.  Although Education Liberty Watch followed many other bills in the last biennium other than these, the others were mostly included in large complicated omnibus bills where the impact of votes on individual components by individual legislators was much more difficult to explain.  The omnibus bills  contained provisions that our organization both opposed and supported.  Therefore, only bills or amendments that showed clear support or opposition to Education Liberty Watch principles were included.

SYMBOLS:

+ = Education Liberty Watch preferred vote

– = Education Liberty Watch opposed vote

? = Legislator was either absent or did not vote

N/A = Legislator was not elected at the time of the vote

* = House incumbent running for a senate seat

HOUSE VOTES:

EXPLANATION OF HOUSE VOTES:

1)      SF 1656 (HJ 9351) to require legislative approval of new standards adoptions – Authored in the House by Rep. Sondra Erickson (R-Princeton), this bill required legislative approval of new academic standards.  This is very important given both the lack of constitutionality and poor quality of the common core national standards already adopted in Minnesota in English, as well as the state developed social studies standards that are very non-academic and revisionist especially in history.  For more details, see our reviews of the social studies standards (here and here) and our discussions of this legislation (here).  Sadly, although this legislation was passed by both chambers of the legislature, it was vetoed by Governor Dayton. The Education Liberty Watch preferred vote on this legislation was “yea.”

2)      HF 1766 (HJ 5493) to prohibit union dues or fair share fees from being taken from childcare subsidy payments – Authored by Rep. Kathy Lohmer (R-Woodbury), this legislation was offered  in light of a huge push to unionize childcare workers by designating those that receive childcare subsidies as state employees, then subject to unionization.  The bill would have prevented union dues or fair share fees from being taken from these childcare subsidies for poor families, therefore keeping the cost of childcare from increasing.  Although opposition to unionization had wide polling support and this commonsense legislation was passed by both chambers of the legislature, it was vetoed by Governor Dayton, a big supporter of unionization.  The Education Liberty Watch vote on this amendment was “yea.”

3)      Petersen Amendment to the Garafolo  Amendment of SF 1755 (HJ 9336) to require a unionization election of childcare workers – In response both to the governor’s veto of HF 1766/SF 1630 to prevent union dues and fair share fees from being taken out of childcare subsidies  and to St. Paul Judge Dale Lindeman’s ruling that the Dayton executive order for a unionization election of less than half of the affected child care providers was “an unconstitutional usurpation of the Legislature’s constitutional right to make and or amend laws,” the House Republicans gave the Democrats a chance to go on record regarding the governor’s plan.  Rep. Pat Garofalo (R-Farmington) offered an amendment to a bill by Rep. Steve Drazkowski (R-Mazeppa) dealing with state employee layoff policy.  The Garofalo amendment set up a childcare unionization election.  Before this was debated, Rep. Brandon Petersen (R-Andover) offered an amendment to the amendment that would have put the entire Dayton childcare union election executive order into law verbatim.  In the end, only 14 legislators, all Democrat, voted to uphold the governor’s plan, thus providing a potential appeals court with clear legislative intent that it did not support the unionization scheme. The Education Liberty Watch preferred vote on this amendment was “nay.”

4)      Buesgens Amendment to HF 934 (HJ 1638) removing the quality rating system from the omnibus education bill – This amendment to the omnibus education finance bill in 2011 offered by Rep. Mark Buesgens (R-Jordan) was to remove a statewide childcare quality rating system that would have imposed sometimes radical and indoctrinating government curricular standards on private and religious preschools, decreased parental choice for families that receive childcare subsidies, and greatly increased costs and bureaucracy for independent childcare workers and programs.  See some of our extensive discussions on this legislation and program here and here.  The Education Liberty Watch   preferred vote on this amendment was “yea.”

SENATE VOTES:

EXPLANATION OF SENATE VOTES:

1)      SF 1656 (SJ 4084) to require legislative approval of new standards adoptions – Authored by Senator Carla Nelson (R-Rochester), this bill required legislative approval of new academic standards.  This is very important given both the lack of constitutionality and poor quality of the common core national standards already adopted in Minnesota in English, as well as the state developed social studies standards that are very non-academic and revisionist especially in history.  For more details, see our reviews of the social studies standards (here and here) and our discussions of this legislation (here).  Sadly, although this legislation was passed by both chambers of the legislature, it was vetoed by Governor Dayton. The Education Liberty Watch preferred vote on this legislation was “yea.”

2) SF 1630 (SJ 5858) to prohibit union dues or fair share fees from being taken from childcare subsidy payments – Authored by Senator Ted Lillie (R-Woodbury), this legislation was offered  in light of a huge push to unionize childcare workers by designating those that receive childcare subsidies as state employees, then subject to unionization.  The bill would have prevented union dues or fair share fees from being taken from these childcare subsidies for poor families, therefore keeping the cost of childcare from increasing.  Although opposition to unionization had wide polling support and was passed by both chambers of the legislature, it was vetoed by Governor Dayton, a big supporter of unionization.  The Education Liberty Watch vote on this amendment was “yea.”

3)      Bonoff Amendment to SF 1030 (SJ 1136) to implement a statewide government controlled quality rating system – This amendment to the omnibus education finance bill in 2011 offered by Senator Terri Bonoff (DFL-Minnetonka) would have implemented a statewide childcare quality rating system that would have imposed sometimes radical and indoctrinating government curricular standards on private and religious preschools, decreased parental choice for families that receive childcare subsidies, and greatly increased costs and bureaucracy for independent childcare workers and programs.  See some of our extensive discussions on this legislation and program here and here.  The Education Liberty Watch   preferred vote on this amendment was “nay.”