Critics Ignore Success of Choice

This op-ed, written by State Senator Kevin Bryant (R-Anderson), was published in The State newspaper on Monday, April 13, 2009:

 

The education establishment in South Carolina is running scared, because it’s running out of excuses.

Despite more money, more “accountability” and more government programs, South Carolina still has the nation’s worst graduation rate. Our SAT scores are still at the bottom of the barrel.

People are tired of failure, of rhetoric that ignores the facts, of irrational defenses of our state’s failed status quo and the steady barrage of misinformation accompanying those defenses.

And they are tired of choice in name only. They are ready for real change.

Several colleagues and I recently introduced the 2009 Educational Opportunity Act, which will provide tax credits for parents to send their children to any school of their choice. This is real school choice, and detractors are attacking it by saying it “won’t help poor kids” because there is “no guarantee” private companies and individuals will support scholarships for low-income, mostly minority students.

There are no guarantees in Pennsylvania either, but since its inception, the Educational Improvement Tax Credit Program has seen more than 3,200 companies pledge donations, and sent more than $350 million to some 600 scholarship-granting organizations. A key provision of the S.C. legislation is modeled after this successful program.

In the current school year, this investment in academic freedom has funded more than 50,000 scholarships to poor, at-risk students in Pennsylvania.

That’s 50,000 students getting a fresh start — and $300 million freed up within the public system to educate a smaller number of students.

In 2007, 62 corporations gave $14 million to student tuition organizations in Arizona, and 20,000 scholarships were made available for low-income students in Florida.

But the defenders of our state’s failed status quo aren’t just ignoring these success stories; they are impugning the motives of parental choice supporters, even playing a subtle but every bit as despicable race card.

Calling us “suburban Republicans,” they are implying that anyone supporting this legislation is only interested in making choice cheaper for those who can already afford it.

They are correct in presuming that this legislation would benefit “suburban Republicans.” It absolutely will. But it also would benefit “rural Democrats,” “urban independents,” “lakeside liberals,” “coastal conservatives” and all kinds of parents in between.

This bill will help all children.

State Sen. Robert Ford — a Charleston Democrat whose impassioned advocacy on this issue has stirred the African-American community in our state to action — is being attacked by the education establishment and prominent members of the NAACP.

I wonder if his detractors feel the same about the African-American mayors of Washington, Newark, N.J., New Orleans, Atlanta, and Jacksonville Fla. — all of whom support parental choice.

Critics don’t want to talk about these leaders, though, because they want you to believe that Sen. Ford is all alone among African-Americans in supporting a parent’s right to choose.

Our bill isn’t about black or white. Nor is it about rich or poor, rural or urban. It is about providing better academic options for each and every child in this state.

Supporters of the status quo want you to believe that this bill won’t help anyone, and yet in the same breath they contend that it will destroy public education.

The truth is this bill will free thousands of children stuck in failing schools — and will improve our public schools in the process by freeing up more money per student.

Mr. Bryant represents Anderson County in the S.C. Senate.

School Choice Vote

The Senate Education K-12 Subcommittee will vote on Wednesday, April 29th on the South Carolina Education Opportunity Act (S. 520).  The subcommittee meeting begins at 9:00 a.m. and will be held in Room 308 of the Gressette Building on the capitol complex in Columbia.

Please contact your senators and be sure to come out and stand up with parents from across the state in support of school choice.

Why Should Ty’Sheoma Have A Choice?

The following op-ed, which appeared in the Sunday, March 1, 2009 edition of The Washington Post, was written by Jeanne Allen who serves as the President of the Center for Education Reform:

 

What if Ty’Sheoma Bethea had a choice? Ty’Sheoma is the young lady who sat with first lady Michelle Obama when President Obama spoke to Congress Tuesday night. She had reached the president through a letter about her school, the ceiling that leaks, the walls that shake when trains go by, the poor education it provides. She warmed his heart and ours.

Ty’Sheoma’s world is not unlike the District’s before charter schools and scholarships, when enormous effort was made to improve schools, to no avail. It wasn’t until these choices were available that people could see how financing a broken system, without accountability, does nothing. Now, charter schools and the scholarship program are not only educating nearly 35 percent of D.C. students but also ushering in a new wave of public school reform that would never have been on the table had the arrival of choice not shown the way and shed light on the failings of the system and its protectors.

What if Ty’Sheoma had a charter school? Poverty abounds in her home town of Dillon, S.C. Its school board and citizens have the power to start charter schools. But school boards fight their creation, claiming they undermine public schools. Charters use education money with one goal, to educate. If they don’t succeed, they don’t stay open.

Dillon’s per-pupil expenditure — $8,700 — is higher than the national average. That funds more than 50 staff positions at her J.V. Martin Junior High School (including four custodians). That’s a student-to-staff ratio of 9 to 1, meaning there are more than twice as many adults serving students as at most schools in the country. What if Ty’Sheoma had an opportunity scholarship, which would send $7,500 to the private school of her family’s choosing? Those schools are not lush, but they are well-maintained, safe and successful in educating children. If Ty’Sheoma could vote with her feet, too, she’d find her allotted money spent where it should be, on ensuring student achievement. Her district might just make changes in response, lifting all schools.

But Ty’Sheoma doesn’t have choices. She’s the victim of a lawsuit filed by those who are adamant that money equals education. We know from years of equity battles that education doesn’t change when courts order states to spend more. Facilities may get a facelift and teachers may make more, but not because they are better; it’s because they are there. With choice, Ty’Sheoma’s family could evaluate a school, review the programs and the data on school performance. Ty’Sheoma could choose to attend a school that worked for her.

Ty’Sheoma Bethea doesn’t know that adults work in her schools regardless of how well they do their jobs, that there are no consequences for leaky roofs. She may not know that cities like this one offer choices that provide exactly what she wants and deserves. She’s been told that she is treated inequitably because the state doesn’t care about kids in Dillon. So she wrote the president, who brought her to Washington and told her story and asserted that the economic stimulus legislation helps her, absent any policy changes.

The Washington that has pledged to help her wants to abolish the D.C. program that affords choices to the poorest children. I wonder, if Ty’Sheoma had written the president about how choice benefited her, whether she would have been sitting with Michelle Obama.

If Ty’Sheoma had a choice, maybe we wouldn’t know her at all.

The writer is president of the Center for Education Reform.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-yn/content/article/2009/02/28/AR2009022801663.html?sub=AR