Promised accountability standards for non-public schools participating
in Louisiana’s scholarship voucher program materialized
and were
approved by the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education yesterday. A
mixed bag, nevertheless they have more positives than negatives.
Participating schools will have students take the same academic tests
as do students in the public schools, where reporting will occur for those with
at least 40 program students or with one grade with at least 10 students. If
after its first year of participation the school scores below 50 on a 150 point
scale computed similarly as School Performance Scores for public schools (that
being classified as “academically unacceptable) using only data from program
students, it will be unable to accept additional program students and those
there already may transfer out with priority. Do that three more years in a
row, and the school gets yanked from the program.
But besides schools with few slots will have to meet these standards,
many at least initially also won’t have to because testing only occurs from
grade 3 on up. This means those that concentrate almost all of their slots in
kindergarten through second grade will not have these standards apply – at this
time about three-quarters of all slots available, although many schools appear
willing to roll eligibility forward in grades as the years pass so soon most in
the program will become subject to these standards.
Good about this framework is that it provides the only genuine element
for accountability – information to families where available. Regrettably, many
families will not take advantage of this chance to rescue students from subpar
public schools because the parents won’t really care. But for those that do
take advantage because they do care, they will behave in rational fashion. They
will shop around and compare the public school’s performance with that of
program students at the eligible schools. They will find the best deal and if
it’s better than the public school’s, they’ll head in that direction. They will
shy away from, if not collectively abandon, program schools that perform below
that score of 50 level.
Overwrought
critics with half-baked analyses of the regulations (and even some usually
more sensible analysts) seem incapable of understanding this, mooting the
complaint that participating schools can rank below public schools sending
transfers their way. Why would a concerned parent send their children to a
school scoring demonstrably lower than the one they’re in? That makes sense
only if, like
teachers’ unions officials are wont to do, they assume all parents are incapable
of rational decision-making – which is by their own words to admit to the world
that these critics do not live in the real world.
At the same time, reporting could go further. Every school
participating, on the standardized tests, could report the average score in a
grade level and the number taking it, even if the minimum threshold for computing
a school score was not met. Some information is better than none for those
schools with few program enrollees.
And the utility of basing participation on a school score might have a
chilling effect of program participation. For example, some students truly
disserved by the public schools, say those physically in the third grade but
academically don’t even perform past kindergarten, could go to a participating
school and have so much catching up to do that they can’t get the average for
their new school above the magic 50 level and sanctions kick in. This fear of
this kind of situation may discourage schools from going through all the effort
to get into the program.
Better would be some relative measure, such as (where possible) calculating
improvement year-to-year for each program student and then comparing that to
the same cohort at the school from where that student came, and aggregating
all. Any greater improvement across all than seen by the averages aggregated at
the previous schools should indicate more learning occurred than would have
otherwise, justifying the school’s presence in the program.
1 comment:
It's hard to know where to begin with today's Sadow Garbage. It's worth repeating that with today's post, Jeff insists on the fusion of state government (and my taxpayer funds) to religious madrassas. Then tomorrow's post he rants about Obama's lack of regard for the constitution simply because some scary Black Panther wasn't lynched for posing in front of a voting center. Lets be clear, Jindal could propose absolutely anything in the world and Jeff would shriek from rooftops that the gospel has been spoken. In this case, it would at least be less dishonorable if you would let other minority religions have their schools on equal footing (ie the Muslim school that was pushed out of the program), but you people can't even muster five minutes of respect for a boring muslim school without turning it into some sort of terrorist training center in your imagination. I would like to suggest that all you stupid Christianist bigots move to North Korea where you'll fit right in.
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