by Georgia Center for Opportunity | Nov 11, 2015
In the late 19th century, Hawaiian sugar farmers struggled to prevent rats from eating their crop. Farmers introduced the Indian Mongoose to the islands to save the harvest.
Unfortunately, mongoose are active during the day, while rats are nocturnal. The mongoose did not quell the rat problem but even now the mongoose severely impact ground-nesting birds, including Hawaii’s state bird, the Nene, and endangered sea turtles. The mongoose is considered an invasive species in Hawaii.
We cannot always predict the outcomes of our decisions in the natural world, and history proves that the same is true in public life. Want the rich to pay more so we can balance the budget? In Maryland, the millionaires moved out. Want to increase the sales tax so people will smoke less? Now cigarettes are smuggled out of lower-tax states into other areas.
As the late Yogi Berra instructed, it’s hard to make predictions, especially about the future.
Still, in education, we all want every child’s future to be marked by success and achievement. This blog has explained how education savings accounts can provide Georgia families with opportunities to inspire their children to learn and find quality educational options. With these flexible accounts, families can make multiple decisions about what is best for their child’s education today and save for the future.
However, with every new law, rules and regulations must follow. These rules are important to help prevent fraud and misuse.
Families that use education savings accounts must be protected from fraudulent educators and taxpayers must be protected from mishandling of the accounts. But these rules should be written carefully, otherwise regulation may limit what students can achieve using an account.
In Arizona, where education savings accounts have been available to families since 2011, state policymakers adjusted the law after its enactment to include fraud protection provisions. The Arizona Department of Education must conduct regular account audits to stop misuse so that it does not become widespread.
Yet the department has still not used other measures, such as updating the cards’ technology to prevent a family from buying educational materials at an approved store (such as Walmart) and also purchasing something that has nothing to do with their child’s education, like a TV.
In Florida, lawmakers have enacted strict rules that often require parents using education savings accounts to spend their own money first and then apply for reimbursement from the state. It’s too soon to tell, but Florida may be too cautious with their rules, while Arizona is not cautious enough.
Three lessons are readily available to Georgia lawmakers:
1. Make deposits into education savings accounts quarterly, then audit every quarter. Families using an account should receive deposits every fiscal quarter. If there is misspending, either accidental or purposeful, quarterly audits will prevent the problem from growing.
2. Students should be allowed to use their education savings accounts at educational institutions and for educational products—but nothing beyond these purchases. We have the technology to limit the use of a debit card so that only educational items can be purchased. Policymakers should tell the financial institution distributing the cards that lessons from other states demonstrate this technology is vital in order to protect students and taxpayers.
3. Learn from other states’ mistakes. In healthcare, food stamps, social security and all other government programs, fraud is a fact of life. But that means we must use all the resources available to allow vendors and individuals to report fraud over the phone or online and ask participating educators to help catch misuse. The Goldwater Institute has additional resources available to lawmakers.
Education savings accounts have the potential to help students from different walks of life succeed in their education and beyond. The proper rules must be in place to allow for flexibility while still protecting students and taxpayers. If we are not careful, the rules may stifle innovation and student success. Lessons from states already offering education savings accounts will help to limit unintended consequences.
Jonathan Butcher is education director at the Goldwater Institute and senior Fellow at the Beacon Center of Tennessee.
by Georgia Center for Opportunity | Nov 4, 2015
While commonly referred to as the “Nation’s Report Card,” the National Assessment of Educational Progress or “NAEP” assesses student knowledge in “math, reading, and other subjects” and has been “viewed as a credible national measure of academic progress.” Last week’s release of NAEP test scores reflect a dismal outlook for Georgia students.
Peggy Carr, acting commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, said that the national scores were not encouraging and represent an unexpected downturn.
The percentage of Georgia fourth graders reading at a proficient level fell one point from 2013 to 33 percent. Making sure students improve their reading efficiency is a must. If a child is struggling with reading by the time they reach the fourth grade, their ability to learn new concepts and subjects is hindered, and they fall behind in other key areas where reasoning and logic are required.
For eighth grade students, the percentage of students scoring at a proficient level decreased to 30 percent from 32 percent in 2011. Students in the eighth grade must be able to read and comprehend different “works of fiction and nonfiction,” analyze information from different mediums and be able to interpret their findings and present them in a clear report.
For mathematics, fourth grade is when students are not just learning concepts, but are learning to problem-solve. The number of fourth graders who scored proficient in mathematics fell four points to 34 percent in 2015. The Atlanta Journal Constitution reported that “state education officials were particularly concerned about the four-point drop in fourth-grade math, and planned to refocus efforts on getting students better prepared in ‘foundational’ work.”
Eighth grade mathematic proficiency also decreased in 2015 to 28 percent (from 29 percent in 2013).
Georgia’s proficiency scores put the state on par with Arkansas and South Carolina, with only a point or two difference between the states. Most Southeastern states scored below the national average with the exception of Florida, which scored above the national average in both fourth and eighth grade reading. Florida is also home to the most robust school choice program options in the nation, allowing parent to choose the best learning environment for their children.
For several years Georgia students have fallen short of the national average education scores. Students are falling behind and parents need additional options and resources to put their children in the education environment that best fits their learning needs. Georgia currently has some limited choice programs, but expanding choice – through ESAs or other school choice programs – is the only way to put Georgia students first.
by Georgia Center for Opportunity | Sep 29, 2015
A few weeks ago, Wired magazine editor Joe Pugliese told readers a story that should sound familiar to anyone who followed the careers of computer icons Bill Gates and Steve Jobs: Pugliese almost didn’t finish college because life outside the classroom was more interesting.
“By the time I was 20 I had found full-time work as a designer, and I was serially ditching class in favor of time at the office,” Pugliese wrote in the September issue. “Prerequisites and lecture halls seemed like a distraction from the place where I knew I was learning the most—the real word.”
Today, students across the globe can learn in more ways than we can count, from books to YouTube videos to free online classes hosted by Harvard and MIT to computers installed on the sidewalk (even Wired magazine has partnered with the University of Southern California to create a graduate program). To better prepare every child for a successful future, parents, lawmakers, and educators need a new definition for what it means to learn. And one classroom might not be enough for a student.
Had Pugliese’s teachers recognized he was bored, clearly they would have tried to make their lessons more useful for the “real world.” No educator wants his students to be unprepared for life. Horace Mann inscribed the mission of generations of educators when he called education the “great equalizer of the conditions of men,” a phrase U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan would repeat some 150 years later.
Yet how can education fulfill this noble treatise if schools can’t keep students in the classroom, or the very least, interested in the classroom?
Today, public education’s challenge is not just to limit the number of students dropping out of school, though that is critical. The percentage of students dropping out has been nearly cut in half since 1990, from 12 percent to 7 percent.
The implications of this decrease are profound. For example, black men of working-age (20 to 34) without a high school diploma are more likely to be in prison than employed, according to Pew research. A diploma may have far-reaching effects for these men.
But just attending school or even finishing high school isn’t enough. Students need to be challenged and inspired by learning experiences that meet their needs so that they can have a chance at the American Dream.
Education savings accounts provide parents and their children with the flexibility to choose from multiple learning options at the same time. As this blog has explained, education savings accounts, now law in five states, are bank accounts complete with debit cards that allow families to buy educational products and services for their children.
In Arizona, Florida, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Nevada, eligible families have more educational options than just their child’s assigned public school. The state deposits funding in each account, and families can pay for personal tutors, textbooks and curricular materials like science kits, online classes, private school tuition, and college classes. Families can even save money from year to year.
In Arizona, the Howard family uses Nathan’s account to pay for tutoring services and private school tuition. The Visser family educates Jordan at home, swiping his education savings account card with different vendors in order to combine therapy services and educational instruction. The McMurray family uses the accounts to participate in extracurricular activities offered by a public school. Research finds that more than one-third of accountholders use their education savings account for multiple learning options.
This is the future of learning. For some students, it may just be a new school. Or a tutor to help them keep up with their classmates. For others, it could mean enrolling in classes offered on the other side of the world or using an iPad—with a data plan—to learn math with an app.
Education savings accounts allow for one or all of these options. Every Georgia child should have access to the future of learning.
Jonathan Butcher is education director at the Goldwater Institute and senior fellow with the Beacon Center of Tennessee.
by Georgia Center for Opportunity | Sep 9, 2015
Perla Macias pulled her son, Albiery, out of their local school in Arizona because he was not getting the attention Perla thought he needed to succeed. “It was sad because he didn’t even want to go to school some days,” Perla says.
Perla is like every mom—she wants the best for her children in and out of school. Fortunately for Perla and Albiery, they live in one of five states where lawmakers have allowed students to use education savings accounts to find unique learning experiences that may include online classes, personal tutors, private schools, public school classes, and college savings plans, among other uses, all with the same account.
With an education savings account, the state deposits public funds in a private account that parents use to purchase educational products and services for their child. In 2015, Georgia lawmakers considered legislation that would have allowed state families to use the accounts, but the legislation stalled.
Albiery’s new school has brought out his interests in new subjects, and Perla is excited to use his account to support him with whatever he needs to succeed. “He wants to be an architect, and I’m so happy for that,” Perla says.
In this three-part series, the Georgia Center for Opportunity will explain why Georgia needs to give parents this flexible educational option, how education savings accounts change the way we think about learning, and how the accounts work in states that have already enacted laws: Arizona, Florida, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Nevada.
Georgia families, like those all over the country, need better learning options. Student achievement scores should trouble Georgia parents. According to researchers, students in 30 developed countries outpace Georgia 15-year-olds in math. Among families where at least one parent finished college, students from 31 nations perform better than Georgia students.
In reading, two-thirds of the state’s fourth graders score below the basic level set by the U.S. Department of Education. By eighth grade, nearly 70 percent read below the basic level.
Yet in a poll conducted by the Atlanta Journal Constitution in January 2015, 30 percent of respondents rated Georgia public schools as “excellent” or “good,” while another 38 percent rated them as “fair.” Sixty-eight percent of Georgia schools cannot be doing a fair job or better if almost three-quarters of their students aren’t.
Every child should have access to a school that will challenge him and prepare him for the future. But the labor market is changing quickly. The skills individuals will need to know in order to have a successful career are impossible to predict over the long term.
A recent study by Young Invincibles, a group that researches trends among Millennials, found that the jobs most likely to set Millennials up for success are physician’s assistants, actuaries, statisticians, and biomedical engineers. These careers will require a solid educational background in K-12 and college and even graduate school.
Families can use education savings accounts to save money from year to year, pay for college classes before and during their student’s postsecondary years, and pay for graduate school. This way, students can learn skills before, during, and after college that will help them in their careers.
This feature of the accounts is why families like Perla and Albiery’s can talk about college. And life after college. “I think it has been very good for our family,” Perla says.
Georgia students deserve the same opportunities to find success in school and in life. Education savings accounts can help give this chance to every Georgia child.
Jonathan Butcher is education director at the Goldwater Institute and senior fellow at the Beacon Center of Tennessee.
by Georgia Center for Opportunity | Jun 3, 2015
Last Friday I had the opportunity to address a subcommittee of the Governor’s Education Reform Commission. This particular subcommittee is tasked with making recommendations on how best to expand educational options in Georgia, or, more plainly, addressing the question,
“What sort of choices should parents have in how their children are educated?”
I was able to tell the subcommittee how I (along with others) lobbied back in 2007 for the passage of the Georgia Special Needs Scholarship Program, our state’s first state-funded private school choice program. We came back in 2008 and lobbied for the creation of the Tax Credit Scholarship Program, which allows individual and corporate donors to receive a tax credit for donations made to non-profits who give scholarships to kids leaving public schools for private options.
Because of these two programs, more than 16,000 students in Georgia now attend the private school their parents chose for them. Many of these children and their families share stories of lives changed because of the opportunities these scholarships provided. Kids that were struggling in the public school they were zoned for are now thriving in an environment chosen by their parents that better meets their individual needs.
But while 16,000 students have found hope in the opportunity afforded by choice, thousands more languish behind because they are either not eligible for a state-funded scholarship or because the tax credit program is capped, limiting the number of students who can participate.
The 2007/2008 legislative session was an exciting time. Georgia suddenly popped onto the national education choice scene in a big way. We may not have been a leader back then, but at least we were finally on the team.
But as I shared with the subcommittee, we haven’t done much since. As a state we had our moment on the national stage, but it was a bit of a flash and then a fizzle.*
We’ve watched year after year as other states create new educational choice programs or expand existing ones. These states are whizzing right past us to the top of the pack, leaving us in an all-too-familiar place when it comes to education: hanging near the back.
Scott Jensen, a colleague of mine in the school choice arena who serves as the Senior Policy Advisor for the American Federation for Children, explained to the committee, “You (Georgia) have the slowest growth rate of any program in the country. Because there is none.”
I’ve been through seven legislative sessions since the creating of our programs, advocating each time for “more” – more choices for families to meet the specific needs of their kids because those kids’ futures depend on them getting a good education.
It’s not as though offering educational options to families is some sort of competition between GA and other states. But it is true that our kids are competing, and not just with other states – they are competing in a global marketplace.
I bet if we allow ourselves a moment of honesty, most of us could agree on a couple of things:
1. Our kids deserve a 21st century education that actually prepares them for college, a career, and life.
2. Every child is different and has unique learning needs.
The great news is, in the 21st century, there are so many tools that previous generations of students, teachers, and parents just didn’t have at their disposal: digital classes and programs, special schools to address specific learning challenges, schools with a focus on the arts, schools with a focus on science and technology, innovative home study programs, etc.
This is actually why I’m not sure the phrase “school choice” really covers the gamut of options anymore. Often, the choices that make the most sense for a family aren’t really schools in the traditional sense. Rather, they are programs, services, therapies or other options that go well beyond the school walls.
With such a diversity of options on the market, what keeps families stuck in the same old school, or the same old rut? It’s usually one of two things:
1. State policy that prevents them from choosing a different educational path.
2. A lack of resources to afford the existing options or move to a different area of town with better educational offerings.
So, what can we do about these challenges? At Georgia Center for Opportunity, we are all about breaking down barriers to opportunity. Together, we can work to:
1. Change state policy to allow families more flexibility with regard to educational options, prioritizing the specific needs of a child over arbitrary school district boundaries.
2. Remove some of the financial obstacles by allowing families to use the money the state designated to educate their child for another school or program of their choice that better meets their child’s needs.
I am weary but hopeful that 2016 will be the end of the lack of legislative action to address the need for more educational options. I hope that the Governor’s Education Reform Commission makes thoughtful but bold recommendations to expand educational choice in Georgia. I hope the Governor and the legislature take those ideas and turn them into reality for our families. I hope, because for far too many kids, a way out, a way forward, or a new way of doing things is their only hope to receive the best education they can get.
Georgia needs to get back in the game, step up to the plate, and make sure we are doing all we can to set our students up for a WIN in this game of life.
*(Actually, we’ve done a lot of good in providing additional public school choices through charter schools, and we’ve had some exciting public school reforms, but here I am focused on what we do for families who need an option outside of the public system in which they are zoned).
by Georgia Center for Opportunity | May 19, 2015
We had an unusual experience last week, with President Obama participating in, of all things, a panel discussion on poverty with three leading public intellectuals, E.J. Dionne, Jr., Robert Putnam, and Arthur Brooks. The conversation ranged pretty widely, with a number of issues coming up, some of which didn’t get all that much attention. I know that there were some hot button moments, which received a good bit of radio and television air time, not to mention editorial and blogosphere commentary, but I’d rather take a deep breath and proceed just a bit more calmly.
Let me begin by observing that the President displayed flashes of the persona that made him at least somewhat appealing when he first appeared on the national scene. He at least said he wanted to get past the partisan divide where one side spoke only about economics and the other only about culture:
The stereotype is that you’ve got folks on the left who just want to pour more money into social programs, and don’t care anything about culture or parenting or family structures, and that’s one stereotype. And then you’ve got cold-hearted, free market, capitalist types who are reading Ayn Rand and…think everybody are moochers. And I think the truth is more complicated.
I think that there are those on the conservative spectrum who deeply care about the least of these, deeply care about the poor; exhibit that through their churches, through community groups, through philanthropic efforts, but are suspicious of what government can do. And then there are those on the left who I think are in the trenches every day and see how important parenting is and how important family structures are, and the connective tissue that holds communities together and recognize that that contributes to poverty when those structures fray, but also believe that government and resources can make a difference in creating an environment in which young people can succeed despite great odds.
And it seems to me that if coming out of this conversation we can have a both/and conversation rather than either/or conversation, then we’ll be making some progress.
I agree: let’s talk about poverty in terms both of the economic straits in which individuals and families find themselves and of the culture (embodied in the media, schools, and government programs, as well as in churches and other community institutions) that should, but doesn’t necessarily, encourage responsibility for oneself, for one’s partner(s), and for any and all children one brings into the world.
Here are some takeaways from the conversation. There was, in the first instance, a good bit of talk about the disparity of opportunities available to those at different ends of the economic spectrum. Robert Putnam set the tone here, alluding to evidence from his recent book that our poor kids get much less support and have much less to which to look forward than do their wealthy counterparts:
[Y]ou can see it in measures of family stability. You can see it in measures of the investments that parents are able to make in their kids, the investments of money and the investments of time. You can see it in the quality of schools kids go to. You can see it in the character of the social and community support that kids — rich kids and poor kids are getting from their communities.
The President responded to this opening by referring to an idealized portrait of community that Putnam draws in the book, one where, despite class differences, everyone shares in the same social and public institutions:
[W]hen I read Bob’s book, the first thing that strikes you is when he’s growing up in Ohio, he’s in a community where the banker is living in reasonable proximity to the janitor at the school. The janitor’s daughter may be going out with the banker’s son. There are a set of common institutions — they may attend the same church; they may be members of the same rotary club; they may be active at the same parks — and all the things that stitch them together. And that is all contributing to social mobility and to a sense of possibility and opportunity for all kids in that community.
Perhaps that was true in some ethnically and religiously homogeneous small towns and urban neighborhoods—Alan Ehrenhalt’s The Lost City is eloquent on this subject—but I have my doubts about it as a sweeping generalization. While, for example, private schools did not proliferate until the 1960s, they have long been available to Roman Catholics (as an alternative to the erstwhile weak-tea Protestantism of the public schools) and to the very wealthy (think Phillips Exeter, Andover, and Choate in the Northeast, as well as Westminster and Woodward here in Atlanta). And anyone who has lived in the South would know that there at least once was a socioeconomic pecking order among Protestant churches, with an enormous contrast between, say, the up-market Episcopalians and the down-market Primitive Baptists. (Indeed, if anything, the decline of the mainline churches and the rise of evangelicalism have served to counteract this phenomenon, so that a much broader socioeconomic spectrum is represented in the pews in many churches on any given Sunday).
Nevertheless, there are three ways community thus conceived can arguably promote social mobility. There are, first of all, the cultural norms of hard work and personal responsibility that can be shared across class boundaries. In this respect, so-called positive role models are not distant abstractions, but personal acquaintances. Peer pressure doesn’t come from (or only from) local gang members but—one hopes—from high-achieving classmates and neighbors. Second, the networks of opportunity readily available to the affluent become open to classmates and acquaintances who don’t have access to them on their own. Finally, because everyone participates in these public institutions, everyone cares about their continued vitality. Thus, for example, parents get involved in PTA’s, care about school board elections, and are active in promoting “investments” (one of the President’s favorite words) in public education. In the Georgetown conversation, we hear something about the last two considerations, but very little (and in any event not enough) about the first.
But if this talk about community isn’t simply to be a nostalgic reminiscence about or longing for something we’ve lost, it behooves us to ask what, practically, we can do to restore it (or preserve it where it still exists).
It would, for example, be impossible—not to say highly undesirable—to compel everyone to attend public schools. While I could imagine some political leaders succumbing to that temptation and trying to regulate private schools out of existence, to the degree that education remains primarily a state and local responsibility, I can’t imagine such a policy sweeping the nation. And even if—horror of horrors—private options were taken off the table, people have historically voted with their feet, exercising “school choice” by moving into a neighborhood whose public schools are attractive. Political efforts to negate the effects of private residential choices haven’t found favor with voters or, for that matter, with the Supreme Court.
This is where, I humbly submit, school choice programs that empower especially lower income people to place their children in better schools actually show some promise of making the aforementioned benefits of community available. Children can escape an essentially homogeneous peer culture that is inimical to achievement and move into schools where parents are involved and there are positive role models. Too bad the President and his party consistently oppose school choice, preferring all too often simply to demand more funding for public schools, as if government by itself can compensate for the social ills that inevitably accompany dysfunctional communities.
A similar statism is implicit in the President’s comments about the role of religion in dealing with the problem of poverty. Here’s what he said:
[W]hen I think about my own Christian faith and my obligations, it is important for me to do what I can myself — individually mentoring young people, or making charitable donations, or in some ways impacting whatever circles and influence I have. But I also think it’s important to have a voice in the larger debate. And I think it would be powerful for our faith-based organizations to speak out on this in a more forceful fashion.
This may sound self-interested because there have been — these are areas where I agree with the evangelical community and faith-based groups, and then there are issues where we have had disagreements around reproductive issues, or same-sex marriage, or what have you. And so maybe it appears advantageous for me to want to focus on these issues of poverty, and not as much on these other issues….
There is great caring and great concern, but when it comes to what are you really going to the mat for, what’s the defining issue, when you’re talking in your congregations, what’s the thing that is really going to capture the essence of who we are as Christians, or as Catholics, or what have you, that this is oftentimes viewed as a “nice to have” relative to an issue like abortion. That’s not across the board, but there sometimes has been that view, and certainly that’s how it’s perceived in our political circles.
While President Obama didn’t go as far as Robert Putnam in mischaracterizing the relative weight of religious emphasis on poverty as opposed to social issues, these remarks do imply that, in his view, social issues like abortion and same-sex marriage play a distractingly large role in the outward-looking role of all too many Christian churches. He does hedge and qualify his statement a bit, but the larger point is that, so far as “our political circles” are concerned, the church’s witness on poverty takes a back seat to its positions on abortion and same-sex marriage. As many have pointed out, this is simply mistaken, but it reveals something about what sorts of actions matter to the President. Furthermore, I’ve argued elsewhere that the President’s principal interest in faith-based groups seems to be mobilizing public support for government action, rather than encouraging their activity as an alternative or supplement to government. He doesn’t see—or at least doesn’t want to highlight—what churches and other faith-based organizations can do as actors in civil society, as possible alternatives to government action. We aren’t supposed to help ourselves or help one another but through the instrumentality of the government. The national conversation on poverty should largely be devoted to what government can do.
I’d like to conclude with a reflection on perhaps President Obama’s most solid contribution to the conversation:
[W]e can all stipulate that the best antipoverty program is a job, which confers not just income, but structure and dignity and a sense of connection to community. Which means we have to spend time thinking about the macro-economy, the broader economy as a whole.
He’s right in every facet of his statement. Having a job is not just about the income, but also about the self-discipline that comes from having to meet obligations to employers, customers, and clients and the dignity that comes from being able to take care of oneself and one’s family. And these relationships are the backbone of every community. I do not mean hereby to deprecate the institutions of civil society—churches, neighborhood associations, and so on—but they don’t prosper without the dignified contributions (both personal and financial) of more or less self-reliant individuals.
While it is clear that our economy hasn’t in recent years generated enough good jobs to lift our least fortunate brothers and sisters out of poverty, I found little in President Obama’s remarks that gave me much confidence that he held the key to success in this regard. We can’t redistribute our way to a better future, so a simple—almost demagogic—focus on inequality won’t do. As Arthur Brooks argued—frequently and effectively, in my view—there is no substitute for a dynamic and productive economy as a generator of wealth. And, as he also argued, ensuring that everyone benefits requires making hard choices that our political classes haven’t demonstrated their willingness to make.
Perhaps conversations like the one that took place last week will provide an opening for further, deeper exchanges of views and for genuinely productive policy-making. But I’m sad to say that I’m not holding my breath.
