It's time for school choice in Illinois Koanhead Dems want kids kept in failing schools so they'll continue to fail. This might be the most despicable thing about Democrats.
Freedom to find the best school for each student
January 19, 2014
"Parents in these poor, overcrowded and failing schools only have one choice, and that's the choice to send their child to a poor, overcrowded and failing school. What kind of a choice is that?"
— Former state Rep. Susana Mendoza, now Chicago city clerk, May 5, 2010
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Four years ago, the Illinois General Assembly came close to approving a school voucher program for Chicago Public Schools. Close, but lawmakers failed.
The bill passed the Senate but was defeated in the House, even though the program would have given thousands of children in chronically underperforming and overcrowded CPS schools a chance to choose a better future.
Instead, the students were consigned to stay where they were, even though most of their schools had languished for nearly a decade on academic watch lists.
The bill failed, even though children at some of CPS' badly overcrowded schools were being taught in restrooms, plastic bags thrown over the urinals. That's a disgrace.
The kindergartners who could have benefited from that school choice program are now in fourth grade, likely attending the same failing schools. In 2013, the average reading score of 4th-graders in Chicago was lower than the average for public school students in other large cities, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, also known as the nation's "report card." More than half of 4th-graders in Chicago don't meet basic reading proficiency requirements. Sadly, this isn't news.
Does anyone care?
Since that vote in the spring of 2010, no voucher proposal has gained meaningful traction in the legislature. The bill's sponsors, Sen. James Meeks and Rep. Kevin Joyce, have retired from the General Assembly, and the influential public employee unions have stifled any movement toward a school choice program.
The bill would have saved money. Chicago Public Schools would have come out ahead financially. And most important: Thousands of students in the poor-performing schools would have been empowered to choose their school.
"I've never supported vouchers. I've been leery of charter schools, but people, we've got to do something different from what we've always done," then-state Rep. Karen Yarbrough, D-Maywood, said during debate. "If we continue to do what we've always done, we'll get the same results. Please vote for this bill."
It wasn't to be. Clout, not kids, won the day. The bill got shot down 66-48 in the House.
Many states have tried creative efforts to expand school choice.
It took a storm — literally, the furor of wind and water from Hurricane Katrina in 2005 — to spur revolution in New Orleans. But it happened. The state took over the schools in devastated neighborhoods and put in place a network of charter schools. In 2012, the graduation rate in Louisiana's Recovery School District was 68 percent, up 10 percentage points in three years. Louisiana launched a pilot voucher program in New Orleans and then expanded it to other schools in the state.
Cleveland developed a school voucher program in 1995. Ten years later, the legislature expanded it statewide. Indiana offers school vouchers to low- and middle-income families. Wisconsin recently expanded a voucher program statewide. Washington, D.C., operates a federally approved voucher program for low-income families. Colorado approved a pilot program. Thirteen states have authorized some form of vouchers, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Like charter schools, choice programs don't always perform miracles. Some produce better results than others. But there's ample evidence that, when done well, they do help student achievement.
One of the most comprehensive studies of the school choice program in Milwaukee — the first U.S. city to institute a voucher program, in 1990 — found that students were one to two years behind academically when they gained access to a voucher. The research by University of Arkansas experts found that voucher students were more likely to graduate high school in four years, more likely to enroll in a four-year college and more likely to stay in college than students who didn't get a choice of schools.
Vouchers saved state money and had "no discernible effect on the racial segregation of schools or housing costs across neighborhoods," the report says.
The education experts studied Milwaukee's program for five years. To be clear: The results weren't mind-blowing. Voucher students, in some grades and some subjects, performed better than public school students. They were more likely to go to college. They were better readers. Many of them switched back and forth between vouchers and public schools.
The point is: They and their parents had the freedom to make their own choices, and many students put that freedom to good use.
At least six schools in the Archdiocese of Chicago are scheduled to close this year because of low enrollment and lagging revenue. This is a school system in which 70 percent of third-graders are proficient in reading and about 73 percent are proficient in math, according to the 2012 TerraNova exams. At the high school level, 95 percent of its graduates enroll in a college or university.
There is an opportunity here.
It's time to rescue kids trapped in failing and overcrowded neighborhood schools. It's time for the legislature to take up school choice.
Without a state-approved voucher system, the only way low-income families can access better schools is through the help of nonprofits and scholarships. But the need far outweighs the available resources.
Every parent should have the kind of opportunity for their children that Willie Mae McGee found.
She is a day care worker and mother of two from Chicago. Unimpressed with her neighborhood school, she started exploring options. She heard about scholarships from Freedom to Learn Illinois (now Ed Choice Illinois), a nonprofit organization that advocates for school choice.
On a Saturday morning two years ago, she sat in a West Englewood gymnasium with hundreds of other parents and crossed her fingers. There were only 15 scholarships to give away.
"I filled out a ticket with our name on it and was sitting there talking, just like this, and thinking, 'Well, it was fun while it lasted.' They gave us lunch and cookies. I was having a random conversation and didn't hear that my name got called," McGee told us. "When I realized it, I could have cried right at the moment."
Because of the scholarship, McGee's daughter attends a private school in Humboldt Park, and she is thriving. She's in first grade, reading at a third-grade level.
She is there because her name was randomly picked out of a metal raffle bin. A crank of the handle one way, or the other, and someone else's name would have been plucked. It was a stroke of luck.
But luck should not determine who gets the opportunity for a better education. Wealth should not determine who gets a choice. ZIP codes should not determine who gets a choice.
Hundreds of loving, committed parents crowded into that gymnasium seeking a better opportunity for their children. Most of them left empty-handed.
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