Tag Archives: Advancing New Hampshire Public Education

Voucher vs. Poor Kids — It Should Be An Easy Choice

  By Advancing New Hampshire Public Education | April 29, 2013 - 9:49 am | ,
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The opportunity gap in schools

The voucher debate is a waste of everyone’s time.  We should work on improving how New Hampshire public education works for poor kids (it already works pretty well for better-off kids) rather than engaging in a debate about privatizing our local public schools.

You don’t need a study to tell you that using public money to send a few kids to the unaccredited religious schools is not going to improve education for New Hampshire kids. The religious, often creationist, schools that dominate the voucher tax credit program are fine for the families that want them.  Many families, even those without much money, do find a way to send their kids. But private religious schools are not the basis of a strategy for helping thousands of New Hampshire kids escape poverty.  Regardless out the outcome of thecourt case challenging the constitutionality of tax credit funded vouchers, we should shut down this pathetic program and get back to the real question of how to help the kids.

Sean Reardon’s piece, “No Rich Child Left Behind’” in today’s New York Times, stands aside from the political debate and looks at what the numbers tell us about the performance of our schools over the last decades.  Here are some snippets:

Students growing up in richer families have better grades and higher standardized test scores, on average, than poorer students…

One way to see this is to look at the scores of rich and poor students on standardized math and reading tests over the last 50 years….I found that the rich-poor gap in test scores is about 40 percent larger now than it was 30 years ago….

…the proportion of students from upper-income families who earn a bachelor’s degree has increased by 18 percentage points over a 20-year period, while the completion rate of poor students has grown by only 4 points…

Can schools provide children a way out of poverty?….

The income gap in academic achievement is not growing because the test scores of poor students are dropping or because our schools are in decline. In fact,…[t]he average 9-year-old today has math skills equal to those her parents had at age 11, a two-year improvement in a single generation….The academic gap is widening because rich students are increasingly entering kindergarten much better prepared to succeed in school than middle-class students. This difference in preparation persists through elementary and high school….

It’s not clear what we should do about all this. Partly that’s because much of our public conversation about education is focused on the wrong culprits: we blame failing schools….

So how can we move toward a society in which educational success is not so strongly linked to family background?…[By] investing in developing high-quality child care and preschool that is available to poor and middle-class children. It also means recruiting and training a cadre of skilled preschool teachers and child care providers. These are not new ideas, but we have to stop talking about how expensive and difficult they are to implement and just get on with it.

The opportunity gap in schools Read it. You’ll be inspired.  Then call the hub of New Hampshire’s early childhood development movement, SparkNH, and ask director Laura Milliken to send a speaker to tell your group what’s happening in New Hampshire.

 

Reposted with permission from ANHPE, original link.

Senate committee votes 3-2 against HB 370, voucher repeal (ANHPE)

  By Advancing New Hampshire Public Education | April 9, 2013 - 5:00 pm | , ,
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Bill Duncan

Senators Peggy Gilmour (D, Hollis) and Molly Kelly (D, Keene) were eloquent at the Senate Health, Education and Human Services Committee today, making the case that the voucher tax credit lacks oversight and accountability, takes money from public schools to send it to private schools that do not promise a better education and is bad tax policy.  But their arguments fell on deaf Republican ears.  After a 16 minute debate, captured below by Granite State Progress (thank you!), the committee voted 3-2 along party lines to recommend Inexpedient to Legislate on HB 370.

Sen. Gilmour recommended that the scholarship organization, Network for Educational Opportunity, put its energy into raising scholarship funds in the normal way, without a large tax credit subsidy.  She was impressed with a private school student who testified but wondered why the family was waiting for the state voucher program while not applying for the school’s own scholarship program.  She went on to point out that the Senate had just passed a one page expansion of the R&D tax credit while the education tax credit required 9 convoluted pages of legislation.  Sen. Gilmour compared the lack of oversight and accountability in the voucher program with the very successful Community Development Tax Credit, with its lower (75%) tax credit and high level of oversight, accountability and credibility.

Sen. Kelley was especially animated about the erroneous implication that the private schools the kids would attend were better than New Hampshire’s own public schools.  There’s are always many ways to improve, she said, but that’s where we should be putting our attention and money, not into private schools.  In her statement on the vote, Sen. Kelly said, ”This bill repeals a private school voucher program that diverts public funds away from our public schools and directs private, non-profit corporations to allocate taxpayer dollars with no oversight or accountability…”  She went on to say:

“The Voucher Program became law last year when the super-majority Republican Legislature overrode then-Governor Lynch’s veto of SB372. It was a misguided venture then and the same is true today. I voted against this bill last year and I will be consistent and vote for the repeal this year. A bad policy is bad policy, no matter if it’s law or not.”

 Ensuring a quality education for all of our students must be a legislative priority. I will not vote to undermine the education of the nearly 200,000 students that attend NH public schools in favor of the few who will have the opportunity to attend private and/or religious schools. At a time when the legislature has levied record budget cuts to our public colleges and universities — including Keene State — it is irresponsible to appropriate and direct millions in public money to private schools.”

Sen. Reagan (R, Deerfield) made the point he frequently does about how bad New Hampshire, and all American, public schools are…falling in the world rankings, etc. (a frequently repeated myth, discussed here and here).  He used another of his speaking opportunities to make the point that the businesses donating scholarships are obviously successful because they have taxes to pay and, as such, are well qualified to allocate some of the State’s $11 million dollar budget.  (Don’t believe me?  Go to minute 11:30 in the video.)

Sen. Sanborn (R, Bedford) offered the non-sequitur that the businesses have the right to make their own choices about where to contribute money, possibly making the implicit assumption that the businesses also have  the right to an almost dollar-for-dollar tax-payer subsidy for those choices.

The chair, Sen. Stiles (R, Hampton), moderated the meeting and voted with the Republican majority.

The bill will probably be brought to the Senate floor when the Senate returns to session on April18.

 

Originally Posted at ANHPE

Stop Sending NH Taxpayer Money To Religious Schools; A Update On Voucher Repeal from Bill Duncan (ANHPE)

  By Advancing New Hampshire Public Education | March 18, 2013 - 9:45 am | , ,
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Bill Duncan

We have a real opportunity to achieve voucher repeal this year – maybe in the next 3 weeks.

HB 370, voucher repeal, has passed the house and is awaiting action in the Senate.  The vote count in the Senate is 12-12.  There has been a steady stream of letters in the paper urging the Senate to support repeal.

The public hearing on HB 370 has been scheduled for Friday, March 22, at 1:00PM in Room 100 of the State House

If I could ask you for one thing for the rest of this session, it would be to attend this Senate Health, Education and Human Services Committee hearing and speak in favor of HB 370.  Testimony should be very brief, one minute or less.  There is no need to make a long, reasoned pitch.  The only point is to show that the citizens of New Hampshire care about this issue and are paying attention.

No date has been set for a floor vote on the bill, but it could be the first week of April.

The array of arguments against the voucher program and for repeal is so persuasive that it’s hard to believe that Senator Stiles and other traditional conservative, good-government Republicans won’t favor repeal in the end.  Here are the issues that have become apparent as the program tries to roll out:

Is the voucher program about helping poor kids or about privatization of public education?

Voucher tax credits are sold as a way to provide school choice for poor kids.  But right behind the heart-strings tugging, the groups involved make clear that tax credits are really about privatizing public education.  The “Red Book” that all legislators received from the Friedman Foundation this week made that point too, saying that “school choice [is] the most effective and equitable way to improve the quality of K-12 education in America”  and the goal is “to make that opportunity available to all families nationwide.”  In other words, disinvest in  public education and send the money to private schools.     As you will see below, the New Hampshire advocates don’t stick to such bland purpose statements.  They say clearly that they want to shut down government schools.

Senators voting on repeal should be left with no doubt about what they are voting on.  Support for vouchers is support for privatizing public education.  In addition, as you see from the headlines below, the New Hampshire voucher program itself is a mess.  Here are the points voucher opponents have been making in the public debate.

The education tax credit (voucher) program is bad public policy.

There are many effective ways to improve the lives of poor kids – early childhood development programs, nutrition programs, medical health programs, targeting more education funding to poor communities.  But paying for them to go to religious schools is not one of them.  Recent news coverage about a Manchester family’s education challenges illustrated this point.  The idea was that, if they got tax credit scholarships, they could go to the local Christian school instead of the overcrowded Manchester schools.

The family would still have been left with large tuition bills, but leave that aside.  As a policy matter, sending a few of Manchesters 13,000 kids out to go to private schools would do little for Manchester education.  I wrote an opinion piece for the Nashua Telegraph on this, here.

The voucher program is not really rolling out.  It is stumbling.

Donations: Businesses have applied for $118,000 in tax credits so far and there has been little movement in this figure over the past 2 months.  As of a couple of weeks ago, none had actually donated money to a scholarship organization.  The Department of Revenue Administration says, “Business interest in the education tax credit program does not rise to the level of tepid.”  The BIA (our state-wide chamber of commerce) took no position on voucher.  Business people have little interest in being associated with an effort to dismantle public education.

Scholarship applications:   Apparently most of the 500 applications so far are from families with multiple children already homeschooling or in private religious schools.  We do see the State’s small religious schools marketing to the parents of their existing students.  It does not appear that there will be enough money to assist many applicants.

The program authorizes $8.5 million in the first 2 years, but with no oversight

New Hampshire’s 30 year old Community Development Finance Authority tax credit program grants only $3.75 million per year in tax credits but its staff and two separate boards review every project in detail.  The donors are listed publicly.  It is well managed, it is considered an honor to sit on the boards and there have been no scandals.

New Hampshire’s charter schools get vetted by the State Board of Education and answer to the Department of Education for curriculum and educational results.  As a result, they provide good curricula and enjoy good public support.

But the voucher program is a whole different animal.  Scholarship organizations are approved by Department of Revenue Administration staff.  There is no oversight board.  Donors names are not public.  Oversight consists of one report per year transmitting summary statistics.  Here’s more.

As a result, the only scholarship organization so far is, well, a poor choice

There were plenty of credible alternatives, but the only scholarship organization appointed to date is a California group that helped write the New Hampshire legislation authorizing the tax credits – The Alliance for the Separation of School and State.  In New Hampshire they call themselves The Network for Educational Opportunity. Describing their mission, they say,  “Our society has become a slave to the state by virtue of government-controlled schools….Government schooling stands in direct opposition to the liberty this country was founded on… I favor ending government involvement in education.”

This is the group that operates autonomously, marketing New Hampshire’s tax credits and deciding who gets the donations.  Here’s more.

There is no accountability in the selection or performance of the voucher schools

The New Hampshire voucher program is unusual in how little accountability is required of participating schools (more here).  As a result, many small unaccredited schools are planning to participate (here’s a sample).  Many teach a Creationist, often overtly political, curriculum far removed from that of any publicly supported school.  A number of religious schools and their associations testified for the voucher bill.  Here’s how one of those schools, the Tri-City Christian Academy, describes it’s philosophy:

“Government schools have assumed a virtual monopolistic influence over the lives of the vast majority of American families with school-aged children….Every fact in the universe is a God-created, God-interpreted fact, and therefore all instruction is to be given in terms of God…It is virtually impossible, however, to control the child’s education in the state (public) school. It is nowhere specified in Scripture that the civil magistrate (the state) is to have responsibility for the education of our children.”

Here is more detail on the curricula in many New Hampshire religious schools.

As a result, we can anticipate the kind of trouble other states have experienced with voucher programs

Here is an alarming sample of recent headlines.

 

Please plan to come on Friday.  The senate committee needs to hear from you.

Bill

Voucher Repeal (HB 370) Passes NH House. An ANHPE Update From Bill Duncan

  By Advancing New Hampshire Public Education | February 21, 2013 - 1:08 pm | ,
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Voucher tax credit

Repeal The New Hampshire House passed HB 370, repeal of the voucher tax credit, yesterday by a vote of 188-151.  It was almost a party-line vote, with a few switches on each side and a lot of absentees.  See how your representative voted here.  The schedule from here is not set.  It could go to the Senate as late as March 28th.  When it get’s there, it will go to the Senate Health, Education and Human Services Committee, Chaired by Sen. Nancy Stiles (R, Hampton).  The committee will hold a public hearing at some point in April and then decide what to recommend.  Voucher repeal is also part of the governor’s budget, so that could affect the committee’s action.

Court Case The hearing (it is called a hearing, but it is really the trial) will be at 11:00 AM at the Strafford County Courthouse on April 26.  The whole trial will be on this one day and Judge Lewis will issue his opinion at some point after that.   There is no need for a show of numbers here, but the trial will probably last only several hours so it would be easy to attend if you are interested.  Here is our court challenge.  And here is a mapshowing the courthouse location.

There’s more about voucher repeal here.

Charter Schools

NHPR’s The Exchange broadcast today was on charter schools.  The program was notable for the consensus expressed in support of charter schools done “the New Hampshire way,” as Scott McGilvray, president of the National Education Association of New Hampshire, put it, The New Hampshire way, in this context, was seen as establishing charters that serve specific needs supplementing what the traditional public schools already do.  Governor Hassan had supported that idea in her budget address, saying that the she would give the New Hampshire Board of Education authority to “prioritize new charter school approval to underserved communities.”  Sen. Stiles, House Education Committee Chair, Rep. Mary Gile, Board of Education Chair Tom Raffio and NEA NH President McGilvray all sounded supportive of the governor’s approach but also felt that this was a good juncture at which to step back, review charter and public school performance and clarify state charter school policy.

There is more about charters here.

Bill

Now is a good time to end the voucher program – Bill Duncan’s testimony to the House Ways and Means Committee on HB 370

  By Advancing New Hampshire Public Education | February 7, 2013 - 3:00 pm | , ,
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Bill Duncan

Now is a good time to end the voucher program

The tax credit funded voucher program was passed last year because conservatives in favor of privatizing our public schools temporarily had a supermajority capable of overriding the Governor’s veto.

Now the public has replaced that Legislature with a more balanced alternative charged with setting a new path. Although the voucher program is a symbol of the excesses of the last Legislature, many will still say, “Give the program a chance….there are poor children who already depend on it.”
Legislators have even received calls saying, “My child is in private school now and I’m depending on this program to enable me to keep him there.”

We need to be clear. No children depend on this program now or will depend on it until next September. The best time to shut this program down is now, while no tax credits have been issued, very little business money has been committed, and before the program has started the process of privatizing New Hampshire’s public schools.

 

The program is expensive

The voucher program is small now but the legislation allows it to grow dramatically. If it grows as the bill provides for, in the 10th year, the program will be spending $30 million dollars every year moving our children from our public schools into private schools. That’s 13,000 children it would be paying for in year 10 – almost 10% of the students in New Hampshire.

In this current biennium, the voucher program would spend over $8 million. Here is how it works:
The program grants businesses an 85% tax credit for contributing to a scholarship organization but the way state taxes are calculated, that really amounts to a 93.5% credit. So a business can give $100,000 to a scholarship organization instead of $93,500 in state taxes. The business is deciding to give our tax money to the scholarship organization instead of to the State. This is the same as if the State had just given that scholarship organization $93,500 of our business tax money.

The Legislature downshifted this cost to the communities because the school district immediately loses its state adequacy grant for each voucher student.

The program does cap the cost to any one district at .25% of the previous year’s budget, but that’s still real money. Think of it in terms of the state budget. One quarter percent for the current biennium would be over $11 million dollars out of our general fund. This is 2 or 3 times what would be needed to restore the CHINS program. In Concord, that’s almost $200,000 out of Concord’s $78 million budget. That’s a lot of money to find out in September that you will lose in that school year.

In addition, the program shifts money from poorer to wealthier towns:
Say a private school student gets $2,500 voucher or a home school student gets a $600 voucher. Either way, the school loses over $4,000 of its state adequacy grant. Where does that profit go? Among other things, it pays for the voucher students in towns like Portsmouth. The State can’t take money from Portsmouth’s adequacy grant because Portsmouth gets no state grant. So the profits from Concord are paying for the voucher students from Portsmouth.
This is a complex and poorly conceived program that takes money from our public schools and gives it to private schools.

There is no accountability to taxpayers

Most states make their voucher schools accountable. They require at least standardized tests and often much more. But in New Hampshire, there is no accountability to the taxpayer for this large and perpetually growing stream of scarce public money.

The program will fund religious education

Our Constitution forbids using state money to fund religious instruction. The voucher program is being challenged in court but, regardless of the court decision, it is bad state policy to spend our money teaching children that dinosaurs and people roamed the earth together a few thousand years ago.

Most participating schools will probably be Christian schools. Of the 114 nonpublic schools in New Hampshire, 71 are religious schools. There are twice as many students in New Hampshire’s religious schools as in secular private schools (11,000 vs. 5,500).

Grade school tuitions average $12,000 in secular private grade schools and $5,500 in religious grade schools. High schools cost even more. And out of district public school tuitions are $10-$15,000/year.  For many parents, a voucher will be sufficient to enable many parents to send their children to religious schools, but will not be enough to enable them to attend nonreligious schools.  As a result, our experience would probably be like that of other states – most of the participating schools will be small Christian schools with low tuitions.

And religion does play a central role in many of the 71 religious schools in New Hampshire:

  • At Cornerstone Christian Academy, a K–8 school in Epsom, the “purpose” of the school is “to be an extension of the Christian home and church . . . and thus to provide a continuity of training for Christian young people.”
  • At Community Bible Academy in Berlin, “[a]ll subject matter is presented in light of the Scripture with a Biblical view of God and guiding principles to equip the student for life.”
  • The “purpose” of Calvary Christian School in Plymouth is “to provide Christian education by integrating Biblical principles throughout the curriculum.”
  • Dublin Christian Academy promulgates a “Statement of Faith” that professes that “the Genesis account of creation is to be accepted literally and not allegorically or figuratively”; that“ all animal and plant life were made directly by God in six literal, twenty-four hour periods”; and that “any form of homosexuality, lesbianism, bisexuality, bestiality, incest, fornication, adultery, and pornography are sinful perversions of God’s gift of sex.” Ex. 37 at 179–80. This Statement of Faith also condemns all forms of abortion, including for pregnancies caused by rape or incest.

Many of New Hampshire’s private religious schools describe themselves as “ministries” of a parish or church.

  • Laconia Christian School “has been a significant ministry of Laconia Christian Fellowship Church for more than 30 years.”
  • The Lighthouse Christian Academy in Rochester is “a ministry of the Harvest of Praise Church of God.”
  • At Tabernacle Christian School in Litchfield, the “principal, teachers and other staff are employed in a ministry” of Tabernacle Baptist Church.

Most of New Hampshire’s religious schools require students to participate in religious activities such as Bible classes, worship services, and classroom prayer.

  • At Salem Christian School, “[a]ll grades incorporate Biblical principles in all subjects and also have regular Bible study classes” every day of the week except for Wednesday, which is when the weekly “chapel service” is held.
  • The Infant Jesus School, a Catholic elementary school in Nashua, requires all students, “regardless of the[ir] religious affiliation,” to “participate in all liturgies, classroom prayer, and other aspects of the spiritual life of the school. The teaching of Religion is a content subject in which all students must participate.”
  • The Bethlehem Christian School and others use the Accelerated Christian Education curriculum. ACE is a thoroughly creationist curriculum. Among many other Christian tenets, it teaches that:

• Humans and Dinosaurs Co-Existed
• Evolution Has Been Disproved
• A Japanese Whaling Boat Found a Dinosaur
• Science proves homosexuality is a learned behavior

These schools are entitled to their beliefs, but New Hampshire state law should not require tax payers to pay for them.

UL Editorial on voucher repeal: Public schools: vs. public education (@ANHPE)

  By Advancing New Hampshire Public Education | January 29, 2013 - 3:24 pm | ,
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From ANHPE Blog
We agree with nothing in this Union Leader editorial, but it’s useful to see the Union Leader state its case for private school vouchers. Here is the editorial, with our commentary:

One of the reasons New Hampshire has to continue debating school choice year after year is that self-proclaimed supporters of public education do not support public education. They support public schools.

There is your warning that this opinion piece is going to torture the language in order to assert that unaccountable, sectarian, private schools are “public education.”

Last year the Legislature passed a law to give businesses a tax credit for a portion of the money they donate to new educational scholarship programs. The scholarships must be offered to families with incomes lower than 300 percent of the federal poverty level. Students use the money to help pay for tuition at private schools.

The sponsors of last year’s bill have proposed a speed-up in the program’s growth and the removal the 300% income limit this year, just a taste of their original intentions for the program and what would have happened if the same folks were still in charge of the Legislature.

Democrats opposed the tax credit last year and are pushing to abolish it this year. House Education Committee Chairman Mary Stuart Gile told this newspaper last week, “My primary concern about education in New Hampshire is to support public education, and this program would divert business profits taxes and business enterprise taxes that go to the general fund and used to support public education.”

Nothing in that statement is true.

Actually, Rep. Gile’s statement is a concise, precise description of what is happening.

The scholarships do not divert money from public education. They are public education. Through them, the public partially funds a child’s education at a state-approved private school. To claim that the scholarships hurt public education, Gile and other opponents pretend that the money does not finance a state-approved education.

“State-approved?” While the state wants to ensure that there are no fires or child-molesters at New Hampshire private schools, that’s as far as it goes. You could be in the private school business over night – and many will be if the voucher bill stays in place. Many secular New Hampshire private schools are already in place teaching that dinosaurs and people roamed the earth together just a few thousand years ago. Voucher schools are unaccountable to New Hampshire tax payers for the curricula they teach.

Nor do the scholarships drain funding from government schools. The scholarships are capped by law at an average of $2,500 per pupil. The tax credit covers most, but not all, of that cost.

The tax credit pays for 93.5% of a business’s scholarship contribution. In essence, the business is spending the state’s money.

The average per-pupil expenditure at New Hampshire public schools was $13,413 last year, with slightly more than 35 percent, or $4,700, covered by the state.

The state general and education trust funds pay about 20% of the cost of education in New Hampshire.

The difference between the tax credit and what the state otherwise would pay for that student’s education remains with the state and can be used to enhance the funding of government schools.

“Government schools?” Is that something like a “reeducation camp?” The paper is way over its head in the weeds in its description of the financial impact of the voucher plan on public education. Suffice it to say, it just doesn’t work the way it is described here. Public education is the big loser when the State of New Hampshire gets into the business of offering vouchers to entice families to leave our public education system.

That is not defunding the public schools. It is buying a good education at a state-accredited school at a fraction of the cost of providing it through a government school. Opposition to this beneficial arrangement is driven by legislators whose loyalty is to government schools and their employees, not to parents, students or taxpayers.

Here the editorial ups the ante from “approved” to “accredited.” Just to be clear, the State of New Hampshire does not accredit the academic instruction provided by private schools that set up in the state. Many are very good. Some are famous. But they are not accredited by the State.

And the primary beneficiary of voucher programs is the small religious schools, often with just a few teachers and students, many of which teach a creationist curriculum that no New Hampshire tax payer should be required to support.

The Union Leader has strayed onto some pretty thin ice trying to defend private school vouchers in New Hampshire. In the end, the editorial demonstrates how hard it is to justify state support of private schools unaccountable to the taxpayers. A voucher plan does not extend the public education system to include private schools. It dismantles our public education system and leaves us with….nothing.

The Education Voucher Bill is back in the NH House! Update From @ANHPE

  By New Hampshire Labor News | January 28, 2013 - 4:25 pm | ,
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Bill Duncan

From Advancing NH Public Education

Two big challenges to the voucher bill

I would urge everyone to attend the public hearing on the voucher repeal bill, HB 370.  The chair of the House Education Committee, Rep. Mary Gile (D, Concord) is the prime sponsor and it has many co-sponsors.  The hearing is at 12:30 in Representatives Hall, this Thursday, at 12:30.  Voucher supporters will be there in force and, while there is a lot of legislative support for repeal, we need to do our part and make our case forcefully.  Please come if you can.

Also, we filed the court challenge to the voucher bill this month.  This editorial in the Portsmouth Herald sums up the case well.  The first court hearing will be on Friday, April 26, at 11:00 AM before Judge John Lewis, in the Strafford County courthouse.

The proposed education funding amendment is on hold for the moment.

The sponsors pulled back from the amendment proposal this session with the idea of working submitting a proposal next year.  We will continue to post on education funding from time to time.

The bills to follow this year.

There are some 30 education bills proposed so far in this year’s legislative session (all bills will have been filed in a few more days).  You can see all the bills we’re following here, listed at the bottom of the Advancing New Hampshire Public Education front page.  Click on the link to go to the page for that bill.  We’ll update those pages as the session progresses.

Tracking opportunities to support early childhood development in New Hampshire

There’s a great interest in enhancing opportunities for early childhood development in the State.  Here is some background.  Be sure to press the Follow button on the front page to stay up-to-date and join the conversation.

Hope to see you at the voucher repeal hearing Thursday,

Bill

To get the most news up-to-the-minute, be sure to click the “Follow” button in the upper left of the Advancing New Hampshire Public Education  web site.

The Teacher Evaluations Debate Comes To NH: An Update from ANHPE

  By Advancing New Hampshire Public Education | January 9, 2013 - 5:11 pm | ,
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Teacher

The Teacher evaluation debate comes to New Hampshire

The national debate about the future of American public education – the “education reform” debate that has taken shape over the past 10 years – has two major parts.   One is essentially about privatization of our public school systems – either though for-profit charter schools (unlike those we have in New Hampshire) or by using publicly-funded vouchers to send children to private schools (like our New Hampshire voucher plan).

The other part of the debate is all about how best to hold schools and teachers accountable for educational results.  This often has a corporate tone, as in, “Show me the improved scores or you will be fired (if you’re a teacher) or shut down (if you’re a school).”   In this form, evaluation is not directly concerned with curriculum questions and can become a club to beat on teachers.  At the other end of the spectrum, teacher evaluation can be integrated with curriculum as a tool for coaching teachers and improving schools.

That debate on how teacher performance should be evaluated has arrived in New Hampshire.

First, the New Hampshire Department of Education is about to publish it’s “Model Educator Support and Evaluation System” (as reported on NHPR).  Teacher evaluation is a key part of the department’s application to the U.S. Department of Education asking to waive the requirements of No Child Left Behind.  Our department of education clearly takes the “coaching” approach to evaluation, but it will be important to assess any teacher evaluation legislation proposed this year on that same scale of corporate vs. coaching.

Then, Michelle Rhee’s StudentsFirst organization gave New Hampshire’s education policies an F grade in its recent report.  Ms. Rhee is clearly an advocate of the corporate approach, as you can see in the Frontline documentary about her.  Although the report is political advocacy, not really a contribution to education policy, it will undoubtedly be used as fodder in the New Hampshire education debate.

And, finally, House Education Committee members Rep Rick Ladd (R, Haverhill) and Rep. Ralph Boehm (R-Litchfield) have submitted a Legislative Services Request to draft a bill “relative to teacher evaluation systems.”  We will track that here when there is something to track.

How should we think about all this?

Although there are many components to teacher evaluation, the heart of the matter is what’s called the “value added modeling,” or VAM.  Our own Scott Marion, of Rye, is a nationally respected practitioner in teacher and student evaluation and VAM.  He works with departments of education across the country, including our own here in New Hampshire.  With some guidance from Scott (but any errors are my own), I’ll do a series of posts to help make VAM and the debate about it accessible to parents and the rest of us.

Value added modeling is a way of analyzing student test scores to attribute a student’s progress to specific teachers.  This is a new discipline, still very much in development.  If it were a drug, it would be in the testing phase, pre-FDA certification.  But it is in use in a number of districts around the country.

The VAM debate is, first, about whether it works at all.  Then, what kinds of tests can effectively be used for this kind of teacher assessment?  Even then, many wonder how reliable can VAM ever be.  And, finally, the most visible part of the debate is over how much weight VAM results should carry in a teacher’s evaluation.  Many knowledgeable practitioners seem to feel that VAM should be limited to 20-25% of a teacher’s total evaluation, with classroom observation, peer review, student feedback and other factors comprising the rest.  But many advocates and school districts, particularly those who subscribe to the corporate style of evaluation, propose evaluation plans that rely on VAM for as much as 50% of the teacher’s evaluation.

Since VAM is part of the NHDOE model support and evaluation plan, we’ll post more later on all this.   If you want to go a step deeper now, here is a good place to start: a 20 page piece by Henry Braun, published by the Educational Testing Service, called “Using Student Progress to Evaluate Teachers: A Primer on Value-Added Models.”

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Originally posted on ANHPE 

NH’s Bill Duncan (ANHPE) Talks About Michelle Rhee STUDENTS FIRST

  By Advancing New Hampshire Public Education | January 8, 2013 - 6:00 am |
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(Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images )

(Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images )

New Hampshire’s badge of honor, an “F” from Michelle Rhee

by Bill Duncan (ANHPE)

Michelle Rhee, failed Washington DC school superintendent and renegade public school privatizer, has given New Hampshire and 10 other states F’s for not privatizing fast enough.  Rhee’s group, StudentsFirst, “advocates expanding privately run public charter schools, weakening teachers’ unions, increasing the weight of high-stakes standardized tests and, in some cases, using taxpayer dollars to fund private tuition through vouchers as the keys to improving public education.”  (Salon)  She is part of a national privatization movement that we began tracking last year when we traced the roots of the voucher proposal here in New Hampshire.  We listed some of the groups here.

The New York Times article on the report has a pretty good perspective.  The net of it is, no one in New Hampshire should feel that an F from Michelle Rhee has any meaning for our public education system.  Or, as Mr. Zeiger of California says below, maybe it’s a badge of honor.  Here are some excerpts:

In just a few short years, state legislatures and education agencies across the country have sought to transform American public education by passing a series of laws and policies overhauling teacher tenure, introducing the use of standardized test scores in Michelle A. Rhee says her group wants to create an “environment in which educators, parents and kids can operate.”

Such policies are among those pushed by StudentsFirst, the advocacy group led by Michelle A. Rhee, the former schools chancellor in Washington. Ms. Rhee has generated debate in education circles for aggressive pursuit of her agenda and the financing of political candidates who support it.

 

In a report issued Monday, StudentsFirst ranks states based on how closely they follow the group’s platform, looking at policies related not only to tenure and evaluations but also to pensions and the governance of school districts. The group uses the classic academic grading system, awarding states A to F ratings.

…..

The two highest-ranking states, Florida and Louisiana, received B-minus ratings. The states that were given F’s included Alabama, California, Iowa and New Hampshire. New Jersey and New York received D grades, and Connecticut a D-plus. The ratings, which focused purely on state laws and policies, did not take into account student test scores.

Some of the policies covered by the report card have been adopted by very few states. Only eight states, for example, require districts to base teacher pay on performance rather than on experience or the attainment of a master’s degree. StudentsFirst also recommends that districts make individual teacher evaluations available to parents and require that districts inform parents when their child is placed in the classroom of a teacher rated “ineffective.”

….

States that have adopted policies aligned with the StudentsFirst platform have in some cases met with public opposition. In Idaho, the Legislature passed a package in 2010 that eliminated tenure, introduced performance pay for teachers and based their evaluations on student test scores. Voters overturned the measures in a referendum in November. (The state received a D-minus grade from StudentsFirst.)

State officials who had seen their ratings reacted differently, with some viewing the StudentsFirst report as a kind of blueprint, others seeing it as an à la carte menu, and some spurning it outright.

Richard Zeiger, California’s chief deputy superintendent, called the state’s F rating a “badge of honor.”

“This is an organization that frankly makes its living by asserting that schools are failing,” Mr. Zeiger said of StudentsFirst. “I would have been surprised if we had got anything else.”

……

“This group has focused on an extremely narrow, unproven method that they think will improve teaching,” Mr. Zeiger said. “And we just flat-out disagree with them.”

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 Cross posted with permission.  Original link

An Education Update from Bill Duncan and ANHPE

  By Advancing New Hampshire Public Education | December 10, 2012 - 10:14 am | ,
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Bill Duncan

Education Funding Under Discussion
12-10-12

First, it’s worth scanning down the list of education bills we’re now following.  So far, these are just Legislative Services Requests and will not become bills with the details filled in for awhile. Many of the anti-education bills brought forward from in last year’s session are presumably DOA.  But still, there are a lot of bills.

Another education funding amendment is on the way

The headline is that Rep. Gary Richardson and Sen. Nancy Stiles will propose another education funding amendment.

Last year, Rep. Richardson made the case that a desirable amendment would be one that enabled targeting but did not change the responsibility of the Legislature to fund education or the power of the Court to enforce the Constitution.  Sen.Stiles says she is authoring an amendment that goes back to language that has received support in the past.  She might be referring to something like this, CACR 18 in the 2007 legislative session.  CACR 18 was focused more on targeting and less on the court as well, so might be similar to Rep. Richardson’s proposal.  Then-Sen. Hassan seemed supportive of the concept at that time.

Anything that Sen. Stiles and Rep. Richardson propose is automatically credible.  However, many attorneys, advocates and legislators knowledgeable about education funding make the case that targeting to communities in need is possible already – without a constitutional amendment.

ANHPE agrees and will flesh out the targeting-can-be-done-now case in the coming days.

 

Lots of early childhood development in New Hampshire

The Gap perpetuates poverty and poor educational performance.  But Spark NH, the hub of early child development energy in New Hampshire, is out to do something about it.  Look at the number and breadth of the council members.  They have a big agenda and will continue to grow.

Tom Raffio, chair of the New Hampshire Board of Education and CEO of Northeast Delta Dental, has been talking about the importance of early childhood development and getting business leaders interested.  He and Fred Kocher are forming a business and educator round table to promote improved student readiness for the workforce, including early childhood education.

That will be an important step because New Hampshire is one of only a few states in the country with no publicly supported Pre-K education program.  All the other New England states have good programs.  Vermont’s is most impressive, reaching 67% of the 4 year olds.  Vermont has built a highly productive public/private partnership – a model for us?

Rough sledding for private school vouchers
There’s been a lot of objection in other states to voucher programs funding secular schools that teach a creationist curriculum (and here).  The Louisiana voucher program has been declared unconstitutional in lower courts for that reason and others.  We have schools in New Hampshire that teach at same curriculum - this one, for instance.
In Wisconsin and other states, there are new calls for accountability in voucher schools.  There is no accountability required of voucher schools in New Hampshire.
Governor-Elect Hassan and many legislators continue to discuss repeal of the voucher plan or at least putting the plan on hold right away while options are discussed.  It’s a bad plan paid for by our property tax payers.  And it, in effect, shifts money from poorer to richer communities.  One way or another, it needs to be gone.

Bill