From The Post and Courier

In the 14 years since South Carolina’s charter school law was passed, the number of charter schools stands at 37. It would have been more had state law and local school districts been more accommodating to their creation.

It is time for the Legislature to make adjustments to the law that ensure financial support for charter schools and relieve them of some burdensome rules. Rep. Phil Owens, R-Easley, has filed a bill, which passed out of committee and is before the full House. It provides a good start.

Most of the bill’s provisions shouldn’t be controversial. For example, it would allow for single-gender charter schools that are now prohibited. It would allow school districts to deduct money from charter schools’ allotments to cover modest supervisory costs. And it would change the election schedule for charter school boards to provide sime continuity.

The sticking points are likely to be those involving money — something no schools have enough of these days. Charter schools need help. Those in the State Public Charter School District, in particular, receive about half the per-pupil allowance that other schools receive, and that is hardly fair.

What seems unnecessarily controversial is a proposal to allow public schools that convert to charter schools to give priority admission to students within their attendance zones.

It recognizes that neighborhood schools require less transportation and foster a sense of community.

Indeed, Charleston County School Superintendent Nancy McGinley has recently won conceptual support from the board for a choice plan to reconfigure the school district so that students in each quadrant of the county would have several schools from which to choose — all of them nearby.

Another provision would be complicated but worth pursuing — allowing charter school students to participate in extracurricular activities, including sports, at their neighborhood schools (if the charter doesn’t offer them).

Charter schools are public schools, and it’s clearly in the best interest of students to foster their artistic, leadership or athletic talents.

The charter school journey has not been smooth. But the efforts of charter advocates have paid off in the form of student successes and in demonstrating that school choice is a worthy aim.

Governing legislation should help maintain momentum for a significant educational trend.

From APP.com

A bill that would create a public school choice program, allowing students from one school district to enroll in schools in other districts participating in the program, is expected to be considered by an Assembly panel Thursday. It would be a good stepping-off point for the next state education commissioner to revamp how education is delivered in New Jersey.

The bill, sponsored by Assemblywomen Mila Jasey, D-Essex, and Joan Voss, D-Bergen, would expand and make permanent an interdistrict public school choice pilot program that expired in 2005. The pilot program allowed only a fixed number of schools districts to accept out-of-district students. The new measure wouldn’t limit the number of “choice districts” permitted.

Potential choice districts would apply for approval to the state based on criteria that would include the quality and variety of academic programs. The bill has built-in safeguards to prevent cherry-picking of students by the receiving schools.

The choice program would not only allow students in poor-performing schools and districts to attend better schools outside of their home district, but it would enable “choice districts” to continue offering courses and programs that declining enrollment might not otherwise allow. It also would generate additional revenue for the district, because the state aid would follow the student.

In addition, expanding school choice would allow regions and counties to establish more specialty or magnet programs for students who show a special interest or aptitude in a particular academic area. It could enable schools in low-performing districts to improve their academic standing by attracting students with an aptitude in the school’s particular interest area.

In recent years, many high schools have begun offering magnet programs that cater to a specific academic or vocational interest. But children in neighboring towns that don’t have sending-district arrangements haven’t been able to take advantage of the options. If specialty programs were coordinated at the county level, it could lead to more schools providing a wider range of offerings.

Bret Schundler, Gov. Chris Christie’s nominee for state education commissioner, is a longtime proponent of school choice. If he is confirmed, he should start by working with Jasey and Voss to help shape the bill and reaching out to county superintendents to identify which schools already offer specialty programs and what programs could be pursued by districts that don’t yet have an area of expertise. This could be the first of many building blocks to help provide a more well-rounded choice of educational offerings across the state.

From PittsburghLive.com

Here’s a report to make school choice critics reach for the Pepto: More low-income students in Milwaukee’s 20-year-old voucher program — 18 percent more — graduate from high school than their traditional public school peers.

In fact, if Milwaukee’s public school graduation rate matched that of students using school vouchers from 2003 to 2008, 3,352 additional students would have received diplomas, according to the study by University of Minnesota professor John Robert Warren.

Add to that a study reported by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: The annual economic benefit from all those high school grads would be an additional $21.2 million in personal income and about $3.6 million more in tax revenues.

Did we mention that Milwaukee’s school choice students cost less than half the $14,011 per-pupil cost of students in the city’s public schools?

It’s a cold dose of reality for those who demonize school choice as a needless draw on education dollars with nary any benefits — which, in fact, are abundantly evident in other school choice programs across the nation.

As President Obama so appropriately put it in his State of the Union speech, “Instead of funding the status quo, we only invest in reform that raises student achievement.”

The choice couldn’t be more clear.

From The Journal Sentinel

New data in a study that compares the high school graduation rates since 2003 of students in Milwaukee Public Schools with those of students in the city’s publicly financed voucher program has concluded that students in voucher schools are about 18% more likely to graduate than their peers in MPS.

The report’s updated findings, to be released Tuesday, refer to low-income students in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program.

MPS officials, however, question the accuracy of the study’s methodology and point out that because the names of the schools analyzed are withheld, it’s difficult to tell if similar schools are being compared in both groups.

The study was funded by the voucher-advocacy group School Choice Wisconsin but conducted by John Robert Warren, a sociology professor at the University of Minnesota who has been researching high school graduation rates for about 10 years. More than 21,000 students in Milwaukee are using vouchers to attend about 110 private schools in the city.

For 2007-’08, Warren estimated the graduation rate in voucher schools to be 77%, and the graduation rate in MPS to be 65%, a difference of 12 percentage points. The information includes comparisons between seven choice schools and 23 public high schools that could provide complete data for all six years studied, and adjusted to account for an expected 5% ninth-grade retention rate in choice schools and an expected 25% ninth-grade retention rate in MPS.

Warren said the new data shows a continuation of a pattern in which voucher students graduated at a higher rate than MPS students in every year except 2003-’04. Warren’s previous report on the issue included data up to the 2006-’07 school year.

Warren said the study did not prove that voucher schools caused those students to graduate.

“We still don’t know whether it’s going to the voucher school that causes you to be more likely to graduate, or if it’s something about the kinds of families that send their kids to voucher schools would make them more likely to graduate,” he said.

According to the most recent data available, MPS reported a 68.3% graduation rate in 2007-’08.

MPS spokeswoman Roseann St. Aubin said the district knows it has “work to do” when it comes to increasing graduation rates at the high schools.

But she questioned the validity of the study because of Warren’s method for calculating the graduation rates – by comparing the number of high school graduates in the spring of one calendar year to the number of enrolled ninth-graders four years prior, then estimating a likely percentage that had been retained in ninth grade in both MPS and choice schools.

“You have to take into account things like mortality, and the number of students who move to another school,” St. Aubin said.

St. Aubin said MPS calculates its graduation rates in accordance with the guidelines set forth by the state Department of Public Instruction. Under that method, the district adds up all its dropouts over four high school years, then adds that number to the high school students who graduated in the fourth year of the data set. The graduation rate comes from dividing the number of graduates by the total number of dropouts and graduates.

Other variables, such as how to count students who receive GEDs or take more than four years to graduate, historically complicate the formulas for calculating high school graduation rates.

St. Aubin also questioned why Warren’s reports on the graduation rates do not identify the schools examined. For example, she said, the report’s methodology says it includes information received from MPS partnership high schools, which are traditionally populated by students who are at risk of dropping out or facing challenging circumstances.

“Is it apples to apples here?” St. Aubin asked. “Are we comparing schools with the same kind of programs?”

Warren said individual school data was not identified because the graduation rate averages across schools in a particular system provided a clearer picture.

From PR News Wire

COLUMBUS, Ohio, Feb. 1 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — More than 88,000 children in 205 underperforming public schools across Ohio are eligible to receive school vouchers to attend private schools next year–and, beginning today, parents can apply to receive the vouchers.

Enrollment for the Educational Choice Scholarship (EdChoice) for the 2010-2011 school year, begins today (Monday, February 1, 2010). The EdChoice Scholarship – which provides a state-funded scholarship for use at a private school – is available to students in the state’s lowest-rated public schools. Schools are considered low-rated if they have been in academic watch or academic emergency for at least two of the past three years.

The enrollment period runs from February 1, 2010 through April 16, 2010.

The scholarships are worth up to $4,250 per year at the elementary and middle school level and up to $5,000 per year at the high school level. More than 300 private schools statewide are registered to accept the scholarship. Once a student obtains a scholarship, she or he can continue to renew the scholarship through high school graduation.

The EdChoice program has generated tremendous interest from parents with scholarship use growing from just under 3,000 the first year to more than 11,500 student recipients during the current year.

“This scholarship continues to be an incredibly popular option for parents,” said Chad L. Aldis, executive director of School Choice Ohio. “In a time when the resources of many families are stretched thin, the scholarship can be a lifeline for parents trying to get their child into a school where they feel they can be successful.”

Interested parents can call the School Choice Ohio toll-free hotline (1-800-673-5876) for more information on eligibility, guidance on how to apply, and a list of participating private schools. Information can also be found on the web at www.scohio.org.

SOURCE School Choice Ohio

RELATED LINKS http://www.scohio.org