"Taking Advantage:" How High-Stakes Testing Guarantees Gaps

Why I Don't Care How My High-Scoring Kids Do on Standardized Tests, and Why I Do Care about How they Score with their Teachers

A couple of friends and I were talking about standardized testing when I shared a new Huff Post article by Dr. Yohuru Williams,  "Common Core Kills Curiosity," which I thought contained the zingiest of zings in its conclusion:
"[T]his is the real crime of the education reformers hell bent on quantifying success in the very limited confines of standardized test scores while tearing down schools, slashing budgets, and working feverishly to eviscerate the teaching profession. They are not only killing curiosity but slaughtering the dreams and prospects of millions of students nationwide -- whose very lives may soon be reduced to a test bubble."
A friend of mine followed up with a great question - one that I think bothers most parents when they think about this issue:
This is being asked in sincerity--do you have suggestions that would allow teachers the flexibility to teach in ways that nurture critical thinking, meet student needs AND provide accountability to show student progress? Other than having to make subjective grading of portfolios?
This was my response, with links to evidence supporting my position on high-stakes testing:
There are so many ways to do this [provide authentic assessments], and many of them are ALREADY being done by our teachers! The tests and inflexibility of one-size-fits-all standards just get in the way of those more accurate, more honest formative assessments. It's a total and disproven myth that standardized testing provides "accountability" with any accuracy - just as it's a total myth that standardized tests are a truly OBJECTIVE measure of progress or achievement. ALL grading is subjective. The tests have implicit biases and measure little more than relative affluence and/or the ability to test well. The time restraints, the external stressors, the lack of preparedness and the gap between what is being taught and how that is being tested are all variables that ensure the test cannot provide an objective measure of learning. But even worse, the tests don't measure knowledge. They don't measure critical thinking. They don't measure potential. But our teachers can and do measure those things every day - if we trusted their professionalism and objectivity as much as we trust the tests, our schools would be a much different place.

If we want to follow a model that works, we should look to Finland, where they ONLY do formative assessments and not high stakes testing, and as a result they have time to TEACH and their students are the top scorers on the PISA test they take every 4 years. Here's a great article I read recently on how they grade, and why it works: http://www.mwera.org/.../v25n1-2-Hendrickson-GRADUATE.

One of the main things teachers have told me in the years since my kids have been in school is that the tests NEVER tell them anything they don't already know about their students, and that the students' performance is predictable: they know what smart students will score low (or high) and what mediocre students will score high (or low). The tests just get in the way of the formative assessments they WANT to do to help them meet each kids' needs. And then they have to watch as the scores are then used to "track" the kids into programs, and that tracking is done largely along lines that just make the gaps wider and wider. The TESTS are the problem - these false assessments are what are actually cause the very gaps the reformers claim they can help us erase. I'm not buying any of it. All I want is the teacher's assessment: the teacher is the person trained to evaluate my child's learning and that is the only assessment I am interested in receiving as a parent. Period. I don't give two shits how my kids do on tests that will be used to sort, judge, penalize, and promote inequity in our schools. And it makes me furious that my kids' teachers pay & professionalism is being compromised by my kids' performance on those tests.

Also as a college English teacher, I am 100% in favor of portfolio grading for classes where it's appropriate and am curious as to why you dismiss it from your choices. It's the only way I grade and I have a very formal set of criteria for assessing student work from a holistic perspective that seeks to measure progress and critical thinking as well as the "finished product". I'm not how sure HS/MS teachers do portfolio grading, but in my own experience it's the only assessment that's fair or productive for students.
[end rant]

I'd like to provide some context for where my "rant" was coming from.

Fact.
This is a question that has been bothering me for many years, as I've seen first hand how kids break down under the pressures of high-stakes tests and I've heard so many stories from parents and teachers as been involved with so many groups and organization committed to supporting public schools.  But mostly, it's my experience as a parent, seeing my own kids go through this testing (and their teachers twist their educational lives around it), and my concerns about how teachers are forced to assess their work that troubles me the most.

Let me illustrate with one, terribly telling, example.  As a parent of a "high scoring" kid who's been placed in the so-called "Talented and Gifted" (TAG) program, these scores have been presented to me as if they are The One True Indicator of my child's success or potential. 

Which is a total joke.  Because here's how my kid measures "success" on his tests [actual conversation from 4th grade, 2013-14 school year]:
Me: How'd the test go?
Kid: Great!  I finished fast enough to read for 45 minutes!
Me: Do you think you got all the questions right?
Kid: [Shrugs, gives look that says "how is that relevant to your first question?"] I don't know. Maybe? Probably.
Me: Well, I'm glad you got some extra reading time. What were you reading?
Kid: Roots.
I don't even know how he scored because when they sent me the scores in the mail I didn't open the envelope.  It's probably around here somewhere.   But I do know that he did really well [Success is doubled! Bonus reading time AND a decent score!] because a couple of months later we got a letter in the mail from something called NUMATS (Northwestern University's Academic Talent Search).

Turns out the kids who score in top 5% all get this letter, which our district sends out to let high scoring kids know about the additional opportunities available to them.  So at first we were like "Yay! More challenge! More rigor! A fun extracurricular that's actually academic, which we love,  instead of sporty, which we hate!"  But it turns out that the "opportunities" being offered were just THE OPPORTUNITY FOR MORE TESTING, which would "prepare him" to take more tests later and provide a "more accurate" assessment of how "advanced" he is.  I kid you not.  The entire program is set up so that high-scoring kids go through this series of additional tests that they otherwise wouldn't take for years - EXPLORE, ACT and SAT - that will allow them to practice and prepare to be better and better at test-taking (and presumably, though this was not stated, to confirm and validate what everybody already knows about these kids: that they're smart good test takers). According to NUMATS, "After students test, parents receive comprehensive information about how their student measures up to other gifted students. This valuable feedback helps families plan for the future."

I cannot even begin to express to you how revolting this idea is to me. Let's break down the "offer" my child was presented:
  • You are a great test-taker, kid! Congratulations!  You are one of the smartest kids best test-takers in our district!
  • As a reward for being a good test-taker, we would like to offer you the opportunity to PAY to take more tests! (If you're poor, we might be able to help with fees).
  • If you do well on those tests, you can take even MORE tests (that are above your level and will test things you haven't been taught yet).
  • Taking these tests will give you an additional advantage so that when it's *really* time for you to take the test, you will do way better than all the kids who did not get this special offer because (1) you're probably so smart! and (2) you will have had a lot practice taking the test and other kids will be taking it for the first time.
In a nutshell:
The kid who is already pretty likely to do well on future tests is being solicited to participate (for pay) to receive a [totally unfair] advantage that will better prepare him to take those future tests than any of the other children in the school.
This advantage will put him in a position that will (much to the pleasure of his parents, I'm sure) guarantee or at least improve his "success" on future tests.  

Success means he scores as high as possible.  Success means he "outperforms" his peers.   Success means he was good at taking the test.  Success means his advantage paid off.
Why, I ask?  Why would we give this advantage to the kids who need it least instead of the kids who need it most 

Why would we not send letters home to the lowest scoring kids inviting them to join a learn-how-to-test camp or something to help raise their scores?

Why would we not invite kids who are doing really well on tests to get involved in a program of actual substance that actually involves teaching and learning?  I know our district does list such opportunities, but they're prohibitively expensive, and we've never been "invited" to participate in them.

Why are we investing in perpetuating the very system that ensures that we will never, ever overcome the gaps that confront our district, our state, our nation?

Why are we not taking seriously the professionalism of our teachers and their ability and expertise to assess and evaluate the performance of our children?

Why are any of us ok with this?

Needless to say we did not "reply now" to "take advantage" of that "opportunity" to further increase the achievement gaps in our district.

And here I was, so naive, thinking it was going to be an opportunity to learn or be challenged beyond the curriculum offered at school.   Not so much.  I'd also like to add that I never heard one word all year about how freaking amazing it was that my kid finished Roots in one week, at 9 years old, devouring it, and followed it up by reading all the slave narratives and historical fiction he could get his hands on.  That's the sort of stuff I wanted to hear about.  But his teacher didn't have time to discuss that with me, because his teacher wasn't assessing that.  And from what I could tell, it was all he could do to keep up with the stuff he "had to" assess.

My younger child is in 2nd grade this year, which is when the testing really begins, now now my worrying begins anew: will the tests be as "low-stakes" for her as they are for her brother, or will she be one of the kids throwing up in the bathroom on test day?  And my fingers are crossed that she won't give a crap, like we don't give a crap, if only to spare her the anxiety, and to remind her that she's worth so much more than a score on a test, no matter how low or how high that score might be.

That's where my perspective is coming from.

So when the question of assessments came up again today, I couldn't help but rant a little on my many reasons for opposing a system where "taking advantage" of opportunities means "taking advantage" of our most vulnerable students and perpetuating our already shameful (and growing) gaps.

The Superintendent of Public Instruction in Wisconsin, Dr. Tony Evers, has been talking a lot about these gaps lately.  He gave his State of Education address last week, calling for more attention to our gaps. He praised schools that take seriously the impacts of poverty and talk frankly about racial inequities.  He says he has a plan for addressing the gaps - "Promoting Excellence for All."  But the plan depends on the same old "accountability measures" that just measure how well kids take tests.  And nothing about how schools need to get creative about addressing the classroom impacts of the opportunity gaps facing our students. Our district calls constantly for the need for equity in our policies and practices - our new slogan is "Futures depend on us...every child, every day."  Every child.  Every day.  And yet: we continue to place our faith, our hopes and our decision-making on a system of high-stakes testing that we know only guarantees that the gaps between "high-performing" and "low-performing" students will widen.

Why?

300,000+ people united to fight for climate justice last week.
This was their slogan.
I love it.
And when do parents, students, and educators stand together and say: Enough!?



All over the country, people are starting to stand:

Parents are opting their kids out of standardized tests.
Teachers are refusing to administer tests on ethical grounds.
Students are walking out on a system that values how they score more than who they are, what they know, where they can go with their lives. In Seattle. In Long Island.
School boards are fighting back against political pressures and federal mandates that force our schools to fight for funding and status based on student performance on high stakes tests.

I have been on the "opt out" fence now for several years.  Because one person opting out two kids doesn't send much of a message, even if they are "high scoring" kids and even if I make a big noisy fuss about it. Because I'm afraid of potential backlash on my kids, their teachers, our schools.  Because I love our public schools and don't want to send mixed signals by being the only person waving the banner.

But it's a message we have to send.

It's a message that we have to send together: Parents. Teachers. Students. Community members.  School Board members. Politicians. And every administrator who is brave enough to say:

Enough.
Teaching matters more than testing. 
Students matter more than scores.

The value of an education cannot be measured in points.
The value of a child cannot be measured.

And every child deserves an excellent education.

It's a simple message.

And it's a message that needs to be sent.
Are we ready to send it?


I love this, too. It's the most coherent, simple, perfect summary I've seen of why we ALL need to join the fight to save public schools. It will only happen through the collaboration of parents, students, educators & community members.

Watch the video and get inspired to get involved. If we don't fight this now, we lose:

The Fight for Public Education: Coming to a School Near You! from Media Mobilizing Project TV on Vimeo.

Public schools are under attack!
What do we do?
Stand up!
Fight back!




Back to School checklist: notebooks, pencils, megaphone




It's that time of year again, and as we're making the most of our last few days of freedom, I've been thinking about what it's going to take to make this year a good one, and I wanted to share the best advice anyone ever gave me about being a parent of school-age kids:


Follow your instincts and stand up for your kids. 
If you do not advocate for them, no one else will. 

If you see your child struggling, if you sense something is "off", say something.  I you are concerned about academic progress or socialization, talk to her teacher.  If your kid is stressed about testing, or how much homework is coming home, send a note to the principal, or call your district's instructional coordinator and share your concerns.  If your child has special needs, know your rights and know what you need to do to make sure school is all it can be for your child. Talk to other parents.  Talk to educators.  Talk to the principal.

Just say something.

That's your job, and you need to do it - but do it respectfully, and value the fact that your child's teachers are professionals who have knowledge of your child that you do not see yourself, just as you have knowledge of your child that they will never know unless you share it with them.   Your kids' teachers want you to take on this role - they need you to share concerns that might otherwise get lost in the shuffle of the increasingly outrageous demands of their profession, that make it difficult for them to do everything they might want to help each student. In Wisconsin, as elsewhere, teachers are struggling, and many are even leaving the profession they love, often because they aren't sufficiently supported by their districts.  A strong showing of parent support can be a huge help in addressing this issue. 

Say something.

I was reminded again today that even though I hate "complaining" about things, I never regret it and I've always seen amazing results when I try to approach situations that concern me with respect for all parties and an open mind.  Being honest, open and fair creates a climate of respect and collaboration - this helps teachers, and it helps students.

And don't feel like you have to stop talking once you walk out the classroom door.  


Now, more than ever, we need parents to pay attention to legislation that threatens the funding for our public schools and dictates the curriculum used by our teachers.  We need parents who are watching school board agenda, following policy changes, making sure that the only "interests" that elected officials and administrators are putting first are the interests of our students. We need parents to unite and say ENOUGH to the standardized testing that is being used to pigeon-hole not just our kids, but their teachers and even their schools by "ranking" them according to "report cards" based on arbitrary scores that often reflect little more than the relative poverty of a given community.

So say something.

Go to PTO meetings. Go to school board meetings.  Join a committee or a parent group or volunteer in the school, if you can, to become better aware and better oriented with the needs of your district, and to take your commitment to your child's education to the next level. Go to legislative hearings to share the much-needed perspective of someone who actually knows what's going on in our schools, and what impacts policy has on our kids.  Look closely at candidate records on supporting public education when it comes time to vote (and it's time to vote very soon!).  Connect with groups and organizations that connect parents to information that helps us help our teachers & schools. Get informed and know what you need to know to feel confident speaking up and standing strong in support of your students.

Here's to a great year for our kids, our schools, and the teachers who make possible everything they'll learn and do!  Let's do our part, as parents, to support our kids and the public schools that fulfill the promise we make to each other: that we all deserve a fair shot at being the best we can be.

All you have to do is speak up.  For your kids, for your teachers, for your schools.

Because if you don't, who will?



Send MoD to Netroots Nation!

 Update 5.17.2014

THANK YOU to all who voted and shared this contest information! I was selected as one of the scholarship winners and hope I can make this work now with my summer schedule.  I so appreciate the support and kind words - and look forward to attending this exciting event if I can!  Click here to see all the winners.

- Heather




Dear friends of MoD,

Netroots Nation - a sort of progressive summer camp for bloggers, activists, and advocates -  just happens to be taking place in Detroit this summer.  And Detroit just happens to be in my home state of Michigan, where I just happen to have unlimited free childcare (thanks, Mom & Dad!).


And the featured guest speaker just happens to be Elizabeth Warren.

And I just happen to have wanted to attend this event for years (having heard rave reviews from others who've attended), but the timing/pricing/logistics have never been right.

This year I think I can do it. 

But not without a scholarship.


I humbly ask you to take 5 seconds to vote for me in this contest so that I have a chance to win a scholarship that would cover the registration fee and lodging.  Voting ends at 11:59pm (Pacific Time) on May 12, 2014.

It really does just take a second, and I promise that whatever I learn at this conference will be paid back in future writing, organizing, and general world-a-better-place-making!

And, if you're feeling extra votey, please take a minute to share some love with fellow grassroots organizers Chris McDonough (SPARC, Wisconsin Grassroots Network) and Marcia Riquelme (Deforest Area Progressives, Wisconsin Grassroots Network).

Thank you!  

- Heather




Lunch of Shame Update: From Waterloo to Sun Prairie

Lunch of Shame UPDATE : 4/13/2014. 

After I published a widely-read post on the "Lunch of Shame" policy in Waterloo, several people reached out to inform me that the policy in my own district, Sun Prairie, may not be as "soft-handed" in practice as I was told when interviewing administrators for that piece.  Disappointed, and bracing myself, I followed up.


I've since learned that we, too, have a practice (if not policy) of taking trays of food and throwing them into the trash, and that discretion is left to each school on how this is handled.  Like Waterloo, the Sun Prairie practice doesn't affect elementary schools (where the kids have their cards scanned before they go through the cafeteria line), but does affect older students, especially those who purchase "a la carte" items at the high school.  As in Waterloo, the tray of food is taken away and thrown in the garbage, and the student is offered an "alternative" lunch (PB&J) that is charged to the delinquent account at a reduced price.  I also learned that the school-by-school practices seem to vary widely - from being gentle and accommodating to harsh and intimidating.  One former lunchroom worker spoke of having repeatedly seen children at an elementary school crying, asking "why" they couldn't eat a hot lunch, not understanding (or knowing) that they had "insufficient funds."

We already knew that hunger is a major issue at our schools, including the high school, where social workers report that they cannot accomodate all the requests for snacks they receive during the day. One wonders if some of these hungry students are opting not to eat at lunch time for fear of being shamed.

I took my concerns to our school board and administration, and brought up the question at a school board candidate forum as well. At that forum, each of the candidates spoke in opposition to any policy that shames a student,  including re-elected board president Tom Weber and newly elected board member Carol Albright.  Our local advocacy and action team, SPARC, also asked that the board take up this issue and I'm pleased to say it's on the agenda for the April 21, 2014 meeting of the Performance and Operations Committee.  Sun Prairie residents and educators who care about this issue are encouraged to attend that meeting, and/or share their thoughts and concerns with the board and our superintendent. Emails can be sent to SPASD board president Tom Weber at tweber@spasd.k12.wi.us and District Superintendent Dr. Tim Culver at tculver@spasd.k12.wi.us.  The April 21st meeting will be held at the District Office, 501 S. Bird Street, at 6:30pm.  The committee will forward its recommendation to the board, who will take up the issue for voting at a future regular meeting of the school board, so now is the key time to share your ideas or concerns with board members on this important issue.


Given the equity-focused vision I've seen emerge from our recent Strategic Planning sessions here in Sun Prairie, I believe that Sun Prairie can and should be a model for what creative and responsible ways to improve practices to provide a safe, healthy, equitable learning environment for all students.  While Waterloo has chosen to respond to the petition by bemoaning the "bad publicity" and refusing to apologize to shamed students, Sun Prairie seems on track for providing an example of what can happen when we put students' needs first and take seriously recent reports that prove we have a long way to go in helping all of our students. In my last post on this topic, I pointed out that this issue is essentially one of equity, the principle that every child is afforded an equal opportunity to succeed in our schools, regardless of that child's family or financial status, or where that child falls on the continuum of "achievement":
In public education, we talk a lot about the need for equity and data-driven decision-making in our schools.  Let's put the data that matters most first: 
I began my original "lunch of shame" post with my starting assumption, and I'll close with it here:


We all want what's best for our kids and our schools.

There's no reason we can't provide that.

And it's remarkable what can happen when just a few people speak up and share their concerns.  Find out what's going on in your district.  Then find out how you can help do what's best for the kids there.



"There is no respectful way to throw away a child's lunch. This is at best a wasteful practice, and at worst school sanctioned humiliation of children. The Waterloo School System gets a lot of things right, one of which is the focus on character education. The adults set the tone for the school community, and I think they would be the first to agree that actions speak louder than words. I fail to see how we can set high character expectations for our students while demonstrating this kind of unnecessary, punitive behavior."
- Erin Forrest

"No such thing as a free lunch:" Waterford School District sets new low in betrayal of students and taxpayers

Waterford School District to Taxpayers:
We opted out of the federal lunch program
because kids from struggling families
don't deserve a "free" lunch

In a staggering display of the most unconscionable and irresponsible local-level decision making possible, the Waterford School Board in Racine County voted this week to opt out of the federal lunch program, with no coherent plan for how to run their lunch program without federal funding.  

Think these ideas come from nowhere? They don't
The idea that "there's no such thing as a free lunch" is
a key concept employed by economist Milton Friedman,
mastermind of the school voucher program and
anti-government enthusiast, to convince
Americans that public schools somehow "steal"
from the taxpayer instead of invest in
the common good and benefit us all.
Friedman's 1995 essay for the CATO Institute,
"Public Schools: Make them Private,"
planted the seeds for all of the anti-education
legislation we see today, and the massive
investment in it by special-interest groups. 

Agreeing among themselves that "the FDA standards are going beyond where they should," the conversation is largely hijacked by one Dan Jensen, who argues early that "there shouldn't be any federal lunch program" and cites his "Libertarian standpoint," evoking the specter of Milton Friedman, to defend the idea that since he "doesn't have the right" to ask someone to pay for someone else's lunch, he somehow does have the right to deny local taxpayers of federal funds they support with their own tax dollars.  While they cite a decline in lunch participation and an increase in throwing food in the trash, board members betrayed their real reasons for opting out of the program in fairly short order (emphasis mine - see the full video and story here):
The Board was split on the need to offer a free and reduced program to low income students in the district. Dan Jensen stated he did not feel it was the district’s responsibility to pay for anyone else’s lunch (video 1 at 4:34). Jensen the went on to describe that WGSD could in the future determine the family income levels that qualify a student for free and reduced lunch and what they would be given to eat if they did.
Board member Dawn Bleimehl stated that she hoped that any free and reduced lunch offered by the WGSD “looks the same” as the lunch served to other students (video #2 at 3:57). Dan Jensen went on to disagree that a free or reduced lunch need to look the same and that as a youngster (in RUSD) he was not bothered by standing in a special line while waiting to receive his free or reduced lunch. He agreed it would matter to some students in WGSD, but felt that was the price those students have to pay for receiving a lunch paid for by others (video #2 at 4:40). Unfortunately, the district would then stand to lose many tens of thousands of dollars in Title funds because it would be much less likely to identify and document students from low income households.
The board is, in essence, robbing local taxpayers of the federal funds THEY help support because of a personal "belief" that students who can't afford to eat don't deserve to eat.  
 
As this local news report demonstrates, the district clearly has not thought through how rejecting nearly $40,000 in federal funds will allow them to provide any kind of lunch at all to students, or how they will manage an alternative plan for providing free and reduced cost lunch to low-income students. There's no back-up plan.  There's no discussion of how hunger will impact student performance and behavior. There's no accountability to district residents who rely on this program because their children could not otherwise access a healthy lunch.  There's no real concern for the impact of this decision on a substantial percentage of children in the Waterford District;  according to 2013 DPI data, at its most needy school, 31.5% of students are eligible for free and reduced lunch. The high school is at the other end of the spectrum, with 12% of students eligible. 

This is precisely what happens when anti-child, anti-education people are elected to represent our schools.  When politics and personal opinion trump the educational success and welfare of our children, something is broken beyond repair. 


I hope the people of Waterford show up with pitchforks at the next meeting of this board.


And I hope they look hard at the spring ballot to make a choice that will matter in bringing some student advocacy to a board that clearly does not put the interests of students first.  

Waterloo knows this.  In the controversy over the "Lunch of Shame" policy, the upcoming school board election has hinged on the need to fight for more equitable and humane lunchroom policies in their district.  The April 1st election could decide that.

Think local elections don't matter?  Who's running for your school board on April 1st?

I know who's running for mine, thanks to SPARC's Local Election Guide and the efforts of many people in our community working to keep people informed and engaged.  If you don't have a group this like in your community, start one. We did. It was easy.  All it takes is a kitchen table and a desire to move forward.  We can even help you get started.  Just get in touch or connect with the Wisconsin Grassroots Network.

I hope every single person who cares about schools takes time to get informed. 

And vote.  

Local elections matter most.  What just happened in Waterford is a disgusting bit of proof.
 





Postscript, for the optimists: 
Meanwhile, here's what people who CARE about kids are doing in public schools.  The images to your right from the Provo (Utah) City Schools show what can be done to make affordable, healthy, delicious lunch within the parameters of the federal nutrition program by partnering locally and thinking outside the box (or can).

We can do so much better. 

Why is Wisconsin setting the bar so low, when we can reach so high? 

Our kids deserve better.

Our schools deserve better.

Get involved and let your community know what "better" means to you.







 



Rickert is Wrong: PUBLIC schools are the popular choice in Wisconsin

Chris Rickert of the Wisconsin State Journal posted a staggeringly and dangerously deceptive opinion piece this week: "Public school advocates dismiss popularity of vouchers at their own risk" (3/20/14).

In it, Rickert bases his entire argument on a laughable fallacy: the alleged popularity of vouchers in Wisconsin.  His absurd premise is this: Application of schools to participate in the program is up about 30% (to 68 schools this year, up from 48 last year) and application of students is expected to double this year.  Therefore, he assumes, if 2400 people applied last year, and that number is expected to double this year, the voucher program must be very popular. 

Let's put those figures into perspective.   There are 874,414 students enrolled in Wisconsin public schools this year.  If, as expected, the number of voucher applications doubles to 4,800 this year, that figure would represent 0.5% of public school enrollment in this state.


What's more, Rickert cites, and then ignores, data that shows how deeply unpopular vouchers are with the typical Wisconsin family: numbers from DPI demonstrate that the vast majority - 79% (!) -  of students who applied for vouchers to attend private schools this year already attend those schools.  If this trend continues, then only 21% of the 0.5% of voucher applicants statewide would represent new enrollment in the program.  If you like math, that means NEW voucher applications would represent 0.11% of the public school population in Wisconsin.

The question: by what delusion of editorial fantasy does a one-tenth-of-one-percent application rate represent "popularity?"

Which makes me wonder how Rickert has a job writing about anything, much less public education.

Despite state-wide expansion of the program, these infinitesimal application numbers tell us what we already knew through polling and public testimony: Wisconsin parents support, and want the state to invest in, public schools.  Not publicly-funded coupons to private schools.  Parents, overwhelmingly, want to keep their kids in local public schools and want to see those schools funded at levels that support all students.


Rickert also avoids what I think is a very telling bit of information in the new DPI data:  only 25 of the 48 schools participating in the statewide voucher program this year reapplied for next year. Of the 68 applications, 43 are new schools. This means OVER HALF of the current participating voucher schools in Wisconsin are opting out of the program!  Hardly an indicator of popularity, in my view, but hey.  I'm not the journalist here.

Further, Rickert's homework is shoddy at best and deceptive at worst.  He implies that vouchers are "cheaper" for taxpayers, and offers a distorted picture of the data, writing that Rep. Sondy Pope's "concern about shifting tax dollars from public schools to voucher schools seems misplaced, given that, on average, taxpayers spend about $5,000 more per public school student than they spend on a voucher," a figure he calculates (apparently; show your work, please!) by subtracting the voucher cost from the "total cost" of year-long education for a public school student.  This is very misleading. And it doesn't take into account at all the additional tax break Wisconsin parents are eligible for if they pay private school tuition. As the Wisconsin School Administrator's Alliance has pointed out:
Two recent memos by the non-partisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau (LFB) raise
more startling issues that should be of concern to all Wisconsin parents and
taxpayers. The first shows that while the average public school student in
Wisconsin receives roughly $4,900 of general state aid, the state guarantees
private voucher school students $6,442 in aid from the state and local school
districts. Over 80% of school districts now receive less than the guaranteed
voucher amount, and voucher advocates are pushing lawmakers to increase the
voucher guarantee to $8,000 or more.
[emphasis mine]
Rickert's stunningly simplistic assessment "A taxpayer-funded education at a private school is still a taxpayer-funded education," demonstrates not just naivete (or, less generously, willful ignorance) about the complicated formula that determines school funding, but a disturbing disrespect for accountability to the taxpayer. Private schools are subject to very little oversight or regulation and the lack of consistency (in terms of curriculum, staffing, financing, policy, etc) puts these "public" private schools, as Rickert would call them, in direct violation of the Wisconsin state constitution:
"The legislature shall provide by law for district schools, which shall be as nearly uniform as practicable; and such schools shall be free and without charge for tuition to all children between the ages of 4 and 20 years; and no sectarian instruction shall be allowed therein." - Wisconsin State Constitution, Article X, Section 3
On the very day when this accountability is being pushed forward and debated in the legislature, Rickert chooses to move our focus away from the real issue and point it at a shadow: his peculiar delusions about the "popularity" of the program.

But, if you can believe it, none of this is even my biggest issue with Rickert's pseudo-analysis.  The fallacy that really pushed me over the edge was that in his larger attempt to besmirch "public school advocates" and voucher opponents, he lumps them together as a stodgy group of politicians and fools, resistant to change, and willfully ignores the reality: that the people most vocally opposed to vouchers in Wisconsin are the people most invested in defending quality, equity and accountability in both public and private schools - parents, advocacy groups, and education professionals.  

I count myself among that number.  I care deeply about protecting and defending our public schools, particularly against the threats of the out-of-state profiteers who have invested countless dollars into propping up "school choice" candidates and writing legislation that undermines public schools and steals tax dollars from the education budget to fund private education - including religious education.

And for that reason I wrote this letter to the editor to the Wisconsin State Journal. I'm reprinting it here because they edited the fire out of it in their print/online version and I think many of the key points are worth repeating:


Dear Wisconsin State Journal:

If Chris Rickert wants to pretend that giving people who can already afford private schools a coupon (voucher) AND a tax break is as valid an expenditure of tax dollars as any other "public education," then he should spend his column-writing time focusing on all the ways those "public" private schools must be held accountable to the public like traditional public schools are,  instead of maligning those who have been calling for such accountability.
Rickert fails to mention that "opponents" of voucher programs have been led most vocally not by politicians, but by the state's largest special interest group when it comes to education: PARENTS. 
Parents, particularly parents of special needs students, have spoken forcefully in support of our kids and our schools to demand accountability and equity in the voucher program. 
Voucher schools discriminate against students with special needs and have a track record of "counseling out" under-performing students - sending them back to public schools.  The local district then absorbs the costs educating these kids while the voucher school keeps the money.  Not exactly the "bargain" Rickert claims vouchers represent to taxpayers, and certainly not the "choice" parents thought they were getting. 
The system is set up to fleece taxpayers and our already-strapped public schools, at the benefit of the wealthy and the expense of our most vulnerable students. Rickert glibly glosses over the fact that 75% of voucher applicants already attend private schools, and fails to mention that even with vouchers, private schools are out of reach for the average Wisconsinite.
That Chris Rickert chooses to side with the billion-dollar out-of-state pro-"choice" lobby and ignore the legitimate concerns of the vast majority of Wisconsin parents and taxpayers makes me wonder why someone so willfully out of touch with education advocacy in Wisconsin has been entrusted with the extremely important task of writing about it.
Heather DuBois Bourenane
Sun Prairie

Note: This post has been updated to correct my math.  Forgot to move the decimal point.  Oops. I think the percentages are right now.  Thanks to Ed Hughes for pointing out the error!