Lot of damage, not much benefit: The truth about Utah vouchers

October 22, 2007

Editorials in two of Utah’s second-tier daily newspapers spell out exactly why the Utah voucher proposal submitted to voters is a bad one. The Provo Daily Herald urges voters to study the voucher proposal, and then vote for it. The Logan Herald-Journal discusses a key problem for Cache Valley parents and educators, in aging buildings that are often older than the grandparents of the students, but which will cost a fortune to replace.

The Utah voucher plan is only half-vampire (blood sucking, that is; or money sucking), leaving with the public schools some of the money allocated for students who choose to leave — at least for five years. In that one regard, the Utah proposal stands a head above other voucher plans offered in the U.S.

That is not enough to make it a good proposal, however. Why?

Here are “givens” for this article, the basic set of facts we have to work from.

1. Crowding is a key problem for Utah schools. Statewide, public schools average 30 pupils per class. That’s above national norms, and twice the concentration of students that studies show make for the most effective classrooms (15 students). (A new study from the Utah Taxpayers Association, a usually credible source, shows Utah’s public school student population growing from today’s almost 550,000, to about 750,000 by 2022 — requiring more than $6 billion in new construction costs.)

2. Partly because of large families in Utah, per pupil spending ranks near the lowest in the U.S. The usual figure used in the voucher discussions in Utah is $7,500 per student per year, but I can find no source that corroborates that figure. The actual number is probably closer to $5,000 per student, but may be lower. Legislative analysts based their scrutiny of the proposal on the $7,500 figure, and for discussion purposes, that’s good enough. It won’t make any difference in the outcome. (A reader in comments on another post says the $7,500 figure comes from the Park City School District, the state’s richest — it may be high by as much as 40% for the state. Can that citation be accurate?)

3. Utah’s schools perform well above where they should be expected to perform, on the basis of number of teachers, teacher pay, and student populations. Despite crowding and shortage of money, three Utah middle schools were named among the nation’s 129 best last month. Utah students score respectably on nationally-normed tests. A high percentage of Utah students go to college. Utah parents deserve a great deal of the credit for this performance boost. Utah has for years had higher than average educational attainment. With several outstanding colleges and universities in a small state, many Utah parents have a degree or two, and they buy books, and that achievement and the drive to get education rub off on their children.

4. These problems should get worse without drastic action. Utah family size may decrease slightly, but immigration from other states adds to pupil population increases. Utah’s economy is not so outstanding that it can easily absorb significantly higher taxes to pay for schools. (See the Utah Taxpayers Association study, again.)

Those are the givens. Advocates of the voucher plan, notably people like Richard Eyre, who made a fortune investing in Kentucky Fried Chicken, and has since invested much of his time in dabblings in public policy, argue several benefits to the voucher plan:

A. Not much damage to public schools by taking money away. In fact, they argue, during the first five years, for each student who leaves a public school with a voucher, the school will keep at least $4,000 (this figure would apply only to the richest districts, if the baseline number comes from Park City as my commenter suggested). This $4,000 would be spread among the other 29 students remaining, effectively, leaving just under $140 additional money per student in the average classroom. (There are problems with this calculation, of course).

B. Public school classroom size will shrink, to the benefit of the remaining kids.

C. Public school spending can hold steady when schools fire the teachers who lose students (I assume this is a misstatement from the Eyres’ video — that instead, some savings might result from dismissal of low-performing teachers in schools where a significant portion of students leave).

D. Magically, competition will create better education.

Below the fold, I’ll tell you why the benefits will not obtain, and point out some of the dangers of pushing the whole education system over a cliff that are inherent in this scheme.

Read the rest of this entry »

2 Comments | Economics, Education, Education quality, Education reform, Education spending, Elections, History, School vouchers | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Vouchers as Oreos: Crumbs for the kids

October 21, 2007

Here’s the infamous “Oreo® cookie” ad by the pro-voucher Richard and Linda Eyre, in the 30-second version:

I have a few questions for the Eyres and their Modified Vampire Voucher program:

1. Private schools are few and far between in Utah — where is a kid supposed to find a school?

2. National statistics tracked by the Department of Education show Utah at the bottom of the per-student spending list. Were Utah spending $7,500/year/student, Utah would rank comfortably near the top. Where did you get your figures for spending in Utah, and why do they differ from the national statistics?

3. Are you saying that, if vouchers cut student loads at public schools, no teachers or classrooms would be cut? I don’t see that guarantee in the law, and I’m wondering why you’re claiming something like that will occur.

4. How many kids need to leave the average public school classroom before there is a significant increase in money left over for the rest of the kids, under your formula? By “significant,” I mean at least 10% increases, or with your statistics, $750/pupil. My quick, in-my-head calculations show that, if only rich kids leave, we need to get 5 rich students , with the lowest vouchers, out of that 30-student class in order to get a significant increase in spending. That’s 17% of the students.

If 17% of the students left Utah’s public schools, how much would your program cost? How many private schools would need to be created to accommodate that percentage?

5. You say Utah spends about $7,000/student, and you suggest that Utah should be spending nearly $10,000/student. In order to get a $3,000/student increase in that classroom, you’d need to get 10 rich students to leave, or 33%. How soon do you think you can get a third of the students to leave Utah’s public schools?

6. You say teachers should lose their jobs if students leave public schools for private schools. Why? Studies show that generally it is the best students who leave public schools for private schools. If their teachers are punished . . . well, explain just what it is you really advocate?

7. When I published the research studies at the U.S. Department of Education, we published studies showing that reduction in classroom size helped student achievement — a measurable amount once classroom size got down to 18 students, and significantly once classroom size got down to 15 students per class. By your figures, we’d need to get half of all students to leave Utah’s public schools to get down to 15 kids per class — without firing any of the bad teachers. How long will it take to get that reduction? How much will it cost?

8. If we can’t get a third of all students to leave the public schools, we’re still stuck with a massive shortfall in funding. What’s your backup plan, since getting a third of all students to leave is a stupid idea with zero chance of success? When you’re done hammering at the foundations of public education, what then?

9. Do the good people at Nabisco approve of your abuse of their cookies?

Eyre’s program may look neat as Oreos, but it leaves only crumbs for the kids. Taking money out for vouchers does almost nothing to contribute to solutions for Utah’s education problems.

Below the fold: The longer version of the ad.

Read the rest of this entry »

7 Comments | Education, Education spending, Elections, Politics, Rampant stupidity, School vouchers | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Utah voucher wars: When very desperate, bribe

October 13, 2007

Salt Lake Tribune political reporter Paul Rolly shows just how desperate are the voucher supporters in Utah, with polls showing the voucher referendum on the November ballot will crush the pro-voucher legislation:  They offered bribes.

Yes, bribes are illegal.  You know that, I know that.  Tell it to the voucher advocates:

With polls showing overwhelming numbers of voters poised to repeal the voucher law that was passed by the Legislature last winter, voucher advocates got so desperate Thursday they sent an e-mail from the FreeCapitalist Project offering money for pro-voucher votes in next month’s referendum election.
    But then someone must have let them know it usually is considered illegal to buy votes, so they sent a second e-mail several hours later retracting everything they said in the first e-mail.
    The original e-mail said Parents for Choice in Education is conducting a “Friends and Family” campaign in which “advocates” are encouraged to sign up friends and relatives who commit to voting in favor of the voucher law in next month’s referendum election.
    If the advocate provides his or her field manager with 25 names committed to voting for vouchers and they actually vote, the advocate gets $10 per person, or $250 for the 25 names, the e-mail said. Plus, the advocate will get $10 for each voter they get beyond the 25.
    The contacts for the program were listed as Brandon Dupuis and Jim Speth, PCE field managers for northern and southern Utah, respectively.
    So, as the old saying goes (a bit amended): If you can’t dazzle them with your brilliance, baffle them with a bribe.
    But then came the Oops!
    “Retraction,”  the second e-mail boomed.
    “We apologize for the previous e-mail . . . . It was simply incorrect and misrepresents the Free Capitalist Projects’ grass-roots efforts. Neither Parents for Choice in Education nor the Free Capitalist Project will ever provide incentives that appear to pay people to vote. The earlier e-mail was sent by determined and sincere individuals who are working diligently, but the Free Capitalist Project and Parents for Choice in Education did not approve, authorize or see the e-mail in advance.”

I’ll wager it wasn’t the illegality that stopped them.  Somebody probably sat down with a calculator and suggested how much it might cost them, at $10.00/vote, if people took them up on the offer.  And for the $10.00, there’s no guarantee that any of the votes would be switches — no guarantee that it would sway any votes their way.

3 Comments | Education, Education spending, Elections, Rampant stupidity, School vouchers | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Utah voucher fight reality

September 24, 2007

Sunday’s Salt Lake Tribune has a fine article analyzing the electoral issues of the referendum on vouchers Utah voters have this November, “Doubt has clout to kill vouchers.”

Reality of elections: It’s more than issues. Voter turnout, and voter habits and biases, affect the outcome. The good news is that the habits and biases in this case work against vouchers.

Hoover Institute fellow Terry Moe’s evaluation of the general feeling of voters toward vouchers is golden, and should be framed by anyone working the issue — about a dozen paragraphs into the article.

Read the rest of this entry »

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Posted by Ed Darrell

Utah voucher advocates take low road

September 17, 2007

Utah’s voucher referendum vote is just over six weeks away. From here in Dallas, it appears the anti-voucher forces are leading.

Why do I say that without looking at a single poll? The pro-voucher forces have gone dirty, by Utah political standards: They’re pushing an opinion piece that says God and the Mormon pioneers favor vouchers, according to an AP report via KSL.com (radio and television).

It the occasionally peculiar language of Utah politics, it’s a desperate move, intentionally below the belt, in hopes of crippling the opposition so a win by default must be declared, even over the foul.

A conservative think tank is distributing a lengthy essay on the history of education in Utah that implies that if Mormons don’t vote in favor of the state’s school voucher law that they could face cultural extinction.

The “conservative think tank” is the Sutherland Institute (SI), which would be a far-right wing group in most other places. SI published a 40-page brief in favor of the Utah voucher plan, and its director, Paul Mero, is on the road in Utah speaking before every Rotary Club, Chamber of Commerce and gathering of checkers players he can find. An excerpt appears at their website, and this appears to be the subject of the current controversy.

Education is one of the key values of the Latter-day Saints Church (LDS or Mormon). “Knowledge is the glory of God,” reads one inscription on a gate leading to the church’s flagship school in Provo, Brigham Young University (BYU).  Schools were always among the first things built in new Mormon settlements.  The University of Utah — originally the University of Deseret — is the oldest public university west of the Missouri, founded in 1850.  Mormons take pride in their getting of education, and in the education establishments they’ve created.

Mero’s argument is that the Mormons were forced to give up their private schools for public schools in the anti-polygamy controversies leading up to Utah statehood in 1896.  This is a weak hook upon which to hang the voucher campaign.  He’s trying to appeal to Mormons who worry about government interference in religion.

The foundations of his argument do not hold up well.  “[LDS] Church spokesman Mark N. Tuttle issued a two-sentence response to the essay, saying the church hasn’t taken a position on school vouchers,” the AP article notes.

Utah’s voucher program is the standard vampire voucher structure, taking money away from public schools in favor of private and sectarian schools, and not putting any new money into public schooling.  When the Utah legislature passed the program, public opposition was so strong that a petition to put in on the ballot as a referendum captured a record number of signatures in a record period of time.

More to come, certainly.

6 Comments | Education, Education reform, Education spending, History, Politics, School vouchers | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Create panic, herd the stampede

September 6, 2007

In old western movies, the bad guys would try to get their way by stampeding the cattle herd of the good guys, knowing that the least that would happen is a lot of destruction, even if they couldn’t exactly control the stampede. Destruction, even mindless destruction, is good for bad guys — in the movies.

I’m not sure why that image popped into my mind this morning. I was reading about the vouchers election campaign in Utah, and then I was looking around the Strong American Schools (SAS) website  (“ED in ’08”).

Strong American Schools is a project of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, two of the largest philanthropic organizations in the world, have provided grant funding for Strong American Schools.
Roy Romer, the former governor of Colorado and most recently superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District, is our chairman and lead spokesman.

At the SAS site I found an interactive map of the U.S., you can roll your cursor on a state and see that state’s graduation rate. ED in '08, campaign from Rockefeller and Gates Foundations

What’s the most-often stated reason for vouchers in Utah? Somehow, the schools are failing.

Which state in the U.S. has the highest graduation rates? At 84% of students graduating from high school, Utah leads the nation in that category. New Jersey is #2 at 80%, and most other states lag 10 to 20 points behind.

What are the Utah voucher advocates using to show “failing schools” when the state leads the nation in graduation?

If Utah leads the nation in graduation, with per capita spending on students in schools ranking near the bottom of the states over the last decade or three, what factor is pulling students from least spending to best graduation? It’s probably the teachers.

Excuse me while I wonder: Why are Utah voters (and the rest of us) in this hand basket, and where are we going in such a damned hurry?

5 Comments | Education quality, Education reform, Education spending, Education success, School vouchers, Teaching | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Carnival Catsup, back to school packet

September 6, 2007

No, the spell checker doesn’t do titles.

How long since we noted the Carnival of Education? Too long.

Education Carnival without a number at Dr. Homeslice
Education Carnival 131 at Education in Texas
Education Carnival 132 at Education Matters US!
Education Carnival 133 at The Red Pencil
Education Carnival 134 at MatthewTAbor.com
Education Carnival 135 at The Education Wonks

That’s about 200 blog posts whose titles you really ought to peruse, at least.

Welcome back to the chalkboard, eh?

Leave a Comment » | Education, Education blogs, Education quality, Education reform, Education spending, Education success, Teaching, Technology in the classroom, Tenure, Weblogs | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Intelligence: Can it rub off in the classroom?

September 3, 2007

Can intelligence rub off from an intelligent classroom to the students?

Educational osmosis is one way to learn, I have found. I think a good classroom is one in which the student learns regardless what the student is doing, even daydreaming by looking out the window. How to achieve that? We’re working on it. In 2007, such a classroom should visually stimulate learning, and do so with sound and kinesthetics, too. Repetition in different media, with different contexts, aids learning and cementing of knowledge. But, I speak only from experience, having taken only a tiny handful of “real” education classes in my life, and they rank at the bottom of my list of useful courses.

Brian C. Smith blogs about education technology from the technology side, at Streaming Thoughts. Some time ago he asked teachers to tell about their ideal classroom technology (my response is here). Now he’s back with results of his survey — what technology do teachers need for educational success?

It may be my fault for failing to make the point, but I think a successful classroom also needs access to a photocopier that can turn around material in short order — a fast photocopier is preferred. Classrooms also need printers.

I also wonder if working ventilation and temperature control for comfort figures into the technology equation.

The ideal classroom technology is that set which allows the student to learn well, with speed and wisdom.

Alexander (not yet the Great) and his teacher, Aristotle; public domain image, originally from British Museum?

1 Comment | Brain learning, Classroom management, Classroom technology, Education, Education spending, Teaching, Technology, Technology in the classroom | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Teacher pay, Teacher unions — What teacher would switch places with Richard Cohen?

August 14, 2007

Richard Cohen, whom I regarded a good columnist when we lived in Washington, D.C., had made an odd turn in the past decade or so. Where normally he’d stand up for public institutions and the people who run them, he just sounds cranky lately. In short, he’s turned into a person who likes Bush Republicans. Oh, my, it erupted in his recent column which is just grousing about how much education costs in the District of Columbia, with an ambiguous, implicit claim that maybe there’s too much money going into education there.

(Well, maybe too much for the results gotten compared with a few suburban districts; not enough to boost performance on the tests.)

Jason Rosenhouse at Evolutionblog Fisks the column, Fisks Cohen, and generally supports teachers — it’s worth a read.

It’s worth a read especially if you’re one of those who, like Richard Cohen, think we should suppress the pay for teachers until they improve, ignoring all the lessons you might ever have learned about getting what you pay for, and about the economics of hiring the best, the brightest, or just the heroes necessary to make a change. Here’s part of Rosenhouse’s commentary:

But that is not the main subject of this post. Instead it’s that gratuitous slap at the unions that struck me. Cohen, like a trained seal, has learned that mindlessly bashing teacher’s unions will never get you into trouble. That is why he feels no need to provide any specifics about what, exactly, the unions are doing wrong. Instead, when it comes time to reveal those subtleties of the education problem about which Democrats need to be instructed, Cohen only produces this:

Only one candidate, Barack Obama, suggested that maybe money was not all that was lacking when it comes to educating America’s poor and minority children. Parents had a role to play, too. “It is absolutely critical for us to recognize that there are going to be responsibilities on the part of African American and other groups to take personal responsibility to rise up out of the problems we face,” he said. What? It’s not just a question of funding?

Parents! Of course! How could those money grubbing teacher’s unions and their slavish Democratic puppets have overlooked such a thing? All this focus on making sure schools have the funds to heat their buildings in the winter and patch the roof when it leaks, this crazy idea that a school using twenty year old textbooks needs money if they are to procure new ones or that science labs are not exactly inexpensive, and they simply overlooked that parents have a role to play in their children’s education. One can only hope the Democrat’s pay attention to someone as perceptive as Cohen.

::heavy sigh::

The U.S. is not alone.  Australia has some teacher pay and facility issues, too, according to Matt’s Notepad.  Another interesting read.

1 Comment | Education, Education quality, Education spending, Parents, Politics, Teacher Pay, Teaching | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Oliver W. Hill, history maker, 100

August 6, 2007

Oliver W. Hill in 1999, when he was 92; lawyer in Brown v. Board case

Literally while writing the previous post about the importance of recording history before the witnesses leave us, I heard on KERA-FM, NPR reporter Juan Williams’ intimate, detailed and stirring story about Oliver W. Hill, one of the lawyers who brought one of the five cases that resulted in the historic 1954 reversal of U.S. law, in Brown v. Topeka Board of Education (347 U.S. 483).

Oliver W. Hill died Sunday, in Richmond, Virginia. He was 100.

In 1940, Mr. Hill won his first civil rights case in Virginia, one that required equal pay for black and white teachers. Eight years later, he was the first black elected to the Richmond City Council since Reconstruction.

A lawsuit argued by Mr. Hill in 1951 on behalf of students protesting deplorable conditions at their high school for blacks in Farmville became one of five cases decided under Brown.

That case from Farmville offers students a more personal view of their own power in life. The case resulted from a student-led demonstration at Moton High School in Farmville. Moton was an all-black school, with facilities amazingly inferior to the new white high school in Farmville — no indoor plumbing, for example. While the Virginia NAACP failed at several similar cases earlier, and while the organization had a policy of taking no more school desegregation cases, the students’ earnestness and sincerity swayed Oliver Hill to try one more time:

On May 23, 1951, a NAACP lawyer filed suit in the federal district court in Richmond, VA, on behalf of 117 Moton High School, Prince Edward County, VA, students and their parents. The first plaintiff listed was Dorothy Davis, a 14-year old ninth grader; the case was titled Dorothy E. Davis, et al. v. County School Board of Prince Edward County, Virginia, et. al. It asked that the state law requiring segregated schools in Virginia be struck down.

Davis was consolidated with four other cases, from the District of Columbia, Delaware, South Carolina, and Brown from Kansas; it was argued in 1953, but the Court deadlocked on a decision. When Chief Justice Arthur Vinson died and was replaced by the (hoped-to-be) conservative Chief Justice Earl Warren, Warren got the Court to re-hear the case. Because he thought it was such an important case in education, Warren worked to get a solid majority. The Court which was deadlocked late in 1953, in May 1954 issued the Brown decision unanimously, overturning the separate-but-equal rule from Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) (167 U.S. 537).

Brown was the big boulder whose rolling off the hill of segregation gave power to the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. That decision and the horrible murder of Emmett Till in Mississippi in the summer of 1955 inspired civil rights worker Rosa Parks to take a stand, and take a seat for human rights on a Montgomery, Alabama city bus in December of 1955, which led to the 1956 Montgomery Bus Boycott, led by the new preacher in town, a young man named Martin Luther King, Jr. When the Supreme Court again chose civil rights over segregation in the bus case, the wake of the great ship of history clearly showed a change in course.

Oliver Hill was there, one of the navigators of that ship of history.

1 Comment | Bill of Rights, Civil Rights, DBQ sources, Education, Education quality, Education spending, Fourteenth Amendment, Jurisprudence, Justice, Law, U.S. Supreme Court | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Condolences pour in: New chair at Texas State Board of Education

July 26, 2007

Some people would say the Texas State Board of Education is “troubled,” or maybe even (that journalistic clichéd kiss of death) “besieged.”

The agency it oversees, the Texas Education Agency (TEA), has a director whose term is expired, the agency has taken hits from almost every daily newspaper in Texas for cheating scandals on the state achievement tests which have been roundly ignored by the agency. The legislature voted to eliminate the Board’s showpiece tests, substituting tests that will have TEA personnel scrambling to make ready, and the legislators didn’t send enough money to buy all the textbooks the agency is obligated to purchase under the Texas Constitution. Meanwhile, Texas kids fall farther behind kids in other states. One member of the board is on the lam after refusing to answer a subpoena to a grand jury investigating whether he actually resides in the district he represents as required by law (he keeps a cot near his office in the district, but spends most time at his farm, outside his district — the farm where he claims residency for homestead purposes under Texas property tax law). Statistics out last week show Texas leads the nation in pregnancies among kids of school age, and a study shows that abstinence-only programs, pushed by TEA, are to blame for high out-of-wedlock-teen pregnancy rates.

But that’s just “business as usual” for the top education agency in Texas for most of the last decade or so. Many Texans might have been disappointed, but none were surprised when Gov. Rick Perry appointed Bryan, Texas, dentist Don McLeroy to be chairman of the Texas State Board of Education (SBOE).

McLeroy’s politics sometimes appear to the right of General William Tecumseh Sherman’s education policies for the state of Georgia in 1864. McLeroy stared at Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Weinberg and a letter from four other Texas Nobel winners in biological sciences, all of them urging high academic standards for Texas students, and McLeroy voted instead against including evolution in textbooks, in 2003, and for including language pushing intelligent design. Someone, often alleged to be McLeroy, then telephoned publishers and warned them to tone down evolution and play up intelligent design in a fit of sore losership (no investigation was ever conducted). A “great quote” at McLeroy’s website explains (from Paul Johnson, End of Intellectuals):

The belief seems to be spreading that intellectuals are no wiser as mentors, or worthier as exemplars, than the witch doctors or priests of old. I share that scepticism.

Condolence notes stream into Texas from scientists and educators. P. Z. Myers at Pharyngula, Phil Plait at Bad Astronomy, the guys at DefConBlog, and Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars, all cry the blues, and for good reason (read their accounts!).

The Dallas Morning News diplomatically expressed hope that McLeroy might rise above petty and partisan politics at a crucial time for education in Texas, in an editorial published over the weekend: [see below the fold]

Read the rest of this entry »

1 Comment | Education, Education quality, Education reform, Education spending, State school boards, Texas, Texas Freedom Network, Texas Lege, Textbook Selection | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Texas Education Agency: Trouble at the top

July 4, 2007

Steve Schafersman dutifully follows events at the Texas Education Agency, particularly with regard to textbook selection, and particularly with regard to biology textbooks. As head and chief instigator and chief bottle washer for the Texas Citizens for Science, he still gets little notoriety for the good work he does — all volunteer.

Shafersman says important stuff to know. So, when he sends along an editorial from the Fort-Worth Star-Telegram pointing out ethical and legal lapses at the agency which appear to be the work of the chief lawyer of the agency, one should read it. That lawyer, by the way, is probably in line to be the next head of the agency.

TEA has suffered from politicized leadership the last few years. Since Mike Moses left the agency, Texas education has drifted, and lack of leadership from TEA has not helped. Controversies over silly things are almost invited; serious issues, like cheating on the state’s graduation test, go unstudied and unremedied. I take the liberty of publishing the full editorial, below the fold — please read it, especially if you’re in Texas. Since Texas influences education so heavily, especially in textbook selection, everybody who has a kid in U.S. schools, who did have a kid in U.S. schools, who was educated in U.S. schools, or lives in a state that has schools, has a dog in this fight. Read the rest of this entry »

Leave a Comment » | Creationism, Darwin, Education, Education quality, Education reform, Education spending, Texas, Texas Freedom Network, Texas Lege, Textbook Selection | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

For-profit Educate, Inc., goes private (Sylvan Learning, Hooked-on-Phonics)

June 15, 2007

Educate, Inc., the parent company of Sylvan Learning Centers, traded for the last time on the NASDAQ exchange yesterday.

No, the company didn’t go out of business. It was taken private by its management, after being a public company for three years. From the Baltimore Sun morning e-mail:

Educate becomes a private company

Educate Inc. has completed its transition into a private company, ending its three-year run on public markets.

Best known for its Sylvan tutoring centers, the Baltimore company, which was purchased in a management-led buyout, traded for the last time on the Nasdaq yesterday.

The investor group that purchased the company is led by chief executive officer R. Christopher Hoehn-Saric, other executives and affiliates of Sterling Capital Partners and Citigroup Private Equity. They paid $8 a share for the company in the deal valued at $535 million.

The company announced this week that more than 75 percent of shareholders approved the deal, which came as the firm has struggled with poor product sales.

Internal reorganization was swift.  The company’s website carried this note this morning:

On June 13, 2007, through a merger transaction, Edge Acquisition, LLC became the owner of Educate, Inc. In a related series of simultaneous transactions, the companies which were part of Educate, Inc. have been split into the following independent companies:

  • Educate Services, which includes Sylvan Learning, Catapult Learning, and Schulerhilfe;
  • Hooked on Phonics, Inc., which includes Hooked on Phonics, Reading Rainbow, and GPN;
  • Educate Online, Inc., which includes Catapult Online and eSylvan;
  • Progressus, Inc.; and
  • Educate Corporate Centers Holdings, Inc., which is a franchisee of various Sylvan Learning and owner of Sylvan Learning Centers.

The companies are now operating independently to better serve students, families and schools across the country. To learn more about the merger and related transactions, click here.

Making a profit delivering education is rare.  Milton Friedman notwithstanding, free market rules do not apply to educational enterprises in the same way they do to other services.  This is one more example, or set of examples, that should give pause to any rational person considering making public schools “compete” for money to improve education for any child, especially any group of children.  Sylvan Learning Centers are considered to be the top of the heap in their niche; Hooked-on-Phonics is a cliché success story.  And they “struggle with poor product sales.”

I hope the company finds the education answers, the magic bullets, and can retail them at affordable prices.

The answer, by the way, probably is not 42.

1 Comment | Brain learning, Business, Business Ethics, Education, Education quality, Education spending, Education success, Free market economics, Pedagogy, Teaching, Technology, Technology in the classroom | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Treat teachers like bankers?

June 7, 2007

A reader named Sam left this comment, in response to my post on teachers being overworked and underpaid, and I elevate it because it demonstrates, once again, how teachers get dumped on in ways that other professions don’t; Sam makes a good point:

It would be interesting to take into effect that teaching is one of the few jobs where people expend large quantities of their own money to do their job. I was a principal in a large urban district before I left education for a private sector consulting job. Part of the reason I left was the paper rationing that occurred during my last two years on the job. Our school district limited our teachers to three sheets of paper per student per week in an attempt to cut costs. Even the best, most engaging hands-on learning takes more than three sheets per week. Add in the lunch menus, report cards, and parent letters that need to go home and it would guarantee that our paper supply usually ran dry by March 1 or so and my teachers ending up buying their own paper.

Could you imagine the uproar that would occur in the mortgage department of a bank if suddenly employees were required to buy their own copy paper? Why is that acceptable for our teachers?

The U.S. Internal Revenue Service even has a specific standard deduction for teachers to use to cover the materials they take to the classroom, that would be supplied by other employers, that should be supplied by the schools. Isn’t it odd that we make provisions in the tax code to try to offset this error, rather than try to fix it?

12 Comments | Classroom size, Economics, Education quality, Education reform, Education spending, Teacher Pay, Teaching | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Utah to get vouchers over objections of people?

May 30, 2007

Only in America can a state get what it votes against, maybe.

Utah’s Attorney General Mark Shurtleff’s opinion would require the Utah State Board of Education to implement school vouchers now, even though the state legislature did not intend the implementation now, and even though the people may reject the plan for vouchers in a November election.

According to the Shurtleff’s opinion, vouchers would have to be implemented despite the state’s rejection of them.  The Deseret Morning News tried to explain the mess.

Complicating affairs is a “technical amendment” passed by the legislature after the original voucher authorization legislation, to correct problems in the first bill.  The referendum is on the first bill; the amendment was billed as a “clean-up” bill fixing technical problems with the first bill.  But the attorney general now says that the amendment can stand alone, and consequently the law would require the Board to implement a law they oppose, even if the people reject the law.

So, of course, the courts may be asked to parse out the truth and the law.

If you’re not confused yet, stick around.   Mark Twain famously said no man’s life, limb, nor property is safe so long as the legislature is in session.  Utah’s corollary is that nothing is safe even after the legislature goes home.

2 Comments | Education reform, Education spending, Jurisprudence, Law, School vouchers, State school boards | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

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