Replace Welfare With Charity

EDUCATION VOUCHERS WORK

Milwaukee's pioneer voucher schools are registering impressive gains in student test scores vis-a-vis their public school counterparts, according to new research.

The most recent study, conducted by Harvard University and University of Houston researchers, supersedes an earlier study by John Witte of the University of Wisconsin that found voucher students' performance was not significantly better than that of public school students after two years.

The new study examined students' test scores over a four-year period. It shows significantly higher reading and math test scores among the voucher school students. The authors of the study charge that the Witte research was "so methodologically flawed as to be worthless."

Yet teachers unions -- fierce opponents of privatizing elementary education -- are reportedly using the Witte study to convince a Wisconsin court to issue an injunction to stop the city from expanding its 1990 pilot voucher program.

Researchers say Witte's study is flawed because it used inappropriate comparisons between low-income, minority students in the school choice program and a much less disadvantaged cross-section of public school students for the control group.

• Ninety-seven percent of school choice students in the Witte study were black or Hispanic, versus only 60 percent of the comparison group.

• Choice parents reported family incomes of only $11,330 on average, compared with $20,040 for all Milwaukee public school families.

• Fifty-eight percent of choice students' mothers were on welfare, compared with 40 percent of mothers in the comparison group.

The Witte study has been used repeatedly in Wisconsin and in Congress to claim that choice schools are not outperforming public schools.

Critics say the Witte study is not just bad science -- it is actually harmful to underprivileged children who most need the superior educational opportunities vouchers would provide.

Source: Jay P. Greene (University of Houston) and Paul E. Peterson (Harvard University), "School Choice Data Rescued from Bad Science," Wall Street Journal, August 14, 1996.

PRIVATE SCHOOLS FOR SPECIAL NEEDS

Private schools offer a breathtaking array of specialized services for youngsters with disabilities and other special needs, disproving teachers' unions charges that they accept only the best students. Schools have been established to cater to teen mothers, recovering alcoholics, chronic truants and the learning impaired.

• More than 3,000 private schools across the country enroll nearly 100,000 children with disabilities.

• In Minnesota, for example, students recovering from drug and alcohol abuse may attend Sobriety High School near Minneapolis -- one of 19 private high schools in the state that last year helped 1,200 at-risk students get a second chance.

• Sobriety High costs taxpayers $3,500 annually per student -- about half what Minnesota spends on a public school student.

Such schools save money by operating with fewer regulations, have greater leeway in staffing and curriculum and are rarely bound by collective bargaining agreements.

The High Road School in New Jersey focuses on children with emotional and learning disabilities.

• School administrators explain that students come to High Road after failing academically and socially in public schools.

• Public schools often place unruly students in the private schools when they disrupt classrooms and interfere with the learning of other students.

In addition to learning disabilities, private-sector schools serve children suffering from mental retardation, visual impairments, chronic illnesses and other disabilities.

Schools like Sobriety High and High Road belie the myth that the public schools are a dumping ground and that private schools take only the academically gifted, according to educators. What remains to be seen, they say, is whether the education establishment will continue to block efforts to afford others that opportunity.

Source: Janet R. Beales (Reason Foundation), "Educating the Uneducatable," Wall Street Journal, August 21, 1996.

CHARTER SCHOOLS TARGET AT-RISK KIDS

Charter schools, which allow a measure of local control to public and/or publicly funded private schools, have created a great degree of diversity. For example,

• City Academy in Minnesota, the nation's first charter school, targets students with a history of poor academics and behavioral problems.

• Jingletown, in California, emphasizes bilingual education.

• A rural Minnesota school facing closure became a charter school and was able to survive with community and business support.

Studies show that two-thirds of the charter schools target a cross-section of students, and half specifically target at-risk children. In Michigan, a survey of 10 charter schools in November 1994 found that about 49 percent of the students were minorities, while other public schools had only 23 percent minority enrollment.

State legislation can encourage or discourage charter schools. In fact, states having strong charter legislation are home to 92.7 percent of the charter schools.

Source: Jeanne Allen, "Charter Schools Could Help Revitalize Ohio's Public Schools," Perspective on Current Issues, Buckeye Institute for Public Policy Solutions, 131 N. Ludlow Street, Suite 308, Dayton, OH 45402, (513) 224-8352.

END BILINGUAL EDUCATION

Almost the only children instructed in reading, writing and other subjects in their native language are Hispanic. Native speakers of Asian, African and European languages are usually put in immersion-type programs, and are more successful. This may account for different success rates among these groups.

• Nearly 30 percent of Hispanic students dropout before finishing high school, a rate four times that of whites and three times that of blacks.

• A 1994 New York study found that 80 percent of students enrolled in English-immersion classes graduated to mainstream English within three years, while only half the students in bilingual classes tested out that quickly.

• The long term impact of the Hispanic dropout rate is that Hispanic unemployment rose to 10.2 in January, 1995, double the white rate for the first time in the 20 years figures have been collected.

Since the U.S. population of young Hispanics is forecast to grow 61% in the next 15 years, a disaster is in the making.

Bilingual education began in the late 1960s as a modest federal program to help impoverished Mexican-American children, half of whom could not speak English when they entered the first grade. Critics suggest it has become a $5.5 billion-a-year effort to preserve dual language use, principally by Hispanic students, and that it actually harms students.

Bilingual education is based on the theory that children can learn math, science and other subjects in their native tongue, while taking special classes to learn English. However, according to researchers, most controlled studies of low-English-proficiency (LEP) students have found that bilingual education is no more effective or even less effective in improving students' English skills than doing nothing.

There are alternatives to bilingual education that studies indicate are more effective, such as English as a Second Language (ESL) and structured immersion. In ESL, students attend regular classes, but are pulled out of class for language instruction. In structured immersion, subject matter is taught in simplified English.

Sources: Jorge Amselle, ed., "The Failure of Bilingual Education," 1996, Center for Equal Opportunity, 815 15th Street, NW, Suite 928, Washington, DC 20005, (202) 639-0803; Maria Puente and Sandra Sanchez, "Experts Call Educational Gap National Threat," USA Today, September 6, 1995.

TEACHING ENTERPRISE

In 1987, former special-education teacher and financial analyst Steve Mariotti launched a program called the National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE). Its goal is to teach disadvantaged youths how to start and run their own businesses.

The program's financial backers believe that poverty remains with us -- not because of transitions in our economy or because of cuts in social spending -- but because of a lack of enough entrepreneurial drive and creativity among the poor, as well as a maze of taxes and regulations that make it difficult for the poor to start their own businesses.

• Since its founding, NFTE has taught about 11,500 youths the basics of entrepreneurship at schools and volunteer organizations in 14 cities across the nation.

• The program's "mini-MBA course" teaches them about supply and demand, cost/benefit analysis, record keeping, the present and future value of money, advertising and marketing, and other elements of starting a business.

• The organization's $3.6 million annual budget is financed by contributors.

• Graduates usually market retail apparel, sporting goods, beauty products or some form of entertainment.

NFTE says that between 10 percent and 14 percent of its graduates go on to start lasting businesses, and that the average business earns $85 per week. While that is far from adequate, the businesses are expected to grow with time.

Source: Hugh Pearson, "Up By Their Youthful Bootstraps?" Wall Street Journal, February 22, 1996.

EARLY PREVENTION

Spending on prisons rose faster than any other category of general fund spending in states in 1995. The increasing cost of incarceration and high crime rates are leading some states to act on research that indicates that less costly prevention programs work over time.

A good preschool program can reduce the incidence and severity of criminal behavior in subsequent years among children who participate in them, according to studies. For example:

• A preschool program reduced the costs of crime by nearly $150,000 per participant over a lifetime, according to Significant Benefits, a 1993 study on the High/Scope Perry Preschool Project in Ypilanti, Mich.

• After 20 years, participants in High/Scope had fewer arrests than a control group, and they were also five times less likely to have been arrested five or more times.

• Only 6 percent of the children in another program providing child care and home visits to very poor families became adolescent probation cases, compared to 22 percent in a control group, according to a Syracuse University study.

• Non-participants committed more robberies, burglaries and physical and sexual assaults, and had 10 times higher juvenile justice system costs per child than participants.

• Los Angeles County delinquency prevention programs saved $1.40 for every $1 spent, according to a 1984 Vanderbilt University study.

Minnesota, Tennessee, Washington, North Carolina and Pennsylvania are among the states that have significantly increased funding for crime prevention programs, particularly those targeted toward children in populations identified as "at risk" to become criminals -- such as single-parent andlow-income families.

Yet less than 40 percent of poor 3- and 4-year-olds participate in preschool, including Head Start, according to the General Accounting Office and the Head Start Bureau.

Source: Scott Groginsky and Jay Kroshus, "An Ounce of Prevention," State Legislatures, May 1995.