Morning Shots

According to the Texas Education Code, the mission of public education in Texas is to “ensure that all Texas children have access to a quality education.” The code also states a goal of public education is for students to demonstrate exemplary performance in the understanding of mathematics and science.

How is it possible for a child to receive a quality education and demonstrate exemplary performance if many students are taught by teachers outside of their field of study and expertise?

The Texas Education Agency reports that more than 25 percent of teachers in Texas public schools between 2001 and 2004 taught classes outside of their field of study. Texas also faces a teacher shortage in math and science fields.

In a perfect world, a child’s education would be the primary concern and finding qualified teachers would be of utmost importance. Unfortunately, this is not the case. For individuals looking to make a career change to teaching, the lengthy and costly alternative certification process can be a roadblock to getting into the classroom. Alternative certification requirements for those with a college degree include a year of training on how to be a teacher, several thousand dollars in fees, and passing a state certification test.

A quick search on the Internet for alternative certification options revealed the high cost of the programs in Texas. For example, Texas Teachers, a private company offering alternative certification, and iteachtexas, an online distance learning alternative certification program, cost about $4,000 each.

The current alternative certification process does not allow easy access to the classroom for “outsiders” to the education field, and favors teachers with little experience outside the classroom over experts in their field. Many professionals would love to teach in the classroom, part-or full-time, but are hindered by the many roadblocks and cost of teacher certification.

If

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These are some final thoughts from Clint Bolick, who is stepping down as president and general counsel of the Alliance for School Choice.  We’ll post responses to his remarks later this week.  -ed.

As I pack my office in anticipation of stepping down as Alliance for School Choice president and the Alliance’s move to Washington, DC, I’m filled with mixed feelings: looking back with intense pride over the first three years of the Alliance; optimism about Charles Hokanson, my successor as Alliance president; and excitement about the future of the school choice movement.  But, of course, what self-respecting lawyer would leave a job without a closing argument?  So here goes.

The progress made by the school choice movement over the past three years is nothing short of remarkable.  Twenty new or expanded programs.  Last year, seven of 11 new or expanded programs were in states with Democratic governors, and the other in a state with an overwhelmingly Democratic legislature.  This year, the nation’s first universal voucher program in Utah, with sliding-scale value based on income.  All very positive developments.  In all, the number of kids in targeted school choice programs has grown over the past three years from 92,000 to over 134,000; the amount of targeted publicly funded school choice has grown from $270 million to $571 million.  What amazes me is the paucity of media coverage of school choice.  If the unions put out a negative study, it is page-one news in the New York Times; but when the nation’s first universal voucher program is adopted, it registers barely a blip.  I can’t understand why–it’s not like there’s a plethora of good news about K-12 education.  But one lesson is that the school choice movement needs to learn a lot more about marketing.

At the same time, progress is

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Gov. Ted Strickland announced on March 14 that he intends to roll back Ohio’s tiny school voucher program to save money in the next budget. The problem is, it would cost a lot more to send the thousands of children in the program back to the failing schools from which they escaped.

The EdChoice program provides to the parents who apply vouchers of no more than $4,250 for K-8 and $5,000 for high school, which enable approximately 2,500 children to get out of inadequate public schools. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, after adjusting for inflation, it costs about $10,500 for the average public school to educate a child, and only about $5,300 for the average private school. So it’s not hard to see how a state could save huge sums through school choice.

If Strickland wants to save money and improve education for Ohioans, he should follow the lead of other Democratic governors and expand school choice by creating a high-impact, low-cost education tax credit program, like the ones that are saving money in other states.

These programs allow businesses or individuals to take dollar-for-dollar credits on donations to scholarship-granting organizations that help lower-income families pay for a school of their choice. If a business owed the city $5,000 in taxes and donated $5,000 for scholarships, it would pay nothing in taxes. Individual credits allow taxpayers to take the same kind of credit on education expenses for their own children, and even for the children of relatives and friends.

Existing tax-credit programs save states substantial sums. A Cato Institute study estimates that under its old $27 million cap, Pennsylvania’s business tax credit program saved the state between $150 million and $200 million annually, because the amount spent on each scholarship is so much less than the amount spent per

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