Morning Shots

School choice opponents in Utah tried a new trick, and it’s coming back to bite them.

Last month, Utah passed the country’s most sweeping school voucher legislation. The Parents for Choice in Education Act (HB 148) makes nearly every student eligible for vouchers worth $300 to $5,000, depending on family income. Under the program, school districts continue to receive funding for every voucher student who leaves for five years. So it doesn’t “drain” money from public schools.

Despite this bone, opponents were up to their old trick of amending school choice legislation beyond workability. They pushed for regulations designed to dampen private school participation, and insisted the Parents for Choice in Education Act come up for review two years earlier than originally scheduled.

Opponents prevailed. But this is ploy is coming back to bite them as they try a new trick to stop the program before it begins.

Utah is one of 24 states where the public can overturn recently enacted legislation through referendum. Opponents have until April 9 to gather 92,000 signatures to qualify their school choice recall for the 2008 ballot. With those signatures, opponents would suspend the program set to start on April 30 and delay implementation until as late as 2009.

But here’s how their latest trick is coming back to bite them. School choice opponents filed their referendum petition against the original school choice legislation (HB 148) before the superseding legislation, enacted largely at their insistence, was signed into law (now HB 174). Simply put, they’re going after the wrong legislation.

Opponents can’t target the revised school choice program because any referendum must be filed within five days after the legislative session ends. The amended legislation wasn’t signed until after that five-day window. The amended school choice legislation also passed with majorities exceeding 2/3 in both

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This year, as Congress debates the future of No Child Left Behind, American families and taxpayers need to consider an important question: What are we giving up to pay for it?

In economics, "opportunity cost" refers to the next best use of a resource. We think about opportunity costs every day as we decide how to spend our time or money. Should I spend the next hour reading the newspaper or watching television? Should I use this dollar to buy a cup of coffee or orange juice?

When it comes to No Child Left Behind, the opportunity cost is the other ways that we could use the $23 billion taxpayers spend on the program, as well as the time teachers and administrators spend implementing it.

This year, Congress will send $23.3 billion to the Department of Education to pay for No Child Left Behind. After funding the operations of the federal education headquarters, this money will be allocated to dozens of different programs, each with its own bureaucracy. As those funds travel from Washington, D.C., back to local school districts, a good portion will be consumed by administrative costs and bureaucracy before they reach schools or classrooms.

Congress owes it to the American people to think about the opportunity costs of No Child Left Behind. Couldn’t this investment be put to better use to improve education opportunities for American kids? Consider some of the alternative ways those funds could be used to improve education.

One idea often pushed by liberals and teachers’ unions is to increase pay for America’s school teachers. According to the Department of Education, there are about 3 million public school teachers in the country. That means the $23.3 billion currently spent on No Child Left Behind would be enough for a pay raise of more than $7,000 for every

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This is the final installment in a three-part series on homeschooling.  Part I is here; part II, here. -ed.

Part III.  “High School” Academics, a Substantial Enterprise, and Costs

1.  High School Academics

A child who reaches the age of twelve, thirteen, or fourteen, and who has read extensively, written extensively, and has completed advanced algebra, is ready to explore serious college level coursework.  Although the child can continue on the existing paths of deep skill development, it is appropriate at this time to enroll the child in a serious mainstream academic course, in any discipline, so that the child can develop the skills needed to succeed in mainstream course-work.  There are courses available at local schools, community colleges, and on-line.  A child may also prep for an Advanced Placement exam with a coach in order to acquire this kind of experience.

Depending on the study habits developed over the years, the skill level achieved by the child, the child’s personality, and the quality of the academic coach, the first course or two might be difficult.  The orientation should not be at all that a failure has occurred, but rather than this a fundamental element of the strategy:  instead of wasting years in meaningless coursework, you, your child, and your child’s academic coaches have adhered to a strategy of optimal skill development rather than content coverage.  But if the child has decent work habits and has very high level skills, these courses are likely to be easy.  If not the first time through, then soon enough.

The metaphor of “coach” is important here.  Adam Robinson’s What Smart Students Know may be an appropriate supplementary guide.  Rather than a “teacher,” the coach observes the child’s existing strengths and weaknesses and, coming from a place of maturity and experience in preparing for such

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