I'm in Scottsdale, Arizona today (projected high: 99 degrees) for an education reform summit hosted by the State Policy Network, the Alliance for School Choice, and the Friedman Foundation. Savvy readers will surmise that at such an event, "school reform" equals "private school choice," and that no keynoter would be appropriate other than the 60's-radical-turned-school-choice-godfather Howard Fuller. (They'd be right.)
Fuller is not known for dry oratory, and he gave a real stem winder of an address today. He took some shots at Barack Obama, whom he supports for president, for calling for change and yet not being willing to break with the teachers unions over choice. But he saved most of his fire for none other than my good friends Rick Hess and Sol Stern. (He went out of his way to say that he "likes Rick." Sorry, Sol.)
He argued that both think tankers quoted him selectively in recent articles (this one by Sol ; Rick's is listed here but not yet available online). For instance, in the current issue of The American , Rick writes:
Howard Fuller, patron saint of the voucher program, has wryly acknowledged, "I think that any honest assessment would have to say that there hasn't been the deep, wholesale improvement in Milwaukee Public Schools that we would have thought."
Fuller, after thanking Rick for "elevating me to sainthood while I'm still alive," said that he had left out the next sentence he said. Which was something to the effect of: But school choice is still worth fighting for because we are literally saving children's lives.
Fuller went on to describe a small Christian school in Milwaukee whose board he chairs, and which is sending 35 of 37 graduating seniors to college. He asked if he should tell his younger students, sorry, the voucher program isn't fixing the system, so it should end, and you should have to go back to MPS?
"Did Harriet Tubman want to end the system of slavery? Of course she did. 
But until that happened, she woke up every day to try to save every single slave that she could."
And with that, Fuller wholly embraced the "lifeboat"??rationale for school choice: It may not transform the system, but it transforms the lives of students who ??participate, and that's reason enough to support it.
This is important. And honest. And, for me, compelling. It's why I supported the DC voucher program even though there was no chance it would do anything to improve the other schools in DC. (It's tiny compared to the charter school sector and DC's public schools were "held harmless" financially.) But it had the potential to dramatically improve the lives of 2,000 impoverished youngsters without appreciably reducing the quality of education of their peers. So for me, that's a no-brainer.
But this is a big shift from the early days of the school choice movement. As Hess writes in his piece,
In 1990, scholars John Chubb and Terry Moe argued in their seminal volume Politics, Markets, and America's Schools , "Without being too literal about it, we think reformers would do well to entertain the notion that choice is a panacea...It has the capacity all by itself to bring about the kind of transformation that, for years, reformers have been seeking to engineer in myriad other ways."
I'm with Fuller, as I suspect Stern and Hess would be too: Let's save as many kids as we can through school choice programs. But let's also admit, as both Stern and Hess have argued, that school choice is not enough if we want to transform the system too.
The Heritage Foundation's Dan Lips writes today, on National Review Online (where "Education Week" continues), more about the Republican eschewal of No Child Left Behind.
Greg Forster thinks (at least I think he thinks) that the difference between rewards and bribes is purely semantic. But semantic distinctions are born to relate and describe real distinctions and degrees, no? Otherwise, we'd have but one word (briwards, maybe) for the concept in question. I argued that Michelle Rhee's KIPP-based justification of her plan to pay students to induce their good behavior overlooks several basic points, such as the real difference between KIPP Dollars and American dollars and that KIPP rewards its students for behavior it already expects while Rhee's plan bribes students to do that which they already should.
Forster doesn't understand the difference between KIPP's rewards and Rhee's bribes. I'll explain it again, but differently. Suppose: Iran refuses to cease its nuclear-weapons development despite the world's protestations. America therefore offers to give Iran $5 billion in annual aid and lift sanctions if the Islamic nation pulls the plug on nuclear dabbling. Behold--bribery! Now suppose Iran voluntarily ends nuclear-related nonsense and, for the most part, behaves itself. America then decides to lift sanctions and transfer funds to Tehran, but only so long as Tehran continues to play by the rules. Behold--a reward!
I could construct other analogies (e.g., the kid who gets $10 after he mows the lawn and the kid who only mows the lawn after he gets $10), but I think the difference is clear. Perhaps it isn't to economists, though, who often have a tough time fitting qualitative data into their charts. But there it is.
Update: Greg Forster writes me to say he is not an economist--he's a political scientist--and that he doesn't understand why so many mistake his profession. Perhaps he's just??so darn sensible that everyone who meets him??thinks, "That Forster must be an economist."??(One hopes he's not??so darn dismal as to induce a similar reaction!)
Joanne Jacobs??takes aim at the disparities between charter and traditional public school performance standards. She writes,
Ohio is closing two chronically low-performing charter schools. That's good. But the perform-or-else rule applies only to charters. Fourteen district-run schools would be closed if the same standards were applied. All will remain in business.
Did you routinely win the estimate-the-weight-of-a-pumpkin contests at the state fair? Always know how to sneak on an already too crowded train? You may be stupendous at math! Or so a new study from Johns Hopkins, which as found a link between number sense--the ability for humans to estimate numbers--and math ability, concludes. Don't run out and spend all your money on those jelly bean jar raffle tickets to practice, though, since researchers have not yet figured out if number sense can be learned.
My doubts were unfounded. Kathy Cox, the state superintendent of Georgia, is officially smarter than a fifth grader and is $1 million richer to prove it. The money will go to three special needs schools in her home state.
The Obama campaign has released a new advertisement??that hits John McCain on education:
"When they grow up, will the economy be strong enough?" asks the announcer in the 30-second spot, titled ???What Kind.'
"Barack Obama understands what it takes to make America No. 1 in education again. John McCain doesn't understand.
"John McCain voted to cut education funding. Against accountability standards. He even proposed abolishing the Department of Education. And John McCain's economic plan gives two hundred billion more to special interests while taking money away from public schools.
"We can't afford more of the same," the announcer continues, as the screen fades to the traditional closing image of McCain and President Bush together.
The funding line is pretty typical election-year stuff. Democrats want lots more money for the schools; Republicans don't. (Though the GOP certainly went on a spending spree in the early years of the Bush Administration.) As for voting to abolish the Department of Education, well, that's true enough, if ancient history now. (It's kinda like saying that many Democrats voted against welfare reform. They did, but they've mostly moved past it.)
But saying that McCain voted "against accountability standards": I've not a clue what that refers to. But one thing is clear: "No Child Left Behind" remained unspoken.
In today's speech??(see here, too), Barack Obama said:
For decades, [Washington's] been stuck in the same tired debates over education that have crippled our progress and left schools and parents to fend for themselves. It's been Democrat versus Republican, vouchers versus the status quo, more money versus more reform.?? There's partisanship and there's bickering, but there's no understanding that both sides have good ideas that we'll need to implement if we hope to make the changes our children need.?? And we've fallen further and further behind as a result. ?? ??
If we're going to make a real and lasting difference for our future, we have to be willing to move beyond the old arguments of left and right and take meaningful, practical steps to build an education system worthy of our children and our future.??
Those lines might have made sense a decade ago, but is he forgetting No Child Left Behind? There's plenty to criticize about the law, but there's little doubt that it was a bipartisan effort that moved "beyond the old arguments of left and right." Where are the props for George W. Bush and Ted Kennedy?
Checker goes in search of those elusive words, No Child Left Behind, and returns empty-handed.