Report:
Teacher Training Is Poor

Visit: Club For Growth

June 12, 2008

School Choice Comes to Louisiana

Nachama Soloveichik

I know I've dumped on Jindal, but I like to give credit where it's due. Yesterday, the Louisiana Senate approved legislation that would set up a private school choice program in New Orleans for low-to middle-income students. This is small program, but it is an important step in a state that has long resisted private school choice. In fact, an amendment to extend the program nationwide was defeated 5-29. Jindal is expected to sign the bill.

Miami, Florida, Schoolteacher and Ex-Husband Sentenced for Human Trafficking and Smuggling Charges

A former Miami-area middle school teacher, Maude Paulin, and her ex-husband, Saintfort Paulin, were sentenced today in federal court for committing federal civil rights offenses when they forced a young Haitian teenager to work as a domestic servant in their home, announced Acting Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division Grace Chung Becker and U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida R. Alexander Acosta. U.S. Senior District Judge Jose A. Gonzalez sentenced Maude Paulin to 87 months in prison followed by three years of supervised release and ordered that she, jointly with her co-defendant, pay $162,765 in restitution to the victim. Saintfort Paulin was sentenced to 18 months of probation, including six months in home confinement, and was ordered to pay a $500 fine.

World Magazine

Court: Credential needed to home school

Full article World Magazine

Excerpts:

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- California parents without teaching credentials cannot legally home school their children, according to a recent state appellate court ruling.

The immediate impact of the ruling was not clear. Attorneys for the state Department of Education were reviewing the ruling, and home schooling organizations were lining up against it.

"Parents do not have a constitutional right to home school their children," Justice H. Walter Croskey wrote in a Feb. 28 opinion for the 2nd District Court of Appeal.

TCS Technology.Commerce.Society

Quote from TCS Daily

No Longer Choosing Choice

"In a new City Journal essay, prominent school voucher advocate Sol Stern declares that competition and choice "may not be a panacea," and recommends that choice supporters shift emphasis to standardizing the curriculum.

He's not alone.

Conservatives have long championed central planning in addition to parental choice, but in recent years centralization has been ascendant. Department of Education alumni William Bennett, Chester Finn, and Diane Ravitch, all appointed under Republican administrations, now place greater emphasis on national standards than on choice. Last month, Mr. Finn faulted Ohio's charter school system for placing "too much trust in market forces."

Their faltering support stems from disappointment with the impact of existing U.S. charter school and voucher programs, and what they think it says about market reform in general. Stern, for instance, laments that while Milwaukee's voucher program has benefitted the low income students who gained access to private schools, it has not dramatically improved the city's public schools."

From: San Diego News

Full article To San Diego News

Excerpts:

OCEANSIDE, Calif. -- John Corcoran graduated from college and taught high school for 17 years without being able to read, write or spell.

Corcoran's life of secrecy started at a young age. He said his teachers moved him up from grade to grade. Often placed in what he calls the "dumb row," the images of his tribulations in the classroom are still vividly clear.

"I can remember when I was 8 years old saying my prayers at night saying, 'please, God, tomorrow when it's my turn to read please let me read.' You just pretend that you are invisible and when the teacher says, 'Johnnie read,' you just wait the teacher out because you know the teacher has to go away at some point," said Corcoran.

Political Correctnes and the Water Closet

PC WC

by: Deborah Lambert, January 29, 2008

Full article Full Article at campus report online.com

Excerpt:

If you think the level of academic conferences can’t sink any lower, read on.

Last fall, New York University offered a day-long seminar titled “Sex, Gender and the Public Toilet: Outing the Water Closet.” Cultural commentator/author Roger Kimball reported that it took four departments to tackle this weighty topic: the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality, the Department of Media, Culture and Communication, the Center for Religion and Media, and the Council on Media and Culture.

Teachers Unions flexed their powerful but destructive muscles once again.

Several months ago the Utah legislature passed a measure allowing vouchers for the state's children.

To satisfy all parties including the unions who always claim that the voucher money taken from public schools will hurt those schools, it was agreed that the per pupil expenditure for each child who left a public school would still be paid to that school for 5 years.

The work done by all sides was agonizing to arrive at and pass that legislation.

Because teachers always want state and federal budgets to be higher, so their salaries can go higher and higher, they were able to get the matter on the state ballot.

Priority to children from teachers keeps going down so their salaries can keep going up, along with teacher tenure and other forces of power that keeps our kids in a failing system.

Excerpt from Michael Barone article

The Muscle of Public Employee Unions

...The teachers and other public employee unions have a vested interest in getting higher pay and less accountability. Higher pay is bad for taxpayers. Less accountability is bad for the intended beneficiaries of public services. The best argument for liberals' lock-step support of public employee unions is that they are the only powerful constituency that supports increased public services, and to mobilize such a constituency you have to serve its institutional interests. Those making such an argument might go on to say that conservatives serve the institutional interests of some of their constituencies in ways that produce bad public policy.

That's a serious argument, I suppose, but it still leaves poor kids worse off. The teacher unions have been spending huge amounts of money to overturn Utah's statewide school voucher law in a referendum next Tuesday, as George Will reports. The teachers unions' "idea of progress is preservation of the status quo," Will writes. Let's hope they lose...

Michael Barone's article

Excerpts from article Below

From: Campus Report Online.net

America’s Middle Class Nightmare

by: Emmanuel Opati, October 23, 2007

It has been reported that middle-class children in suburban schools are not as proficient at their grade levels as most parents think.

Presenting their research findings from a study carried out among California middle class schools, at the Heritage Foundation recently, Lance Izumi and Dr. Vicki Murray noted that of the 284 California middle-class schools where the median home price was more than $400,000, 78% of the students failed standardized tests in English or Math.

Although the U.S. Department of Education’s Nation’s Report Cardwhich was released in September indicated that “Reading skills are improving for both fourth- and eighth-graders, particularly among lower- and middle-performing students,” Izumi argues that “mediocrity now appears to be a systemic tide that has seeped into the middle-class suburban schools.”

Many American families, it was argued, purchase homes in affluent communities as a key to unlocking better opportunities for their children. “The major reason why middle-class families buy expensive homes is for the public school system,” said Mr. Izumi. “School quality is the most important factor in difference in prices of similar homes” he added.

Mr. Izumi Lance, who is the Director of Education Studies at Pacific Research Institute, said “living in a middle-class suburb does not necessarily guarantee a good education to children.”

He said that statistics from their research indicate “nearly 300 schools across California in some of the priciest places did not have at least 50% of their grade level proficiency.”

For instance “at Hillsdale High, a school in an affluent suburb with a median house cost of $867,000 (and which was voted as a California Distinguished School by the Department of Education), amongst 11th graders only 40% are proficient in English,” he said.

10-25-07

Beliefs Which Are Accepted But Not Necessarily True, Maybe Even Highly Inaccurate:

Upscale neighborhoods with expensive homes means good schools

Findings: "that in nearly 300 schools in middle-class and affluent neighborhoods, "less than half of the students in at least one grade level performed at proficiency in state math and English tests."

In one Silicon Valley community where the median home goes for $1.6 million, less than half of 10th and 11th graders scored at or above proficiency on the state English exam.

###

The following article is from:

LA Times

Jonah Goldberg:

Do away with public schools

Government is inept at running schools. It should subsidize education for needy students, then get out of the way.

June 12, 2007

HERE'S A GOOD question for you: Why have public schools at all?

OK, cue the marching music. We need public schools because blah blah blah and yada yada yada. We could say blah is common culture and yada is the government's interest in promoting the general welfare. Or that children are the future. And a mind is a terrible thing to waste. Because we can't leave any child behind.

The problem with all these bromides is that they leave out the simple fact that one of the surest ways to leave a kid "behind" is to hand him over to the government. Americans want universal education, just as they want universally safe food. But nobody believes that the government should run 90% of the restaurants, farms and supermarkets. Why should it run 90% of the schools — particularly when it gets terrible results?

Consider Washington, home of the nation's most devoted government-lovers and, ironically, the city with arguably the worst public schools in the country. Out of the 100 largest school districts, according to the Washington Post, D.C. ranks third in spending for each pupil — $12,979 — but last in spending on instruction. Fifty-six cents out of every dollar goes to administrators who, it's no secret, do a miserable job administrating, even though D.C. schools have been in a state of "reform" for nearly 40 years.

In a blistering series, the Post has documented how badly the bureaucrats have run public education. More than half of the District of Columbia's kids spend their days in "persistently dangerous" schools, with an average of nine violent incidents a day in a system with 135 schools. "Principals reporting dangerous conditions or urgently needed repairs in their buildings wait, on average, 379 days … for the problems to be fixed," according to the Post. But hey, at least the kids are getting a lousy education. A mere 19 schools managed to get "proficient" scores or better for a majority of students on the district's Comprehensive Assessment Test.

A standard response to such criticisms is to say we don't spend enough on public education. But if money were the solution, wouldn't the district, which spends nearly $13,000 on every kid, rank near the top? If you think more money will fix the schools, make your checks out to "cash" and send them to me.

Private, parochial and charter schools get better results. Parents know this. Applications for vouchers in the district dwarf the available supply, and home schooling has exploded.

As for schools teaching kids about the common culture and all that, as a conservative I couldn't agree more. But is there evidence that public schools are better at it? According to the 2006 National Assessment of Educational Progress history and civics exams, two-thirds of U.S. high school seniors couldn't identify the significance of a photo of a theater with a sign reading "Colored Entrance." And keep in mind, political correctness pretty much guarantees that Jim Crow and the civil rights movement are included in syllabi. Imagine how few kids can intelligently discuss Manifest Destiny or free silver.

Right now, there's a renewed debate about providing "universal" health insurance. For some liberals, this simply means replicating the public school model for health care. (Stop laughing.) But for others, this means mandating that everyone have health insurance — just as we mandate that all drivers have car insurance — and then throwing tax dollars at poorer folks to make sure no one falls through the cracks.

There's a consensus in America that every child should get an education, but as David Gelernter noted recently in the Weekly Standard, there's no such consensus that public schools need to do the educating.

Really, what would be so terrible about government mandating that every kid has to go to school, and providing subsidies and oversight when necessary, but then getting out of the way?

Milton Friedman noted long ago that the government is bad at providing services — that's why he wanted public schools to be called "government schools" — but that it's good at writing checks. So why not cut checks to people so they can send their kids to school?

What about the good public schools? Well, the reason good public schools are good has nothing to do with government's special expertise and everything to do with the fact that parents care enough to ensure their kids get a good education. That wouldn't change if the government got out of the school business. What would change is that fewer kids would get left behind.

jgoldberg@latimescolumnists.com

The National Center for Public Policy Research

# 552

April 2007

The Teachers' Lesson: How To Scam Social Security

by David Hogberg, Ph.D.

How would you like to work for just one day and earn thousands of dollars for it afterwards? Perhaps that sounds like an infomercial on cable TV at three in the morning. Or maybe it sounds like another FOX TV “reality show.” In fact, it is the experience of more than a few Texas schoolteachers.

In 2002, the Dallas Morning News reported that the Coleman Independent School District advertised on its website a “Temporary Employment Program” that “may include custodial work, cafeteria work, clerical work, classroom aide.”1 Most important, the website stated, “if employed by Coleman ISD in a temporary role your compensation for the work will have deductions for the Teacher Retirement System and for Social Security.” What Coleman was advertising was a well-known (among Texas teachers) legal loophole that enabled teachers to get more spousal benefits out of Social Security.

Decades ago, a public employee whose spouse was employed in a job covered by Social Security would have three sources of retirement income. The employee would have a public pension, the spouse would have a Social Security benefit, and, because the employee was married to a Social Security beneficiary, the employee would be eligible for a full Social Security spousal benefit. In 1977 Congress ended this practice by passing the Government Pension Offset (GPO). Under GPO, a public employee’s spousal Social Security benefit was reduced by $2 for every $3 he received in his public pension.2

Public school teachers in Texas eventually found a loophole in GPO. They could still receive their public pension and full Social Security spousal benefits if, during their last day of public employment, they were in a job covered by both Social Security and a public pension program. School district jobs such as janitor and cafeteria worker fit the bill nicely. A system was developed to exploit this loophole, which worked out well for both teacher and school district alike. Teachers would be hired for one day to mop some floors or do similar work, which made them eligible to receive much larger retirement benefits courtesy of the U.S. taxpayer. The school districts would charge the teachers “fees” for the privilege of holding these one day jobs, fees that would add up to millions of dollars for the districts.3

Congress eventually got wind of this scam, and had the Government Accountability Office investigate. The GAO issued a report in 2003 noting the use of loophole was growing, with officials of one Texas school district reporting “that use of the exemption grew from one worker in 1996 to 1,050 in 2002.”4 In 2004, Congress closed the loophole with legislation requiring public employees be employed for five years in a job covered by Social Security in order to be eligible for full spousal benefits. However, the GAO report concluded that exploiting the loophole was legal and that the teachers would get away with it:

…the law provides an exemption from the GPO if an individual’s last day of state/local government employment is in a position that is covered by both Social Security and their state/local pension system. In these cases, the GPO will not apply, and Social Security spousal benefits will not be reduced.5

Enter Joe Fried, a CPA who runs a Texas-based nonprofit, the Public Program Testing Organization, which studies the effectiveness of government programs. Fried has written a book on Social Security that contains a chapter on this scandal.6 “The book was the first time I’d looked into it,” said Fried. “I returned to it after the book, and the more I looked into it, the more it became a kind of crusade.”7 However, Fried was unable to get the Social Security Administration to take any action. Using the Texas Public Records Act, he launched his own investigation. He compiled a bevy of evidence that he turned over to the Inspector General of the Social Security Administration. That was enough for the Inspector General to launch his own investigation in October 2005.

In late January of this year the Inspector General released his report on the scandal. It was damning. The report estimates “that 19,212 individuals will receive $110 million in spousal benefits annually to which they may not be entitled. Over their lifetime, they will potentially receive about $2.2 billion in spousal benefits.”8 The report examines seven Texas school districts, finding that the “school districts collected approximately $7.4 million in fees from their one-day workers, while only paying them about $900,000.”9

The report further noted that five of the districts had agreements with the Social Security Administration that precluded them from providing Social Security to part time workers. The Inspector General was not impressed with the districts’ claim that the one-day jobs were full-time jobs: “Although school district officials stated they hired the one-day workers for full-time positions, we found there was no intent or expectation by either party that the employment would last longer than one day.”10

Unfortunately, the overall reaction to this scandal has been a collective yawn. Other than a few press stories, the media has largely ignored it. No one in Congress is calling for an investigation. And the Social Security Administration seems determined to ignore its own Inspector General and sweep the matter under the rug. The Waco Tribune-Herald reports that Social Security Administration spokesman Mark Hinkle, in an interview with the paper, “stressed the agency doesn’t anticipate finding problems.”11, 12

According to the Tribune-Herald, the Social Security Administration will only review whether the school districts had valid participation agreements with Social Security. The agency will not investigate if those agreements were misused or if individual teachers are receiving benefits to which they are not entitled. “We’re not even getting down to that level,” Hinkle said. “We’re just looking at (the agreement) on file and seeing that everything is in order.”13

Fried sees it differently. “Can you imagine if this was a private company?” he asks. “In the Tyco scandal, CEO Dennis Kozlowski stole $600 million from private investors, and the media and prosecutors were all over it. This is over $2 billion bilked from the taxpayers and no one seems to care.”14

Fried also notes that a new Social Security Commissioner, Michael J. Astrue, was just approved by Congress. Says Fried, “Whether Astrue takes this scandal seriously is the first true test of his leadership.” Indeed, it is.

# # #

David Hogberg, Ph.D. is senior policy analyst at The National Center for Public Policy Research in Washington, D.C. Comments may be sent to dhogberg@nationalcenter.org.

Footnotes:

1. Allen Pusey, “GAO: Some Texas schools helping teachers tap Social Security,” The Dallas Morning News, August 8, 2002, reprinted by Teachers.net, available at http://www.teachers.net/gazette/SEP02/loophole.html as of February 17, 2007.

2. “Government Pension Offset,” Electronic Fact Sheet, Social Security Administration, SSA Publication No. 05-10007, January 2007, available at http://www.ssa.gov/pubs/10007.html as of February 18, 2007.

3. Office of the Inspector General, Social Security Administration, “Government Pension Offset Exemption For Texas Districts’ Employees,” Audit Report, A-09-06-26086, January 2007, available at http://www.ssa.gov/oig/ADOBEPDF/audittxt/A-09-06-26086.htm as of February 16, 2007.

4. United States General Accounting Office, “Congress Should Reconsider Revising the Government Pensions Offset ‘Loophole,’” Testimony Before the Subcommittee inn Social Security, Committee on Ways and Means, House of Representatives, February 27, 2003, p.4, available at http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d03498t.pdf as of February 15, 2007.

5. Ibid, p.1.

6. Joseph N. Fried, How Social Security Picks Your Pocket: A Story of Waste Fraud, and Inequities, Algora Publishing, 2003. See chapter five.

7. Interview with Joe Fried on February 17, 2006.

8. Office of the Inspector General, Social Security Administration, “Government Pension Offset Exemption For Texas Districts’ Employees,” Audit Report, A-09-06-26086, January 2007, available at http://www.ssa.gov/oig/ADOBEPDF/audittxt/A-09-06-26086.htm as of February 16, 2007.

9. Ibid.

10. Ibid.

11. Cindy V. Culp, “West ISD’s Role in Teacher Retirement Loophole Under Fire,” February 4, 2007, available at http://www.wacotrib.com/news/content/news/stories/2007/02/04/02042007wacwestloophole.html as of February 16, 2007.

12. Neither Mark Hinkle nor anyone else at the Social Security Administration returned calls seeking comment for this paper.

13. Cindy V. Culp, “West ISD’s Role in Teacher Retirement Loophole Under Fire,” February 4, 2007, available at http://www.wacotrib.com/news/content/news/stories/2007/02/04/02042007wacwestloophole.html as of February 16, 2007.

14. Interview with Joe Fried on February 17, 2006.

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The National Center for Public Policy Research501 Capitol Court, N.E.Washington, D.C. 20002(202) 543-4110Fax (202) 543-5975E-Mail: info@nationalcenter.orgWeb: www.nationalcenter.org

More than half of teachers are educated in programs with the lowest admission standards (often accepting 100% of applicants) and with "the least accomplished professors."

…three-quarters of the country's 1,206 university-level schools of education don't have the capacity to produce excellent teachers, says the report “Educating School Teachers" done by the group, Education Schools Project.

Begun in 2001, the project’s purpose was to examine how America trains its educators and to make suggestions that might improve such instruction.

As to the study itself the Wall Street Journal reports that: “Its report card this week is significant for two reasons.

First, it is based on four years of broad and methodical research, including surveys of school principals and of the deans, faculty members and graduates of education schools.

In addition, researchers studied programs and practices at 28 institutions. No matter how many establishment feathers get ruffled by the results of these inquiries, miffed educators can't easily brush off the basic findings:

There are glaring flaws and gaps in our teacher-training system.”

The director of Education Schools Project, Arthur Levine, is a former president of Columbia's Teacher's College.

Mr. Levine points out “that we're currently facing a national shortage of nearly 200,000 teachers -- at the same time that, "to compete in a global marketplace and sustain a democratic society, the United States requires the most educated population in history."

Society now demands that teaching success be measured no longer by what children have studied but by what they have actually learned.

The Wall Street Journal goes on to give the opinion that “nobody knows what makes a good teacher today”, even comparing the training authorities and required curricula to “Dodge City” and reminds us that in medicine or law, nothing so willy-nilly could take place. Those professions require a universally acknowledged body of knowledge and set of skills.

The report has some serious negatives about university practices which concentrate more on collecting additional tuitions, than on excellence in training.

The article concludes with the recommendation that “all states begin collecting information about how much their schoolchildren have learned from kindergarten through high school so it can be correlated with information about how their teachers were trained. Until this fundamental question is explored and answered -- what kind of training produces teachers who get the best results from their children -- we'll be holding classes in the dark.”

Full Teacher Training Report