Teaching Turkeyday: Making Milwaukee Voucher Schools Play Fair

"Teaching Tuesday" just didn't happen in a timely fashion this week, y'all.

Thoughtful Cheddarspherean (and this week's Carnival host) Dean asked me the other day, in comments, if I'd seen his fellow "Community Voices" columnist's colum from Monday this week. Indeed, I had, but I hadn't gotten to blogging it yet. So, here we go.

Dean mentioned that he agreed with Lois Moore's column. I do to, to an extent. Let me quote the parts I agree with first:

It's time private schools advertised truthfully that they are not held accountable to the taxpayers. They do not currently have to squander resources trying to teach kids how to pass a standardized test to avoid sanctions and closure if all students do not achieve, as required of public schools.

This is particularly disturbing when the fact that private schools may turn down or throw out any student who does not fit their cookie-cutter mentality. For example, they can turn down physically, mentally and emotionally challenged students or students with behavior or truancy problems.

Public schools must educate anyone and moreover must develop an individual educational program for each challenged student. They must teach every student how to pass the standardized tests, even those who are not learning at grade level, for their scores will be included in the school's evaluation regardless of the student's ability to learn the required curriculum.

How does the exclusion of these students, and exclusion of private schools from accountability tests, justify receiving public money that should be going to the public schools to address the severe problems associated with poverty, unemployment and special needs of MPS students? If private schools boast that they can have smaller class sizes, why is it wrong for public schools to work toward that goal?

Right on, sister.

Here's one of the biggest problems with the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program: Choice schools exist, on the state's dime, as a separate shadow system of essentially unaccountable schools. Wisconsin taxpayers are supporting two systems of schooling in Milwaukee, one that is demonstrably failing and one that may or may not be failing, we're not really sure, and that's okay that we don't know, since the less we know the better off we are. Tortured logic, if logic at all, I know.

Moore is right that choice schools can summarily remove students who don't fit the program. Choice schools do, however, lose whatever remaining disbursements are due them for such ousted students (though if they time it right, they can do well) and MPS does not get the funds, either, to pay for the students' presence in MPS classrooms post-ouster. Still, if it comes down to it, a school may feel it's better off one kid short. Choice schools can also decline to accept special needs kids (and their state money) if they don't have the facilities to handle them. And, as I am fond of pointing out, choice schools are under no obligation to collect or report any performance data of any sort to anyone at all.

What is left unsaid is that choice schools are also allowed to operate with no accountability to the community they serve, either. They don't have to report to hold open meetings or even tell parents anything (.pdf) at all about what goes on in the school. This is an untenable situation that has been allowed to continue for too long.

However, Moore implictly demands something from voucher schools that I will not--standardized testing. Jim Doyle wants it, as evidenced by his recent proposal. I don't. If I were to start advocating for standardized tests, I would be the biggest hypocrite in the world, because, you know, I hate standardized tests. I don't want them for my school, and I wouldn't wish them on my worst enemy's schools. Tests are just about the worst way to judge schools' performance, and in their current implementation, they are not very good at judging students' performance, either.

My plan is simple, and it assures basic quality in voucher schools. Require accreditation, and require all schools to be in operation for one full calendar year before accepting state dollars. No tests, no meddling in curriculum or philosophy of education.

Lois Moore is on the right track, in that the choice program needs serious revision. However, testing choice students, as with testing public school students, is not the answer.