Education Policy Group Post
This is the Education Policy Group area. Use the comment thread here to discuss on which specific education policy to focus, and to allocate the specific parts of the brief to individuals to research and write.
The challenge of Cornell in the nation's capital
This is the Education Policy Group area. Use the comment thread here to discuss on which specific education policy to focus, and to allocate the specific parts of the brief to individuals to research and write.
I think we should definitely include the Voucher system for private schools. I am not sure how the best way to incorporate that would be, but it is a good idea.
My recommendation would be to address something to do with student loan debt. Student loan interest rates are set to double next month and for the first time ever, student loan debt exceeds credit card debt in the aggregate, nationally. This issue sound really hit home being that we’re all probably holding some of that debt.
Good suggestions, both. One would be a look at K-12 education and the other would be higher education. Any preferences?
–Silbey
Vouchers might be interesting, but that is a state government issue, not really a federal government issue. I think we should keep the focus on K-12 education. It might be worth looking at recent education battles, like those that Michelle Rhee encountered. I would propose examining student evaluation methods. For example, NCLB increased the fed’s role in education and stipulated that every state must conduct annual testing, etc. It might be interesting to see if we could propose minimum achievement standards and tie that to funding.
I also think the best option is focusing on K-12
I would recommend that if we are going to do education reform it is completely reasonable to add in Vouchers as a way of cutting down on taxes that need to be paid by letting the constituents that are putting children through school put the equivalent of what they would pay in taxes towards public schools and let them put that towards private school tuitions. This would be easily sustainable by slashing No Child Left Behind as it has become a hugely complicated bill of $25billion dollars. If you convert the worth of the Johnson’s original Great Society bill that is the skeleton of No Child Left Behind, it was roughly $7.4billion and it has since quadrupled in worth. If you slash it in half to $15 billion of more streamlined grants and ways of distribution.
The distribution of the money can be determined by competency tests, ensuring that the teachers are doing a good job and allowing the citizens to know which schools are the best and then allowing them to enroll in those public or private schools that best suit their children’s learning needs.
Since we’re talking about augmenting or gutting NCLB, I’m willing to shift focus and support K-12 if that is the consensus. Sounds like a fun discussion topic!
So far, this voucher program sounds more like a way to cut taxes rather than a way to improve education, which I think is the overall goal. My fear is that a voucher system would create a barrier to opportunity for those unable to obtain access to a quality private K-12 educational institution. We can’t assume that implementing a voucher system would include everyone unless we’re proposing that we do away with the entire k-12 public education system and fully subsidize for-profit private K-12 tuition. I can’t imagine $25 billion saved by eliminating NCLB would be enough to pick up that tab.
If this about having a choice on where to attend, I’m pretty sure the NCLB policy already accounts for that -I have to double check. Plus, I’m unaware of any empirical evidence that suggests that for-profit Charter Schools are, pound for pound, better than the best public schools.
In any event, I think we should first define our goal and determine what the focus is (K-12 vs. Higher Ed) before getting into the 3 policies portion absent an analysis.
Quick question: Are we supposed to be proposing an existing policy, or something unique?
Good discussion so far. Let me suggest that we’re thinking not necessarily about a policy, but a policy *problem* that a policy would answer. I.E. what is the NCLB supposed to correct? What is the problem or issue that we’re trying to deal with? Policies are the solutions to the issues, not the issue themselves.
I agree with the K-12 focus. Our problem could be how to assess student performance and encourage development of basic skills. NCLB could be an option or we could come up with 3 different alternatives.
We could say that the problem is two-fold: (1) that the U.S. lags behind other developed countries in terms of achievement (the number of K-12 students reading on or above their reading levels, proficiency in math and science, etc) and (2) that students from disadvantaged backgrounds are significantly farther behind in terms of achievement. That is technically the justification for ESEA/NCLB/RTTT. Things that we’re talking about like vouchers or opportunity scholarships are methods of creating access to “better” schools for disadvantaged students.
The vast majority of charter schools that are started actually fail, despite what Waiting for Superman chose to portray. But we can investigate that too.
We’ll talk about the competency test thing in class. That’s a fun subject.