Charters offer students over the age of 18 an alternative path to graduating high school

The U.S. Senate will soon vote on the nomination of Betsy DeVos, and it appears the vote may be a 50-50 tie, in which case Vice President Pence will break the tie. We believe DeVos’s confirmation would be a mistake, and we urge senators to vote against it. She supports the idea that every student should be able to use publicly funded vouchers to attend private schools, and we believe such broad voucher programs would be a huge mistake.

States have already begun to pass voucher programs available to almost every student. Louisiana’s program allows almost half of public school students to apply for vouchers. Nevada passed a bill allowing virtually every family access, but fortunately, the courts ruled it unconstitutional. The Arizona House passed a similar bill. With DeVos as Secretary of Education, there will be high-level national support for such legislation.

We understand that vouchers for poor, inner-city children expand the opportunities available to them. But when vouchers are available to all or almost all, they will undermine what little equal opportunity still exists in our public schools. Wealthy parents will add money to the voucher—because they love their children—and buy $30,000-per-year educations. Upper middle class parents will buy $20,000-a-year educations; middle class parents will buy $15,000-a-year educations; and poor and working class parents will be stuck in schools that accept the voucher as full payment.

What little mixing of income levels we have today will vanish, and with it any hope of equal opportunity. Children will also lose the chance to rub elbows with those from different social classes, races, and ethnic groups. That experience creates a more tolerant society, willing to embrace diversity—a huge asset in a racially and culturally diverse nation such as ours. Its absence creates the opposite.

We also believe that all schools receiving public funds should be held accountable for their performance. Louisiana and Indiana do this with vouchers, but most voucher programs include no accountability to the public. If students don’t learn to read and do math, nothing happens—the schools continue to collect the vouchers. Some parents might pull their children out of school, but if students don’t take standardized tests, how will their parents know? Experience with charter schools teaches that some parents will stick with a school if it is safe and nurturing even if reading and math scores are abysmal, so we cannot rely on parents to abandon all failing schools even if we do require testing.

Should more states enact broad voucher programs accessible to most students, we doubt there will be political support for accountability. Once every private school and almost every family is eligible for voucher money, the lobbying pressure against public accountability will be too strong.

Eli Broad, founder of the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation (a PPI funder), wrote a letter to all senators last week to “urge them to vote against Mrs. DeVos confirmation.” No one has been a fiercer advocate for education reform, including public charter schools, than Mr. Broad. We agree with him when he writes, “We must have a Secretary of Education who will vigorously defend the rights of all students to have safe, fair and equitable learning opportunities.”

Kudos to Governor Andrew Cuomo for proposing that the New York State legislature abolish the charter schools cap that limits the sector’s expansion in New York City. As a group, the city’s charters have long been high performers. Despite opposition from adults in the system – particularly the teachers’ union – we must never lose sight of what is most important: the students. Lifting the cap will help poor and minority students who need help the most.

Cuomo’s proposal is in direct contrast to the unwise decision made by Massachusetts voters to keep their charter school cap. Massachusetts has some of the highest-performing charters in the country. Why would people want to deny them to poor, minority kids in Boston, Springfield, Worcester, Lawrence, and other urban centers? Could it be because the Massachusetts Teachers Association spent millions of dollars misleading people, warning that charters would drain money from their school districts?

This is not the first time Governor Cuomo has stood up for public school choice and innovation. During his campaign, Mayor Bill de Blasio said he wanted to stop co-locating charters with traditional schools and start charging charters rent if they were in district buildings. He then withdrew permission for three charter schools to share space with traditional schools. In response, Governor Cuomo pushed through a budget agreement that required New York City to find space for charter schools inside public school buildings or pay much of the cost to house them in private space. The legislation also prohibited the city from charging rent to charter schools, something de Blasio had suggested. Governor Cuomo vowed to make sure the city’s charters had “the financial capacity and physical space and government support to thrive and grow.

Progressives have long supported charter schools. While Republicans were focused on vouchers, Democrats led the charge in early charter states: Minnesota, California, Massachusetts, and Colorado among them. President Bill Clinton proposed the first national charter school program in the 1990s, which has since provided $3 billion to start charter schools. President Barack Obama continued to support charters with his Race to the Top grants.

So Governor Cuomo stands in a long line of progressive, reform-minded Democrats who have had the courage to stand up to the teachers unions. For that, we applaud him.

WASHINGTON—The Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) today led a panel discussion at the 2016 NewDEAL Leaders Conference on strategies to ensure that all Americans have the education and skills to succeed in the rapidly changing 21st Century global economy. The panel was moderated by PPI President Will Marshall and featured panelists Harry Holzer, Professor of Public Policy at the McCourt School at Georgetown University, and Bridget Gainer, NewDEAL Leader Cook County Commissioner (Ill.).

Marshall discussed PPI’s Reinventing America’s Schools Project headed by Senior Fellow David Osborne—focusing on how policymakers can innovate and reinvest in education and the importance of reimagining public schools for the knowledge economy, with an emphasis on why reimagined charter schools can and must lead the way.

“The longer students stay at charters, the larger the benefit. By the time a student spends four or more years enrolled in an urban charter school, we can expect their annual academic growth to be 108 days greater in math and 72 days greater in reading per year than their peers in traditional public schools,” said Will Marshall, highlighting the work of David Osborne at PPI. “Since traditional school years last about 180 days, this is equivalent of an extra half-year of learning, every year.”

As Osborne has noted, rising inequality was a major underlying issue in the 2016 Presidential Campaign, yet the candidates avoided the subject of K-12 education and its impact on closing the inequality gap. The gap in standardized test scores between affluent students and the poor has grown at least 49% since the 1960s. The gap in college competition between those whose families make $109K a year or more and those making $34K a year or less has grown to 77%. As education levels largely dictate income levels, the education gap widening and education levels mattering more in the job market have created a vicious cycle. Stanford Professor Sean Reardon says, “As the children of the rich do better in school, and those who do better in school are more likely to become rich. We risk producing an even more unequal and economically polarized society.” Charter schools have started to close these gaps, according to Osborne’s research.

Holzer spoke on the need for new and meaningful postsecondary education or training for working class Americans to find jobs that pay enough to sustain a middle-class life and stressed the role of community colleges—expanding on ideas proposed in his report for PPI, Creating New Pathways into Middle Class Jobs. Gainer spoke about the promising new approaches to apprenticeships that she has been working on in Chicago.

To learn more about PPI’s Reinventing America’s Schools Project visit www.progressivepolicy.org or email Taylor Miller-Freutel at tmillerfreutel@ppionline.org.

Betsy DeVos, Donald Trump’s pick to be his Secretary of Education, is often described as a champion of school choice. Progressives should know that she defines “school choice” in ways that undermine public accountability and blur the crucial distinction between public and private education.

“We think of the educational choice movement as involving many parts: vouchers and tax credits, certainly, but also virtual schools, magnet schools, homeschooling, and charter schools,” DeVos said in 2013 interview.

DeVos grew up in Michigan, where she met her husband Dick DeVos, an heir to the Amway direct-sales fortune. Together they helped pass Michigan’s charter school law in 1993, which has failed to hold charter authorizers accountable for the quality of their schools. Michigan’s charters are some of the least regulated in the country, and about 80 percent are run by for-profit companies. If one authorizer denies a charter or tries to close a failing charter, the school often simply shops for a more laissez-faire authorizer. Hence failing charters are often allowed to stay open, which has helped create an estimated 30,000 empty seats in Detroit.

The DeVos’s own children attend private Christian schools. Betsy DeVos founded and serves as chairwoman of the American Federation of Children and its associated political arm. She has used this political platform to vigorously support candidates who endorse vouchers. The DeVos family has also made political donations to discourage lawmakers from increasing oversight on charter schools.

The Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) helped to pioneer the charter school concept in the early 1990s. But it has always drawn a sharp distinction between charter schools, which are public, and vouchers, which allow students to attend private schools at public expense. The problem is, those private schools are not accountable to the taxpayers in any way. All too often, they aren’t very good schools. Even in states that do hold them accountable, like Louisiana, research has shown that students who participated in the voucher program experienced declines in achievement test scores of eight to 16 percentile points.

Another big problem with vouchers is that if we give them to poor children, eventually the middle class will want them, too. Already, several states have passed laws allowing the majority of families to access vouchers. (Fortunately, Nevada’s was found unconstitutional.) When this happens, any semblance of equal opportunity will fly out the window.

Let’s say the voucher is worth $10,000 per child. Poor and working class parents will send their kids to $10,000 schools. Middle class parents may send their kids to $15,000 schools, adding some of their own money to the voucher. More affluent parents will send their kids to $20,000 schools, $25,000 schools, and beyond. I’m not blaming them: We all love our children, and we want what’s best for them. But public policy should protect the common good as well as private goods. And public education, despite all its inequality, is perhaps the only place left in American society where we even make an effort to create equal opportunity. If we lose that, we lose something precious–and we kick the growing inequality undermining our society into high gear.

We should push for more integration of public schools by race and class, because research shows that it helps low-income students without harming higher-income students. Beyond that, in a multi-racial, multi-cultural nation, we need to promote experiences that help people rub elbows with those from different races and classes. That experience teaches people that underneath our skins we are all alike. It builds tolerance into our society. After the elections we’ve just experienced, it should be abundantly clear that we need more tolerance in America, not less.

Betsy DeVos’s goal is different — to radically diminish public oversight of public schools, and to steer more dollars into unaccountable private schools.

That’s not the kind of “school choice” progressives should support.

Rising college tuition prices have become a serious obstacle for many low and middle income students. One potential way to manage those costs is through Advanced Placement (AP), which allows students to earn college credit in high school, thereby reducing the time and money needed for a degree. But not all colleges grant credit for AP, and many cap the amount they accept or require test scores above the AP standard.

In a recent report, Paul Weinstein, Jr., of the Progressive Policy Institute, documents the limits colleges place on AP credit. He recommends new requirements — that colleges accept AP credit and students’ test fees be waived — to ensure the benefits of AP are equally accessible to all students.

AEI’s Nat Malkus responds with concern, countering that Weinstein’s recommendations might have unintended consequences for AP programs, which have successfully produced value for students and colleges alike by maintaining quality even as access has increased.

Both make compelling points. We invited them to discuss them below, hoping to foster constructive, substantial dialogue on how policy should influence these valuable programs.

Paul Weinstein:

The American higher education system is the finest in the world. Yet there are big cracks in the ceiling and the cause is money – or more specifically the amount of cash students need to attend college and graduate school.

Fueled by the ability of students to access relatively cheap loans through the student loan program, colleges and universities have been jacking up the cost of college. Since 1981, tuition and fees have risen 129% in real terms while median family incomes have grown only 11% over the same period.

Current reform proposals such as debt forgiveness and more subsidized loans will enable schools to continue to raise the price of tuition. To cut the cost of college and ensure students get the best educational experience – on campus – we must help students earn their bachelor’s degree faster. Moving to a three-year degree would save students anywhere from $9,000 (public institutions) to $30,000 (private institutions), open more slots at better schools, and avoid pushing students into MOOCs or shady for-profit institutions.

How do we transition to a three-year degree? One step is to ensure that students who successfully complete Advanced Placement (AP) courses, the International Baccalaureate (IB), or other recognized assessments receive actual course credit instead of a pat on the back.

Unfortunately, despite encouraging students to spend time and money on AP courses and tests, colleges aren’t always giving them course credit when students succeed.  Among the top 152 colleges and universities, 83 percent restrict AP credit (including a growing number that deny credit completely). Schools argue they are acting to ensure quality – that AP courses don’t measure up.  Yet many of those same schools acknowledge that these students have mastered college-level coursework by allowing them to waive core requirements for that same AP coursework.  That simply does not pass the smell test.

It’s time for schools to reward hard work and put students first.  Ensuring colleges and universities do not overly restrict AP and IB credit for the sake of additional revenue should be prevented.  And no school that encourages applicants to take AP and IB courses should be allowed to deny course credit for successful work.

Nat Malkus:

Paul, you rightly identify rising college costs as a problem, and I agree it’s far better to lower those costs, rather than pumping more money into the system. It’s also prudent to make the most of proven systems, like AP courses and exams, in that effort.

I encourage readers to read your succinct report, because it usefully leverages new data to plainly show that some students may be in for a bait-and-switch when they learn they won’t get college credits for their hard earned AP scores. This issue is worthy of attention, but I think the problem may be smaller than you believe, and that your solution could have negative unintended consequences.

The data indeed show a majority of institutions restrict AP credit.  However, only 6% refuse all AP credit, and the remainder give credit for 85% of AP exams. Most institutions accept the standard score of 3, while a minority require 4’s or 5’s. Again, most take all students’ AP credit, but 38% have an upper limit. As I see it, giving full credit for AP work isn’t the exception. It’s the rule.

Nonetheless, relatively small problems may still warrant a solution. But requiring all colleges and universities to give full AP credits will take away an important check on AP program quality.

Critics have long warned that AP quality is or will be eroded by rapid program growth.  My research suggests such watering down of AP hasn’t happened broadly, yet, and it is worth considering why. In part, it is because the College Board has had to focus on quality because AP serves both students and post-secondary institutions, and they serve neither well if quality slips and more institutions refuse credit.

If AP credit were required by law, it would erode the pressure to maintain AP rigor to preserve the high voluntary acceptance rates among post-secondary institutions. Those high acceptance rates are evidence of AP’s high quality. It’s predictable – and it would be unfortunate – that an overzealous effort to maximize the benefits of AP could ultimately undermine the educational quality of such a successful program.

Paul Weinstein:

Nat, your excellent research is really key here – that the rapid growth in AP course and exam takers has not diminished the quality of the program.  Unfortunately, many schools have used that fallacious argument to restrict or eliminate credit for AP work. Just look at the case of Dartmouth.  With regards to your argument that “giving full credit for AP work isn’t the exception. It’s the rule,” I would reiterate that not only do the majority of institutions on my list limit AP credit, but almost half don’t offer any credit for a score of 3 – and even among those schools that do accept a minimum score of 3, most require a score of 4 or 5 for certain AP subjects.

Your second point, that a government solution could lower AP quality, is worthy of consideration.  There are always positive and negative consequences to any policy.  But one way to ensure quality remains high is to give schools a seat at the table in developing the AP curriculum and examinations.

Nat Malkus:

Paul, I think we agree on the problem here, and only marginally disagree on its scale. I am less convinced than you that post-secondary institutions limit AP credit primarily for profit, but wholeheartedly agree that institutions that do so should stop.

Your report proposes some big solutions — that Congress mandate AP credit and the administration underwrite AP exam fees — which I have taken issue with elsewhere.  I will add here that those solutions are unlikely, especially given Congressional productivity.

Since it is too easy to critique without offering solutions, I will throw out one of my own which would be readily achievable. The Department of Education could collect and report institutions’ AP credit policies­, including the exams for which they give credit, any caps they have, and what scores they accept. That transparency won’t force any changes, but institutions that want the best students will have to balance their AP restrictions with possibly losing some of them. The administration has made multiple attempts to shed light on college costs and outcomes, and this is an easy step in that direction. If nothing else, by making the terms for credit clear up front, it could keep unwitting students from the AP bait-and-switch.

Paul Weinstein, Jr. is a senior fellow at the Progressive Policy Institute and director of the graduate program in public management at Johns Hopkins University. Nat Malkus is a research fellow in education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute.