School Choice Erroneously Proposed as Way to Promote Economic Development

Key Review Takeaway: Reports offer little support for the use of school choice to spur urban renewal.

Find Documents:

Press Release: http://nepc.info/node/8716
NEPC Review: http://nepc.colorado.edu/thinktank/review-choice
Report Reviewed: https://www.edchoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Renewing-Our-Cities-by-Bartley-Danielsen-David-Harrisson-and-Jing-Zhao.pdf

Contact:

William J. Mathis: (802) 383-0058, wmathis@sover.net
Jennifer Jellison Holme: (512) 475-9398, jholme@austin.utexas.edu

Learn More:

NEPC Resources on School Choice

BOULDER, CO (June 20, 2017) – EdChoice and the American Enterprise Institute each recently released a report contending that the introduction of school choice can promote economic development in economically distressed urban areas. The first report presents a case study of a charter school that has, according to the report, contributed to the economic development of the city of Santa Ana, California. The second report presents a proposal for a hypothetical voucher-like program that, if implemented, would purportedly spur economic development in high-poverty neighborhoods by luring higher income families into those neighborhoods.

Jennifer Jellison Holme and Emily Germain of The University of Texas at Austin reviewed Renewing Our Cities: A Case Study on School Choice’s Role in Urban Renewal and CPR Scholarships: Using Private School Choice to Attack Concentrated Poverty, Crime, and Unemployment.

The reviewers find that both reports make unsupported claims that rely on flawed logic and data. The EdChoice report’s primary weakness is that it fails to collect and analyze data related to the report’s causal assertion that economic development in Santa Ana resulted from the establishment of the charter school. Both reports also overlook significant bodies of relevant research literature. In particular, the American Enterprise Institute report’s claims about the benefits of the proposed program to publicly fund private schooling are unsupported by existing research.

The reviewers also point out that both reports subscribe to an ahistorical explanation for racial and economic segregation in this country – one that is undergirded by market and economic theory and largely ignores the role that government policy played in engineering white, middle-class flight to the suburbs and persistent poverty in urban centers.

The reviewers conclude that these reports offer little useful guidance for policy or practice for those seeking to reform urban schools, to support low-income students, or to uplift urban neighborhoods. The reports’ proposed solutions, which are heavily reliant on markets and trickle-down economic theory, are not only flawed but threaten to exacerbate the educational and geographic inequities that exist.

Find the review by Jennifer Jellison Holme and Emily Germain at:
http://nepc.colorado.edu/thinktank/review-choice

Find Renewing Our Cities: A Case Study on School Choice’s Role in Urban Renewal, by Bartley R. Danielsen, David M. Harrison, and Jing Zhao, published by EdChoice, at:
https://www.edchoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Renewing-Our-Cities-by-Bartley-Danielsen-David-Harrisson-and-Jing-Zhao.pdf

Find CPR Scholarships: Using Private School Choice to Attack Concentrated Poverty, Crime, and Unemployment, by Bartley R. Danielsen, published by American Enterprise Institute, at:
http://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/CPR-Scholarships.pdf

The National Education Policy Center (NEPC) Think Twice Think Tank Review Project (http://thinktankreview.org) provides the public, policymakers, and the press with timely, academically sound reviews of selected publications. The project is made possible in part by support provided by the Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice: http://www.greatlakescenter.org

The National Education Policy Center (NEPC), housed at the University of Colorado Boulder School of Education, produces and disseminates high-quality, peer-reviewed research to inform education policy discussions. Visit us at: http://nepc.colorado.edu

Source: School Choice Erroneously Proposed as Way to Promote Economic Development | National Education Policy Center

Crowdfunding to raise money for medical care: A collection of research from the Journalist’s Resource

Millions of people have turned to crowdfunding platforms to raise money for medical care and stave off bankruptcy. This collection of research examines the trend from multiple angles.

Source: Crowdfunding to raise money for medical care: A collection of research – Journalist’s Resource

Children left in hot cars: Data and research

This collection of research studies and reports looks at child deaths in hot vehicles, including how the conditions inside automobiles contribute to heat stroke and death.

Source: Children left in hot cars: Data and research – Journalist’s Resource

Who serves in the military: Parsing Pentagon data

Since the end of the draft in the 1970s, the U.S. military has become a professional fighting force. But is it representative of Americans? Not really.

Go To The Source: Who serves in the military: Parsing Pentagon data – Journalist’s Resource

Seen a fake news story recently? You’re more likely to believe it next time

Talk of fake news dominated the 2016 presidential election cycle. New research examines how people fall for such disinformation.

Read More at the Source: Seen a fake news story recently? You’re more likely to believe it next time – Journalist’s Resource

Town Hall Meeting in NE Grand Rapids a clear example of NIMBY

Grand Rapids Institute for Information Democracy

About 60 people showed up to a meeting last night that was held outside across from a building that some people believe might be the future site of the Guiding Light Mission.

A Facebook posting and a flyer (seen here) is what brought out people to the gathering.

Mike Farage, someone who is running for 2nd Ward City Commission, was facilitating the meeting and another person was passing out a document that said it was presenting facts about what was happening.

One “fact” that the document listed said, “A developer purchases the property from the City of Grand Rapids to do a 15 year build to lease to the General Services Administration (GSA) for Federal VA use.” This fact seemed to be called into question, since according to the City Parcel map, the current owner of the property is listed as VA Ventures Grand Rapids, which is based in Crown…

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Under the GOP’s health plan, sexual assault could be considered a pre-existing condition

The Catalysts for Change

ByMarieSolis on MIC

“After failing to bring their Affordable Care Act replacement to a voteinMarch, GOP legislators have come armed with a new health care plan that may be even more heartless than their last. 

According toRawStory, the bill’s recently added MacArthur Meadows Amendment would ditch theACA’sprotectionsfor pre-existing conditions — sexual assault being one of them.”

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Massachusetts Teachers Take A Stand Against “Personalized Learning”

Wrench in the Gears

During the annual meeting in May, representatives of the Massachusetts Teachers Association overwhelming approved three New Business Items opposing the roll out of so-called “personalized” learning programs in the Commonwealth via the MAPLE/LearnLaunch initiative. Additionally, a commitment was made to expand research the MTA has been conducting on privatization to include “personalized” learning and to create a webpage to share information and document the harm being done by such programs to teaching and learning.

I have written about digital curriculum in Massachusetts HERE and HERE. Mark Zuckerberg’s “personalized” learning platform Summit Basecamp has been making its way into a number of Massachusetts districts as well as districts in neighboring Rhode Island, which reformers have targeted for conversion as the nation’s first “personalized learning” state. More on that HERE.

In an email to members yesterday, Delegates say NO to personalized learning and YES to funding, MTA president Barbara Madeloni…

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It’s Not Guns That Cause Gun Violence. It’s Handguns.

By the time I went to bed last night, the ether was filled with reactions to the Alexandria shootings, most of them reflecting the alt-right view of things about guns and violence, namely, that if there had been more good guys at the ballfield with guns, the bad guy wouldn’t have shot anyone at all. But at least one sane voice emerged belonging to Chelsea Parsons and her colleagues at the Center for American Progress (CAP) who put up a podcast, ‘Too Many Guns in America,’ and discussed the event.

CAP has been a mainstay in the effort to strengthen gun regulations, and much of their approach can be found in their report, America Under Fire, which makes a persuasive argument that gun violence and laws regulating gun ownership and access go hand-in-hand; i.e., more laws equal less injuries caused by guns. You can download the report

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Betsy DeVos Doesn’t Get It: Catering to the Desires of Individuals Won’t Serve the Common Good

Betsy DeVos Doesn’t Get It: Catering to the Desires of Individuals Won’t Serve the Common Good
by janresseger
Betsy DeVos is a libertarian. One cannot drill this concept often enough. DeVos believes in the freedom of individuals to make the choices that benefit themselves and their children. It is the kind of thinking that promotes the rights of individuals above all else. Wikipedia’s definition of libertarianism perfectly describes the thinking of Betsy DeVos: “Libertarians seek to maximize political freedom and autonomy, emphasizing freedom of choice, voluntary association, individual judgment, and self-ownership.” Libertarians don’t believe government should interfere with individual liberty.

The other day, Betsy DeVos made people in the audience mad when she…

janresseger

Betsy DeVos is a libertarian. One cannot drill this concept often enough. DeVos believes in the freedom of individuals to make the choices that benefit themselves and their children. It is the kind of thinking that promotes the rights of individuals above all else. Wikipedia’s definition of libertarianism perfectly describes the thinking of Betsy DeVos: “Libertarians seek to maximize political freedom and autonomy, emphasizing freedom of choice, voluntary association, individual judgment, and self-ownership.”  Libertarians don’t believe government should interfere with individual liberty.

The other day, Betsy DeVos made people in the audience mad when she addressed the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools (We’ll ignore for a minute the fact that charter schools are, as a form of private contracting, not really public schools.), because she didn’t seem fully to endorse charter schooling. Here is what she said: “Charter schools are here to stay… But we must recognize that…

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