School Choice Is A Moral and Financial Imperative

Q&A with school reformer Lisa Graham Keegan.

1x 1.1x 1.25x 1.5x 2x 3x

:15 :15

Download

School Choice Is A Moral and Financial Imperative

"Education is how people fulfill their humanity," says school reformer Lisa Graham Keegan. "School choice meets that need precisely."

As the former superintendent of public instruction in Arizona, Keegan sponsored one of the most comprehensive charter school laws in existence, helped define state education standards, and reformed school financing so that money more closely follows the students for whom it is intended.

She now heads the Keegan Company, consults on various education reform efforts, and serves as executive director of A for Arizona, which aims to increase charter school quality in the state'"particularly for low-income students. School choices, says Keegan, "gives people their own capacity'"their ability to give back."

Her 2013 memoir, Simple Choices: Thoughts on Choosing Environments that Support Who Your Child is Meant to Be, offers a revealing and powerful personal account of how her life's challenges affected her ideas about education reform.

She recently sat down with Reason TV's Nick Gillespie during the annual meeting of the State Policy Network to discuss the moral and practical cases for school choice.

Watch the video above for the full interview, which covers the following topics:

:58—The moral case for school choice.
1:35 – The difference between market-driven and public school models.
2:39 – Moving to "backpack funding," where money follows students to their school of choice.
4:54 – The impact of Arizona's school funding reforms and scholarship programs.
6:33 – The reforms' effect on students of different socioeconomic backgrounds.
7:53 – The growth of high-achievement charter schools.
9:00 – The biggest impediments to school choice, including local control, taxes and spending.
10:56 – How to avoid confrontation with local school boards in order to fund charters.
11:52 – School accountability, including standards and testing.
15:12 – Common Core.
16:11 – Whether the Republicans really are the party of school choice.
17:03 – How Keegan's family and upbringing led her to school choice advocacy.

About 19 minutes.

Interview by Nick Gillespie. Edited by Justin Monticello. Camera by Meredith Bragg and Alexis Garcia. Music by RW Smith.

Scroll down for downloadable versions. Subscribe to Reason TV's YouTube Channel to receive notifications when new content goes live.

Comments

[JFree]

If ‘local control’ is the ‘problem’ with implementing school choice; then that is the wrong model for school reform. There are a number of things that can go wrong with local control – but a top-down implementation by top-down ideologues is a guaranteed clusterfuck no matter how ‘libertarian’ they claim to be. And even more problematic, it is yet one more way to destroy the family which is, like it or not, the only realistic alternative to most other functions that have been taken over by government.

I’m becoming more convinced than ever that the best school reform is not at the school-level but at the class/teacher/curriculum level. And we need even more local control – getting rid of professional/bureaucrat run ‘school districts’ and reverting back to part-timer-run individual school boards. Schools themselves are infrastructure which is exactly what a Georgist location tax (NOT a property tax) was designed for. Choosing curricula/teachers/etc is exactly what school choice should be about. May involve some decisions about funding – parent fees, endowments, etc – but that should be much easier than trying to mix up decisions about the building/infrastructure from decisions about curriculum/teaching. And if that latter means a class on creationism co-exists next to a class on evolution – or a college-prep class exists next to a vocational class – well that is precisely the sort of opportunity that freedom is supposed to enable.

[RAHeinlein]

I support school choice, but increasing Charter School options isn’t the answer. Ultimately these schools operate under Dept of Education regs. DofEd needs to be eliminated.

[wanderlustmisfit]

Are you really the author of Stranger in a Strange Land? If so, can I ask you how you feel about the Starship Trooper movie?

[skunkman]

I’m for choice and support vouchers as long as no funding whatsoever goes to homeschooling. My kids went to public schools and as a good parent I taught them things at home too. The “homeschool only” technique rarely has adequately trained teachers and the kids pay the price.

[bvandyke]

Really? My son is home schooled. He does go to several classes at a home school partnership. One of the classes is a honors level English/History/Writing class. Over the summer they had to read the Iliad and The Odyssey – he is a freshman. The education is way, way ahead of public school.

Here is what is his missing:

[bvandyke]

darn keyboard – finishing:
1. School where teachers let kids sleep in class
2. School where online test are allowed to be retaken until kid makes 100 (question never change)
3. School where valedictorian of graduating class thinks teachers for letting them retake tests to make better grades.
4. I won’t even go into issues of common core
5. Over the top liberal crap dished out at public schools

I know what you are going to say – but what about social interaction? We have plenty of it. Have a seen home school kids that seem to have issues. Yes but way fewer than public school.

It is a great way to go. Most parents know when they can’t teach something and find someone else to do it.

[SoCal Soccar Mom]

Please tell me what is required to be adequately trained as a teacher. I can assure you, you won’t find many that satisfy your ideal in traditional public schools.

I homeschool my sons through a public charter school, homeschool based program. In our homeschooling group, there are lawyers, engineers, computer programmers, TEACHERS, small business owners… pretty much the entire group is made up of families where one or both parents has a college degree and real world experience. Most of the homeschooling parents I know left the pursuit of their careers to homeschool their children. I am one such mom (but there are dads as well.) Does my B.A., double major in political science and linguistics, and J.D. qualify me to homeschool? If not, then please, tell me what does.

Here’s a portion of the data on how the kids at our school compare to kids in traditional public schools in California. I pulled the information from the school’s SARC report. http://prntscr.com/8z0jjt Now please explain how the kids are paying the price. Seems the homeschooled kids are kicking ass.

[skunkman]

It sounds like you do homeschooling the right way. It sounds like you are well trained and that you organize through a charter school program and have a real curriculum. I commend you for that. The problem is that other homeschoolers operate in a way that drags good parents like you down. Maybe I am talking more about the “unschoolers”, but I know several families that have homeschooled, and criticized me for not doing so, that have a lesson plan that included trips to the zoo and the museum and the follow up is a report from the older kids and a coloring exercise for the younger ones. I have also seen several families that spend a significant amount of school time in religious studies. I support religious studies, but public and private school families teach faith, the zoo and museums at home in addition to schooling. My point is that vouchers shouldn’t fund homeschooling, not that all homeschooling is bad.

As for the data showing that homeschoolers do better on standardized tests. Upper middle class kids are a high percentage of the homeschool population. They have involved patents and they are mostly white and are English speakers. The poorer kids with less involved patents are in public school on average at a higher rate, as are ESL students at a significantly higher percentage. I suspect to get your political science degree that you took a statistics class or two, so you know you are not comparing equal groups.

[SoCal Soccar Mom]

Why shouldn’t funding go to homeschooling? I pay taxes, why shouldn’t my children benefit from tax money?

Well this should chap your hide… the school pays for 100% of the curricula I use. I have an annual budget of $4,000 per child that pays for textbooks, workbooks, programs, apps, audio and visual materials, even music, art, sports, and other extra-curricular activities. Paid for 100% by the tax payer. This is quite a bargain. In the same school district, the district spends more than twice as much per student in a traditional classroom. If anything, instead of refusing to fund homeschooling programs, the state should incentivize homeschooling to save money.

You never did say what adequately trained means. I looked up the demographics for the parents at our charter school/homeschool. Seventy-five percent of the parents have a college degree. Forty-six percent have a graduate degree. I guess not as rare as you thought.

[toolkien]

Why is Sharon Gless involved in school reform?

[AD-RtR/OS!]

ALL public schools need to be converted to “charter” schools, with no PE Unions.
For those whose behavior is not conducive to a proper learning environment, there could be “disciplinary schools” where such behavior would be taught along with the usual curriculum.
For those whose behavior is beyond help, there should be the re-institution of “reform schools” where the students are boarded 24/7 until they can rejoin society, or graduate.
If a family is unwilling to have their child in a disciplinary or reform environment, they would – of course – be free to enroll him/her in any private school that would accept them.

[SoCal Soccar Mom]

“For those whose behavior is not conducive to a proper learning environment…” They already do this. Any child who will not sit still in their chair or causes any type of disruption (calling out answers) is evaluated for ADHD, ADD, etc. Then it is recommended that the child be medicated and the school then receives more money. Don’t believe me? My son’s second grade teacher, before I pulled him out of traditional public school, wanted him evaluated, because he rocked back in his chair.

[wanderlustmisfit]

If you put funding on the head of each student and tell K-12 schools this is how they’re going to fund themselves, K-12 will turn into the disaster that is college education. We’ll have billboards telling parents to send their kids this way or that, advertisements everywhere, the elementary schools will build massive enticing playgrounds and the high schools will pour millions into their sports teams, and as every public school competes for public funding, prices will go up, up, up, and the quality of education will be subordinated to the school ‘experience’.
We already have school choice: you can go to this public school, or to any of these private schools, or move and go to any of these other public schools.

[M Knights]

agree still schooling starts at home and no matter how other humans and environment can influence us, what we learned at home stays with us, it shapes our view on the world, our attitudes and beliefs..of course there is a possibility of change but still no matter what we always go back to basics and what we learn at home is basics so no matter which school we choose, our morals won’t change – if you were a person who was always googling write my paper for me or if you were a smart and hard-working kid, you would stay the same (though there is a small percentage of change..well that’s only an exception from the rule but exceptions are rare)..but yes though morals won’t change financial situation will..guess that’s why most parents are saving money for their kid’s college education since the day the kid as born

[Bongean]

You said absolutely right school choice is a moral and financial imperative. How is it possible? Answer of this question contain this article in detail. I have little bit idea about it but this article contain more detail about it. Any how, I actually try to read reviews of bestdissertations.com but such articles are good for the students while selection of school.