Baltimore Students Deserve School Vouchers

Originally published on FoxNews.com

By Dan Lips
Published on Friday, August 25, 2006
Bad news just keeps coming for Baltimore City public schools. The city’s high-school graduation rate has slipped below 40 percent -- worse than every city in America except Detroit. State education officials recently labeled six Baltimore City public schools as “persistently dangerous.” Some 22,000 students languish in schools that have failed state benchmarks for six or more years. Unfortunately, Maryland state lawmakers appear unwilling to reform even the worst public schools in Baltimore City. During the last legislative session, Gov. Robert Ehrlich proposed a state takeover of 11 chronically failing public schools. The General Assembly not only approved a measure to delay changes for one year, it overrode Gov. Ehrlich’s veto of the legislation. Yet change could come to city schools if the Bush administration and some in Congress have their way. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings recently joined lawmakers on Capitol Hill to unveil a plan to give private-school scholarships to disadvantaged students in some of the country’s lowest-performing public schools. The Opportunity Scholarship Initiative would provide $100 million in grants to cities such as Baltimore with a high density of failing schools. The grants would be used to give low-income public-school students scholarships to attend private school or intensive after-school tutoring programs. Only students in the lowest-performing public schools would be eligible. In Baltimore, that would include more than 40 schools, attended by more than a quarter of the city’s public-school students. Read More »

Fostering education stability

Originally published in the Baltimore Examiner

By Alison Lake
Published on Monday, July 10, 2006
BALTIMORE - Thousands of miles away in Arizona, a small but significant program hatched here in Maryland became law in June. But Maryland’s 11,500 foster care children, 7,000 of whom are in Baltimore City, have yet to benefit from this program designed by The Maryland Public Policy Institute. Gov. Janet Napolitano, Democrat, personally signed into law a first-in-the-nation targeted school choice program for foster care children. Arizona’s $2.5 million scholarship grant program offers foster children scholarships worth up to $5,000 for tuition. Any child who has or is placed in the foster care system is eligible, and the students can use the scholarship to attend private schools. Read More »

Baltimore City Schools Takeover Signals The Need For More Choice In Education

By Kirk A. Johnson, Ph.D.
Published on Monday, June 12, 2006
The 2005-2006 school year has been tumultuous for Baltimore City Schools, which prompts reflection about what policies should be enacted so the next school year can be better for children in Baltimore’s public schools.   “Nothing Has Improved”   Obvious frustration with Baltimore city’s school system reached its apex this year when Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. announced that the state department of education would take over seven of the city’s middle schools and four of its high schools that have been persistently failing for years and even decades. These schools are the particularly dysfunctional ones in a city where the majority of students are not getting a decent education. A quick analysis of the Maryland State Assessment (MSA) test scores for 2005 show this persuasively. Citywide, only 40 percent of Baltimore’s eighth graders are considered proficient or better in reading, and an even more heartbreaking 19.5 percent of these children are proficient or better in math. For comparison, 2005 statewide eighth grade reading and math proficiency rates are 66.4 percent and 51.7 percent, respectively. Read More »

Special children, special needs, big bucks

Originally published in the Baltimore Examiner

By Alison Lake
Published on Thursday, May 18, 2006
BALTIMORE - The ongoing and systemic failure of Baltimore City’s special-education system in public schools is an extreme but very real example of what happens when a public school district is allowed to underserve its students for decades. Under state management since summer of 2005, the city’s special education services have been ordered to provide 90,000 hours of makeup services from 2005 on top of what is due children in 2006. A state report also showed that 25 percent of city high school seniors in special education received diplomas last spring without meeting graduation requirements. Baltimore City’s school system is an excellent example of a situation where both mainstream and special-education students would benefit greatly from the opportunity to take their per-pupil money elsewhere to a better school. Read More »

Baltimore's lost generations

Originally published in the Baltimore Examiner

By Alison Lake
Published on Wednesday, April 26, 2006
 Eleven Baltimore City schools that are failing their students qualify for state oversight under No Child Left Behind. Yet when the state department of education moved to assume control of those schools, Maryland legislators blocked the measure in the General Assembly, leaving the schools to fail for yet another year. Baltimore City schools, in academic danger for years, have reached a serious impasse now, simply because no one can effect an appropriate administrative solution. What legislators, and outsiders, do not appear to grasp is the severe situation of many Baltimore City children. For example, several generations of the city’s special education students were allowed to miss out on essential services before the state finally assumed control of the system. Those effects of state oversight have yet to be measured and will require at least a couple of years to demonstrate any positive effects on student learning. Read More »

Strong leadership can uplift public schools

Originally published in the Baltimore Examiner

By Alison Lake
Published on Monday, April 10, 2006
Recently the state department of education targeted 11 Baltimore City schools for eventual takeover. No Child Left Behind allows such action with schools that demonstrate a sustained pattern of low test scores for five years or more. The city’s broken special education system has been under state control since summer 2005. Now, four high schools and seven middle schools are the first in the country to be overtaken by the state under the auspice of No Child Left Behind. Read More »

Is More Education Spending The Answer In Maryland?

By Kirk A. Johnson, Ph.D.
Published on Wednesday, January 25, 2006
On January 5, 2006, Maryland Governor Robert L. Ehrlich, Jr. announced an initiative to spend an additional $462 million on state education programs, and an additional $281 million on public school building rehabilitation and construction.[1] This new education spending proposal comes just a few years after the record amount of Thornton Commission money was passed by the Maryland General Assembly in 2002, which was supposed to provide more than a billion additional dollars to Maryland’s 24 public school districts.[2] K-12 education spending continues to be an emotional subject in Maryland, especially because it usually is the largest single budget item in county budgets, and one of the top spending items in the state budget. In the debate over ever-increasing education spending, a legitimate question emerges: has education spending been shortchanged over the past few decades? Is it being shortchanged now? The best way to evaluate this question is to look at the history of education spending in Maryland, and on average in the United States. [1] Liz F. Kay, “Ehrlich Announces Additional Education Dollars: Spending Increases to Fund Various Initiatives, Public School Construction,” Baltimore Sun, January 5, 2006. [2] This law is known as the “Bridge to Excellence in Public Schools Act.” Read More »

Parents With Special Needs

Originally Published in the Washington Post

By Alison Lake
Published on Sunday, December 04, 2005
Last month the Supreme Court ruled in a case involving Montgomery County Public Schools that parents must assume the burden of proving that the special-education plan the schools devise for their child is lacking [front page, Nov. 15]. Read More »

School Choice for Maryland Foster Care Children

Fostering Stability, Satisfaction, and Achievement

By Dan Lips
Published on Tuesday, October 11, 2005
There are an estimated 523,000 foster care children in the U.S. Maryland has approximately 11,500 foster care children, 7,000 of whom are in Baltimore City. This paper is based on the understanding that these children require specially tailored education and assistance to help wit the difficult transition from youth to adulthood. Unlike their peers in traditional families, foster children often do not have an adequate safety net or social network. They are unable to rely on parents and other relatives for support during the school years and to facilitate a smooth transition out of the home and into adulthood. Read More »

The Steele Commission Report: A Lost Opportunity To Debate Vouchers In Maryland

By Kirk A. Johnson, Ph.D.
Published on Wednesday, September 14, 2005
On September 14, 2005, the Governor’s Commission on Quality Education in Maryland, dubbed the “Steele Commission” because of its chairman, Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele, released its final report—the culmination of a year-long investigation of Maryland’s K-12 public schools. While there are a number of both positive and troubling recommendations, the report fails to even mention school vouchers as a way to improve the educational prospects of children trapped in too many failing Maryland schools. Read More »