Americans for Prosperity Pennsylvania wrapped up its School Choice Week initiative yesterday at their "Restoring American Exceptionalism" townhall event at the Hershey Lodge. The event was led by AFP-PA's Chairman, Jennifer Stefano, and featured guest speakers Dick Morris, Bob Bowden (Director of "The Cartel: Education+Politics=$"), and Chris Freind (independent columnist).
School choice has been a hot topic in Pennsylvania for quite some time, but it has been especially publicized for the past year with the debate over the SB-1 voucher program that was defeated in the PA Legislature in late 2011. Many activists believe that this bill failed to pass because it didn't phase-in the voucher program to all students in PA by the end of its 3-year institution. However, the failure of this bill has not cooled the passions of school choice advocates across the state since nearly 300 of them attended yesterday's event.
Though Pennsylvania doesn't rank at the bottom of states as far as school choice, other states including Indiana, Arizona and Louisiana are far ahead. For example, since the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina, over 80% of students in New Orleans have enrolled in charter schools thanks to vouchers and their performance has doubled. Overall data shows that students attending alternatives to public schools have a graduating rate of 90% compared to the U.S. average of 70.1%. And, those that graduate from private/charter schools go on to attend college 80% of the time, compared to the U.S. average of 63.3%.
The crisis in education is an American issue that affects us all. Every student in our country should have the opportunity to graduate from high school prepared for life!
According to AFP, American 15-year-olds rank 35th out of 57 countries in math and literacy, behind almost all industrialized nations, even though the U.S. spends more than any other nation on education. Since the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, federal education spending has increased nearly 64%, but there has been little improvement in America’s test scores. According to an Education Department blog posting last December, “The U.S. effectively showed no improvement in reading since 2000.” In fact, the U.S. rating in math declined from 19th to 25th in the world since 2000. “How much money the U.S. spends on education isn’t the problem,” the Department admitted. "We spend more per student than any nation...except Luxembourg.”
The data is similar in Pennsylvania. According to The Commonwealth Foundation, education spending in Pennsylvania has increased 133% since 1980, from $4 billion to over $25 billion, yet test scores remain flat. In 2009, Pennsylvania spent an average of $13,000 on every student, but 80,000 of them remain trapped in violent, failing schools and 40% are not even grade-proficient. Usually, those students in inner-city schools in areas such as Harrisburg and Philadelphia are the hardest hit. In Philadelphia, four out of five students are not proficient in reading or math. These statistics caused AFP-PA Chairman Jennifer Stefano to declare school choice the "civil rights issue of our time."
Yesterday's panel discussed many reasons why public schools in the U.S. are failing including governmental roadblocks, teachers' unions, and lack of parental interest and participation in the education of the their children. In addition, the panelists stressed that the school choice issue transcends party lines, praising both Democrats and Republicans who have advanced school choice initiatives in their states, while criticizing those who have not. In fact, Dick Morris took the opportunity to criticize PA Governor Corbett's lack of leadership on the issue by lamenting, "If only you had a Republican Governor and a Republican legislature in Pennsylvania."
Several resources were provided to those in attendance to use to take action in their local school districts. A list of them are provided below:
- Americans for Prosperity (how to improve school choice awareness in your community)
- Global Report Card (compare your district's scores against the world's)
- Nation's Report Card (compare your district's scores to the national average)
- OpenPA.gov (see how your education dollars are being spent)
- Citizen Watchdog (become a citizen watchdog in your community)
- Choice Media TV (education news service)
Stay tuned to Leadership for Liberty and look for our report about how to understand your school district's budget.
The two main take-aways from AFP's townhall event were that we as citizens have the power to change things in our local school districts, and this change needs to begin at the local level. Having personal experince in influencing the decisions made in my local district in the past, I can tell you that you are powerful and change can come quickly if you organize just a few of your neighbors and attend your school board meetings. When we concentrate on "issues, not candidates and solutions, not elections", we can pressure almost any politician to do the right thing and that is where our efforts should be focused.