Starting in 2008, the Alliance for School Choice will be sending action alerts, press releases, and other information to our allies and friends. Among these alerts will be ideas for opinion pieces that you could write and send to your local newspapers. In many cases, local organizations�not national groups�are the best messengers to communicate key perspectives to local media outlets.
Accordingly, this week marks the sixth anniversary of the signing of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. Based on your personal views and that of your organization, this anniversary could provide you with a compelling opportunity to write and place an opinion piece in your local newspaper, or to call talk radio shows. Here are five messages to consider if you want to write an Opinion piece on this issue, followed by statistics and data:
Five Points to Consider
1. No Child Left Behind properly shifted the focus from systems and processes to students and results. Yet, far too many children have been left behind because of the Act's inadequate provisions on parental choice.
2. More than 10,000 schools are on the federal "in need of improvement" list and 2,300 of these schools are in need of restructuring because they have failed five years in a row. Despite the promise of public school choice, less than 2 percent of eligible students were able to transfer into a higher performing school. This has disproportionately hurt low-income children who have no other avenue to a quality education.
3. Despite the largely positive impact of No Child Left Behind, America faces an education crisis, and our leaders must take bold action to ensure that parents control the education of their children. Any reauthorization of No Child Left Behind should preserve strong accountability and expand existing school choice options to include private school choice.
4. Every low-income child in a restructuring school should be given a promise scholarship to attend the public or private school of their parents' choosing. This is a matter of social justice. In addition, Congress should authorize and appropriate funds for national opportunity scholarships where local non-profits could apply for federal grants that would provide scholarships to low-income children in schools that have failed for three consecutive years.
5. Private school choice has been proven to work, is supported by the American public, and improves parental involvement, graduation rates, and student achievement.
Facts and Data to Support the Argument
1. More than 1.2 million students failed to graduate from high school in 2007. (Education Week, 2007)
2. It is estimated that 45 percent of African-American students and 47 percent of Hispanic students do not graduate from high school, compared to 22 percent of white students. (Jay P. Greene and Marcus A. Winters, Leaving Boys Behind: Public High School Graduation Rates, Manhattan Institute Civic Report No. 48, April 2006)
3. Dropouts from class of 2007 will cost the country nearly $329 billion in lost wages, taxes and productivity over their lifetimes.
4. Education researcher Jay Greene found that Milwaukee voucher students in the graduating class of 2003 had a 64 percent graduation rate, compared to 36 percent for the Milwaukee public high schools and 41 percent for the city�s academically selective public high schools. (Jay P. Greene, �Graduation Rates for Choice and Public School Students in Milwaukee,� School Choice Wisconsin, September 28, 2004)
5. In math, American 15-year-olds scored below the international average, being outperformed by 23 countries, while only scoring higher than four countries. Since 2003, Hungary and Poland have moved ahead of the United States. (2006 Program for International Student Assessment-PISA)
6. Sixty-four percent of Americans are dissatisfied with the quality of public education in America. And more than half think that American public schools are below average or among the worst when compared to schools in Europe (The Economist/YouGov Poll, 2007).
7. The majority of Americans�53 percent�support giving parents vouchers to pay for private school tuition for their children (The Economist/YouGov Poll, 2007).