Missouri lawmakers listen to pros/cons of open enrollment
JEFFERSON CITY — Superintendents from small districts bordering Iowa and Arkansas told similar stories Tuesday about the possibility of Missouri school districts adopting an open enrollment policy. There are good and bad elements of the philosophy of letting parents enroll children in schools outside the district where they live, but if Missouri lawmakers adopt such a plan, be prepared to change it on the fly.
The General Assembly agreed to study open enrollment this year as a compromise in the education bill approved in May. That bill, which allowed merit pay for teachers in the St. Louis Public Schools, was hung up until those pushing open enrollment dropped a provision pushed by Sen. Rob Mayer, R-Dexter and Sen. Jane Cunningham, R-Chesterfield, and agreed to further study.
A joint House and Senate committee began a series of three hearings to look into the issue Tuesday in the capital city. Meetings will follow later in Branson and Nov. 4 at the University of Missouri-St. Louis.
Gary Battles, a superintendent from Nodaway County in northern Missouri, told the committee that the toughest part of an open enrollment plan is the ability of local districts to complete budgets, since state money would move with each child to the district where they chose to attend.
“Developing a budget is going to be a nightmare,” Battles said. “Every district’s cost is different.”
Still, Battles said he was familiar with Iowa’s move to open enrollment, and he said it seemed to work for that state, though the Legislature has made changes to the policy several times to try to make it better.
“It wasn’t perfect, but they continued to change it,” Battles said. “It’s a living, breathing document.”
The battle over open enrollment pits school administrators and teachers’ unions against conservatives pushing for more choice and competition in schools. Retired St. Louis financier Rex Sinquefield, has helped fund the movement in Missouri to bring changes to the public schools.
Many Democrats bristle at Sinquefield’s involvement in the issue, though nationally, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, a Democrat, is pushing some of the same ideas.
Penney Rector, a lobbyist representing school administrators, told lawmakers that her organization had many concerns with the proposed legislation, including costs for transportation and special education.
“It would seem you would have losers and winners,” among districts, Rector said. She also criticized the proposal for making students more transient, which doesn’t necessarily improve learning, she said.
If the bill is to become law, it will have to get through the Senate first, said House education chairman Maynard Wallace, R-Thornfield. Wallace is an ex-superintendent who sides with Democrats on many education issues. He said he would give a hearing to open enrollment if it passed through the Senate first.
Penny Rector said “It would seem you would have losers and winners,” among districts. That’s right Penny, because, guess what? In the real world, where these children will be after they get out of the “everyone’s the same” world you preach in school, there are winners and losers. It’s called competition and it’s what makes everything better.
There will be winners and losers, to be sure. Right now, the losers are the children who are stuck in failing districts like Riverview Gardens and Wellston. The sad thing is that a state rep from Thornfield, an unincorporated community of several hundred people on the border of Mark Twain National Forest, could block a bill that would give a choice to the thousands of children trapped in failing urban schools. Message to Mr. Wallace: This isn’t about Thornfield, it’s about St. Louis. Get it right!
Who is going to pay for transportation ? Is there going to be private taxi service to transport them ,much like there is in the city and north county ?
jimbo - The private taxis were part of the deseg program. If a parent elects to send a child outside the resident district under an open enrollment program, the parent is responsible for providing transportation.
Children stuck in failing schools are losing out on a decent education, students who could benefit more from other schools miss opportunities,…competition is a good way to let the schools compete for the students, let them thrive to improve.
Do we want to keep our schools mediocre?
I am all for choice…they are my kids, why should someone else decide where they have to attend school?
By all means, let’s pass a law that says every kid in the state can be enrolled in the Clayton school district. I can’t imagine why that wouldn’t work…
If we want real education reform universal public school Pre-K is the only way to go. All the research supports Pre-K.
There is no hard emperical data to support open enrollment - public school “vouchers” in improving districts or student achievment.
There is no evidence to support that free-market “competition” between
“have” and “have-not” districts improves education. In fact there is evidence that it has a negative impact on the districts that lose students
and motivated parents. Right now most of us aren’t real charmed with
the “competition” from Wall-Street record.
Amazingly, purported “competition” in public education does not improve student performance. Public schools take all students, a novel concept for private schools. Open enrollment, vouchers and other efforts to destroy public education do not improve educational opportunities for students. They merely allow affluent students to leave, taking resources with them which make it difficult to meet the needs of those students who remain. Perhaps we should support public schools and our teachers to help enhance educational opportunities.
Byron, Woody:
You could only say there is ‘no evidence’ regarding the potential benefits of giving parents educational options if you haven’t bother to look for any. Educational choice programs have been the subject of a quite substantial body of research over the past two decades - not just on the national scale, but internationally as well! - and much (though not all) of it has suggested that when parents have a broader range of educational options for their children, schools tend to perform better and the parents tend to be MUCH happier with the education their children receive. As a starting point, I’d recommend reading “School Choice: The Findings” by Herbert J. Walberg, or perusing the research posted at Harvard’s website dedicated to education policy research: http://www.hks.harvard.edu/pepg/research.htm . Having done that, you might still disagree with the conclusions that the researchers have come to - but you would at least be engaging in a reasoned discussion instead of spouting nonsense like “there’s no evidence…”
Pelagius,
We can never enter upon the path of virtue, unless we have hope as our guide and companion . . . looked up Walberg’s stuff published by the Libertarian Think Tank Cato Institute. This group is widely recognized as being driven by ideology not data. Still stand by the statement but will add no CREDIBLE emperical evidence in support of “Open Enrollment.”
Last evening Senator Cunningham may have let the Virtual Cat out
of the Virtual Open Enrollement bag. For-profit virtual school companies have benefited by removing taxpayer dollars from residents’ school districts remember - might be a concern regarding Open Enrollment.