By Gene Meyer | Kansas Reporter
TOPEKA — Parents get to choose the tax-supported colleges and universities in which to enroll their children, says one longtime advocate of homeschooling.
So why are there so few choices for public schools? That's the question asked by Jeff Barclay, pastor at Christ Community Church in Lawrence.
Only 25 of Kansas' 1,445 public schools are charter schools. The state has an estimated 160 private schools, most of them near the state's largest population centers in Kansas City or Wichita. Kansas offers no help to parents seeking private school alternatives.
The state Board of Education quietly shelved a proposal in 2006 to provide tax-funded vouchers after school boards and other education groups objected to the plan.
But a proposal to change the makeup of Kansas' schools may resurface in House Education Committee hearings scheduled this week in Topeka.
Barclay was a teacher, coach and administrator in both public and private schools for nearly 30 years before becoming a full-time pastor. He and his wife, Cindy, homeschooled their six children so they could provide the Christian education they say is missing in public schools.
Homeschooling, private schooling and public schooling — the Barclay children experienced them all as they grew to college age — are all appropriate choices for students and families, Barclay said.
"And I think the competition is good for all of them," he said. "There's a reason you see McDonald's, Taco Bell and Kentucky Fried Chicken on the same street corners — it's to give the public a choice.
"I don't know why we don't extend that to schools, as well," he said.
The question is at the heart of a Kansas House Education Committee hearing, scheduled Thursday, to explore ways to offer more educational choices and improve the quality of education students receive, all in the most cost-efficient ways possible.
The Kansas hearings are not formally tied to a National School Choice Week, which runs Jan 22-28 and includes more than 250 events across the nation. For more details click here.
But the hearings are another indicator of growing public interest in the idea, said Andrew Campanella, a national coordinator of School Choice Week activities.
"It is incredibly important in Kansas where parents are working hand in hand with legislators to enact new policies that will create the best schools for their children," Campanella said.
Three of the main presenters at the committee hearings here are Dave Trabert, president of the Kansas Policy Institute, which has sponsored research exploring the advantages of wider school choice in Kansas; Mark Tallman, associate director of advocacy for the Kansas Association of School Boards; and Janet Barresi, Oklahoma's state superintendent of schools.
Barresi is one of 10 state schools chiefs across the U.S. promoting free-market choices proposed by the Foundation for Excellence in Education, founded by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, a Republican.
Kansas Policy Institute wants state officials to consider widening parents' access to charter and magnet schools and to explore the use of school vouchers and tax credits to give families more educational choices, initiatives designed to improve academic performance across the state, Trabert said.
Kansas Policy Institute is the original founder of KansasReporter.org, now an affiliate of the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity, which advocates improved coverage of government affairs.
National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, are readings that the U.S. Education Department uses to compare educational achievement among state school systems. The data show about a third of Kansas' fourth- and eighth-graders are proficient in reading, and less than 50 percent of those students are proficient in math, Trabert said.
"Those are nowhere near acceptable levels," he said.
Moreover, the scores used to measure that progress have remained essentially flat since 1998, even though state spending on education has risen from $3.1 billion then to $5 billion in 2011, Trabert said.
All Kansas school leaders say they want to be able to provide flexible, innovative school programs to improve students' educations, Tallman said. The state school boards association also disputes the Kansas Policy Institute's portrayal of low state scores, saying Kansas' performance compares far more favorably with regional and national scores.
"But we want to see that done in a public school model, controlled by locally elected school boards, and not through programs offered as alternatives to public schools," Tallman said.
Kansas already offers local communities the opportunity to set up charter schools and other nontraditional public school choices that could be held to improved test scores or other standards. But it is the only state in the U.S. that puts the authority to create those schools in the hands of the same elected school boards that run traditional public schools. Most other states grant that authority to outsiders, such as universities or other qualified providers.
Relatively few Kansas districts offer charter schools or other similar alternatives to traditional schools.
Even so, "We believe that what matters is that you develop good programs and deliver them to students," Tallman said.
Kansas Republican Gov. Sam Brownback has said raising Kansas students' economic performance, and particularly their fourth-grade reading scores, is a central priority he hopes to advance. He has proposed major changes in basic educational funding formulas for traditional schools to help achieve that goal, but has not indicated what he thinks about extending state support to non-traditional schools.
The governor's office did not return repeated phone calls or emails Wednesday.
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