{"id":345,"date":"2007-01-18T07:12:19","date_gmt":"2007-01-18T13:12:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php\/2007\/01\/18\/case-meets-reality\/"},"modified":"2007-01-18T07:12:19","modified_gmt":"2007-01-18T13:12:19","slug":"case-meets-reality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=345","title":{"rendered":"Case Meets Reality"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mitch “The Other Mitch” Pearlstein spells out the case for vouchers<\/a> in the Strib today.<\/p>\n

He starts in with all that common sense:<\/p>\n

A common myth is that schools across the country with lots of low-income students are less-well-funded than schools with fewer low-income students. The opposite, actually, is more routinely the case. Minnesota, in fact, recently ranked fifth best in the nation in terms of “extra poverty-based funding per student living below the poverty line.” This (benevolent) gap was $3,075.<\/p>\n

But given that African-Americans in Minneapolis are doing unusually poorly academically, how do these conflicting findings compute?<\/p>\n

To complicate matters even more, consider Ascension School, a K-8 Catholic school in north Minneapolis. Students are overwhelmingly minority; they’re overwhelmingly non-Catholic; and in 2005, 90 percent of eighth-graders there passed Minnesota’s Basic Skills test in math and 95 percent passed Minnesota’s Basic Skills test in reading.<\/p>\n

In contrast, eighth-graders in Minneapolis public schools, in 2003, passed at these rates in math: 82 percent for whites; 57 percent for Asian\/ Pacific Islanders; 41 percent for Hispanics; 40 percent for American Indians; and 28 percent for blacks. Please note, though you probably already have, that the 82 percent passing rate for whites in Minneapolis public schools was substantially below Ascension’s 90 percent for all its kids. MPS scores were significantly better in reading than they were in math; but again, they were significantly below Ascension’s reading scores.<\/p>\n

What are tuition rates (for non-parishioners) in inner-city Catholic schools in the state? According to the Minnesota Catholic Conference, they average under $3,200 for elementary schools and under $8,000 for high schools. By contrast, as long ago as 2003 — in the wake of a recession — federal, state, and local revenues in Minneapolis Public Schools totaled $13,658 per “pupil unit.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Pearlstein notes that, given the objective data (and data he didn’t state – such as the fact that private, Catholic and alternative schools do a vastly better job with most “special ed” students), the case for vouchers should be open and shut.<\/p>\n

Of course, it’s not about rational evidence.\u00a0 It’s been said that the greatest victory of the compulsory education system has been convincing people that there’s no other way to educate kids; similarly, the greatest victory of the current school system has\u00a0 been getting people to think that what we have today:<\/p>\n