Education Stamps

My newest idea for improving educational outcomes in Nebraska is radical.

Model an 'education stamp' on the 'food stamp' program as a way to fund all public K-12 education as required in Nebraska's Constitution. Parents receive an 'education stamp' for each child and present it to the Principal of their selected school. Principals in turn send all students for a State administered test to assess their individual annual average gains on the California Achievement Test. And the State releases the annual AVERAGE gains of students, by teacher for the year, to the local news media. More detail below.

Parents can depend on published results by teacher, a type of Red, Yellow, Green report on student progress, to select a school to receive their child's 'education stamp.' By injecting market principles into our schools, all will improve. Just as no one takes 'food stamps' to a grocery store with browning vegetables, parents will choose schools that work and entrepreneurs will open schools in under-served areas.

Imagine the relief when all the overhead costs justified today by Districts, the State and federal mandates and micromanagement melt away and our kids become great Nebraska scholars again, able to read effectively, thinking and reasoning through the complex problems of the future. Many details must be worked out, such as, a Unicameral committee determining the value of 'education stamps' each year and funds for junior, senior and special 'education stamps' adjusted rates but those are the easy part once parents are once again put in control.

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A settling in period can require that private schools must accept the amount of the 'education stamp' as payment in full.  President Obama's girls attend Sidwell Friends which accepted several lottery winners' 50% stipend of average spending per pupil in D.C. Public Schools, or $9600, and added diversity to the education of their other students who pay approximately three times that amount.  Unfortunately, in 2009, Pelosi and Obama removed the lottery only grandfathering in some recipients.

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Average reading level of second grade students and their gains in Class A; Class B

Reading level of Students	Teacher A’s Class	Teacher B’s Class
Average leaving First Grade	Grade level 1.9	Grade level 2.5
Average leaving Second Grade	Grade Level 3.1	Grade level 3.4
Average increase	1.2 years	0.9 years

While in math problems,

Math level of Students	Teacher A’s Class	Teacher B’s Class
Average leaving First Grade	Grade level 2.9	Grade level 1.1
Average leaving Second Grade	Grade Level 4.0	Grade level 3.4
Average increase	1.1 years	2.3 years

In reading, Teacher  A is able to speed up reading scores faster than Teacher B but Teacher B does not let readers fall behind and accelerates math scores faster than Teacher A's class.  Teacher C’s job was eliminated as scores in reading and math in that classroom fell below grade level. No parents allowed their child to be assigned to Teacher C’s classroom.

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Some eighth grade graduates taught in Nebraska's country schools of our past and used the Spalding method.  "Once students have learned the first 30 phonograms, they can begin to read the Spalding Series 1 Leveled Readers. This occurs in Academic Week 10 of the Spalding Kindergarten Teacher's Guide."

Children learn sounds, and create a list of words they know, can read, spell, pronounce, use in a sentence and write and their list keeps growing.  Being in a classroom of mixed age children, drill for the younger students was often performed by the older ones. Every had multiple chances to fill in information they may have glossed over when presented earlier.

Success stories in Nebraska are legend, Willa Cather, Bess Streeter Aldrich, John G. Neihardt, Mari Sandoz, to name a few but remember our grandparents and great aunt's penmanship and English was impeccable. Teaching reading, needed for all the other subjects, isn't rocket science.

Don't be fooled by universal preschool raising scores of the underprivileged like we did all day Kindergarten classes. All day classes doubled the amount of resources required; two teachers and two classrooms, but as I discovered by comparing the OPS 8th grade outcomes 9 years after all day kindergarten, that they did not rise scores and in fact scores had dropped again.  Universal preschool may cause our high school graduates to carry a four year college loan for an Early Childhood Education degree to work in a preschool.