Park City - Memorial Day 2017

After being cooped up at home for so long we needed a short getaway.  We were away from home for less than 24 hours, but it was just what the doctor ordered.  We love being out adventuring as a family.

We visited our favorite restaurant on Main Street, Bandits' Grill and Bar.  Sadly, It has taken me so long to add this overnighter to the blog that the restaurant has since closed.

We stayed at the Marriott Summit Watch on Main street.  The girls are pretty good at sharing a bed when traveling, but as we were going to bed I was debating whether or not it was really worth spending the night 45 minutes from our own bed. Once everyone is asleep things are a lot calmer.

Breakfast was donuts from the Little Donut shop.  They were pretty good.  A little pricey, but we liked them.

Memorial Day morning we went and rode the Mountain Coaster (our first time) and the Alpine Slide.

Now back to civilization and the girls' last week of school.

Voucher Recap

Although I came across as being in full support of vouchers in my previous posts, I have struggled with my decision to either vote for or against Referendum 1. Everybody that commented on the previous posts, made valid points one way or another and caused me to look closely at my position. Because this issue will finally come down to a vote a week from tomorrow I thought that it would be appropriate to read through the full text of House Bill 148 (referendum 1).

The information for this post was taken from an extremely handy website administrated by Lieutenant Governor Gary Herbert's office. This website includes links to:

• Arguments for/against Citizen's State Referendum 1 (here)
• Impartial Analysis - prepared by the Office of Legislative Research and General Counsel (here)
• Full text of House Bill 148 (here)

Before you read any of the above information, forget everything that you've heard in the ads supporting or against vouchers because they are trash and they do not give you the full story. I found the Impartial Analysis and the full text of the bill helpful. A few key points from the bill that I found interesting were:

• The money to pay for the scholarships is taken directly from the General Fund.
• The credentials of teachers at the private schools must be disclosed (116).
  
• If a private school teacher doesn't have a college degree, they must "have special skills, knowledge, or expertise that qualifies them to provide instruction in the subjects taught (156)."
• The private school must enroll more than 40 students to be eligible to accept vouchers (184).
• "The Legislature shall actually appropriate money to the board for the General Fund to make scholarship payments for all students projected to apply for scholarships (203)."
• Once the money allocated by the Legislature has been used up for that year, then no more scholarships will be awarded. If more people apply than there is money for, then the scholarships will be given by random selection.

Like I've said before, there are interesting arguments on both sides of this issue. For everybody out there that will have an opportunity to vote on referendum 1, please educate yourself on the issue (by reading the bill or the impartial analysis) and by then voting the way that you feel most closely adheres to your values and desires. I'm still weighing my options...

Re: Re: Vouchers

Thanks to everybody that has commented on this topic. My opinion has been changed by the insight that people here have provided. Here is an explanatory video about vouchers that Heather mentioned in her comment on the post below (the pro-voucher Oreo commercial is a confusing extract from this video). Vouchers are not a perfect solution - in fact they are far from it, they are an experiment that can be molded and changed over time - because as Clark mentioned, there simply cannot be an immediate mass exodus from public school because the private infrastructure is not yet able to accommodate. This video also seems to address many of the concerns that Ben brought up in the post below.

Re: Vouchers

I received a fascinating reply from Ben Iverson (a High school buddy of mine, visit his blog here) to my earlier post about school vouchers. His response was very well-thought out and insightful - and he doesn't even live in Utah anymore. He felt that his reply was too long to be added to the comments, so I hope that he doesn't mind me posting it here.

"So, all of this talk about how a market for schools is better gets me thinking about a class I had at BYU called "The Economics of Education" where we basically applied economic principles to the problem of optimal education. In essence, you view the school as a business whose product is the students, and you study which inputs into the school make the most difference. In most of the papers that I read, an improvement of the "product" was one of the following three things: 1) higher standardized test score, 2) Smaller dropout rates, or 3) higher salary once the kids left school (and college, if they go to college). To cut to the chase, the ONLY thing that can be shown to improve these student outcomes is teacher quality. Smaller class sizes don't statistically improve any of those 3 outcomes. Better technology in a school doesn't do that either. But if you put a high quality teacher in the classroom, those students will do better than the same students who had a worse teacher. So, in my opinion, the biggest need is higher quality teachers. Think about good old LHS--we had a few good teachers, but then we also had Mr. Spencer. That's the real problem, I think.

"So, when you're thinking about how to vote on this voucher system, the question I would ask is: Where is this extra money going to go? If it's going to Fios internet in all schools or something like that, I wouldn't vote for it. But, what if we took all of that money and put it straight into teacher salaries? It wouldn't be long until there were more people who wanted to become teachers, and more competition for teaching spots will result in higher quality teachers. Used that way, vouchers can be great, I think. Also, increased competition among schools (for students) should result in better teachers as well. But if the money is used in a dumb way, I would be cautious.

"I have one other reservation about voucher systems. Do you want to hear it? I thought so. :) Again, relating a school to a business, the best businesses are specialists in certain products. If a pure market system were used in the school system, I think the same thing would happen with schools. You'd get certain schools that are really good at physics, but poor at theatre, etc. So if a parent and child are trying to decide which school to go to, they might have to start choosing career paths in 8th or 9th grade! In my opinion, that's a shame because no kid knows at that age what they really want to be. In the same way, with a voucher system you're going to end up with the same kinds of kids going to the same schools because people naturally stick to what they're familiar with. If you take an extreme case, 15 years down the road there might be a nice school for rich kids that want to be doctors, and a poor school for Hispanic kids that is a lot more like a vocational school. I kind of like the heterogeneity in the public school system where they just take in a big geographic area and everyone gets thrown together for a while. And they all get essentially the same education as well.

"Anyway, those are just some things I was thinking of. You probably didn't want a response this long, but too bad! Overall, I think that vouchers can be a good thing, but they need to be set up in a way that (a) improves teacher quality and (b) forces all schools to maintain a high standard in all subjects. If they work out that way, then they're definitely better than the current system."

My only response is that I believe that vouchers will allow parents to search out the best teachers. Therefore, if the parents believe that higher quality teachers can be found in a private or charter school, they might actually be financially able to act upon those beliefs. Does anybody else have any thoughts?

Vouchers

Anybody that lives in Utah has probably heard about the brouhaha concerning school vouchers. The basic idea is that the government would offer a prorated voucher for parents that would like to take their students out of public schools and put them in a private school. The vouchers would range from $500 (for the rich) to $3,000 (for the poor) - which could possibly be enough to allow lower income families to have the same educational choices as families with higher incomes.

I never understood what all the voucher fuss was about - and until recently I didn't care whether vouchers were approved or denied. Basically my vote was up for sale, and it was almost purchased by the $3 million, out-of-state, teacher's union/voucher opponents. Then a couple of weeks ago, my dad e-mailed this editorial from the Standard Examiner and I saw school vouchers in a whole new light (You may have seen the pro-voucher commercial with the Oreos. This is where the idea originated). For more information on vouchers, see this website (pro) and this blog (against) and then decide for yourself. Let me know what you think in the comments.

Guest commentary: Why vouchers will make public schools better

Friday, September 28, 2007

By Richard Eyre
Guest commentary

I think there are two powerful and compelling reasons to support school vouchers.

Reason No. 1: smaller class size and more money per pupil in public schools.

We spend more than $7,000 in taxes per pupil per year in our public school system. Every time a family makes a decision to use a voucher to move a child out of a public school into a private school, the class size goes down and the amount of money for each of the students left goes up. I like to explain it with Oreo cookies: Say you have 30 little stacks of Oreos -- seven cookies in each stack -- representing a typical Utah class of 30 students and the $7,000 we spend on each of them each year. Now, let's say that the fairly wealthy parents of one of those students decides to take their $500 voucher (half a cookie, which is the size of the smallest voucher) and send that child to a private school. The class size drops to 29, and the six and a half cookies that the departing student left behind are still in that classroom, to spend on more books or materials for the other 29 kids, or on more pay for the teacher. Now let's say that another family, a poorer one, also decides to use their $3,000 voucher (three cookies, which is the size of the largest voucher) to send their child to a private school where they think this particular child can get more of what he needs. The public school class size drops again, to 28, and four cookies ($4,000) stay behind in the public school to be spent on improving that public school classroom.

Think about that! Two fewer stacks of cookies -- two fewer kids in the classroom -- but 10-1/2 cookies to put on the 28 stacks that are left -- $10,500 extra dollars to spend on the kids who stay in that public school.

Now the teachers' union (whose job is, don't forget, to keep the status quo and protect the jobs of even the worst teachers) will try to create confusion about where that left over money will go. But the simple fact is, the public schools will have more money per pupil every time a family uses a voucher and moves a child out.

Reason No. 2: more options, choices, and involvement for parents.

I see myself as an advocate for parents and families. I believe, passionately, that parents are the stewards over their children, and that they know, far better than a bureaucratic school system or a teachers' union, what is best for each of their kids. What vouchers do is give parents the decision about where their kids go to school, and the option to try to find the education that each individual child needs. The vast majority of parents will just leave their kids where they are, in the public schools, just like Linda and I did with all of our kids. But when a child needs something that may not be available in the public school, or when a child has a teacher he can't relate to or learn from, vouchers give parents another option!

Wealthy parents already have the private option, but poorer families do not. With a $3,000 voucher, a lower-income parent becomes a customer, who can shop around and find what they think is best for their child. The average cost of private schools in Utah (if you take out the two highest-cost schools in the state) is $3,800, so the voucher brings the option within reach. And even thinking about the possibility, and having the option, will make the parent more involved, and if he or she chooses to leave their child in the public school (which most will do) they are likely to be more interested and involved in that public school. Vouchers will create more demand for more private school options, and areas where there are no private schools will likely have those options in the future.

Now, the teachers' union will say most parents don't care, especially poor parents, or won't do anything. I find that offensive. I believe in parents and in how much they care about their kids.

And if they don't do anything or won't get involved, then the union has nothing to fear, so why are they fighting vouchers so ferociously? They are fighting it because they fear competition, innovation, and the kind of creativity that always comes when you give people a market and let them choose. That is why the National Education Association is shoving $3 million into Utah to try to defeat vouchers.

Good teachers and good parents need to pull together. If parents and teachers get the facts, vouchers will pass on Nov. 6. If the teachers' union succeeds in covering the facts with smokescreens and fear tactics, vouchers will fail, and Utah will go on, as it has for so many years, as the last-place state in per-pupil spending, with the least competition and the largest class sizes

Olene!

Here's a random photo for your Monday:
It's a picture (scanned from the newspaper - hence the poor quality), that appeared in the Deseret News in January 2005. The picture is of former Utah Governor Olene Walker obviuosly having a blast... On New Year's Eve 2004, I 'met' Olene at the Fiesta Bowl party. We were slowly making our way through a crowd and I ended up squished against her so I placed my arm around her and said "hello Olene" and "Go Utes." Those were the days!