The Chess Club and Scholastic Center of St. Louis will host the 2009 U.S. Chess Championship! From May 7-17 the top 24 in the nation will compete for over $200,000 in prizes. Come show your support for your community!
The Opportunity Scholarship Program is small stuff in Washington, where trillions of dollars are thrown around like Frisbees, but the program drew national notice because a few sentences and paragraphs to abolish the program were tucked into the stimulus bill. Members of Congress and figures in the new administration, who, like the Obamas, wouldn't dream of sending their children to a public school in the District, cheerfully killed a program for families not as fortunate as themselves. All in the name of high principle, of course.
The president and the Democrats say they killed it because there was no proof that it worked. But now there is. The evaluators found that scholarship students scored specific gains in reading - by a half grade. That's no small increase. Math scores remained steady, and the scores suggest that further gains will follow as the students from deprived neighborhoods acclimate themselves to the more rigorous discipline of private schools. This is the change in which hundreds of parents are eager to believe.
”There are transition difficulties, a culture shock, on entering a school where you're expected to pay attention, learn, do homework,” said Jay Green, an education scholar at the Manhattan Institute, to the Wall Street Journal. “These results fit a pattern that we've seen in other evaluations of vouchers. Benefits compound over time.”
Ninety-nine percent of the low-income students who have transferred from deprived neighborhoods are black and Hispanic. A long waiting list, with four applicants vying for each scholarship, testifies to the demand for the program.
The $7,500 voucher is equal to only half of what the D.C. government spends per student in the city's dreadful public schools. Despite the $14,000 the District spends per pupil in its schools - highest in the nation - the city's achievement scores are among the lowest in the country.
Vouchers are key to education reform, along with more charter schools, knowledge tests and merit pay for teachers. But the powerful teachers unions, the ventriloquists behind the congressional dummies on their laps, naturally oppose reforms that would impose accountability. The worst teachers know their weaknesses, and the protection of mediocrity becomes the first order of business for the teachers unions.
President Obama promised he would support “what works for the kids,” and now he has the proof that this specific program works. In addition to the statistical evidence, there's the reassurance, hard to measure but abundantly clear, for parents and their children to feel secure and safe in the program. The program takes them out of schools where learning is not often prized and where physical safety is often at risk.
