Month: January 2022

2021 was “the year of school choice, and we’re just getting started,” says Corey DeAngelis, national director of research at the American Federation for Children and a leading advocate for school choice.

The disruption to schooling caused by COVID-19, demands by teacher unions for more money and less accountability, and the mounting frustration of parents over everything from failed attempts at distance learning to medically dubious mask mandates have created the greatest opportunity for radical K-12 education reform in American history. Last year, 18 states either expanded or created new school-choice options, from publicly funded charter schools to education savings accounts to voucher programs. The percentage of households saying they are homeschooling their kids more than doubled from 5.4 percent in 2020 to 11.1 percent in 2021.

I talked with DeAngelis about what reforms have already been passed, what fixes are coming next, and what barriers need to be smashed in order to deliver on the promise of a quality, individualized education for every kid in the country. We discussed why he is against state-level laws banning Critical Race Theory (CRT) and other controversial pedagogies, why he believes Republicans are the party of school choice, and why he thinks parents should lobby state legislatures rather than local school boards if they want real choice for their kids.

This episode is supported by The Long Time Academy, a new podcast about how to be a good ancestor. It’s a show about time, and how we think about time. The Long Time Academy is an audio documentary, but it also includes with practical exercises designed to expand your sense of time and help you be a good ancestor. Search for The Long Time Academy anywhere you listen to podcasts. Life is short. Time is long. The Long Time Academy.

The post Corey DeAngelis: 2021 Was "the Year of School Choice," But 2022 Will Be Even Better appeared first on Reason.com.

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I have an op-ed in the Philadelphia Inquirer on the controversy surrounding Professor Amy Wax at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. You can see more about the current controversy here.

My focus on the op-ed is on whether there is or should be a hate speech exception to academic freedom and tenure protections. Many of those who were calling for Penn to fire Wax for her comments on the Glenn Loury podcast have been arguing that hate speech is unprotected. This claim seems as misguided in this context as it is in the larger First Amendment context. As I note there:

It is not hard to weaponize a hate speech exception to academic freedom in order to drive out professors with unpopular views. One student complained that professor Wax should be sanctioned for making students feel “uncomfortable” and “unheard,” and a student petition called for tenure rules to be modified to ensure that tenured professors must follow “principles of social equity.” But such claims can be multiplied endlessly. In 2020, College Republicans announced that it felt unwelcome on campus because of a history professor’s anti-MAGA social media posts. Sponsors of measures that oppose critical race theory justify them, in part, by arguing that professors who teach critical race theory are creating a hostile educational environment for white students. If academic freedom principles are changed to escort professor Wax out the door, she will not be the only one to find herself out on the street.

Read the whole thing here.

As a bonus, the editors at the Inquirer wanted a contrasting position to pair with mine, and they used a piece from a third-year Penn law student, Apratim Vidyarthi. That piece, arguing that Wax can no longer perform her duties on the faculty, can be found here as well. Vidyarthi is willing to bite the bullet and argue that “We already draw a line as to what speech is acceptable,” though interestingly the examples offered for when speech is obviously over the line and would lead to a professor being fired are in fact examples that are clearly protected under traditional academic freedom principles. Professors who deny the Holocaust have been protected by those principles, so long as they are expressing such views in their private capacity in the form of extramural speech and are not teaching, for example, twentieth-century European history or holding themselves out as a scholarly expert on the Holocaust.

Also on the Amy Wax front, the Business Insider has a report on allegations relating to Wax’s behavior on campus involving students in and out of the classroom. Those allegations are an entirely different matter. If proven true, Wax would be in a much more vulnerable position and could not easily seek shelter under academic freedom protections. Penn would do well to make very clear that its announced investigation will not be focused on her protected extramural speech but rather on her on-the-job conduct. Penn should investigate such allegations carefully and in good faith, and Wax should have ample opportunity to defend herself against such charges.

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The Biden administration today withdrew its mandate requiring workers from large companies to get vaccinated for COVID-19 or regularly tested, following a Supreme Court loss earlier this month. 

Because of the court’s ruling in National Federation of Independent Businesses vs. OSHA, an emergency temporary standard (ETS) the administration put into place can no longer be enforced.

The vaccination mandate has caused controversy in part because an ETS can circumvent the traditional democratic rulemaking process and even act as a proposal for more permanent standards, bypassing Congress’ lawmaking powers. 

Fearing this temporary regulation may become permanent, many private businesses, Republican states, and religious groups threw dozens of lawsuits at the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). Now, OSHA will ask the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals to dismiss cases related to their mandate. 

The mandate would have applied to over 80 million employees.

OSHA still says it will continue to evaluate the vaccine rule as it monitors the course of the pandemic, but this is amounts to an empty threat. The Supreme Court’s ruling was about the breadth of the mandate and whether OSHA had such power, not how the rule was implemented. Even following the normal rule-making process, a new vaccine and testing mandate would likely not make it past the courts. 

From the time of OSHA’s inception, the agency never required employers to make vaccination mandatory, a safety measure that would extend beyond the workplace. Moreover, OSHA typically requires employers to pay for workplace safety measures, not employees. The vaccination mandate turned this concept on its head, with workers now bearing the burden of either vaccines or testing—something the court said is not within OSHA’s power. 

Justice Neil Gorsuch stated in his concurring opinion that the court’s decision was about who has the power to respond to the pandemic, not how it should be handled. 

With the Supreme Court’s decision and the mandate withdrawal, the Labor Department now states it “continues to strongly encourage the vaccination of workers against the continuing dangers posed by COVID-19 in the workplace.”

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Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, school kids across the country have suffered—not much from the disease itself, but from three school years that have been interrupted by pandemic mitigation measures. Though in-person public schools have suffered, home-based educational alternatives have thrived.

The families of nearly 2.6 million kids have turned to homeschooling since the pandemic began. The homeschooler population is almost double what it was before the pandemic, with 11 percent of American households now homeschooling their kids. Charter school enrollment also boomed, and home-based virtual institutions drove much of that growth in many states.

Long before the pandemic, millions of students were completing their education at home. I became one of them in 2005. From kindergarten through 10th grade, I attended a virtual charter school in Pennsylvania. I completed readings, assignments, and exams with the help of my mother at first, and independently later on. After a final two years as a traditionally homeschooled student in Utah, I finished high school having never set foot in a brick-and-mortar school.

This educational journey was far less common in the pre-pandemic years, partly due to strict regulation of alternative schooling and partly due to the perception that these options were inferior to public brick-and-mortar education. But now that an entire nation’s worth of students has been forced to experience nontraditional education, families and lawmakers are beginning to see the benefits that have always existed outside the traditional public school system.

The journey to acceptance has been a lengthy one. Homeschooling was once extremely rare, and not even legal in all 50 states until 1993.

After legalizing the practice, states enacted their own regulations for home-based education. By 2015, more than half required education in certain subjects. Twenty-three states had attendance requirements, while 13 required homeschooling parents to have certain qualifications. Kids in 24 states weren’t legally permitted to participate in extracurricular activities at their local public schools or attend those schools part time. Others required (and still require) annual achievement tests, portfolio reviews from school system representatives, and detailed attendance records. New York, which has some of the strictest homeschooling laws, dictates that a “home instruction program will be put on probation and the parent must submit a remediation plan” if “a child’s annual assessment does not comply” with state regulations.

Even so, at times different states have sought greater involvement in how parents teach their children. An unsuccessful 2004 bill in Montana would’ve banned parents from homeschooling kids with developmental disabilities. In March 2008, California ruled that parents without teaching credentials couldn’t educate their kids at home. Though reversed a few months later, the ruling put the parents of an estimated 166,000 children at risk of prosecution (as their children would have been deemed truants). Virtual home-based programs have been under fire since their launch, too—including in my home state of Pennsylvania, where a state representative in 2019 introduced a bill that would’ve required all cyber charter schools to cease operations.

But perceptions changed when COVID-19 hit and school districts sent kids home. Parents began to realize that home education is often the right fit for kids with special needs and disabilities, those who have concerns about bullying or systemic racism, or those who take issue with one-size-fits-all instruction. (Not to mention the extreme learning loss caused by pandemic-era schooling.) In June 2021, the Department of Education reported that public school enrollment “fell by its largest margin in at least two decades.” Public schools lost 1.4 million students.

Every student, to some degree, experienced home-based education—and the ones who stuck with it didn’t always fit the stereotypical mold of homeschooled students. Between April and October 2020, the percentage of black families homeschooling their kids had jumped from 3 percent to 16 percent. The percentage of homeschooling Hispanic families nearly doubled.

Families are voting with their feet, and lawmakers are paying attention. Last April, the National Conference of State Legislatures reported that at least 19 state legislatures saw bills that would roll back homeschooling regulations. Nearly half of all states had considered legislation that would launch or broaden education savings account programs, through which parents may withdraw kids from public schools and receive a deposit of public funds to use on alternative programs. Colorado, Virginia, New York, and New Jersey had all seen legislation introduced on tax credits for homeschooling families. Lawmakers in other states have put forth bills that would allow homeschoolers to participate in local public schools’ athletic programs and extracurricular activities, take Advanced Placement and college entrance exams at district brick-and-mortar schools, and access scholarship programs at in-state colleges.

These reforms are overdue and could tip the scales for families considering home-based education. Homeschooling made me an entrepreneurial learner and enabled me to pursue educational opportunities outside the four walls of a classroom. I scored well on standardized tests and was accepted to most of the four-year universities I applied to. I graduated college summa cum laude, even though I entered with no high school diploma. Lawmakers should make that path more accessible, not less.

I’m not an anomaly, despite skeptics like Harvard law professor Elizabeth Bartholet claiming that “we have zero evidence that, on average, homeschooled students are doing well.” Students educated at home “typically score 15 to 30 percentile points above public-school students on standardized academic achievement tests,” according to the National Home Education Research Institute. Over three-quarters of peer-reviewed studies on academic outcomes show that homeschooled students “perform statistically significantly better than those in institutional schools.” Recognizing their unique backgrounds, many top U.S. universities actively recruit homeschoolers—including Harvard.

The U.S. became a nation of involuntary home-learners during the pandemic. Predictably, this approach didn’t suit everyone—homeschooling never has. But more families than ever before have seen the benefits of alternative, home-based education. Once-controversial instructional methods are finally entering the mainstream.

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