Granting
access to a better education
Editor’s note:
The following article, courtesy of the
St. Paul/Minneapolis Archdiocesan newspaper, The Catholic Spirit, explains the
general education access grant bill in which the
March 1.
Chalnicea Smith said she is among the fortunate parents who can
afford to send her seventh-grade daughter, Musulyn,
to
"There are many people
who would like to send their kids to Ascension and just don’t have the
means," said Smith. It becomes even more difficult to pay tuition when
people have two or three children”, she said.
Smith said she would support
the general education access grant bill that was proposed in the 2005 state
legislative session by Sen. David Hann (R-Eden
Prairie). The proposal is supported by the Minnesota Catholic Conference, which
lobbies the Legislature on behalf of
“The Legislature would be
putting the money in the right place, Smith said, if
it allowed a grant to follow a student to the school chosen by the parents to
best meet a child’s needs.”
She chose Ascension for Musulyn because of the family atmosphere, she said.
"It puts her in a place
with family being involved in education," she said. Discipline is another
plus, along with the school uniforms.
"With everyone wearing
the same thing, kids concentrate on education, instead of how they look,"
she said.
Along with great academics,
Smith added, principal Dorwatha Woods "is a
wonderful person."
Woods said Ascension’s first
priority is a solid curriculum.
"Academically, we score
very high on the
A graduate and proponent of
public schools, Hann said he is concerned that
today’s public school system is not as strong as it could be. He said he
believes competition and free-market choices help bring reform. Public schools,
for instance, did not suffer when open enrollment allowed students to choose
from a variety of charter schools or schools out of their district, he said.
"We should be trying to
find ways to allow families and students to go to schools where they believe they
are going to have the best opportunity, and we shouldn’t refuse them access to
those schools simply because they don’t have the financial means," Hann said. "For me, it’s a matter of social
justice."
An access grant follows a
low-income student to the school chosen by the parents. However, the grant is
just a portion of the per-pupil allotment set for a school district. For
example: If the Minneapolis school district received $11,000 per pupil, the
access grant proposed last session would have been about $2,500, or about 25
percent of the available revenue. The remaining per-pupil allotment - $8,500 -
would be available to the
Peter Noll, MCC’s education department director, also believes
educational choice is a matter of social justice.
"[Catholics] operate
from principles that go back 2,000 to 3,000 years," Noll said. "These
are core principles developed from encyclicals and documents on Catholic social
thought."
But, not everyone agrees with
how that choice should be funded.
State Sen. Steve Kelley,
DFL-Hopkins, said public schools are subject to public accountability for the
money they receive, which currently includes meeting requirements of the No
Child Left Behind Act.
"I think the principals
of private schools would not want to subject their kids to No Child Left
Behind," Kelley said.
"I think some private
schools have done a very good job with at-risk students, as have some very good
public schools," he added. "But the fact remains that the private
schools get to choose which students to admit, and that gives them an enormous
advantage with respect to the public schools, which have to take all comers, regardless
of ability levels, regardless of what happened to them before in their lives,
whether they are crack babies or not."
Despite opposition, providing
general education access grants to students will be an MCC priority during the
2006
"That’s going to be our
big effort this session and beyond," he said. The grant allows poor
families some assistance and latitude to select a school that meets the needs
of their child.
Noll also noted that public
school revenue would actually go up with the proposed student access grants.
"The family just utilizes a portion of the per-pupil cost when they choose
to go to a private school - the rest remains there for the discretion of the
school district.
Studies of the grant program
in
In many instances, Catholic
schools provide a private, religious school education for about two-thirds the
cost of public education, Hann said.
In addition, said Deborah
Morris, executive director of KidsFirst Scholarship
Fund, Inc., private school students out-perform their public school peers.
KidsFirst has provided low-income parents educational choice
for their children in kindergarten through eighth grade since it was formed in
1998. About 57 percent of the 600 students, who have received the
privately-funded KidsFirst scholarships, attend or
have attended Catholic schools.
"At the eighth-grade
level, once they graduate, we look at if they passed the eighth-grade standard
skills test, which includes reading and math, and how many passed it in
comparison to the
"Eighty-five percent of
our KidsFirst graduates have passed the math test and
91 percent passed the reading," she said. "If you look at their
public school peers in Minneapolis and St. Paul, only 48 percent in both school
districts have passed the math, and in Minneapolis 64 percent passed the
reading and 65 percent in St. Paul."
Marty Weisbeck,
principal at St. Pascal Baylon School in
But, if the state would
provide grants to any inner-city school, he said, it should provide them to
Catholic schools, which have the most need and the most difficulty surviving.
"Twenty-five hundred dollars would almost pay for a student here," he
said. "A grant system would make a great difference by making it possible
for a student to receive a Catholic, Christian education in smaller classes and
a safe environment."
Income tax education credit eligibility expansion
Sen. Julianne Ortman (R-Chanhassen) also introduced an education bill in
the 2005 legislative session. The "Income tax education credit eligibility
expansion," SF0558, would authorize an education tax credit for tuition
expenses (in an amount equal to 75 percent of the amount paid for
education-related expenses) for certain school attendance and eliminate the
family cap on the education tax credit.
Current legislation allows
low-income families to deduct some education materials, such as textbooks,
computers, software, and some instructional fees, from their income tax.
Parents of Catholic school students also may be eligible for deductions, which
do not include religious, arts, sports, driver’s education or similar expenses.
The general response from
principals to the proposal has been lukewarm.
"It’s unrealistic to
believe that a very low-income family can take $1,000 and go and buy a computer
and expect to wait for that money to come back, when they can’t hardly get the
food on the table," said Woods of Ascension. "You can’t think of it
in a middle-class or upper-class frame of mind."
Noll from the
Catholic Conference
acknowledged that it would be difficult for low-income families to provide
money for tuition up front. "There may need to be creative problem
solving," he said. "Under Sen. Ortman’s
bill, the tuition tax credit would be available to any family who meets the
income level."
Top education issues at the state Legislature
Education access grants: The
grants would allow poor families in the
Education tax credits: The
tax-credit program allows families to deduct expenses for certain school
supplies, such as computer hardware and software, when they file their state
income-tax return. It does not allow parents to claim a tax deduction for
tuition to non-public schools.
Special education delivery and funding task force
A task
force was created to study funding and services to students with learning
disabilities and provide a report
with recommendations to the 2006 Legislature.
Early learning and school preparedness
A new study on early learning
is slated to be released in 2007, which may influence future proposals for
pre-school students.
In-state tuition rate at
colleges and university for students of undocumented immigrants who meet
certain requirements - called "The Dream Act." As proposed, the act
would allow immigrant students who attended a state high school for two or more
years; graduated or obtained a G.E.D.; and are registered in a public
institution of higher education, to pay the in-state tuition rate at a state
college or University.
To contact your legislator
Visit the Minnesota State
House Web site at: www.house.leg.state. mn.us or visit the Minnesota State Senate Web site at: www.senate.leg.state.mn.us
To find out who your
representative is: geo.commissions.leg.state.mn.us/districts/start.html
For more information and
links to the above sites, visit the Minnesota Catholic Conference Web site:
www.mncc.org
(Source: Minnesota Catholic
Conference.)