Some Education-Related Policy Snippets

Information and Proposed Changes in the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAP)

The ASVAP has been a powerful recruiting tool for the Pentagon, with hundreds of thousands of student scores routinely being sent to the military each year, typically leading to follow-up calls from recruiters. About 621,000 students took the ASVAP test in 2006-07, yielding 23,000 military recruits, or 9.3 percent of total enlistments, according to the Department of Defense (DoD). Of the 11,900 schools nationwide that gave the test, 92 percent allowed military recruiters to receive test results and personal contact information.

Civilian Defense Department employees seeking to market the ASVAP attend educator conferences, give talks in schools and can spend up to $1,000 for events where they make presentations, or give training to school employees.

The 693,600-student Los Angeles Unified School District mandated in the 2011-12 school year that no ASVAP information go to recruiters. About 2,700 students still took the test.

Among the changes that critics -- chiefly Safe Passage USA -- propose are:
- equal access for organizations providing alternatives to military careers;
- reporting of policy violations to school boards; and
- possible banning of recruiting organizations after two violations of policy.

Charter School Fraud

Between 2005 and 2011, the U.S. Department of Education opened 53 investigations of charter school fraud, resulting in 21 indictments and 17 convictions. Nineteen of Philadelphia's 84 charter schools were under investigation by state and/or local authorities.

Influences on Student Performance

A study titled "Withering Opportunity" reported that the family is by far the most important influence on student performance, topping both school and community. It is the latest in a series of studies showing that it is difficult to overcome a bad family situation in educating a child.

In 2010, the results of international testing comparing students in 34 developed countries showed a stunning decline in U.S. test scores.

The two findings above have a relationship to President Barack Obama's policy preferences, as he believes in tying teacher evaluations to student performance on high stakes testing. Teachers working in poverty-stricken areas have an additional hurdle to overcome in raising their students' test scores. Secondly, the decline in the test scores of U.S students in 2010 testing shows that years of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) may not have had a beneficial effect. Although Obama proposes to remove the NCLB emphasis on failing students and schools, he still does not want to kill NCLB.

On-Line Education

When President Obama held a well-publicized meeting with former Florida governor Jeb Bush, the GOP's "go-to guy" on educational issues, he gave prominence to the GOP's ultimate goal of breaking teachers' unions through use of vouchers, increasing the number of mostly non-union charter schools and promoting on-line education. Jeb Bush has possible conflict of interest problems, because a brother sells products tailored for on-line education. Jeb, himself, travels the country extolling the virtues of for-profit on-line education.

On-line education has a number of drawbacks: it siphons money from public institutions into for-profit companies; it undercuts public employees and their unions; it is beset with allegations of fraud; on-line schools rank among the most troubled of schools; and the digital learning products tend to be of low-quality.

There tends to be little teacher involvement in on-line education and parents do much of the teaching. Class sizes tend to be large, as illustrated by more than 100 students in some Wisconsin on-line classes. Also, teachers' salaries comprise just 17 percent of the budget for the on-line company, ECOT; in contrast, in Ohio's public schools, teachers may comprise 75 percent of the education budget.

Spending priorities can be very skewed at on-line education companies: Q Academy Wisconsin spent $424,700 on ads.

Finally, a CREDO research study shows learning gains for on-line students are significantly worse than in traditional public schools.