Recently issued reports documenting the performance high school students who took the SAT in 2013 confirm that private school students continue to outperform.  The following table displays average scores by school type for each of the SAT's components:

2013 SAT Scores: National Figures	Critical Reading	Mathematics	Writing
School Type
Public	491	503	480
Private Religious	531	536	528
Independent	536	581	545

The following table shows average overall test scores by school type, as well as the relation of average scores to the current SAT benchmark score of 1550.  The test developers consider students scoring above the benchmark to be "more academically prepared for college with a 65% or greater probability of achieving a first year grade-point-average of B- or higher."

2013 SAT Scores National Figures	Average Overall Test Score	Points Above/Below Benchmark
School Type
Public	1474	-76
Private Religious	1595	+45
Independent	1662	+112

The legal "window" for the annual filing of the California private school affidavit opened October 1 and extends through October 15.  Section 33190 of the California Education Code requires every private school in the state to file this important document.  Below, you will find step-by-step instructions for online filing.  To enter the required information you will need to know the unique eight-digit password assigned to your school.  On September 23, the California Department of Education emailed a message containing the password and filing instructions to all private schools in the Department's current database - meaning all private schools that filed an affidavit last year.  The message was resent on October 7.  Both pieces of correspondence were transmitted to the email address provided in your school's last affidavit filing.  If, after checking, you believe your school did not receive this communication, or if you should require assistance, please send an email to Laura Nelson at the CDE: lnelson@cde.ca.gov

This year's affidavit contains two new fields, one containing a school's fax number, and the other showing a school's website address.  Also new this year, a school's address will be added to the list of pre-populated fields.

Here, courtesy of the CDE, is a list of step-by-step instructions to be followed when filing the private school affidavit online:

 

 

 

 

As you complete your affidavit, please devote special attention to the questions asking whether your school is established on a for-profit, or nonprofit basis.  If your school enjoyed a particularly strong fundraising campaign and happened to finish its most recent fiscal year "in the black," it does not necessarily make your school a for-profit entity! A school that has been granted 501(c)(3) status by the Internal Revenue Service is a nonprofit entity, regardless of the size of its endowment, or the "bottom line" on its end-of-year balance sheet.

 

The CDE has done its best to facilitate the affidavit filing process.  CAPSO urges all private schools to complete the submission process in a timely manner.   

 

Note:  The U.S. Department of Education will be conducting its biennial Private School Universe Survey (PSS) at approximately the same time schools are required to complete the PSA.  The PSS is akin to a national private school census, and is used to obtain vital, across-the-board data about the nation's private schools.  Please see that your school completes both the state Private School Affidavit, and the federal PSS.  (The timing of the administration of the PSS, which is a federal project, may be impacted by the government shutdown.)

 

E-Mailer readers are familiar with the series of statewide workshops provided under the auspices of the California Private School Advisory Committee, K-12, and the California Department of Education.  These high-quality, low-cost professional development opportunities are funded by Title II, Part A of the federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act. 

To ensure the relevance of these offerings, the CPSAC and CDE collaboratively conduct needs-assessments designed to identify the professional development priorities that will inform the federally-funded statewide programs. The current survey seeks to obtain information relating to the needs of private school administrators.  Administrators were recently invited to participate in the needs assessment, via an email furnished by the CDE.  The online survey is user-friendly, and takes about 15 minutes to complete.  The assessment should be completed by one administrator per school.  Prior to completing the online form, administrators are strongly encouraged to obtain input from key school staff and parents.  The deadline for the completion of the survey is November 15, 2013.  

 

 

Bills, Bills, and More Bills!

 

The California Legislature maintains a two-year legislative session, with the first year beginning in odd-numbered calendar years.  Now that we're approaching the half-way point of the current session, here are some figures that provide a sense of the magnitude of legislative activity in the Golden State:

 

Total Number of Bills Introduced:	2,390
Bills Introduced by Democrats:	1,794
Bills Introduced by Republicans:	596
Bills Sent to Governor by Democrats:	631
Bills Sent to Governor by Republicans:	83
Bills Held Over (until second year):	1,137

 

A legislative calendar for the current year can be downloaded, here.  As can be seen, September 13 marked the deadline for the passage of bills during the first year of the current session.  The Governor can sign, or veto bills through October 13.

 

 

How Much are State Legislators and Staff Paid? 

  

Most members of the California Legislature earn a base salary of $90,526.  This is true for members of the State Assembly and State Senate, alike.  The Assembly Speaker and President Pro Tem of the Senate earn base salaries of $104,105, as do the minority leaders of both houses.  Staff salaries are highly variable.  Clerical staff earn annual base salaries starting at roughly $30,000, and legislative assistants earn salaries in the $50,000 range.  Legislative chiefs of staff receive salaries in the $85,000 range, while committee chief consultants earn salaries in the $120,000 to $150,000 range.

 

The highest-paid employee of the State Assembly is the Chief Consultant to the Democratic Caucus, who earns a base salary of $193,476.  The distinction of being the highest paid employee of the State Legislature goes to the Secretary of the Senate, who currently earns a base salary of $205,584.  All salaries of persons employed by the State Legislature are a matter of public record, and may be accessed either through this State Assembly webpage, or this Senate page.

 

 

Read the CAPE Outlook!

 

Check out the current edition of the CAPE Outlook newsletter, here.  The Outlook, published monthly during the course of the school year by the Council for American Private Education (CAPE) provides news and commentary concerning national developments of interest to America's private school community.  You can subscribe, here, if you'd like a free PDF version of the CAPE Outlook newsletter sent to your inbox each month.

 

You might also wish to visit the CAPE website, which contains a variety of material and information that can prove useful to your school's outreach and marketing efforts.  For example, this page contains a compendium of information and sources affirming the benefits of private education, while an assortment of facts and information about private schools can be found, here. 

My father was a good person.  My mother is a good person.  Me?  Apparently, not so much.  You see, unlike my parents, who were good enough to have sent their children to public schools, I somehow deviated from the "proper" path, and enrolled my own children in private schools.  Which makes me "bad."  At least in the eyes of Allison Benedikt it does.

 

You may have heard of Ms. Benedikt.  She's the Slate webzine editor who penned an article titled,  "If You Send Your Kid to Private School You Are a Bad Person."  Honest.   You can read it, here.  If you do, you'll quickly find that Ms. Benedikt doesn't mince words.  Here's how she opens her piece:

 

 

Whew!  I guess I'm only pretty "bad."
 
There is, however, a certain compensation accompanying one's relegation to the ranks of the immoral.  Ms. Benedikt appears to regard the "bad" people who send their children to private schools as exceedingly capable.  Comprising but a sliver of the population, and accounting for less than 10 percent of those with children currently enrolled in any of grades K-12, Ms. Benedikt obviously believes private school parents hold the key to improving America's public schools.  Her thesis boils down to this: "...if every single parent sent every single child to public school, public schools would improve." 

The transformation will take time, perhaps generations, explains Ms. Benedikt, adding, "Your children and grandchildren might get mediocre educations in the meantime, but it will be worth it, for the eventual common good."  And exactly how does the author understand the notion of the "common good?"  While this is not made entirely clear, she hints at what she has in mind when, after confessing that she "...went K-12 to a terrible public school," she writes: "I'm saying that I survived it, and so will your child, who must endure having no AP calculus so that in 25 years there will be AP calculus for all." 
 
While Ms. Benedikt appears to favor equality over individual liberty, it remains unclear whether her primary allegiance rests with the producer of education, or its consumers.  On the one hand she rails against harming the producer (i.e. "ruining one of our nation's most essential institutions") to benefit the consumer (i.e., "get what's best for your kid").  Yet, the future state of affairs she envisions is one in which consumers are better off (i.e. "AP calculus for all").  Apparently, Ms. Benedikt not only believes that a monopoly will redound to the ultimate benefit of both the producer and consumers, but that a monopoly is the only way to ultimately benefit all consumers.
 
Such thinking strikes me as bizarre, inaccurate, and insulting.  It is, for example, bizarre to contemplate a transposition of Ms. Benedikt's argument to the U.S. Postal Service, which has demonstrated significant improvement in services provided to consumers after the introduction of competitive alternatives.  It was the ability of consumers to choose alternative forms of service that induced the USPS to respond in ways that better met the public's needs.  Why Ms. Benedikt believes that producers will become more responsive to the needs of consumers in the absence of competition escapes me.  The common good would appear to be served just fine by the availability of options.
 
Nowhere does Ms. Benedikt offer so much as a shred of empirical evidence to gird the hypothesis that a monopoly is required to serve the common good.  Indeed, she ignores evidence to the contrary.  For example, in 2004 the nation's sole federally funded school vouchers program was initiated in Washington, D.C.  Rather than harm that city's public education system, a dramatic increase in achievement test scores ensued.  Between 2007 and the present, the overall proficiency rate in English and math for students enrolled in Washington, D.C. public schools has risen from 33.5 percent to 51.3 percent.  That's still not nearly good enough, but improvement in excess of fifty percent should cause Ms. Benedikt to reconsider her view, even as it provides cause for optimism.  As a Washington Post editorial notes:

I'm not suggesting that the progress demonstrated by Washington D.C.'s public school students is attributable to the existence of educational options.  I'm simply observing that the existence of options hasn't hampered significant improvement of the public education system.

Mostly, though, Ms. Benedikt's article is just plain insulting, not least of all to thousands of good and great public schools in which dedicated teachers, administrators and involved parents have joined forces to achieve and improve.  The notion that parents whose children happen to attend "crappy" public schools (to use Ms. Benedikt's term) require the resources possessed by private school parents in order to effect change is particularly demeaning.  (If the author truly wished to empower parents in need of additional resources, one might think she'd look with favor upon arrangements that actually effect a shift in resources from producers to consumers.) 

Obviously, Ms. Benedikt's "think" piece is grossly insulting to private school parents, who are deemed "immoral" for wishing their children to attend schools in which morality is integral to the educational program, or who wish to enroll their children in schools that best meet their particular needs, or who simply want to feel that their children are safe.  (While exhorting private school parents to subject their children to an inferior education, Ms. Benedikt stops short of positing the "morality" of intentionally placing a child in harm's way.)
 
Last, but certainly not least, Ms. Benedikt's article is an insult to herself.  Her candor is defeated by an accompanying lack of discretion.  After describing herself as a general ignoramus, she offers the following case-in-point:  "Reading Walt Whitman in ninth grade changed the way you see the world? Well, getting drunk before basketball games with kids who lived at the trailer park near my house did the same for me. In fact it's part of the reason I feel so strongly about public schools."  Really?  Aside from assuming that monopolies serve the interests of consumers, she appears to believe that all private school parents are rich, powerful, and liberal, concluding her article with the admonition, "Don't just acknowledge your liberal guilt-listen to it."  Newsflash: many private school parents possess conservative, or middle-of-the-road guilt, though not when it comes to doing what's best for their kids.

One assertion made by Ms. Benedikt is deserving of praise.  She writes (if parenthetically): "By the way: Banning private schools isn't the answer."  (Regrettably, she felt obliged to have tacked on the following qualifier: "We need a moral adjustment, not a legislative one.") 
 
In 2001, California State Senator Ray Haynes eschewed such restraint and introduced Senate Bill 715, a measure that would have forced public school teachers to enroll their own children in a public school located in the district in which they are employed.  In the analysis of the bill prepared by Senate Education Committee staff, it is noted that public school teachers are more likely to send their own children to private schools than is the population in general.  Senator Haynes adduced figures appearing in the analysis suggesting that 36.7 percent of San Francisco's public school teachers, and 30.1 percent of their Los Angeles counterparts sent their own children to private schools.  What you may not know is that Senator Haynes introduced his bill with tongue planted firmly in cheek.  His primary intention was to produce a memorable piece of theatrical farce in which the California Teachers Association would testify against the bill.  Which it did.
 
The thought that so many "bad" people teach in our public schools must be distressing to Ms. Benedikt.  She might consider advising those "bad" people who wish to become "good" by pulling their children out of private schools and sending them to the worst of our public schools that they could become even "better" by boycotting any public schools employing staff who are "bad" people (even if they happen to be great teachers).

While I hadn't intended to lapse into farce, I will say in conclusion that reading Ms. Benedikt's article sparked an idea for the publication of a book containing a compendium of positive experiences and outcomes enjoyed by private school parents and their children.  Its title:  When Good Things Happen to "Bad" People.

Ron Reynolds

The next edition of the CAPSO Midweek E-Mailer will be published November 13, 2013.