In keeping with its mission to provide a coherent voice for private education,
CAPE periodically develops issue papers to help inform lawmakers, policymakers,
and the general public about public policy issues of concern to the private
school community. Issue papers are approved by CAPE’s Board, which
consists of the CEOs of the member organizations, a representative of
the state CAPE organizations, and various at-large members. CAPE member
organizations represent about 80 percent of K-12 private school enrollment
nationwide.
You can let your representatives in Congress know where you stand on
various public policy issues, by using CAPE’s Legislative Action
Center. Just click the button below.
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NCLB Reauthorization
Objective
To secure improvements in services to private school students and teachers in certain programs authorized by the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB).
Rationale
The reauthorization of NCLB is a major education priority for the 110th Congress. Many provisions within NCLB have a direct impact on students and teachers in private schools, and some of those provisions go back as far as the mid 1960s, when Congress determined that federal education aid should be directed toward helping children in need, regardless of the type of school they attend. CAPE believes that federal programs that benefit public school students and teachers should provide equitable benefits to comparably situated private school students and teachers. Such equity is mandated in much of federal education law. It is based not only on a commitment to fairness, but also on the practical recognition that America’s children are educated in a variety of schools and that the nation is best served when all its children are well-educated. In keeping with this rationale, CAPE supports the following proposals.
Action
Establishing Equitable Services
- Provide for the participation of private school students and teachers in any newly proposed programs as well as in existing programs that are not currently available to them, such as Striving Readers.
- Include within the private school provisions found in Title V and Title IX certain safeguards relating to the participation of private school students currently found in Title I.
- Require school districts to serve private school students through all discretionary grants they receive.
- Allow participants in the Troops-to-Teachers program to teach in private schools.
Consulting About Establishing Equitable Services
- Require timely notification of the amount of funds available for services to students and teachers in private schools under NCLB programs.
- Require school districts to secure written affirmations from private school officials that timely and meaningful consultation has taken place in connection with all programs serving private school students and teachers, and require state education agencies to withhold funds for district programs pending verification that the written affirmations have been secured.
- Require state education agencies to secure written affirmation from appropriate private school officials that timely and meaningful consultation with representatives of the state’s private school community has taken place with respect to programs carried out by the state that extend to students and teachers in private schools.
- Require school district officials and private school officials to agree upon the method and sources of data that will be used to determine the number of children from low-income families in participating school attendance areas who attend private schools.
- Require school districts that disagree with private school officials over any issues involved in the consultation process to provide in writing the reason why the LEA has chosen a different course of action.
- Include among the issues of required consultation within Titles I, V, and IX the issue of pooling funds generated by private school students for the purposes of improving services to students and teachers.
- Require states to include in their consolidated grant applications from school districts adequate and specific assurances that timely and meaningful consultation with private school officials has taken place.
Delivering Equitable Services
- Include statutory language that would presume on-site services to students in private schools absent an agreement to the contrary.
- Remove the requirement in Titles I-A, V-A, and IX that service providers be independent of any religious organization.
- Shift the responsibility for providing Title I services to private school students from the school district in which the child lives to the school district in which the private school the child attends is located.
Funding Equitable Services
- Require school districts to expend funds generated by private school students for services to such students during the school year for which the funds have been appropriated. If funds are not expended during the appropriate school year, require school districts to expend any remaining funds for services to private school students during the subsequent school year.
- Clarify or reform policies relating to equitable set-asides for private school students when a school district reserves funds “off the top” of its program allocation.
- Provide private schools the option of receiving the benefits for students and teachers that they would have received in each title program absent a district’s transferability plan under Title VI.
- Allow school district officials, after consulting with private school officials, to transfer funds generated by private school students in accordance with the provisions in Title VI, Part A, Subpart 2, in order to better meet the needs of private school students and teachers.
- Require school district officials and private school officials to reach agreement regarding proposals relating to the pooling of funds for services to private school students.
Safeguarding Equitable Services
- Streamline the bypass provision and the complaint process and shorten the bypass/complaint implementation timeline.
- Establish meaningful consequences for a district’s or state’s failure to carry out provisions of NCLB (e.g., timely and meaningful consultation) that relate to the participation of private school students and teachers, including the withholding of funds.
- Require each state education agency to identify a private school ombudsman to advocate for private schools and to monitor and enforce requirements regarding private school participation in federal education programs.
Approved by CAPE’s Board of Directors: January 2007
Related Links
Click here to download CAPE's NCLB issue paper as a PDF document.
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Principles Relating to School Choice Legislation
Introduction
The Council for American Private Education (CAPE) is a broad-based national organization representing private schools. In its vision statement, CAPE recognizes that America’s children have greater opportunities because of access to an array of high-quality schools. CAPE’s mission is to preserve and promote educational pluralism so that parents have a choice in the schooling of their children. In keeping with its vision and mission, CAPE offers the following principles to guide school choice legislation at the state and federal levels.
Choice initiatives have taken various forms, including government vouchers for parents, tax credits/deductions for parents, and tax credits/deductions for corporate or individual contributors to programs that award scholarships. Because any one of these approaches might be best in a given situation, these principles are intended to apply to all of them.
General Principles
- Funds relating to school choice should flow through parents rather than directly to schools.
- School choice initiatives should not in any way infringe upon the existing right of private schools to control the hiring of staff.
- School choice programs should safeguard the right of private schools to control the instructional program and curriculum, and should not add restrictions or regulations in this regard beyond what may already exist in state law.
- School choice programs should allow schools to retain their admission policies.
- Test scores should never be allowed to become a sole or dominant indicator of achievement or failure.
Level and Distribution of Benefits
- Benefits to families should be substantial enough to allow families to select from a variety of schools.
- Benefits should vary with family financial need to ensure that families with the greatest need receive the greatest benefit.
- Families with children already in private schools should be eligible for benefits.
Responsibilities of Participating Schools
- Participating schools should comply with federal, state, and local requirements that currently apply to private schools, including those relating to civil rights, nondiscrimination, background checks for employees, and student health and safety. However, choice legislation should not give rise to additional regulation of private schools.
Approved by CAPE’s Board of Directors: March 2006
Related Links
Click here to download CAPE's school choice principles as a PDF document.
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HEA Reauthorization
Objective
To secure the equitable participation of private elementary and secondary school students and teachers in programs contained within the Higher Education Act (HEA).
Rationale
The reauthorization of the Higher Education Act is a major education priority of the 109th Congress. Many provisions within HEA have a direct impact on programs at the elementary and secondary levels. CAPE believes that federal higher education programs that benefit public school students and teachers should provide equitable benefits to comparably situated private school students and teachers. Such equity is mandated in much of federal education law. It is based not only on a commitment to fairness, but also on the practical recognition that America’s children are educated in a variety of schools and that the nation is best served when all its children are well-educated.
Action
Specifically, CAPE supports the following proposals.
- All federal financial aid programs, including loan-forgiveness and scholarship programs, should apply alike to educators in public and private schools.
- If additional high-need instructional or geographic areas are identified for accelerated loan forgiveness programs, these new provisions should cover public and private school educators.
- The Direct Loan (20 USC 1087j) and Federal Family Education Loan (20 USC Sec.1078-10) programs should be amended to include, in all loan-forgiveness benefits, private school teachers who demonstrate subject-matter competency.
- The teacher recruitment grants program under the Higher Education Act (20 USC 1024) should allow scholarship recipients to complete their service requirements in high-need public or private schools.
- Special teacher scholarships should be established to encourage teachers to become qualified in those subject areas where the need for expert teachers is especially critical.
- Teacher training programs at universities receiving federal funds should allow and recognize practice teaching in private as well as public schools.
- College financial aid officers (FAOs) should be required to consider a family’s elementary and secondary school tuition obligations as a “special circumstance” in determining a family’s need for college financial aid. The Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) should be amended to reflect this requirement.
We support the above proposals, which would expand educational opportunities for students and educators in private schools and would help ensure that they receive equitable treatment under this important federal program.
Approved by CAPE’s Board of Directors: June 2005
Related Links
Click here to download CAPE's HEA issue paper as a PDF document.
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Title V
Objective
To restore funding for Title V, Part A, of the No Child Left Behind Act to its fiscal 2004 level of $296 million.
Rationale
Title V is an important and widely used program that serves students in private and public schools. It provides materials, equipment, and services to meet student needs, as those needs are identified by local administrators. In one school the program might provide remediation in reading and math; in another it might be used to purchase library books, and in another, to train teachers to use instructional technology. The bulk of the benefits go to public schools, but as much as 11 percent of funds are available for services to children in private schools, a reflection of their portion of the school-age population.
The innovative programs funded under Title V, while determined at the local level, are required to be part of an overall reform strategy tied to promoting academic achievement standards and to improving student performance (20 USC 7215(b)). Numerous accountability provisions are built into the program and are reflected in the application that local educational agencies must submit to states.
To determine the effectiveness and value of Title V, CAPE invited private schools to participate in a survey based on the Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART), which was developed by the Office of Management and Budget and is used by the Department of Education to determine program effectiveness and allocations. The survey report (available at www.capenet.org/pdf/wpss.pdf) provides overwhelming evidence that Title V funds are targeted in an efficient and effective way to address specific needs. Moreover, projects funded by Title V have performance measures that focus on outcomes, and regularly meet their performance goals.
Within the private school community, Title V is the most popular of all federal education programs, and it enjoys a long history of support, in part because it provides for the equitable participation of private school students based on their share of a district’s enrollment. The program’s origins go back to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA), when it was known as Title II. In 2000, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the program in Mitchell v. Helms, a landmark case in church-state jurisprudence.
But despite Title V’s popularity and its long and distinguished history as a staple of federal education law, Congress last year cut funding by one-third from $296 million to $200 million. (Fortunately, an energetic and extensive grassroots campaign by various public school and private school organizations helped reverse the decision by Senate and House appropriators to eliminate the program entirely.) For fiscal 2006, President Bush has proposed to cut the program further to $100 million. In a program that provides local educators with much-needed flexibility, a cut of this magnitude would adversely affect the quality of education that students are provided. It is essential that Congress restore funding for Title V to fiscal 2004 levels in order to repair the damage done by last year’s cuts
Approved by CAPE’s Board of Directors: June 2005
Related Links
Click here to download CAPE's Title V issue paper as a PDF document.
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Educational Accountability
CAPE believes that all educational institutions have a responsibility
to provide their students with the knowledge, skills, values, ethics,
and social commitment they will need to succeed, to be good citizens,
and to be positive forces in a dynamically changing society and global
environment.
Ultimately, each private school is most immediately accountable to its
students’ families, and to its graduates—one by one. Private
education is based on choice. Families choose private schools for their
children, and parents will always be judges of whether a school meets
the needs of their children. All private schools are also to some degree
dependent on generous, voluntary support from graduates, families, and
others who are pleased with these schools.
Other forces also shape a private school’s destiny. The performance
of private schools is continually assessed by their governors and sponsors.
These overseers have an ongoing duty to evaluate outcomes and make their
decisions based in large part on each school’s performance.
Many private schools voluntarily participate in an accrediting process
as a way of accounting to the school’s own public as well as the
larger community. Accrediting bodies conduct extensive site-based reviews
of every aspect of a private school’s operations and program, measuring
and certifying that it meets prescribed standards.
Some states, in varying degrees, are also involved in some forms of accountability.
The U.S. Supreme Court in Pierce v. Society of Sisters (268 U.S.
510 [1925]) limited the state’s authority to “standardize
its children” by forcing them to submit to only one kind of instruction,
because “the child is not the mere creature of the state.”
While guarding the liberty of parents to “direct the education and
upbringing of children,” the state has a legitimate responsibility
to ensure that students are educated in safe environments that promote
democratic values. Private schools comply with applicable statutes and
regulations. But in carrying out its regulatory role, government must
not impose on private schools rules “so pervasive and all-encompassing”
that compliance would “effectively eradicate the distinction”
between public and private schools and thereby deny parents their capacity
to guide their children’s education (Ohio v. Whisner, 351
N.E.2d 750, 768 [1976]).
At a time when test scores are seen by some as the ultimate measure of
attainment, the accountability of private schools for student achievement,
teacher quality, and school success cannot be addressed by standardized
testing alone or any single scale of measurement. While students in private
schools routinely take standardized tests as one tool for assessing achievement,
and while other forms of periodic assessment also have their place as
well, CAPE believes that test scores should never be allowed to become
a sole or dominant indicator of achievement or failure. Educational accountability
requires a much broader, long-term assessment of outcomes. These must
include the family’s educational goals for its children, how students
do at the next level(s) of schooling, accomplishment in life, and evidence
of productive good citizenship.
An accumulation of accountability mechanisms—not any single one—combines
to assure the public that private schools will provide the resources and
vision needed to help every enrolled student succeed. Within such an environment
of accountability, private schools pursue their mission, and survive or
fail on the merit of their performance. CAPE supports policies and initiatives
that will preserve and enhance this environment of accountability—so
that private schools remain good for students, good for families and good
for America.
Approved by CAPE’s Board of Directors: March 2004
(Modified from a statement approved March 1, 2003, by
the
National Association of Independent Schools.)
Related Links
Click here to download CAPE's accountability
issue paper as a PDF document.
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Reauthorization of IDEA
Objective
To secure equitable services for parentally placed private school students
in the reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education
Act (IDEA).
Rationale
Although IDEA provides significant assistance to public school children
in need of special education, it has never provided the same scope and
quality of services to children in private schools. Currently, no individual
child in a private school is entitled to any services under IDEA, and
collectively, children with special needs in private schools receive funding
for only a small portion of the special education services available to
their public school counterparts.
When Congress reauthorized IDEA in 1997, it required a given school district
to provide to children with special needs in private schools only those
services that could be purchased by a proportionate share of the federal
funds available to the district under the statute. Thus, if 10 percent
of students with disabilities in a school district are enrolled in private
schools, the district must only set aside 10 percent of its IDEA funds
to serve those children. And since IDEA funds cover only a small share
of the total cost of special education services to begin with, the net
effect is that children with special needs in religious and independent
schools receive only a fraction of the services they would otherwise receive.
Since IDEA does not provide any particular private school child the right
to special education services, the proportionate spending rule applies
to private school students as a whole. As a result, public school officials
must ration the scarce resources available for private school students.
They choose which, if any, students will be served, which disabilities
will be addressed, and whether any direct services will be provided.
Action
To address the inequity faced by children in private schools, Congress
should amend IDEA as follows:
Services
- Incorporate innovative approaches that would ensure equitable services
to eligible individual private school students.
- Require on-site services for children in private schools.
- Require districts to provide each private school child identified
as having a disability with services or with a certificate for services.
- Strengthen the current child-find language to identify and evaluate
eligible children in private schools and to include the use and payment
of private evaluators.
- Require districts to develop an Individualized Education Program (IEP)
for each private school child identified as having a disability.
- Require districts to consider a child's cultural and linguistic background
in determining appropriate IDEA services.
Funding
- Increase significantly the federal share of funds for IDEA. (A significant
increase in federal IDEA support from current levels would help districts
meet the needs of all students with disabilities and would ensure a
more equitable level of service and participation for students in private
schools.)
- Document consultation on the method and data used to determine the
proportionate share of IDEA funds for services to students in private
schools.
- Require districts to spend the full proportionate share of IDEA funds
on students in private schools, regardless of any separate state and
local funds used to serve those children.
- Change the law so there is no fiscal disincentive for school districts
to serve children in private schools.
Accountability
- Strengthen the provisions relating to timely and meaningful consultation
with private school officials regarding the design and implementation
of services to children in private schools.
- Strengthen the bypass language to provide a recourse to students whose
LEAs do not provide equitable services.
- Require districts to report annually on all private school children
located, referred, identified, evaluated, and served.
- Provide for equitable due process procedures for parents of eligible
students in public, private, and religious schools.
- Require federal monitors who evaluate the implementation of IDEA programs
to include representatives of private and religious schools in this
process.
- Require the full disclosure of the number of private school students
identified, the number served, and the dollars expended on those services.
The reauthorization of IDEA provides Congress a unique opportunity to
recraft an act that will truly provide enhanced opportunities for special
education students. The above proposals would go a long way toward realizing
the equity that IDEA has always sought.
Approved by CAPE's Board of Directors: December 2002
Related Links
Click here to download CAPE's IDEA issue
paper as a PDF document.
Visit CAPE’s IDEA Update page to find out
the status of the reauthorization and CAPE’s analysis of the legislation.
Download CAPE’s free IDEA Toolkit, developed
to help parents, private school officials, and public school officials
understand the provisions of the IDEA that relate to children with disabilities
who have been placed by their parents in private schools.
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School Choice
Objective:
To provide parents with financial assistance to allow them to exercise
fully their right to choose their child's school—religious, private,
or public.
Rationale:
Private schools, by definition, help fulfill the ideal of pluralism in
American education. America's first schools were private schools established
in the early 17th century. Today, one in four of the nation's elementary
and secondary schools is a private school; eleven percent of all K-12
students attend them. These schools are continuing to flourish and are
identified by strong statements of mission and purpose. They are religious
and secular, large and small, urban and rural. They serve diverse populations,
and are multi-ethnic and multi-cultural. Almost all vest the school's
principal with the authority and the ability to implement change. Faculty,
parents, and, when appropriate, students, are actively engaged in the
decision-making process. A sense of common community and common goals
and an emphasis on values pervade these schools. The goals of private
schools include academic excellence, meeting the needs of individual students
and families, and a concern about the social, moral, spiritual, emotional,
physical and intellectual development of each child.
As the nation continues to focus on education reform, private schools
provide significant models of success. They are ultimately accountable
to the parents who choose them. In 1925, the landmark Supreme Court decision
Pierce v. Society of Sisters guaranteed the right of existence
to nonpublic schools and therefore the right of parents to choose a school
which reflects their values. The Council for American Private Education
affirms this right and further urges enactment of national and state legislation
that will provide all parents the opportunity to exercise fully their
right to choose their child's school—religious, private, or public.
Approved by CAPE's Board of Directors: October 1990
Modified: March 1997
Related Links
Click here to download CAPE's school
choice issue paper as a PDF document.
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Teacher Shortage
Every elementary and secondary school in the United States is facing
a threat that could undermine the quality education of all children. The
U. S. Department of Education projects that the nation's schools will
need 3 million new teachers by 2008. The New York Times noted (7 January
2000) that the shortage of qualified teachers has led to a competition
for teachers that creates problems for all schools and drives up the costs
of education across the country. Public and private schools work together
to educate the country's children. The challenge of the growing teacher
shortage threatens the whole education community. The welfare of all our
children calls for federal policies to attract new teachers into the profession
in a way that benefits all students.
Addressing the problem
The shortage of teachers hurts all of our schools. It increases the job
stress of teachers and administrators alike. It leads to increased turnover
of staff, undermines curriculum quality, and hinders efforts at staff
development. Having to hunt for teachers to fill their classrooms drives
up the administrative costs to schools and reduces the funds available
for the classroom. Most of all, the shortage of qualified teachers hurts
our children by forcing too many students into too few classrooms, reducing
the amount of time that teachers can spend helping individual students.
The shortage of teachers hurts children regardless of the type of school
they attend, public or private. It spans the breadth of education in the
United States and threatens to deprive the children of all races and social
classes, in rural, urban, and suburban communities, of the quality education
they will need to meet the challenges of the future.
In view of this pending crisis, the Council for American Private Education
believes that addressing the growing shortage of quality teachers must
become one of our nation's highest public policy priorities. We call on
all members of Congress and the Administration to come together in a bipartisan
effort to craft policies that promote more vigorously the recruitment,
retention, and development of quality teachers for all our children regardless
of the type of school they attend.
Teacher benefits are child benefits
Federal education policy has long recognized that children are the ultimate
beneficiaries of the help given to teachers. Teachers move back and forth
between public and private schools during the course of their careers,
bringing their knowledge and experience to all students. As a result of
the national commitment to improving the education of all children, various
provisions of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act and the Higher
Education Act that are designed to promote improvement in teacher quality
already include teachers from all types of schools. Innovative solutions
such as the Teacher Next Door program of the Department of Housing and
Urban Development help teachers from urban public and private schools
alike to purchase affordable housing in the communities where they serve.
This program recognizes that extending the participation and influence
of teachers in the community benefits the whole community regardless of
the type of school in which the teacher serves. Future federal programs
to encourage and promote teaching as a profession should likewise be constructed
to benefit the teacher as an educator and not to benefit the school as
an institution, in order to avoid inappropriate institutional regulation.
Only this approach can guarantee the equitable participation of all teachers
in a way that meets the distinctive needs of teachers in all circumstances,
ensuring that the benefits of quality teachers will extend to all students.
Policies to help recruit and retain quality teachers
Members of all political parties understand that promoting a quality
education is one of the best contributions that they can make to the future
of our nation. The Council for American Private Education strongly recommends
that members of Congress and the Administration work together to develop
innovative new policies and expand some existing programs to promote the
recruitment, retention, and development of quality teachers. Our recommendations
include the following:
- Expand current student loan forgiveness programs (i.e., the Stafford
and Perkins programs for teachers in low-income public or private schools)
to allow for loan forgiveness for all teachers. Teachers in schools
serving high-need communities should be forgiven loans at an accelerated
pace.
- Establish special teacher scholarships to encourage teachers to become
qualified in those subject areas where the need for expert teachers
is especially critical.
- Provide special tax incentives (e.g. tuition tax credits or special
tax credits for teachers) for those entering the teaching profession.
- Increase the number of visas available to teachers recruited from
abroad.
- Broaden the current Teacher Next Door program to include additional
communities and create other housing incentives for teachers.
Promoting equitable participation for all teachers
In addition to ensuring the equitable participation of all teachers in
the initiatives discussed above, the Council for American Private Education
also recommends the following modifications to programs which currently
only benefit some teachers, so that all teachers can benefit from them:
- The Troops-To-Teachers program and other future initiatives designed
to train and place mid-career professionals in schools should allow
for placement of candidates in private as well as public schools.
- The teacher scholarship program under Title II (Section 204) of the
Higher Education Act should be expanded to include the equitable participation
of teachers serving in private schools.
- Universities receiving federal funds should be required to allow and
to recognize practice teaching in private as well as public schools.
- Congress should streamline the conflicting standards and regulations
governing the participation of private and religious school teachers
in federally-funded professional development programs to produce one
clear set of standards that ensures the equitable participation of all
teachers.
- Federal competitive grant programs that provide continuing education
funds should be open to eligible applicants from public and private
colleges, universities, and professional organizations, as well as public
school LEAs and SEAs.
Conclusion
The Council for American Private Education strongly recommends that the
Congress and the Administration work together to propose and enact federal
legislation that addresses the critical shortage of quality teachers for
all our nation's schools and that respects the autonomy and independence
of private schools. Only inclusive and nondiscriminatory solutions that
provide for the equitable participation of all teachers, whether they
teach in public or private schools, will prove to be a sound investment
in our nation's future and will improve the education of all our children.
Approved by CAPE's Board of Directors: March 2000
Related Links
Click here to download CAPE's teacher
shortage issue paper as a PDF document.
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