Mark Loewe's efforts to improve K-12 education
Will Ken Mercer or Rebecca Bell-Metereau defeat Physicist Mark Loewe?
During the 1980's, Mark devised what has become known as "
progressive vouchers", or "
progressive school choice", to attract billions of additional private dollars per year into Texas' K-12 education system, tens-of-billions of additional private dollars per year into our nationwide K-12 education system, and to maximize the public education funds available for any child.
In 1991, Dr. Loewe began to inform state and federal legislators and education officials about progressive vouchers. In 1994, Dr. Loewe began to testify before Texas legislative committees on the fiscal benefits of progressive vouchers.
Around 1997, the Legislative Budget Board prepared a report on Dr. Loewe's proposal at the request of Representative
Robert Junell (D-San Angelo), Chair of the Texas House Appropriations Committee.
In 1999, the Texas Legislative Council drafted a "progressive voucher plan" bill based on Dr. Loewe's proposal at the request of Representative
Kent Grusendorf (R-Arlington). (The draft bill was not introduced.)
Dr. Loewe sent material on
progressive vouchers to former U. S. Secretary of Labor
Robert B. Reich months before September 2000. Unlike
progressive vouchers, the variant proposed in "
The Case for 'Progressive' Vouchers", Robert B. Reich,
Wall Street Journal, 6 September 2000, would trouble governments to define and measure incomes of individual families and impose large, involuntary reductions of voucher amounts as family income percentile increases. Although many refinements and variants of
progressive vouchers are worth consideration, Professor Reich's variant is so cockeyed that, under it, a government school would receive less public education funds to educate five children from a high income family than to educate one child from a low income family. Professor Reich's variant also does not provide even slightly higher voucher amounts for handicapped children, does not provide even slightly higher amounts of public education funds (per weighted child) to government schools than to voucher schools, and does not provide even slightly higher amounts of public education funds to voucher schools that are not fortunate enough to attract additional private funds than to voucher schools that are fortunate enough to attract additional private funds.
During the 1990's, Dr. Loewe emphasized to legislators, education officials, and members of Governor
George W. Bush's staff that key components of accountability for public education funds are to require that district (or state) academic achievement tests be administered yearly to all children for whom schools receive public education funds and to require that statistical results and questions used to determine student scores be made public promptly after each test.
Dr. Loewe mentioned that a parent (or persons the parent trusts) should have the opportunity to factor results of district (or state) academic achievement tests into his or her choice of school for his or her child. Dr. Loewe mentioned that provision of information to help parents make school choices for their individual children is far better than government imposed, high-stakes sanctions against schools (which may affect hundreds of children per school) based on government defined performance thresholds (perhaps altered for political reasons after the tests) on government prepared minimum proficiency tests. Dr. Loewe mentioned that results of academic achievement tests would be more useful than results of minimum proficiency tests that have few challenging questions.
Texas State Board of Education, District 5
During the 1990's, Dr. Loewe urged legislators and education officials to study whether mathematics and science achievement are significantly correlated with extents to which children (are expected to)
permanently keep their mathematics and science textbooks. Dr. Loewe urged researchers involved with the
TIMSS international mathematics and science achievement tests to gather data to test for such correlations.
In 1999, Dr. Loewe wrote a letter to the editors of
Scientific American to urge that American children be allowed to
permanently keep low cost mathematics and science textbooks and to point out a discrepancy in "The False Crisis in Science Education" by W. Wayt Gibbs and Douglas Fox,
Scientific American, October 1999. Altered quotes from Dr. Loewe's letter (with insertions not written by Dr. Loewe) are featured in
"
Letters to the Editors", by Staff Editor,
Scientific American, February 2000, page 4.
In 2000, 2006, and 2008, Dr. Loewe convinced Republicans at state senatorial district conventions to adopt
platform resolutions on low cost textbooks. As a Delegate to the 2000 and 2006 state conventions of the Republican Party of Texas, Dr. Loewe attempted to convince the platform committees to adopt resolutions on low cost textbooks.
Based on Dr. Loewe's proposal, Representative
Garnet Coleman (D-Houston) authored House Bill 759 during the 2001 session of the Texas Legislature and House Bill 689 during the 2003 session of the Texas Legislature. Representative
Kent Grusendorf (R-Arlington) coauthored House Bill 759 and House Bill 689 and, as Chair of the Public Education Committee, held a hearing on House Bill 689 at which Dr. Loewe testified. Based on data provided by the Embassy of Japan and the Embassy of the Republic of Korea, Dr. Loewe testified that Japanese and Korean children are allowed to permanently keep their textbooks and that Texas mathematics and science textbooks are multiple times more expensive than Japanese and Korean mathematics and science textbooks.
In 2009, Mark Loewe wrote and Representative
Garnet Coleman (D-Houston) authored
House Bill 2959 (81
st Legislature) to acquire low cost mathematics and science textbooks for children to keep permanently.
In 2003, after hearing that Texas high school students would soon need to pass statewide tests to receive high school diplomas, Dr. Loewe decided to investigate the level of the science questions. Unexpectedly, Dr. Loewe discovered scoring mistakes on
question 11 and
question 45 of the Spring 2003, Grade 11, Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS) released Science test. Dr. Loewe discovered and was informed of
more scoring mistakes on TAKS released mathematics and science tests.
The Fort Worth Star-Telegram (articles and letters to the editor of 6, 7, 10, 14 June 2003) and
The New York Times ("
None Of the Above", by
Lisa Guernsey, 24 April 2005) reported on some of the questions. On 15 July 2005, Dr. Loewe testified before the State Board of Education that the Texas Education Agency (TEA) "failed to correct any of the mistakes and is continuing to propagate the mistakes, and false claims, without correction."
Christine Castillo Comer, former TEA Director of Science, informed Dr. Loewe on 16 July 2008 that "as a direct result of your testimony, [TEA] hired four science Ph. D.s, a physicist, a chemist, a biologist, and an earth scientist," to improve the quality of questions on statewide exams.
Mark Loewe discovered errors of roughly $752 Million in the values of two Chilean international investment funds held by the
Permanent School Fund (PSF). According to the
Texas Permanent School Fund Schedule of Investments Held as of August 31, 2009 (Unaudited), published by the Texas Education Agency, the PSF held 48,805 shares of the international industrials fund LAN AIRLINES SA (CUSIP 2518932) with book value $390,535,414 and fair value $581,689 and the PSF held 715,695 shares of the international utilities fund EMPRESA NACIONAL DE ELECTRIC (CUSIP 2299356) with book value $363,744,646 and fair value $1,094,772. The book values of the two funds were too high by roughly $752 Million.
Mark Loewe received the votes of over 20,000 Texans in the 2 November 2010 General Election as the
Libertarian candidate for Member,
State Board of Education,
District 5. Mark Loewe was also a candidate for Member, State Board of Education, District 5, in the 2006 Republican Party Primary Election.
