Author Archive | Doug Tuthill

Doug Tuthill: Choice & customization will force teachers unions to adapt, someday

By Doug Tuthill on June 13, 2013

Tuthill

Editor’s note: This is the fourth and final post in a series on the future of teachers unions.

Over the last 20 years, the federal government and state governments have used standards, assessments and regulatory accountability to assert more top-down control over classroom teachers. As state-mandated teacher evaluation and merit pay systems have become ubiquitous, the level of teacher disempowerment and alienation has soared, and teacher unions have hunkered down and become even more defensive and conservative.

School choice is the way out – not only because it is breaking down public education’s 19^th Century industrial management model, but because teacher unions are so economically tied to this model they are fighting to preserve it, even though it is bad for teachers and students. Ironically, teacher union dues today are used to perpetuate a dysfunctional management system, and to protect teachers from being abused by this same system. It’s crazy.

I say this as a former teacher union leader.

I started teaching in fall 1977. In January 1978, I sat at a table with other teachers and heard a divorced mother with two young children tearfully tell us she had rejected her boss’ sexual advances and now he was ending her employment contract. At the time, we didn’t have a union or a union contract.

I was 22 years old and became a union organizer while sitting at that table. We organized ourselves, collected cards and successfully petitioned the state to hold a collective bargaining election. We won a court case management had filed to block the election. Then we won the election and bargained and ratified a contract that included protections against arbitrarily firing employees.

In 1984, I joined a more mature union (and the school choice movement) when I moved to St. Petersburg, Fla. to help start one of the state’s first magnet schools. The Pinellas Classroom Teachers Association had been a professional association for several decades before turning into an industrial union in the late 1960s. By 1984, its collective bargaining agreement had been in place for more than a decade, and it had established a collaborative working relationship with management.

After the intensity of building a union from scratch, PCTA felt stagnant. The union was part of district management. It did a great job protecting teachers from the abuses of a politically-managed bureaucracy, but there was no energy or vision for progress. PCTA’s only internal and external message was, “We need more money.”

Pinellas teacher salaries increased by an average of 45 percent from 1981 to 1986, yet teachers were still miserable. More money was great, but they wanted greater job satisfaction. Individuals become teachers because they want to make a meaningful contribution to children’s lives, but that’s difficult – and often impossible – in a mass production bureaucracy that treats teachers like assembly line workers and students like identical widgets.

We attempted reform from within. Continue Reading →

Lessons from school choice in Florida

By Doug Tuthill on June 4, 2013

For the last month, the North Carolina legislature has been debating whether to create a scholarship program to help low-income families pay the tuition and fees at qualified K-12 private schools. Since this proposal closely parallels Florida’s tax credit scholarship program, I’ve traveled to Raleigh three times in recent weeks to discuss what we’ve learned in Florida over the last 10 years and how these lessons might apply to the North Carolina program.

Below are the lessons learned I’ve shared with supporters and opponents:

All parents want to match their children with the schools that best meet their needs. This is not a political or ideological decision for parents. They just want to do what’s best for their children.

Low-income parents have fewer schooling options than more affluent parents. Scholarships provide low-income families with more options. Scholarships don’t level the playing field, but they move us toward greater equality of opportunity for disadvantaged children.

Low-income parents don’t have a bias for or against neighborhood schools, magnet schools, charter schools, virtual schools or private schools. Their schooling decisions are pragmatic. They just want access to schools that work for their children.

Every child and every school is different. Schools that work great for some children fail others. The challenge for parents is matching each child with the school that works best for him or her.

Children and schools are constantly changing. A school that works for a child one year may not work for this child the next year. When the relationship between a child and a school is no longer successful, low-income parents with scholarships find another school. Low-income parents without scholarships don’t have this option. Continue Reading →

Florida offers answers to North Carolina’s questions about school choice

By Doug Tuthill on May 17, 2013

Editor’s note: This op-ed was published on the Raleigh News & Observer website last night.

The debate over a private learning option for poor schoolchildren in North Carolina has a familiar ring to it because Florida faced similar fears a dozen years ago. But a targeted and accountable scholarship can strengthen our commitment to equal educational opportunity by giving more tools to the students who face the greatest odds.

Don’t trust me, a lifelong progressive Democrat and former teacher union president who now leads the nation’s largest scholarship program for low-income students. Look instead at the track record in a state with a scholarship that is similar to the plan being offered by a bipartisan coalition of N.C. House members. The Florida Tax Credit Scholarship can provide at least a few answers:

The scholarship serves the students who struggle the most. Scholarship opponents say that the most disadvantaged students are the most likely to remain in public schools. But the experience in Florida is just the opposite. As the state’s independent researcher noted in the latest report: “Program participants tend to come from lower-performing public schools prior to entering the program. Likewise, as in prior years, they tend to be among the lowest-performing students in their prior school.”

• These same students are making solid academic progress. According to the results of their nationally norm-referenced tests, these students who were losing ground prior to choosing the scholarship are now achieving the same gains in math and reading each year as students of all income levels nationally. “In other words,” said the latest report, “the typical student participating in the program gained a year’s worth of learning in a year’s worth of time.”

• Traditional public schools are not hurt financially. One N.C. community organizer recently wrote: “At their core, vouchers are about taking public money and giving it to private schools.” But in Florida, five different independent agencies over the past decade have reached the same conclusion: The scholarship saves tax money that can help public schools. That’s because the scholarship is substantially less than the cost of public education, and most of its recipients would have otherwise attended public school. The Florida Revenue Estimating Conference pegged the savings this year at $57.9 million. Continue Reading →

Balancing choice, regs in public education

By Doug Tuthill on April 24, 2013

My recent post about the importance of including parental choice in our definition of public education accountability drew a thoughtful response from Melissa Webber, the parent of a special needs child.

She writes, “I’m not sure I agree with the writer’s explanation of accountability. While I support parental choice and have in the past taken advantage of the McKay Scholarship, I think choice is a separate issue not to be confused with accountability unless parent empowerment actually affects positive change of a program to bring it up to regulation standards. One of the private schools I visited had no certified teacher, made no attempt to comply with sunshine standards and they weren’t bound to provide services spelled out in Blake’s IEP. Basically, it served as a disorganized daycare for middle school ESE kids. It was an easy choice for me to opt for another public school program. However, my choice to do so did not make the school more accountable. There should be much more oversight to insure at least minimal standards are met so the children of less informed parents do not suffer in the name of choice.”

The public good is best served when public education operates with maximum effectiveness and efficiency. Highly effective and efficient schools are best possible through a combination of regulations and consumer choice. Regulations provide the floor below which no school should operate, but regulations alone can’t produce excellence. Excellence requires consumer choice.

Ron Matus’ recent story about one of Florida’s top charter schools included this quote from the school’s founder and principal, Yalcin Akin: “If they like us, they come to our school. If they don’t like us, they don’t come. We have to have a high level of customer service and a high level of performance – or we will not survive.”

This necessity to meet parents’ needs or go out of business is part of accountability, and helps fuel the drive for excellence. Last year, Akin’s school had a waiting list of about 1,500 students.

Now consider Melrose Elementary in St. Petersburg. Only one student chose to attend Melrose’s magnet program this year. All the other Melrose students were assigned there by the school board and, if they don’t show up, their parents can be sent to jail.

Melrose is more highly regulated than Akin’s charter school, but it is not more accountable. As long as students are forced by law to attend Melrose, it won’t go out of business, regardless of its effectiveness. Continue Reading →

Parental choice is part of accountability

By Doug Tuthill on April 9, 2013

Accountability in public education derives from a combination of government regulations and consumer choice. Historically, because we’ve had so little consumer choice in public education, regulations have been the dominant component of accountability. But now that school choice is becoming more ubiquitous, consumer choice is assuming a more prominent role.

Unfortunately, some of our most important public education policy wonks are devaluing the importance of consumer choice by using the term accountability as a synonym for regulations.

My friend and former colleague here at Step Up For Students, Adam Emerson, in criticizing the lack of required state assessments in Florida’s McKay Scholarship program, recently wrote on his Fordham Institute blog that:

“Virtually no accountability measures, however, exist in most of the nation’s special-education voucher programs, including the largest such program in the United States, Florida’s McKay Scholarship for Students with Disabilities.”

Parents choose to apply for and use a McKay Scholarship. If their needs are not being met at one of the more than 1,100 Florida private schools accepting the McKay Scholarships, they can vote with their feet and go to another school. To suggest this level of consumer choice equates with “virtually no accountability measures” is wrong.

Adam’s gifted colleague at Fordham, Mike Petrilli, made a similar error a few days later. He wrote that “Indiana’s voucher program has accountability in spades,” then ignored consumer choice and equated accountability only with required student testing and school grades. Continue Reading →

Seeing a little progress in a New York Times lead

By Doug Tuthill on March 29, 2013

Two years ago, we launched redefinED in an attempt to help opinion leaders, the public and the mainstream media understand how public education is being transformed and redefined. So the following lead in yesterday’s New York Times was, even if by mere coincidence, gratifying to read: “A growing number of lawmakers across the country are taking steps to redefine public education … legislators and some governors are headed toward funneling public money directly to families, who would be free to choose the kind of schooling they believe is best for their children, be it public, charter, private, religious, online or at home.”

We are still early in this transition from a one-size-fits-all assembly-line model of public education to an approach that stresses empowerment, diversity and customization, but this shift is accelerating and it’s inevitable. And as these changes unfold, redefinED will continue to aspire to be a place where thoughtful people can – with civility and mutual respect – discuss how best to address all the challenges this transformation is producing.

In the 1980s and ’90s, when the National Education Association was a leader in trying to improve public education, we use to say change is inevitable but improvement is optional. This is especially true today, which is why the dialogue we’re having at redefinED is so important.

Thanks for staying with us.

Why school voucher opponents should reconsider

By Doug Tuthill on March 29, 2013

In a blog entry last week, “I’m rethinking my opposition to school vouchers. Convince me,” Nicole Stockdale, the assistant editorial page editor at the Dallas Morning News, said she is grappling with whether to support school vouchers.

The evidence shows Florida’s tax credit scholarships do the opposite of “skimming the cream.” They are awarded to the state’s lowest-income and lowest-performing students.

What stimulated Nicole’s dilemma is a bill in the Texas Legislature to allow low-income families to use tax credit scholarships to pay private school tuition and fees. She deserves a serious reply to her challenge, and, given I am president of a Florida nonprofit that administers the country’s largest tax credit scholarship program for low-income children, I thought I’d try.

Nicole identified three traditional anti-voucher arguments she wanted help refuting:

By allowing low-income students to have the same schooling options as more affluent students aren’t we delaying the process of improving ineffective district schools?

This is not an either-or proposition. All schools should be engaged in continual improvement, but this is not a rationale for denying low-income families access to additional schooling options.

Researchers studying Florida’s tax credit scholarship program found urban district schools improved when our program was first introduced. They hypothesized that the possibility of losing students caused these district schools to focus more attention on meeting the needs of low-income students. This same study also found the district schools most impacted by the loss of scholarship students – Florida now has about 51,000 high-poverty students on scholarship – had proportionally higher test score gains among their own low-income students.

So in Florida we’ve found that both the low-income students on scholarship and the low-income students who remain in district schools are improving at the same time. This finding confirms that different students are successful in different environments, that there is no one-size-fits-all solution for helping students learn. The relationship between the school and the child is the key. That’s why allowing all parents – including low-income parents – to match their children with the schools that best meet their needs is so necessary.

What about students who don’t choose to attend magnet, charter or private schools? Will we end up with non-magnet district schools comprised only of students from apathetic families?

Researchers have found Florida’s tax credit scholarships attract some of the state’s highest poverty and lowest-performing students. In essence, our program does the opposite of creaming. Continue Reading →

In Florida, the debate over the future of school boards is happening now

By Doug Tuthill on March 20, 2013

Last year, 43 percent of Florida’s PreK-12 students attended a school other than their assigned neighborhood school. This enthusiastic embrace of school choice by parents is forcing school boards to rethink their roles and responsibilities. Should they fight to prevent parents from attending non-district schools? Or should they embrace parent empowerment and help ensure all their community’s students have access to the schools – neighborhood, magnet, charter, virtual or private – that best meet their needs?

This dilemma was on full display at a recent Palm Beach County, Fla. school board meeting. The board was reviewing what to do about three struggling charter schools when one board member, Marcia Andrews, suggested the board should do more to help these schools succeed. “We’ve got to kind of change how we do business,” she said, according to the Palm Beach Post, “so they’ll know we’ll partner with them, so they’ll be successful.”

Some of her colleagues disagreed. They argued that when parents choose charter schools they take their funding with them and that hurts the district. They also worried about the costs of helping charter schools when district budgets are already stretched tight.

This caused another board member, Frank Barbieri, to join Andrews in calling for greater collaboration and support. “I don’t want to hear about ‘we’re taking money from our kids and giving it to these kids,’ ” said Barbieri. “These are our kids. Let’s help them.”

Statistics from Florida’s tax credit scholarship program, which I help administer, support the these-are-all-our-kids position. Continue Reading →

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