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In Florida, school choice verges on mainstream

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On May 2, 2012 in Charter Schools, Customization, General, Parental Choice, School Choice, Virtual Education

Some of us at redefinED will be at the American Federation for Children summit tomorrow and Friday, where there will be lots of discussion about school choice and education reform. As good a time as any, we thought, to offer a snapshot of where Florida stands. Check out these numbers, which Doug Tuthill, the president of Step Up for Students and a redefinED host, shared last week with business leaders at a Leadership Florida event:

The numbers (carefully compiled by Jon East, vice president for policy & public affairs at Step Up) are from 2010-11 and we know in many cases the current figures are even higher. Charter school enrollment, for example, topped 175,000 this year, and the tax credit scholarship program serves more than 39,000 students. Altogether, the numbers underscore two things we emphasize at redefinED: School choice – the kind that allows parents to go beyond their neighborhood school - is becoming mainstream in Florida. And the lines between “public” and “private” are more blurred here than in any other state.

The AFC conference agenda includes Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Newark Mayor Cory Booker and an all-star line up of choice experts and advocates. We’re hoping to have a little time to update you on what’s going on with blog posts and tweets. For the latter, follow us at @redefinEDonline.

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Lorena Castillo, Florida teacher who supports school choice – podcastED

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On April 13, 2012 in Customization, General

Today at redefinED we’re going to smash another stereotype: not all public school teachers oppose expanded school choice.

Lorena Castillo is chairwoman of CHISPA, the Coalition of Hispanic Instructors in Support of Parental Awareness. CHISPA falls under the umbrella of the Hispanic Council for Reform and Educational Options, and its 180 members – almost all of them teachers in traditional public schools – support charter schools, private school vouchers and tax credit scholarships.

Castillo sees no conflict between that support and support for public schools. The bottom line for CHISPA, she said in the redefinED podcast below, is finding the right fit for Hispanic students who are struggling. That way, they can catch up, earn diplomas, become good citizens – and not become statistics. “We have great public schools, and dedicated public school teachers,” said Castillo, who teaches middle school science in Dade County, Fla. “But for some students with special needs, they need other options in order to graduate.”

Castillo can relate. She was a teacher and principal in her native Nicaragua but moved to the U.S. 25 years ago. Before becoming certified to teach here, she worked a full-time job, a part-time job and attended night school to learn English – all at the same time.

“We were out of our environment. Different language. Different culture. So we had to struggle a lot to adapt,” she said of herself and her family. “When I see any Hispanic student in my classroom struggling, the same way I did and my kids did, I completely understand and I can make a complete connection.”

As far as we know, there are no other organized groups of public school teachers who openly support expanded school choice options. Coincidentally, “chispa” is Spanish for “spark.”

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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Florida pastor symbolizes new face of vouchers, school choice

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On April 5, 2012 in Customization, General, Religious education, School Choice

If you read the papers, you know the story. People who like vouchers and tax credit scholarships are right-wingers. They don’t like public schools. They’re corporate pawns.

Now meet the Rev. Manuel L. Sykes.

He’s a Democrat. He’s president of the NAACP in St. Petersburg, Fla. He thinks public schools did a fine job with his kids.

Privatizing schools? Mention the idea to Sykes, who is pastor of Bethel Community Baptist Church, and you’ll get a slow burn about elitism, resegregation and crony capitalism.

But Sykes, 55, also supports vouchers and tax credit scholarships. And for folks who think they see a contradiction, he offers a quip and a laugh: “Stereotyping is a function of a lazy mind.”

Sykes isn’t a leader in the school choice movement, but like thousands of others he quietly defies the story line. In that respect, he is symbolic of the new face of public education. It’s not public or private. It’s not liberal or conservative. It’s pragmatic.

“You can’t plant roses in every environment,” Sykes told redefinED. “You have to find the right environment for that flower. Or that orange tree. Or that apple tree. If we’re wise enough to know that with trees, why don’t we have the same common sense with children?” Continue Reading →

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Michelle Rhee’s evolution on school choice

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On March 29, 2012 in Charter Schools, Customization, General, Online learning, Parent empowerment, Parental Choice, School Choice, Unionism

Michelle Rhee and I are members of the same political tribe. We’re progressive Democrats. Throughout most of the 1800s and into the mid-1970s, our tribe supported school choice, including allowing parents to use public funds to help pay for private school tuition. Our group’s position began to change in the late 1960s as urban teachers, who are core tribal members, began to unionize. By the time Jimmy Carter ran for president in 1976, the transition was complete. Progressive Democrats opposed school choice.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, school districts began using within-district school choice to promote voluntary desegregation, so our tribal position began to gradually evolve. I say gradually because in 1986, I led a floor fight at the annual National Education Association convention, on behalf of then-NEA President Mary Hatwood Futrell, for a resolution endorsing within-district magnet schools. The opposition argued that magnet schools were voucher programs which siphoned off money and the best students from neighborhood schools. The resolution failed.

As the number of unionized teachers working in magnet schools expanded, the NEA eventually embraced magnet schools and other within-district school choice programs, and progressive Democrats followed. Today most progressive Democrats support within-district school choice programs that employ unionized teachers, and they oppose publicly-funded private school choice. But this latter position is evolving. Increasingly, core progressive constituencies, such as African-Americans and Hispanics, are embracing full school choice, as are some progressive leaders.

At Florida Gov. Jeb Bush’s annual education reform conference a few years ago, Michelle Rhee began her morning speech by saying she was hired in Washington D.C. to reverse the flow of students into charter schools. But in her new position as founder and CEO of StudentsFirst, Michelle is slowly becoming more open to school choice. Continue Reading →

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Expanded school choice means education reporters must adapt

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On March 28, 2012 in Charter Schools, Customization, Education and Public Policy, Education reporting, General, Parent empowerment, Parental Choice

I’m not an education reporter anymore, but from my new gig I’m getting even more dizzy watching education evolve. So many states are adding or expanding school choice options – charters, vouchers, virtual schools, tax-credit scholarships – that it’s hard for reporters to keep up. To make it worse, newsrooms are shrinking and there’s more pressure than ever to produce daily stories. It’s really hard to master the wonky details of say, vouchers for special needs students, at the same time you’re covering a middle school brawl and school board sniping.

But reporters are going to have to adapt. They’ll have to cover more ground with more depth.

Readers won’t be well served if education coverage continues to be reflexively focused on traditional public schools. And newspapers’ bottom lines won’t be well served when growing numbers of parents see that their schools are either 1) not being covered or 2) being snared in simplistic story lines that don’t mesh with their realities.

I see plenty of stories that relate to school choice that make me cringe. But I also see some that suggest newsrooms are adjusting: Continue Reading →

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Parents and schools both deserve scrutiny

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On March 27, 2012 in Achievement Gap, Customization, Education reporting, General, Parent empowerment, School Boards

It’s a common refrain in ed reform debates: If only more parents would do the right thing, schools would be a lot easier to fix. Especially, it seems, black parents.

Whenever I wrote a newspaper story about struggling black students, it was guaranteed to make the web site’s “most commented” list. Scores of angry people would write in to berate and belittle black parents, often in blatantly racist terms. Bill Cosby makes similarly hard-line arguments in a tough-love kind of way. So do some media personalities, like nationally syndicated columnist Bill Maxwell.

In his column last Sunday, Maxwell takes on a faith-based group in Pinellas County, Florida called FAST, which stands for Faith and Action for Strength Together. FAST recently made headlines for urging the Pinellas County School Board to do something about abysmal reading scores in 20 high-poverty schools, many of them with predominantly black student populations. In a public meeting, 3,000 members of the group called on the board to adopt a “direct instruction” approach.

As he has done before, Maxwell called for more accountability from black parents. He suggested it was a waste of time to focus on what schools may or may not be doing. He said the district’s web site had plenty of good tips.

Maxwell is right to stress how much parents matter. Nobody in their right mind disagrees. But like many things in education, this isn’t a case of either-or. Continue Reading →

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Businesses, teachers unions benefit financially from status quo in education

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On March 21, 2012 in Charter Schools, Customization, Funding, General, Parent empowerment, Parental Choice, School Choice, Unionism

Editor’s note: Corporate greed! Profits! Privatization! Shout the same, alarming buzz words enough – as critics of education reform are doing – and it defines the debate. But as Doug Tuthill, a former teachers union president, argues in this post, businesses benefit more from the status quo in education than they will from expanded parental choice.

Public education would not exist without the products and services provided by for-profit corporations. Every year, for-profit corporations receive billions of tax dollars from school districts to build schools and supply them with desks, books, computers, pens, pencils, paper, calculators, buses, crayons, and power to turn on the lights. And yet school choice critics continue to assert that giving parents more schooling options is a plot by for-profit corporations to make more money.

I don’t buy it.

The profit margins of businesses providing goods and services to public education are greater under the current command-and-control system because the costs of sales and servicing contracts are lower when the customers are large, centrally controlled organizations.  My friend Jean Clements, who is the teachers union president in Hillsborough County, Florida, was the first person to explain this to me.

Four years ago, I asked Jean why her union refused to sell union memberships to private school teachers. Her answer? She would lose money. Jean said the membership revenue she would receive from teachers in small, non-district schools would not cover the costs of negotiating and servicing their collective bargaining contracts.

Large school districts allow teachers unions to spread their costs across a large number of members, which is why large districts are their preferred market. It’s also why unions are so opposed to public education occurring in schools not owned and managed by school districts.

I suspect the same economy-of-scale issues influencing Jean’s business decisions are also relevant for Dell, Pearson and Apple. Continue Reading →

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McKay voucher supporters look to up its game

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On March 12, 2012 in Customization, General, Parental Choice, School Choice

A couple weeks ago, Scott Jensen, the senior governmental affairs advisor for the American Federation for Children, came down to the Sunshine State to offer glowing praise for the state’s backing of parental choice. “Florida leads the pack,” he gushed at a state Board of Education workshop. But at the tail end of his presentation, Jensen politely singled out one program for coming up short.

The McKay voucher for students with disabilities had been a trailblazer, he said. But it could use a little more oversight.

“I want to thank the board here for taking a look at adding more accountability to this program,” he said. “We believe that more accountability will make the program stronger and even more of a national model to people around the country.”

Jensen essentially got an I’ll-second-that a few days ago from Adam Emerson, who got redefinED rolling before becoming the school choice czar at the Fordham Institute last month. Continue Reading →

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The progressive choice: embrace school choice

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On March 6, 2012 in Customization, Education and Public Policy, General, School Choice

Editor’s note: Vouchers, charters, tax-credit scholarships – all part of the right-wing conspiracy to privatize education, right? Doug Tuthill argues that it’s the political left that should champion choice – because it’s the only path to equal opportunity in education.

For progressives who believe in equal educational opportunity, the current state of school choice is problematic.  As the movie “Waiting for Superman” illustrated, limited access to school choice is exacerbating inequalities. Parents who win lotteries, have the right political connections or have the money to buy homes where they want have schooling options less fortunate or less wealthy parents don’t have.

To resolve these inequities, progressives can advocate eliminating all parental choice – and force every child to attend their assigned neighborhood district school - or they can support making school choice ubiquitous.

Leveling the playing field by eliminating all parental choice is not a viable option. This solution would mean closing down all within-district choice programs such as magnet schools, alternative schools, open enrollment programs and career academies, and choice programs that occur outside school districts, including charter schools, online learning programs, homeschooling and private schools. This approach would also require eliminating the most common form of school choice: parents buying homes in their preferred school zone. To stop this practice the government would need to assign families to school zones and then require them to purchase homes in their zones. Of course, this is never going to happen. Continue Reading →

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Florida, superstar athletes and school choice – Deion Sanders joins the lineup

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On March 5, 2012 in Achievement Gap, Charter Schools, Customization, General, School Choice

Coincidence or not, an impressive roster of superstar professional athletes with strong Florida ties have become major league champions for school choice. Tim Tebow was homeschooled outside Jacksonville. Derrick Brooks of Pensacola co-founded a charter school in Tampa. Andre Agassi, who trained in Bradenton, did the same in Las Vegas. And Jorge Posada, who lives in Tampa (or did until recently), put his name behind the Lake Worth-based Hispanic Council for Reform and Educational Options.

The latest to step up: Deion “Prime Time” Sanders, a Fort Myers native who starred at Florida State before going on to electrify pro football and baseball.

Sanders is starting two charter schools in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. The Prime Prep Academy schools, set to open this fall, will feature a technology-heavy curriculum aimed at inner-city kids.

“It’s been a 3-year process,” Sanders told the Forth Worth Star-Telegram Feb. 20. “Nothing I have ever done compares to this. We are going to have the best teachers and coaches. These schools will have no color and no boundaries. We plan to educate and influence kids to go and make a true difference in their community.” Continue Reading →

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