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Universal choice plan passes Florida Senate panel

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On April 14, 2011 in Customization, Education and Public Policy, General, Parental Choice, Private Schools, School Choice

Florida’s Senate Education Committee just passed a plan that would make a voucher or other money for educational expenses universally accessible to Florida families. Despite its “vouchers-for-all” moniker, the proposed bill creating Education Savings Accounts passed with the support of one Democrat, Bill Montford, who also serves as the chief executive of the Florida Association of District School Superintendents. 

“I’ve got some serious concerns,” Montford said. “But this concept is certainly worth exploring.”

The support is all the more notable considering Gov. Rick Scott himself backed away from the idea before the state’s legislative session began last month. Scott’s education transition team recommended the savings account, inspired by the Goldwater Institute, and proposed funding each participating family with an amount equal to 90 percent of what the state would pay per pupil in public schools. A torrent of criticism followed, even from those who favored vouchers in various designs, including from Cato Institute scholar Andrew J. Coulson.

The current plan would pay an amount only equivalent to 40 percent of the per-pupil allocation and there would be no income restriction on eligibility. The account could be used for educational expenses that include private school tuition, private tutoring, textbooks or college savings plans.

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Fuller: I will oppose a subsidy for rich people

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On April 13, 2011 in Education and Public Policy, General, Parental Choice, School Choice

Yesterday, we highlighted Howard Fuller’s alarm over Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s proposal to eliminate the income threshold for entry into the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program. The Black Alliance for Educational Options now has posted Fuller’s comments to the Wisconsin legislative Joint Finance Committee, to which Fuller closed by saying:

I am a person who has taken blows for years from people who have said this program for some has never been about poor people. They warned that once the program got established the real agenda would surface, which is to get money for rich people. I have never believed and do not believe now that many people who have fought for the program over the years had this as their purpose. But, this is exactly what this provision does. I want everyone to understand that if this provision becomes law, I will become an opponent of a program that I have fought for over 20 years. I will never support a program that essentially provides a subsidy for rich people.

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AZ governor vetoes tax credit bill, okays special ed vouchers

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On April 13, 2011 in Education and Public Policy, General, Parental Choice, School Choice

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer has confused many in the school choice community during the last 24 hours by signing into law a bill creating “savings accounts” for students with special needs while simultaneously killing a measure that would have expanded opportunities in the state’s tax credit scholarship. 

In a letter announcing her veto, Brewer says she recognizes “the importance of empowering parents” but warns that HB 2581 “unbalances the budget.” A tax credit scholarship made available to students who want to leave the public school system likely can lessen the financial burden of the state, Brewer wrote, but the current measure “expands the pool of qualified students that may qualify.” Also, she added, removing the cap on corporate tax credits would make budgeting difficult.

This is where things get muddled. Nothing in the bill’s fiscal analysis backs up the governor’s assertion that an expanded pool of students would unbalance the budget. In fact, House analysts report that if more public school students took advantage of the scholarship — just 3,300 — they would offset the loss of tax revenues that resulted from the bill, which they estimated to be at $17.2 million for 2012. Brewer seems to be suggesting this wouldn’t happen, but she doesn’t say why. 

Brewer did, however, bestow her blessing on a limited version of a plan, birthed at the free-market oriented Goldwater Institute, that has generated a lot of controversy in other states such as Florida. In Arizona, the plan creates what are called “Empowerment Accounts,” which in this sense would benefit special education students with money their parents can apply to the instructional needs they determine are appropropriate. These might include private school tuition, tutoring or textbooks.  The amount of money placed in an account would be 90 percent of the per-pupil funding that a public school would have received for the child.

While the accounts are limited to special education, their proponents somehow managed to escape much of the notice directed at those who advocated for their passage in Florida. When Florida Gov. Rick Scott’s education transition team recommended a more universally applied “Education Savings Account,” the suggestion was attacked as a “voucher for all,” and Scott has since backed away from the idea.

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Don’t let Howard Fuller off the train

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On April 12, 2011 in Education and Public Policy, General, Parental Choice, School Choice

Those who favor private learning options for poor children can count few champions for their cause more passionate than Howard Fuller, who is almost singularly responsible for the success of Milwaukee’s voucher program, the nation’s oldest. That’s why we should take seriously Fuller’s heartburn over Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s proposal to remove the income restrictions to the voucher and open the Parental Choice Program to wealthier families.

If Walker is successful, Fuller told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel yesterday, “that’s when I get off the train,” and further called Walker’s proposal “egregious” and “outrageous” during testimony of Wisconsin’s legislative Joint Finance Committee.

The point Fuller is making is one that too often gets lost in the debate over education reform generally and vouchers specifically: Programs such as Milwaukee’s began with the sense that families of wealthier means already had options beyond the neighborhood public school, and that poor families might benefit from public policies that empowered them to find the best fit for their children. And that sense still pervades current means-tested efforts such as Florida’s tax credit scholarship and the pending measures in Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

Any movement in education reform is larger than one person, but let’s not dismiss the jaw-dropping implications of Fuller’s alarm. State legislatures may feel momentum toward greater school choice and choice advocates may be emboldened by the U.S. Supreme Court’s move to legally insulate an Arizona tax credit scholarship, but Fuller would have us remember who needs our greatest help.

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Report: Senate passage expected on Pennsylvania voucher plan

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On April 12, 2011 in Education and Public Policy, General, Parental Choice, School Choice

UPDATE: The Post-Gazette now says not so fast.

From the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

HARRISBURG — School voucher legislation is poised to pass the state Senate as early as today, following a lengthy committee debate Monday over amendments from the bill’s opponents.

The measure, which has drawn both fervent support and opposition, would make low-income students eligible for vouchers toward their tuition at a public or private school outside their district. A provision approved Monday would expand that eligibility to some middle-class students in the program’s fourth year.

Attempts to limit the program’s eligibility, require districts to tally up how much vouchers cost them, and allow students to opt-out of religious classes at their new school all failed in the Appropriations Committee.

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Budget deal includes money for D.C. voucher

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On April 9, 2011 in Education and Public Policy, General, Parental Choice, School Choice

The last-minute spending deal among Congressional leaders adds money to the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal are reporting. The revival of the scholarship is a top priority of House Speaker John Boehner, who has sponsored a measure that passed the House last month. That was just about the time the White House issued a statement asserting that the scholarship has proven ineffective.

Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid said of the eleventh-hour negotiations: “We didn’t do it at this late hour for drama, we did it because it’s been very hard to arrive at this point. Both sides have had to make tough choices.”

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Majority of Denver families opting for school choice

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On April 8, 2011 in Charter Schools, Education and Public Policy, General, Parental Choice, School Choice

Eddie of Ed is Watching fame brings us news on school choice from Denver via The Denver Post. The Post is reporting that more than 1 of every 2 families in Denver Public Schools  is opting out of their assigned schools and taking advantage of the district’s liberal open-enrollment policies or any of the other public options available to them. That means roughly 42,000 students are attending a traditional school outside their zone or any of Denver’s magnet programs or 30 charter schools. That’s up from a third of all Denver families just seven years ago.

To hear the district put it, as the Post reports, even more Denver families would exercise choice if they understood all their options. One parent, Armida Solis, explained her motivation accordingly: “What we look for is somewhere where I can trust leaving my kids all day and where I feel I can be a part of their education.”

Given that explanation, it’s disheartening to see recent news reports showing that districts in New York, Florida and Rhode Island are limiting or eliminating their open-enrollment policies to acheive greater cost savings. It’s a stark reminder that many districts once pursued choice plans within their boundaries primarily as a way to balance enrollment with efficiency. Now that they’ve gotten those efficiencies, and since their budgets are souring, they’re beginning to sound a little tone deaf to the needs and wishes of families, as evidenced by one Martin County, Fla., school board member: “Choice has served us well. It’s beginning to create some problems for us.”

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Nation’s top public virtual leader endorses private competition

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On April 8, 2011 in General, Parental Choice, Virtual Education

As a bill allowing other virtual education vendors to bring their services to Florida makes its way through the Legislature, the president and CEO of the nation’s largest public online school told an audience gathered Thursday in New Orleans at the Education Writers Association conference that she welcomes the competition.

“We feel like that every program is different and has its own personality, and parents and students will choose what’s best for them,” said Julie Young, who pioneered the Florida Virtual School 14 years ago. “I think it’s good.”

Young said that she had once worried about whether virtual education options should be expanded in Florida. But those concerns have eased thanks to state officials’ push for more accountability and vendors’ own drive to provide a quality service, she said.

In a separate interview with redefinED, Young said that because Florida Virtual School is recognized as a top national model of virtual education programming, the programs offered by other providers who enter the arena will be compared to it. This past year, FVS grew by 38 percent, with 213,926 course enrollments and 97,183 students. That’s three times more than the second-closest state. The bill, SB 1620, that was approved unanimously Tuesday by the Senate Education PreK-12 Committee contains numerous standards supported by FVS and aimed at assuring quality curriculum and monitored results.  

“I think Florida Virtual School set the bar,” she said.

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Enjoy the victory, but remember who needs our help the most

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On April 5, 2011 in Education and Public Policy, General, Parental Choice, School Choice

If there was a central theme that drove last week’s conference on school choice at Berkeley, Calif., it was the moral imperative of empowering the parent. Not all its participants agreed on how best to accomplish this goal within public education, but if you surveyed the assembly, it’s likely a majority would favor a design of private educational choice that first benefits the poor and disadvantaged.

Yesterday’s U.S. Supreme Court decision upholding an Arizona tax credit scholarship program would seem to provide a blueprint for that design, but many advocates for school choice are so jubilant over the court’s 5-4 ruling that they’re dreaming of bigger plans. “The way forward for the school choice movement is clearer than it has ever been,” our friend and Cato Institute scholar Andrew Coulson writes. “Education tax credits … allow for universal access to the education marketplace without forcing any citizen to subsidize instruction that violates their convictions.”

Coulson is no doubt correct about the future legal viability of private options through tax credit programs. But while some of the judicial pressure may be relieved, the political pressure remains. We certainly have seen encouraging political progress on this front, with choice coalitions that now swell with more Democratic members in Florida, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. “To me, a scholarship for poor, struggling schoolchildren is in the greatest tradition of our collective commitment to equal educational opportunity,” wrote Bill Heller, the former ranking Democrat on the Florida House Education Council, in the St. Petersburg Times last year.

I’m not sure Heller would write these lines if the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship he’s supporting here would be universally accessible to students at all income levels. In fact, the glue that holds these coalitions together is their focus on the poorest among us — the children who typically need the greatest help. Continue Reading →

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School choice as a moral imperative

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On April 1, 2011 in Charter Schools, Education and Public Policy, General, Parental Choice, Private Schools, Religious education, School Choice

At the edge of the campus of the University of California, Berkeley, there is today unfolding a conference that has brought together advocates for school choice of varying ideological stripes. There are some participants who support public school choice among charter academies but who are skeptical of the success of publicly funding private learning options. There are those who back private options for the social justice they bring to disadvantaged families but who have issues with the free-market embrace of universal vouchers.

But City University of New York professor Joseph Viteritti, one of the nation’s most legitimate experts on educational administration and one of the most devoted students of school choice as social justice, opened the session with the glue that bound everyone together. It is fundamentally indefensible, Viteritti said, to confine a child to one education option only because our public policies challenge or even prohibit a choice of varied learning opportunities.

The opportunities defining today’s discussion, titled “May Superman Pray?”, are those that enable a choice among faith-based schools. Viteritti, for one, defined as a moral imperative the chance to choose among religious institutions if it allows a family who could not otherwise afford such an option if it wanted to raise their children according to their value system. Furthermore, Boston University educational historian Charles L. Glenn said, “It is a fundamental right of the citizenry to decide how you’re going to educate your child.”

This was not a partisan conference, and its participants went to great lengths to illustrate this point. The conference was sponsored by the Berkeley-based American Center for School Choice, which is chaired by law professor John E. Coons, one of the nation’s most liberal voices for parental choice — particularly private choice — in education. One panel featured both Cato scholar Andrew Coulson and former Democratic California Sen. Gloria Romero. “I believe in public education,” said Romero, the California director of Democrats for Education Reform. “But I don’t believe only the rich should have school choice.”

But can Superman (a play off the documentary “Waiting for Superman”) pray? Most of the participants agreed he should, but they’re not aligned on how he could. Some would advocate extending school choice to families who want to benefit from the unique identity of a faith-based school. Others, such as Glenn, believe the voucher war is unwinnable and would take the admittedly risky approach of allowing a religious school to become a charter school while still maintaining its religious identity.

The threat of the Blaine Amendments in the states had brooded over the conference like the Holy Ghost. So how do our public policies fulfill the moral imperative of choice even for our most disadvantaged families? Tax credit scholarships may survive a legal threat, some, such as Coulson, said. But not every state has a tax code that could create a viable system of educational choice. The Supreme Court has given us guidance on navigating the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Constitution with its 2002 decision in Zelman vs. Simmons-Harris, but the Blaine threat is much more pervasive for many states considering these options.

These questions aren’t new, but the American Center for School Choice is to be commended for drawing the debate away from the margins and toward the center of our discussion over education reform. Whatever divides our approach to the schoolhouse door, it is either misguided or politically calculated to define the discussion as anything other than a moral imperative.

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