As you know, we keep tabs on what’s written and said about school choice and ed reform, particularly in Florida. This week has been a doozy when it comes to head-scratching statements. Today we highlight a few and offer a quick response …

In just a few years, Orlando-based Fund Education Now has become the leading parent group in Florida. Aggressive. Media savvy. Super effective. I respect its members for their passion. I sometimes agree with them. But there are times when the rhetoric is at odds with reality.

After this week’s FCAT fiasco, the group wrote in an action alert to members: “These abysmal FCAT Writes scores are proof that Tallahassee’s ‘education reforms’ are an unmitigated disaster.” I agree the state raised the bar too fast and too fast on some of our standardized tests. But have the state’s policies as a whole flat-out bombed?

In the past four years, Florida has ranked No. 11, No. 8, No. 5 and No. 11 among all 50 states in Education Week’s annual Quality Counts report. And contrary to some critics’ claims, that’s not just because of policies on paper that sound good; it’s also because the state has moved the needle on student achievement, particularly for low-income kids. On the K-12 achievement portion of EdWeek’s rating – which considers performance and progress on NAEP, AP and graduation rates – Florida finished at No. 7, No. 7, No. 6 and No. 12 over the past four years. In 2011, it finished in the Top 10 in eight of nine progress categories. It finished in the Top 3 in six of them.

The reason Florida tumbled out of the overall top 10 this year is because of budget cuts, and because its NAEP scores have stalled in reading and math. That’s troubling when the state is still nowhere near where it needs to be. I think that’s what led the state Board of Education to be too bold in raising the bar.

But Florida’s policy makers, like them or not, have been more right than wrong in the past decade when it comes to standards and accountability and school choice. To deny there’s been progress is good for stoking fury and mobilizing troops. But it’s unfair to the teachers who made it happen. And it could undermine changes that really did make things better for kids.

In an op-ed Sunday, syndicated columnist Bill Maxwell describes what he sees as another round of teacher bashing in Florida and blames “conservative lawmakers who dominate Tallahassee” and are gunning to privatize public schools. The prompt for his outrage: A cost-cutting decision by the Pinellas County School District to curb the use of individual printers by teachers.

I, too, think Florida’s public schools are underfunded. (I’ll have to explain some other time.)  I‘m also bothered by the printer decision. But anybody who pays any attention to the Pinellas County School District (I live in Pinellas, I covered the district as a reporter and both my kids will be attending public school there in the fall) knows “conservative lawmakers” are far from the only reason it has money problems.

The district is notoriously top heavy in administration. It pays out $10 million a year for unused sick leave. By the local teachers union’s own admission, it has been overstaffed for years. It can’t find money to offer decent amounts of differential pay to teachers in high-poverty schools, but for years has quietly doled out lucrative supplements to teachers in its marquee (and very segregated) magnet programs. The day before Maxwell’s column ran, the Tampa Bay Times, in a fascinating front-page story, called attention to how the district unloaded valuable surplus property for next to nothing at auction.

And yet, the printer flap is the sole fault of conservative lawmakers?

Earlier this week, the Miami Herald published a story about how momentum is building for a nationwide petition drive to curb standardized testing. The story noted that Parents Across America, a group with a strong presence in Florida, is helping to lead the effort. It then added:

“Parent activists won a major battle in Tallahassee this year, defeating the controversial parent-trigger bill, which would’ve let parents in failing schools petition for them to be overhauled or converted into charters.”

Hmm. It’s a major victory for parents when parents kill a bill that would have helped parents overhaul failing schools?

It’s clear which side won the spin war.

Though well intended, the hard-charging Florida Board of Education moved too far, too fast last year when it raised the bar on academic standards. The short-term result for the state’s standardized writing test isn’t pretty. According to scores released this week, the percentage of passing fourth graders alone dropped from 81 to 27.

In an emergency session, the board tried to mitigate. It revised the passing scores downward so the percent passing will be roughly the same this year as it was last year. Education Commissioner Gerard Robinson also admitted the state should have better communicated the new scoring criteria to teachers.

But (sigh) the damage was done. The people who have bitterly fought every major education reform in Florida since Jeb Bush was elected governor – and who will never admit there has been real progress – now have a bit of real ammo. They’ll use it to take fresh aim at everything from new teacher evaluations to expanded school choice. They’ll be even more aggressive ripping into the next batch of reading and math scores, which will also look a lot starker this year.

Conspiracy theories are spinning wildly. This was a well orchestrated plot, goes one, to make traditional public schools look bad so charter schools shine by comparison and the privatization agenda can reign supreme. Never mind that just a few years ago, the state had a record number of A and B schools. Or that charter schools take the same tests. Or that, if the past is any guide, a disproportionate number of them will be tagged with F’s.

You won’t read this in the papers (except, thankfully, in this Orlando Sentinel column), so here’s the backdrop for Florida’s latest ed reform flap.

Despite the denial of critics, one academic indicator after another, from NAEP scores to AP results to grad rates (all crunched by somebody outside Florida), shows the Sunshine State has been a national leader in progress over the past decade, particularly for minority and low-income kids. Last week, the highly regarded Florida Trend magazine (in an acknowledgement as rare as a Florida panther sighting) offered a perception-vs.-reality piece about the state’s “lousy public schools.” Its spot-on headline: “Education in Florida is undersold.”

At the same time, it’s also true that Florida has so far to go. And there are signs that its once-impressive gains in reading and math have stalled.

So the board was right to ratchet up expectations. It’s doing what it can with the tools it has. Florida has a more advanced system of school choice than any state in the country, but it is still young and evolving. Until that bottom-up system matures, and parents can seriously leverage positive change themselves, the state is left to apply pressure from the top down.

Raising the bar is political and subjective but necessary. It’s also tricky. It requires finding the right balance between rigorous and reasonable, between high enough to motivate but not to discourage.

It was common knowledge that the state’s writing test was way too easy. It’s about time the state meaningfully assessed students on punctuation, spelling and grammar – something past tests didn’t do. But the combination of tougher criteria, higher passing score and little time for adjustment tipped the balance from boldness and urgency to overreach.

Just what critics were waiting for.

If President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney want to win over Latino voters, a new survey of five battleground states suggests they do two things: Talk up education. And emphasize school choice.

More than voters in general, Latino voters are more likely to say education is a leading issue, just behind the economy and jobs, found the survey, released Tuesday by the American Federation for Children and the Hispanic Council for Reform and Educational Options. The survey also found Latino voters are more likely than voters in general to support vouchers, tax credit scholarships and education savings accounts.

For instance, while 57 percent of likely voters said they supported vouchers, 69 percent of Latino voters did.

“Unfortunately a lot of our Latino families come from low-income areas (where) choice is the only way that they are going to be able to achieve that American dream, graduate high school and go on to make something of themselves,” Julio Fuentes, president and CEO of HCREO (and a Step Up for Students board member) said in the redefinED podcast attached below.

The survey results suggest both Obama and Romney will have challenges swaying Latino voters.

For Obama, it’s a matter of position. The president has endorsed school choice options such as charter schools, but has stopped short of backing vouchers and tax credit scholarships. For Romney, it’s a matter of emphasis. Hard-line positions on immigration may fire up the Republican base, but it’s not a top-tier concern for Latinos.

“The immigration debate from a national level has taken the spotlight. And this educational crisis that we find ourselves in, especially within our Hispanic community, just seems to never be discussed,” Fuentes said. “In a professional, politically roundabout way, we asked our candidates, President Obama and Gov. Romney, to basically give us their take. What’s their plan when it comes to the Hispanic educational crisis?”

The survey was conducted with likely November voters in Florida, Arizona, Nevada, New Jersey and New Mexico. You can see the full results here.

Over at the Gradebook (the Tampa Bay Times education blog) this morning, another example of why public school choice alone isn’t enough:

Forty-two percent of the 2,200 parents in the Pasco County School District who applied to switch schools this fall were denied, the Gradebook reports, often because there wasn’t enough room. (Florida’s voter-approved class-size restrictions contributed to the complications.) The blog post notes the appeals process is ongoing so “a few more families might win their preferred school seats.”

That still leaves a whole bunch frustrated – and unnecessarily so.

This happens far too often. In Florida alone right now, there are thousands of upset parents in Pinellas, Palm Beach and other major school districts because they failed to get their kids into the public schools they wanted. In Hartford, Conn., 10,000 kids lost the public school lottery a few weeks ago.

As we’ve written before, school districts must become more nimble in responding to parents. At the same time, expanding choice options to include private schools and charter schools can help, too. The more that chance and lotteries can be taken out of the process, the better.

The end result will be more parents invested in their schools – and more kids in the learning environments that work better for them.

Editor’s note: After posting Howard Fuller’s concerns about universal vouchers last week, we asked Andrew J. Coulson, director of the Cato Institute’s Center for Educational Freedom, to offer his perspective.

It’s not hard to see why Howard Fuller might be skeptical of universal government education programs. Public schooling is one such program and it has done an atrocious job of serving the poor. But is its universality the cause of its failure? Fuller believes that the poor are forgotten and given short shrift under universal programs and that the wealthy are favored by them. If that were the case in public schooling, we would expect schools serving the poor to receive less funding than those serving the wealthy. In responding to Fuller, Matthew Ladner contends that this is indeed the case: that public schooling “systematically distributes more money per pupil” to wealthier kids.

Actually, though, that doesn’t appear to be true. According to the federal Department of Education’s Condition of Education 2010, Indicator 36-1, districts with the poorest students are the highest spending. Public schools serving these students are not atrocious because they are underfunded, they are atrocious despite the fact that they are the best funded districts in the nation.

Having voted to raise public school spending relentlessly for generations, and having chosen to direct the highest level of per-pupil spending to the poorest children, it is hard to believe that Americans are indifferent to the education of the poor.

A more plausible explanation of the facts is that Americans would love to see their poorest countrymen thrive educationally but don’t know how to make that happen. For generations they have been told by the media, academics, and political leaders that the solution is higher spending. They have gone along with that recommendation and it has failed utterly. A few are finally beginning to realize that, but they still don’t know how to improve matters.

But the school choice movement believes it does know the cause of the problem: the lack of alternatives. Middle and upper income families find it easier to pay for private schooling or to relocate away from the worst public schools. They have alternatives that the poor do not. As a result, they get better service. The movement’s solution is thus to ensure that everyone has alternatives.

And this brings us back to Fuller’s claim: that the poor will be better served by a school choice program targeted exclusively at them. Is he right? In answering that question, it helps to consider a few facts and distinctions that are usually overlooked:

• First, there is a difference between universal access to the education marketplace and universal participation in a government program;
• Second, tiny markets are dramatically inferior to vast ones;
• And third, it actually matters who is footing the bill for a child’s education.

Saying that everyone should have educational choice is not the same thing as saying that everyone should participate in a particular government program.

Most Americans want to ensure that all their fellow citizens have enough to eat, but no one argues that every American should receive food stamps. That’s because most people are able to provide food for themselves and their families without government assistance and it is generally believed that they will get better and more efficient service if they pay for it themselves than if the government pays for it.

We also have to remember that the performance of a marketplace depends on its size. Large markets have many consumers and many providers. The proliferation of providers means more choices, more specialization, and more competition. The proliferation of consumers means that the best providers stand to earn vast amounts of money. The prospect of earning that money attracts investors and entrepreneurs of the highest caliber. That is why we have iPhones and Starbucks, Whole Foods and Facebook. Consider how we would communicate and listen to music today if early mobile phones and Sony Walkmans could only have been sold to a tiny fraction of the population. It would have been impossible to recoup the R&D costs that went into producing those products and so they would never have come to market. The whole explosive process of innovation and productivity growth in those fields would never have occurred. We’d still be using land-lines. [And if you’re too young to remember the time before cell-phones, just watch an action or suspense movie released prior to 1980. The search for a phone-booth or other land-line is a recurring plot point.]

Today, the poor in America can afford cell phones. But if cell phones could only have been sold to the poor 30 years ago, no one would have them today. The quality of the services received by the poor depend on the size of the market serving them. So it is better for the poor—and for everyone else—to ensure the largest possible scope of market activity in any given field. Universal access to the education marketplace is clearly superior to the limited and highly distorted access that exists today.

But, again, that is not the same as saying that everyone should participate in a particular government school choice program. In fact, there is considerable evidence that it is better for families if parents do not accept government education assistance unless they require it. If they can actively participate in the education marketplace without government assistance, they and their children will be better off. The reason is that the responsiveness and efficiency of schools depends directly on the share of their funding that comes from parents through fees.

I reviewed the worldwide research on this point for the Journal of School Choice, but the gist can be summarized with just a few examples. Consider, for instance, the case of India, which has three main types of schools: government schools, government-funded private schools, and parent-funded private schools. Several Indian studies have found that the first two types of schools perform more or less the same and that both are inferior to parent-funded private schools. Parent-funded schools are also far more likely to use English as the medium of all instruction—as the vast majority of parents prefer—while government-funded schools (both public and private) are usually required by the state to use local languages as the medium of instruction. In this and other respects, schools funded by parents tend to be more responsive to parents’ wishes than schools funded by a third party (usually, the state).

A massive study of 28,000 schools in Indonesia looked specifically at the relationship between the share of school funding coming directly from parents and school efficiency. It found that the higher the parental share of funding, the more efficient the school, holding other factors constant. If you can afford to pay for your children’s education out of your own pocket, you’ll get a better education for them than if you accept third-party financial assistance. A particularly interesting finding of this study is that the biggest value-added comes when parents go from contributing nothing in school fees to contributing even a small percentage of the cost. As Milton Friedman so often pointed out, we tend to be far more careful in how we spend our own money than in how we spend other peoples’. This observation has a very long history, particularly in the context of education. It was, for instance, the subject of a letter from the Roman corruption prosecutor Pliny the Younger to his friend Tacitus 2,000 years ago.

An obvious reason for this phenomenon is that providers always turn their attention to the source of their funding. When that source is parents, they heed the wishes of parents. When that source is some third party (such as the state), the wishes of parents become less important.

So the desire to ensure universal access to the education marketplace has to be informed by the knowledge that third-party subsidies make schools less responsive to parents and less efficient. Everyone, from the poorest to the wealthiest, benefits from directly shouldering as much as possible of the cost of their children’s education. Just as Bill Gates would not benefit from being taxed to pay for government food stamps for his own family, he would not benefit from being taxed to pay for government education subsidies for his children.

The wealthiest families clearly do not require third party financial assistance to educate their kids. But what about middle-income families? Can we ensure that they have easy access to the education marketplace while minimizing the problems of third-party payment? The answer is yes: by simply cutting their taxes if they pay for their children’s education themselves. Iowa and Illinois already do this on a very limited scale, and their programs could and should be grown and replicated around the nation.

But of course the poorest families owe little or nothing in taxes and so cannot benefit from direct (or “personal”) education tax credits. They require some sort of third-party financial assistance. Does it matter whether that assistance comes from a state government agency (in the form of a voucher) or a non-profit like Step Up for Students (operating under a “scholarship donation” tax credit program)? I’ve tried to answer that question empirically for nearly twenty years, and have concluded that scholarship tax credits are preferable to vouchers because they impose significantly less regulation on private schools, they make it easier for poor families to avoid the strings attached to third-party funds, and they avoid the social discord caused by compelling every taxpayer to support every type of schooling.

All that to say, there is very good reason to ensure universal access to the education marketplace and equally good reason not to foster universal dependence on government education subsidies.

As detailed in today’s Tampa Bay Times, the effort aims to make school operations more efficient and academic offerings more rigorous. It includes a key partnership with Notre Dame University’s Ace Academies, which will help with the quality piece. And it involves increased use of Florida’s tax credit scholarship program, which gives low-income families more learning options for their kids. “It’s a reimagining of how our schools would look like in five to 10 years from now, to make them viable,” Alberto Vazquez-Matos, the diocese’s superintendent, told the Times.

In this podcast interview with redefinED in March, Christian Dallavis, director of the ACE Academies, put the Tampa Bay partnership in context. He noted Hispanics in the U.S. make up two thirds of practicing Catholics under the age of 35, and that the high school graduation rate for Hispanics is about 50 percent. “We see the future of the church is on pace to be kind of radically undereducated,” he said. But “we also have a solution in that we know Catholic schools often put kids on a path to college in ways that they don’t have other opportunities to do so.”

The success of Hispanic students is especially important in Florida, where Hispanics could be a majority in a few decades. Boosting Catholic schools with innovative partnerships and school choice programs is a bold response that offers hope for the future.

Editor’s note: Progress in the parental school choice movement is measured not only by big gains in states like Indiana and Louisiana, but by the flurry of incremental developments in more states every year. Peter Hanley, executive director of the California-based American Center for School Choice, offers a look at encouraging developments in his home state.

California has the nation’s largest charter school program, with 982 charter schools serving 412,000 students. But with nearly a two-thirds Democratic legislature heavily influenced by the California Teachers Association, tax credit scholarships or vouchers have been entirely off the table. In fact, charter schools’ flexibility is under near constant attack. Now, though, two legislators have introduced innovative approaches that address a unique feature in California’s constitution and attempt to bring educational tax credits to the state.

Unlike any other state, California has a voter-initiated constitutional amendment (Prop. 98) that sets a floor on the percent of general fund monies that must be spent on education. Anything that removes money from the general fund will instantly trigger the public education coalition to oppose it. So these legislators, one Democrat and one Republican, have proposed models that benefit both public and private schools.

Senate Bill 1542, introduced by Democratic Sen. Gloria Negrete McCloud, provides individual and corporate tax credits to Local Educational Advancement Program (LEAP) organizations. They will assist K-12 students from families with demonstrated financial needs to receive critical services before or after school, on weekends, or during the summer. SB 1542 precisely aims to ensure academic services – such as diagnostic evaluations, tutoring, summer school, and college and career planning and counseling – that have been heavily damaged by the extraordinary recession California has experienced since 2008. Although many more fortunate families in the state continue to be able to provide such services for their children, those with low and moderate incomes cannot and are disproportionately suffering. Children from public and private schools would be eligible for these services.

The Senate Governance and Finance Committee is expected to hold a hearing on this bill within the next few weeks. The future likely depends on whether it can be fit into the state’s budget, with questions now revolving around whether both individuals and corporations will be eligible for the credit, how large the credit will be, and whether it will be a straight credit or a percentage of a donation. Notably, the committee has not raised any objections about private school participation.

Assembly Bill 2582, sponsored by Republican Assemblyman Brian Nestande, takes a more traditional approach.

It proposes an individual and corporate tax credit program for tuition support to low- and moderate-income families provided through scholarship granting organizations (SGOs). It balances that with tax credits that can be claimed for contributions to public schools to support co-curricular activities (art, athletics, community service, and academic clubs) and STEM programs (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics). Again, these are programs that have suffered significantly as California’s education budget has been reduced.

The corporate tax credit, which could be up to $300,000 under the proposal, would go to districts under the most financial stress, generally those in low-income communities. The price tag on the initial proposal – $1 billion divided equally between public and private schools – is too high to be passed. But the bill will be heard before a committee this year with action possible next year.

The fact that this legislation has even begun a journey through the California legislature is progress. It still has long way to go. But by offering help to public schools as well as private schools, it could pick up some supporters.

Florida: The state’s top education official offers a strong pitch for continued expansion of school choice options despite recent scrutiny of charter schools. (redefinED) The state Board of Education overrules several school districts that opposed new charter schools. (Orlando Sentinel)

Louisiana: One local school district plans to open a virtual school to compete for home schoolers. (Baton Rouge Advocate) Meanwhile, this district seeks to opt out of the state’s new voucher program. (Baton Rouge Advocate) So does this one. (Monroe News Star) Charter schools get a thumbs up from Democratic U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu. (Baton Rouge Advocate)

Alabama: Charter schools bill, watered down after vigorous opposition from state teachers union, is dead. (Montgomery Advertiser)

Massachusetts: State lifts temporary moratorium on new charter schools. (Boston Globe)

South Carolina: Gov. Nikki Haley to sign charter school expansion bill. (Associated Press) A tax credit scholarship proposal is on the move in the state senate. (Aiken Leader)

New Mexico: Albuquerque students are flocking to charter schools. (albuquerque.com)

Michigan: The state’s online learning options for K-12 students have grown dramatically. (Detroit News)

(Image from carolroth.com)

Last fall, Arlene Ackerman, the former schools superintendent in Philadelphia, made a stunning announcement for someone of her status. In a newspaper op-ed, she forcefully came out in favor of expanded school choice options, including more charter schools and yes, even vouchers. “I’ve come to a sad realization,” she wrote. “Real reform will never come from within the system.”

In this redefinED podcast, Ackerman talks more about her evolution.

For years, she pushed change from the highest perches in K-12 education. Before Philly, she headed the school districts in Washington D.C. and San Francisco. She led the latter when it became a finalist for the prestigious Broad Prize, annually awarded to the best urban school district in the country, in 2005. But the kinds of sweeping reform needed to help poor and minority kids, she said, too often met with resistance from unions, politicians, vendors and others who benefited from not budging.

A key turning point came a few years ago. Given current trend lines, her staff told her, all students in Philadelphia won’t be proficient in reading and math until the year 2123. “It became real to me that it was important to include as many options as possible for parents,” said Ackerman, who now lives in Albuquerque, N.M. to be closer to her children and grandchildren. She said she began thinking, “What would I want for my children if my children were trapped in a school? What options and alternatives would I want available to me?”

Before the op-ed was published, Ackerman wrote a heads-up email to hundreds of friends and colleagues. Some said they understood. Some said she was almost a traitor. Most didn’t say anything.

“I hope it provided an opportunity for people I know and respect to think about why somebody like me, who spent so many years within the traditional public school system fighting for radical change, would embrace charters and vouchers for low-income families,” she said.

“If it changes the life of one child, it’s to me worth the effort,” she also said, referring to expanded choice. “The other thing it will do is force the traditional public school systems to change. It will put pressure for real reform to take place because there’s competition. Let’s face it: This country is built on competition. And it’s good.”

Editor’s note: Behind all the blog posts about school choice policies and politics, there are real kids and families who benefit from vouchers, tax credit scholarships, charter schools and other expanded learning options. This morning we highlight a student profiled by the talented folks in the Step Up For Students marketing department. This blog is proudly affiliated with Step Up, the non-profit that administers tax credit scholarships to 39,000 low-income students in Florida.

When Luis Aponte Jr. was profiled as an eighth grader for Step Up For Students in 2007, he dreamt of becoming a pursuing a college education.  Now in 2012, there’s no denying that he has achieved his dream and more.

Luis’ graduation from Liberty Christian Academy in 2011 marked the culmination of years of academic diligence, hard work and perseverance: he was the valedictorian of his senior class.

Throughout his school career – first at a neighborhood school and later in private school – Luis made it a priority to study hard and earn top grades. While other students may have been satisfied with earning A’s and B’s, Luis was determined to never see anything lower than an A on his report card.

True to his goal, Luis left Liberty as one of its few students to earn straight A’s, said Lynda Fleming, his former guidance counselor. “He was hardest on himself,” she said. “He’s definitely a peer model for several students, still.”

Luis’ father knew from his own experiences in life that not all schools can fulfill the needs of each child, and he was eager to give his son the opportunity to achieve his dreams. Luis, Sr., grew up attending neighborhood schools. His parents dreamed of sending him to private school, but couldn’t afford the tuition. After years of longing, though, his parents finally were able to send him to private school during his senior year of high school. That one year was a life-changing experience for Luis Sr. that he knew he wanted someday for his children.

Unfortunately it seemed that Luis, Jr. and his brother Jonach would never get the chance to attend a private school and fulfill their father’s dream. But in 2002, Luis, Sr. and his wife Carmen learned that the family met the program’s qualifications and the boys were enrolled in a private school as Step Up scholars. Luis’ parents saw this as an opportunity to put him in a private school that would provide a challenging learning environment – something they did not feel he was receiving in the public school system. 

At the time, Luis, Jr. was a fourth-grader who performed well at his neighborhood school. When he entered his new learning environment at Blue Lake Christian Academy, he rose to the academic challenges he faced and accomplished more than he ever thought he could.

“He put more effort into his schoolwork,” Luis Sr., said. “It was a challenge.”

When he was in the eighth grade, Luis, Jr. transferred to Liberty Christian, where he continued to excel. By the time he was a senior, Luis, Jr. was balancing classes at school with dual-enrollment at the local community college, working up to 30 hours a week at a grocery store, and playing point guard on the school’s basketball team.

Luis, Jr. also was engaged in a friendly battle with another honor student for valedictorian – his girlfriend. By graduation, he had surpassed her for the top spot by .2 percentage points.

Luis, Jr. said the small, family-like environments of the schools that he attended on the scholarship enabled him to build close relationships with his schoolmates and teachers and to do well academically. “(With the students), you become like brothers and sisters,” he said. “You end up being a role model because little kids are always around you, looking up to you.”

Today, Luis, Jr. is studying radiology at the College of Central Florida. He looks forward to graduating from school, starting his career, and making that competitive girl from high school his wife. It’s a life that Step Up For Students helped make possible. “I can’t imagine not going to private school,” he said. “It really was a great opportunity.”

About Liberty Christian Academy

Liberty Christian Academy in Tavares, Fla. was founded by the Liberty Baptist Church in 1987, and serves students from prekindergarten to 12th grade. Approximately 181 students attend Liberty Christian, 64 of whom receive Step Up For Students Scholarships. Tuition is $4,500, and Liberty Christian Academy gauges students’ progress by administering the Stanford Achievement Test (Stanford 10). Liberty Christian is accredited by the Florida Association of Christian Colleges and Schools (FACCS).