@willweatherford: One of my big priorities is 2 give parents #schoolchoice http://t.co/QJE1GPtKap via @TBOcom #edFL #legFL #edreform #Sayfie15 hours agoReplyRetweet
@JasonBedrick Your chart rocks!15 hours agoReplyRetweet
RT @JasonBedrick: #Schoolchoice tax credits grow more popular once implemented. Legislators, be not afraid! http://t.co/I2aOwqnOAm15 hours agoReplyRetweet
Strong demand for #schoolchoice among #Hispanics http://t.co/tTGFo4bdtI via @AaronMRodriguez #vouchers #edreform #edpolicy @HispanicCREO15 hours agoReplyRetweet
RT @PEFNC: Critical Vote on Tuesday!:Tap here http://t.co/8oo1ZuVFyq to contact your legislators & show your support for Opportunity Schola…16 hours agoReplyRetweet
@LisaLeslie Thanks for the RT! And thanks for speaking at #AFCPolicySummit. We're honored to be on the same #schoolchoice team with you.16 hours agoReplyRetweet
Follow #schoolchoice #vouchers #charterschools #magnetschools #virtualschools? Then you'll like our facebook page! http://t.co/iJd9hErKwS17 hours agoReplyRetweet
RT @PEFNC: Opportunity Scholarships are being debated now by NC legislature. ACT NOW!: Text SOS to 52886 and ask your legislator to support…2 days agoReplyRetweet
RT @HispanicCREO: Congratulations to the 2013 National Charter Schools Hall of Fame Inductees http://t.co/gZLwqm0fSA2 days agoReplyRetweet
@TXparentsunion Thank you!2 days agoReplyRetweet

Fears about Florida’s parent trigger bill are overblown

By on March 8, 2012

The parent trigger is headed for a showdown in Florida’s Senate on Friday, and it is worth remembering that the bill was greeted in January with bipartisan support on education committees in both chambers. Suffice it to say, warm and fuzzy has now left the Capitol.

Defeating SB 1718 has become the top priority for the Florida Education Association, and its views carry more currency in a year in which redistricting leaves lawmakers scrambling to run in new districts. The Senate is also in a state of meltdown, with an attempted leadership coup having raised the temperature in the chamber and caused senators to scurry for new alliances. Oddly, the clash may also be owed to the fact that lawmakers have written a budget that restores most of the deep funding cuts made to public schools last year, allowing educators to shift their focus. In the state’s largest newspaper today, a teacher union official and a PTA president gave us a sense for the drama. Nine days ago, the state Board of Education raised the bar for school grades, putting pressure on many of them to further improve or end up with lower or possibly failing grades. So a bill that now would allow parents to vote to overhaul or bring new management to low-performing schools feels to them like a conspiracy.

This may help to explain rhetorical excesses like this: “Florida politicians are chopping up our piece of the (American) dream.” And this: the bill is “really the corporate empowerment bill” and “an effort to dismantle public education.” But the apocalyptic tone is simply confounding. Continue Reading →

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More school choice could ease pain of public school lotteries

By on March 8, 2012

As students across the nation apply for entry into their public school districts’ magnets, fundamental schools and special academies for the fall, the parade of winners and losers brings to mind The Lottery, Madeleine Sackler’s provocative documentary on coveted charter school slots. It is also a reminder that many public schools, just like private ones, can be quite selective in their decisions.

In New York City, for example, the good news this year is the percentage of black and Latino students accepted into eight specialized high schools increased by 14 percent. That’s encouraging, but the racial makeup of Stuyvesant High School, with four Nobel Laureates among its graduates and a student body that is only 1.2 percent black, is a reflection of the imbalance that remains.

In Pinellas County, a school district of 101,000 students on Florida’s Gulf Coast, 4,787 incoming kindergartners applied for 846 seats in the district’s magnet and fundamental schools. “I don’t know how I got to be so lucky,” one parent of a sixth-grader told the Tampa Bay Times. “I feel like I won the lottery. This is better than money.” In Brevard County, on Florida’s Atlantic Coast, school officials are considering a plan to improve lottery odds by the unsual strategy of removing the preference they give for families wanting to keep brothers and sisters together. “For families like mine,” one mother told Florida Today, “we’ve counted on both of our children going to the same school.” Continue Reading →

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Not all bad apples spoil the whole bunch

By on March 7, 2012

A year after I began work as an education reporter, I witnessed a classroom scene so shocking, it haunts me to this day. I asked a high school teacher in a typical, normal public school if I could sit in on his class, and he said sure. He flipped on the most boring documentary ever made – a decades-old snoozer on map making, if I remember right – and turned off the lights. Heads became one with desk tops. Eyes closed. And then the really bad thing happened.

The teacher – who was also a teachers union representative – sat back in his chair, put his feet up and unfurled a newspaper with a flick of his wrists.

In the aftermath, I had to tell myself: Don’t leap to strong conclusions. Don’t let this one crazy thing unnecessarily taint the full picture about teachers and teachers unions. And I don’t think I have. As an education reporter for many years, I saw plenty of awesome teachers in public schools and a handful of really bad ones. I saw teachers unions take positions on issues that jibed with the facts, and others that were just flat ridiculous. The world of education as I’ve come to know it is often complicated and gray, and sometimes it’s hard to tell good guys from bad. With so much hanging in the balance, we should all be careful before we decide whether an obviously rotten apple is a representative example or an anomaly, or whether a small string of them is unfortunate coincidence or troubling trend.

I was reminded of that teacher and his newspaper this past week because of two story lines that have been running simultaneously in the Tampa Bay Times. Continue Reading →

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Sorry, but you got it wrong: redefinED introduces rebuttED

By on March 6, 2012

Last week, the Tampa Bay Times, the biggest newspaper in Florida, published a front-page story about Jeb Bush’s still-substantial influence in Florida education reform. The headline was fair and straightforward — “Jeb Bush shaping education in Florida” — but then came the blurb beneath it: “Lawmakers listen. Private and charter schools and online learning benefit.”

It sounds provocative, but we think the evidence shows it’s pretty distorted. If you don’t believe us, just read the first two paragraphs of the story:

When Sen. David Simmons needed his colleagues’ support on the education budget last week, he dropped a powerful name on the Senate floor.

“I had a conversation last week with former Gov. Jeb Bush in which we discussed this and his support of it,” Simmons said of the provision to spend $119 million on reading programs at low-income schools.

It’s a little bit baffling how an editor or copy editor could read that lead – about Bush supporting a big-ticket effort to help struggling readers in public schools — and then write the aforementioned blurb. But the truth is – and we say this respectfully to our friends in the media — that kind of thing happens fairly often in reporting about school choice. It feeds a narrative we don’t think is rooted in reality. And we think it’s time somebody set the record straight.

Since we call our blog redefinED, it might as well as be us. So, today, we humbly introduce rebuttED, complete with funky new logo!

Behind the silly goat horns, rebuttED is what we’re going to tag blog posts that aim to chip away at misinformation circulated by anyone who shapes public opinion about school choice and other aspects of school reform we find critical. It might be a newspaper. It might be a lawmaker. It might be an interest group. Continue Reading →

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The progressive choice: embrace school choice

By on March 6, 2012

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

By on March 5, 2012

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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Obama’s inconsistency on school choice

By on March 5, 2012

The Obama administration’s refusal to embrace parental choice in education is difficult to understand given its health care stance and the overall public policy direction that Democrats have advocated and embraced for decades. The most recent example is the controversy over the access to contraception under Obamacare.

Initially, the administration asserted that a woman’s and family’s right to choose to use contraception trumped whatever objections religious affiliated employers had to its use. Churches themselves were exempt, but not hospitals they operate. These religious employers would have had to honor the family’s right to choose contraceptives and at zero cost for all their employees. The White House backed off somewhat from the directive in the face of an uproar, but instead ordered that insurance companies have to offer and pay for such coverage separately when the religiously affiliated organization opts not to offer it.

This recognition of the family’s rights on such a personal and potentially life changing decision as contraception oddly does not carry over to education, which in the 21st century is more life changing than ever. Education once was third behind a good work ethic and a strong back for many middle class jobs. Today, education is a must for a middle-class standard of living. Continue Reading →

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redefinED roundup: parent triggers in Florida, voucher studies in Milwaukee and more

By on March 5, 2012

Editor’s note: We’re going to try something new this morning – a quickie roundup of recent headlines that we think deserve your attention. In keeping with redefinED’s focus, we’ll put the spotlight on stories regarding school choice (vouchers, charters, tax-credit-scholarships, etc.) and/or speak to new definitions of public education.

Florida: A parent trigger bill clears a key Senate committee in an unusual Saturday morning vote. (Tampa Bay Times). A proposal to give charter schools more money for capital projects falters in the state House. (Tampa Bay Times.)

Arizona: Gov. Jan Brewer signs legislation that expands the state’s tax credit scholarship program. (Arizona Republic.)

Wisconsin: Voucher students in Milwaukee make bigger reader gains that peers in public schools, study finds. (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.) Proposed voucher expansion could open private-school doors for parents in 37 school districts. (Appleton Post-Crescent) Continue Reading →

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Glen Gilzean, pro-voucher school board member in Florida – podcastED

By on March 2, 2012

As maybe the only pro-voucher school board member in Florida, and one of the few in the country, it could get awfully intense for 29-year-old Glen Gilzean. But when asked by redefinED if he liked the extra-big spotlight, Gilzean laughed.

Being a voucher guy on a local school board, he says in this redefinED podcast, is like being the first person in a flash mob.

“It’s like a flash mob. It takes one person. Everybody look at him like, ‘Oh this guy is crazy.’ What is he doing? Then you know three more people come in and it’s like, ‘Oh, he’s not really that crazy.’ Let’s just continue the thing going. And then all of a sudden, the whole group, everyone’s like doing the dance. And to be frank with you, I see Florida, on the legislative stand point, they’re making that bold step. I see our commissioner of education making that bold step. I see our governor making that bold step. Now it takes people on the local level to start, you know, making some of those bold steps to ensure that children are getting what they need.”

Glen Gilzean

Glen Gilzean

We also ask Gilzean about the evolution of his thinking concerning vouchers and tax-credit scholarships, and what he thinks about vouchers for all parents, regardless of income. Note: The podcast comes in at 26 minutes, and there are five seconds of silence at the beginning. Truth be told, your humble podcaster needs a crash course in basic 21st century technology. Hopefully, future podcasts will be shorter, sweeter – and edited for the sake of time and clarity.

Play

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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Colorado Dems: ‘School choice appeals to the best instincts of both political parties’

By on March 2, 2012

Four prominent elected Democrats in Colorado – Lt. Gov. Joe Garcia, Denver Mayor Mike Hancock, U.S. Rep. Jared Polis and state senator Michael Johnston – felt strongly enough about the power of school choice to pen an op-ed this week for The Hill’s Congress blog. Here’s a taste:

In Colorado, school choice has appropriately always enjoyed support from both Democrats and Republicans. Nationally, choice has too often been divisive, with some Republicans using choice as a wedge issue to deconstruct the Federal role in education, while other Democrats have resisted change in any form in an attempt to preserve the status quo. But in Colorado, the emergence of elected Democrats independent from legacy policies and willing to form broad coalitions has reframed the debate on education reform.

School choice appeals to the best instincts of both political parties. It allows Democrats to adhere to their core principals of equality and opportunity – so that a student’s zip code does not determine the quality of their education. It allows Republicans to introduce moderate – and managed – market dynamics and the beginnings of limited competition in the public school sector.

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