Tag Archives | Dropout Nation

Private school options empower more than just children

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On December 14, 2011 in Education and Public Policy, General, Religious education, School Choice

At the Dropout Nation, editor RiShawn Biddle visited his archives and resurrected his examination of the school choice movement and his call for black churches to open their own schools. “They must embrace school reform and take the role that Catholic churches have done for so long and for so many,” Biddle writes.

So it seemed appropriate for redefinED to visit its own archives and unearth this post from Doug Tuthill showing how publicly funded private school options have already helped black churches take the step that Biddle urges:

As the Florida coordinator of Democrats for Education Reform (DFER), I am frequently asked by Democrats in other states why so many elected Florida Democrats support all forms of school choice, including vouchers and tax credit scholarships, but not tenure and teacher pay reforms.  The answer is black middle-class jobs and the rise of black-owned schools.

During the days of Jim Crow, school districts were the biggest employers of college educated African-Americans and even though other professions have opened up, school districts today remain a leading employer of college-educated African-Americans.   Consequently, education reforms that are perceived as negatively impacting school districts are usually opposed by the black community. This is one reason former chancellor Michelle Rhee’s effort to reduce job protections for Washington, D.C. educators was so fiercely opposed by many district African-Americans, even though they knew black children were benefitting.  Saying that school districts should put the needs of students above the concerns of adults ignores that adults feed, clothe and house students and meeting those needs is difficult without a job.

Every Florida black elected legislator opposed the early school choice programs, but the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship for low-income students and the McKay Scholarship for exceptional students have caused a change  in attitude.  These programs have enabled black churches and community groups to create financially viable schools, and as these schools have grown so has black political support for school choice. Black ministers are employing black teachers and administrators to work in their growing schools and are seeing the lives of black children turned around. These ministers, in turn, are pressuring black elected officials to support these scholarship programs, and they are responding.

Last spring, a majority of the Black Caucus supported legislation significantly strengthening the Tax Credit Scholarship program, while unanimously opposing legislation that reformed tenure and teacher pay in school districts. A respected minister from Fort Lauderdale, Rev. C.E. Glover of Mount Bethel Baptist Church and Christian Academy, even joined a coalition to challenge both gubernatorial candidates this fall to support the scholarship. “I have led this ministry for a quarter-century now, and I can tell you that nothing is more satisfying or more important than our mission to provide for the academic needs of children in our community,” Glover told reporters. “For those of us who have fought the historic battle against the indignities of racial discrimination in our nation, we understand the importance of providing educational opportunity to new generations.”

The lesson for DFER out of Florida is that school choice programs that enable local black and Hispanic communities to own and manage financially healthy schools are essential to expanding support for education reform within the Democratic Party. Black and Hispanic legislators will support school choice programs, including vouchers, if these programs allow their constituents to own schools and expand middle-class employment. Protests from school boards and teacher unions that minority-owned private schools drain market share from school districts do not resonate with black and Hispanic elected officials when they see minority-owned schools creating jobs and succeeding with children who were previously failing.

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School choice and the case for equity

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On July 22, 2011 in Education and Public Policy, General, Parent empowerment, Parental Choice, School Choice

Over at Dropout Nation, RiShawn Biddle has explored how school choice activists, particularly those on the left, can re-energize the legal case for equity in education spending. He writes, “If choice activists and civil libertarian groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union successfully take up such moves, it would lead to another round of school choice efforts that would provide more poor and minority children with opportunities to get the high-quality education they deserve.”

Biddle has done more than any journalist to highlight the egregious symptoms of what he calls zip code education, notably pointing to the criminal prosecution of a homeless mother in Connecticut and a low-income parent in Ohio who sent their children to schools outside their assigned districts. He sees relief in the very state constitutional provisions that give most choice advocates heartburn: the idea that states must provide uniform systems of public schools. The language differs depending on the state, but the same barriers exist for voucher or charter school expansions. Or do they?

“Practices that have led to zip code education, including the concept of zoned schools, are essentially unconstitutional; and thus, inter-district choice of the kind encouraged by otherwise foes of choice such as Richard Kahlenberg of the Century Foundation would be allowable,” Biddle writes.

Before readers roll their eyes, they should know there is precedence in Biddle’s contention, namely in two of the most stalwart advocates for equity, John E. Coons and Stephen D. Sugarman of the University of California at Berkeley. Coons and Sugarman first struck at the inequalities in school spending between rich districts and poor districts in the 40-year-old California case known as Serrano v. Priest. The case led the California Supreme Court in 1971 to establish the concept of “fiscal neutrality,” which recognized that the quality of a child’s education should not be a function of a district’s wealth or poverty. The way to equalize education for rich and poor, Coons and Sugarman eventually argued, was to enact a system of choice.

A commitment to family choice in education, Coons would later write, “would maximize, equalize and dignify as no other remedy imaginable.” And, notably, this comes from a progressive voice that Biddle believes is critical to this enterprise. While it’s unlikely that any grassroots or parent-led effort can soon convince the ACLU to drop its opposition to the choice policies that Biddle and Coons would promote, Biddle is right to argue that it will take a left-of-center effort to quarterback this challenge.

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Another voice for a parents union

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On April 25, 2011 in General, Parental Choice, School Choice

This week, RiShawn Biddle’s Dropout Nation features a plea from Gwen Samuel, the president of the Connecticut Parents Union, for families to demand greater accountability and choices for their children’s education. Just as Ben Austin’s California parents union has organized families to essentially take over a failing school, Samuel is shepherding a movement in Connecticut calling for an enhanced level of parental choice. “Quality-blind education will continue unless parents demand something different,” she wrote (Samuel’s union also is helping Tonya McDowell, the homeless Connecticut mother charged with larceny and ordered to pay $16,000 in restitution after authorities learned she enrolled her child in Norwalk schools when she should have sent him to Bridgeport):

If lawmakers and school leaders are not going to demand schools and their staffs to be fiscally and academically accountable for our children, then they should give us choice and attach each child with their per pupil amount. They can’t have it both ways. Either demand accountability of education leadership or give parents choice. If not, parents will take it. These are our babies and their lives are our responsibility.

Quality-blind education will continue until parents demand something different. We must demand access to excellent schools. That means, as parents, we can no longer have excuses for why we don’t visit our child’s school, or support them at home and in the community. If you can not support your child’s homework needs, let’s work together and find someone that can.

Parents want to be team players. We want to partner with educators, teachers, administrators, community and lawmakers to ensure better outcomes for all students. But the days of blind trust in what you do are over. We are learning to read and understand data, and learn and what high-quality schools should look like. Low performance will no longer be an acceptable option for our children. These are our children and we are responsible for their well-being!

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Two thoughts on the failure of our discourse

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On April 20, 2011 in General

Dropout Nation’s RiShawn Biddle on anti-intellectualism in our debate over education reform:

For all the taxpayer-funded doctorates and graduate degrees that are found among the defenders of traditional public education, there is little going on among them other than closed-minded, sclerotic thinking. This lack of intellectual vigor — the ability to see the value of new concepts, the lack of understanding of economics and technology, and the rabid opposition to anyone outside of education arguing for reform — is one reason why American public education is mired in the kind of mediocrity that has fostered the nation’s education crisis.

And from Terry M. Moe and Paul T. Hill writing in Education Week on government, markets and the mixed model of education reform:

Stereotypes are alive and well in American education reform, and nowhere is this more evident than when school choice is being discussed. All too often, choice is characterized by its detractors as a “free market” solution that would “privatize” education. And all too often, this depiction is reinforced by its more libertarian supporters, who do indeed see choice in these terms and are stridently opposed to a government-run education system. The framing suggests an unbridgeable chasm. On the one side, markets. On the other side, government.

As is often true of stereotypes, this kind of either-or framing is not helpful. A more productive way to think about school choice—and about American education reform in general—is not in terms of markets vs. government, but rather in terms of markets and government.

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