Tag Archives | parental empowerment

Progressives have long supported vouchers, school choice

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On April 18, 2012 in Parent empowerment, Parental Choice, Progressives and ed reform, School Choice

Think school choice is solely a conservative idea? Think again.

* After the Civil War, blacks in the South who were tired of waiting for the government to organize schools – or who were dissatisfied with the quality – built schools themselves.

* During the civil rights movement, activists in both the north and south established alternatives to segregated, second-rate schools.

* In the 1960s, leading progressives proposed private-school vouchers because of anger over failing inner-city schools.

Historical gems like these sparkle throughout “The Secret History of School Choice: How Progressives Got There First,” a 2005 academic journal piece by Georgetown University law professor James Forman Jr.  From Reconstruction to the civil rights era to the “free schools” and “community control” movements – indeed, for most of American history – progressives have been a leading voice for choice.

So forget what you hear from choice critics and read in the newspaper. The parents who use vouchers and tax credit scholarships to help their kids can’t be shoved into one political box or another. The same goes for the political and philosophical roots that sprouted those options. Conservatives have advanced compelling reasons for school choice. So have progressives. Continue Reading →

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‘I’m just a dad looking to do the best for his son’ – school “voucher” parent Mike Enters, podcastED

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On April 6, 2012 in General, Parent empowerment, Parental Choice, School Choice

Folks who think the school choice movement is about tearing down or privatizing public schools should set aside a few minutes to listen to Mike Enters.

Enters, 52, is the father of 13-year-old Jack Enters, a sixth grader at tiny Lake Monroe Christian School in Sanford, Fla. Jack had severe health problems in his earliest years and has struggled a bit to fit in socially. Enters thought it best to place him in a small school with few distractions, lots of one-on-one attention and strong relationships between parents and staff. He has been financially able to do that thanks to a tax-credit scholarship.

“If it wasn’t for the scholarship program, I would have had to kind of send him out like a sheep into the wolves, you know, and see what would happen,” Enters told redefinED.

Dad is happy with how things turned out. Jack and his teachers continue to work on his social skills. Meanwhile, he’s academically solid across the board and light years ahead in subjects like geography and astronomy. The school has “been perfect for him,” Enters said. “It’s been tailor made and I couldn’t have asked for anything better.”

Enters, a former missionary, said he doesn’t have anything against public schools. In fact, his father was a public school teacher and principal for 39 years. But “I’ve got one crack, you know, at doing well with Jack,” he said, “and I didn’t want to take a chance to see if that would work, whether he would be accepted in a public school or not.”

“I’m just a dad looking to do the best for his son,” he continued. “I see where public schools have their place, definitely. It’s just that the description I gave before for the way Jack is, the way he’s wired, he would be one of those kids left behind, that are kind of shunted to the side at best. At worst, he’d be teased, he’d be, you know, just his spirit broken. I couldn’t picture myself putting him through that.”

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Complementary messages in new school choice videos

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On April 5, 2012 in General, Parent empowerment, Parental Choice, School Choice

Two new parental choice videos offer messages that work well in tandem. The first, released today by the American Federation for Children, pushes back hard against the paternalistic attitudes that some in the education establishment have towards parents who want more choice. “Enough is enough,” it says. “It’s time to stand up for our kids.” The video includes a snippet from St. Petersburg, Fla. mom Shannon Coates: “I have the right as a parent to choose the best school that I feel fits for my child.”

The second video, released yesterday by the 60,000-strong Parents for Educational Freedom in North Carolina, offers a gentler message: Public and private schools are not rivals. And strengthening their “symbiotic relationship” can give families more options to help their kids.

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Parent trigger founder: Teachers unions launched “sweep and destroy” mission to deny parents

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On March 28, 2012 in General, Parent empowerment, Parental Choice, Unionism

Two weeks ago, Gloria Romero, the former California state senator who wrote the original parent trigger law, wrote in this redefinED piece that the “status quo” killed the parent trigger bill in Florida. Today in this op-ed for the Los Angeles Times, Romero uses much tougher language – and singles out a specific foe - to describe the parent trigger battle in two California locales. Some excerpts:

In both Adelanto and Compton, parents trying to exercise their rights felt the full onslaught of a “sweep and destroy” mission launched by the California Teachers Assn. and its affiliates. What had taken weeks to build was destroyed in a few days of heavy-handed lobbying. Parents have reported being told outright lies about charter law and about their rights. Some parents reported that they were even threatened with deportation if they didn’t rescind their signatures …

A recent survey by California Common Cause revealed that the top lobbying force in the state in 2011 was the 300,000-plus membership of the California Teachers Assn. In other words, the massive teachers union is the top political force in the eighth-largest economy in the world. The union has made it clear that it wants to take the trigger out of the hands of mothers and fathers. Parents who attempt to lobby for their children now find themselves on a collision course with this powerful organization …

So what can we do to help parents actually see things clearly without biased interference? We need to direct attention to failing schools, so that parents understand the situation and understand that they are not alone. And when they send out cries for help, we should defend their right to occupy a political arena previously dominated by vested interests.

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In parent trigger debate, teachers unions sounded an awful lot like management

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On March 22, 2012 in General, Parent empowerment, Parental Choice, Unionism

I started teaching in the fall of 1977, and by the winter of 1978 I had become a union organizer. A law authorizing public employees to participate in collective bargaining had passed a few years earlier in the Florida legislature, and public educators were actively organizing themselves into unions.

Management was hostile toward our efforts. They asserted that unions would pit teacher against teacher, and teachers against management. They said collaboration was the key to improving our working conditions – not the adversarial relationships that are inherent in unions. They set up teacher advisory councils and said we didn’t need unions. They said we had input through the councils.

Management always uses these arguments to fight union organizers, which is why I wasn’t surprised they surfaced during the recent parent trigger debate in Florida. The parent trigger legislation is part of an effort by progressive Democrats to begin unionizing parents in school districts, and management is opposing their efforts. But it’s ironic that teachers unions are also opposing parent unions and using the same arguments management used against them in the 1970s. Continue Reading →

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More choice for low-income parents shouldn’t be limited to charter schools

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On March 21, 2012 in Charter Schools, Parent empowerment, Parental Choice, Private Schools, School Choice

John Kirtley, chairman of Step Up for Students and one of the hosts here at redefinED, offered some thoughts on parental choice and parental empowerment over at Fordham’s Board’s Eye View blog today. Here’s a taste:

Parents must be truly empowered, however. They can’t just be empowered to choose charters, as some reformers believe. In most states, there is a surprisingly large inventory of private schools that are already serving low-income children. In some of these places there are few charters—sometimes (but not always) because the district is slow to authorize them. In Duval County, Florida, for instance, the district has only thirteen charters despite its large size (over 150,000 students). And not all of them serve low-income children. By contrast, there are over 100 private schools in the county that serve low-income children under the state’s tax credit scholarship program.

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Florida parent trigger debate didn’t bring out best from established parent groups

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On March 13, 2012 in Education reporting, General, Parent empowerment, Parental Choice

Amidst all the inflated rhetoric that defined the debate over Florida’s parent trigger bill, one persistent claim stood out as particularly jarring: the notion that low-income parents don’t know how to act in the best interests of their children.

That much of this language came from white, suburban parent activists makes it all the more disconcerting.

The parent trigger is “just a method for uninformed, inactive parents to be used to shut schools down,” said Rita Solnet, a Palm Beach County parent who co-founded Parents Across America.

“It uses a parent’s love to pull the trigger and pass all that they hold dear into the hands of for-profit corporations eager to peel off a chunk of every child’s per pupil funding for themselves,” said Linda Kobert, a co-founder of Fund Education Now.

After the parent trigger went down in flames Friday, the Orlando Sentinel continued with the same theme.

“This bad bill would have cued the stampede of for-profit charter school companies looking to sweet talk frustrated parents and turn a fast buck,” its editorial board wrote.

There’s no doubt that if one of the biggest newspapers in Florida suggested that the savvy, passionate, well-meaning parents behind the Florida PTA, Parents Across America and Fund Education Now had been “sweet talked” into their opposition by the teachers unions and the Democratic Party — and let’s face it, the links between those groups are obvious — they’d be ripped to shreds. Continue Reading →

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Parent trigger founder: What happened in Florida ‘only a temporary setback’

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On March 13, 2012 in General, Parent empowerment, Parental Choice

When Florida’s parent trigger bill sadly failed on a 20-20 vote in the Senate last Friday, parents in the state’s worst performing schools lost an opportunity to change their schools, their lives, and their children’s lives for the better.

The debate seemed to turn mysteriously on fears of privatization through charter schools, even though converting the school to a charter was only one of four options parents could have elected under the legislation. Given that Florida already has many charter schools, I find it baffling why allowing parents access to this option was so threatening to the education establishment.

Fortunately, Florida still has options for parents who want to leave a failing school, but the demand for options such as a tax credit scholarship or a charter school exceeds the supply. To a large degree, though, these kinds of options are not really the point of parent trigger legislation. For most families, the ideal situation is a high-quality neighborhood school. This is particularly true for low-income families that struggle with juggling multiple jobs, child care and transportation.

If we believe that strong families, parents and neighborhoods are at the heart of American society, Florida just lost a precious opportunity to empower revitalization. No neighborhood is truly successful if its schools don’t work. The traditional education model strips away the authority of parents to do much about these schools when it simply assigns children to schools according to zip code. But because education is such a fundamental part of life, stripping away this power and authority has implications far beyond just education. It robs parents and families of a feeling that they have influence more broadly on their community.

That’s why parent trigger legislation is so important. Continue Reading →

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Who you calling conservative?

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On February 27, 2012 in Charter Schools, General, Parent empowerment, Parental Choice

I am a left-of-center Democrat who’s been an education reformer for 34 years and have always considered myself progressive, so I was surprised when the Ledger, a newspaper in central Florida, recently asserted that education reformers in Florida are conservative:

“Conservative education reformers are back in the state Capitol this year with an array of proposals that would strengthen alternatives to Florida’s traditional public schools, from more private school vouchers to expanded virtual education programs.  But the bills promoting charter schools are generating the most resistance from public school districts.”

Now I’m not naive to the partisan politics that shape many of these debates and, given the large Republican majorities in the Florida Capitol it is hardly surprising they would be driving the agenda. But let’s pause for a moment on the term “conservative education reformers.”

I’ve always assumed traditionalists protecting the status quo were conservatives, while those advocating improvements were progressives.  Had this Ledger writer shared my assumptions, he would have written, “Progressive education reformers are back in the state Capitol…”, and the next sentence would have read, “But the bills promoting charter schools are generating the most resistance from conservative public school districts.”

Even if the writer in this case is using the terms conservative and progressive as synonyms for Republican and Democrat, he still has some explaining to do. Clearly, not all charter school supporters are Republicans. President Obama is a charter school advocate, as was President Clinton, and these men are both prominent Democrats. In Florida, the original charter school bill was signed into law by the late Gov. Lawton Chiles, also a Democrat.

Given how rapidly the political landscape surrounding education reform is shifting, trying to label reformers as conservative or progressive seems counterproductive.  The most successful public education reformers are values-driven pragmatists who effectively balance progressive and conservative solutions.  So are education reforms conservative or progressive?  They’re both.

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Hello from the new guy

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On February 27, 2012 in Parental Choice, Private Schools, Religious education, School Choice

Hi everybody. My name is Ron Matus. I’m the new assistant director of policy and public affairs at Step Up for Students, a nonprofit in Tampa, Florida that oversees a tax credit scholarship for 38,000 low-income students. Among other responsibilities, I’ll be editing redefinED, which means I have the unenviable task of replacing the irreplaceable Adam Emerson, who put this forum on the map and is now the school choice czar at the Fordham Institute. I have mountains of homework to do before I can approach the depth and breadth of knowledge that Adam brought to redefinED. But I am pumped about keeping the blog’s spirit alive and finding ways to bring more people into the conversation. I think redefinED stands out for its tone and view. I appreciate its humility. And I know it is absolutely on point in 1) trying to reshape what is meant by “public education” and 2) accentuating the common ground between so many of us who have somehow been segregated into warring camps.

I’m sure I’ll be sharing more about myself in future posts, but for now I think two things are worth noting.

I was a newspaper reporter for 25 years. Continue Reading →

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