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  • Home
  • ABOUT US
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    • Analysis
    • Commentary and Opinion
    • News
    • Spotlights
    • Voices for Education Choice
    • factcheckED
  • Topics
    • Achievement Gap
    • Charter Schools
    • Customization
    • Education Equity
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    • Education Research
    • Education Savings Accounts
    • Education Spending
    • Faith-based Education
    • Florida Schools Roundup
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    • Microschools
    • Parent Empowerment
    • Private Schools
    • Special Education
    • Testing and Accountability
    • Virtual Education
    • Vouchers
  • Multimedia
    • Video
    • Podcasts
  • Guest Bloggers
    • Ashley Berner
    • Jonathan Butcher
    • Jack Coons
    • Dan Lips
    • Chris Stewart
    • Patrick J. Wolf
  • Education Facts
    • Research and Reports
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    • Hope Scholarship Program Facts
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Florida Education Revolution

Education and Public PolicyEducation ResearchfactcheckEDFlorida Education RevolutionFlorida Tax Credit ScholarshipKnow Your HistoryMyth BustersSchool ChoiceTax Credit ScholarshipsVouchers

Busting myths of 20 years ago

Patrick R. Gibbons September 27, 2019
Patrick R. Gibbons

Florida’s then-Gov. Jeb Bush testifying before a U.S. House committee Sept. 23, 1999.

Twenty years ago this week, Gov. Jeb Bush spoke before the House Education Budget Committee about Florida’s recently passed A+ Plan and the state’s first voucher, the Opportunity Scholarship Program.

“It’s been fun, in all honesty,” Bush said with a smirk, “to watch the myths that have been built up over time when you empower parents.”

Those myths were shattered, Bush said, though he admitted the program was only just a few months old at that point. Nevertheless, two decades of evidence have proved him correct.

By the time of Bush’s presentation, the Opportunity Scholarship had awarded scholarships to 134 students at two schools in Pensacola. Seventy-six of those students used the program to attend another higher-performing public school, while 58 used the voucher to attend a private school, according to Bush’s testimony.

The first myth Bush called “the brain drain,” which occurs when only the high-achieving kids leave public schools. But according to Bush, the students on the program were no more or less academically advantaged than their peers who remained behind.

The second myth was that vouchers would only benefit higher-income students. “Eighty-five percent of the students are minority,” Bush said. “Eighty-five percent qualify for reduced and free lunch. This is not a welfare program for the rich, but an empowerment program for the disadvantaged.”

The third and final myth he called “the abandonment myth” — schools where students leave will spiral ever downward.

Twenty years later these myths remain busted.

Eleven years of research on the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship show the critics’ claims ring hollow.

• Students attending private schools with the help of the scholarship are among the lowest-performing students in the public schools they leave behind.

• Today, 75 percent of scholarship students are non-white, 57 percent live in single-parent households, and the average student lives in a household earning around $27,000 a year. Researchers at the Learning Systems Institute at Florida State noted that these students are also more economically disadvantaged than their eligible public-school peers.

• More importantly, scholarship students are achieving Jeb Bush’s goal of gaining a year’s worth of learning in a year’s time.

• Even the abandonment myth remains untrue. Overall, public schools with large populations of potentially eligible scholarship students actually performed better, as a result of competition from the scholarship program, according to researchers David Figlio and Cassandra Hart.

When Jeb Bush took office just 52 percent of Florida’s students graduated. Today 86 percent of students graduate. According to the Urban Institute, students on the scholarship are more likely to graduate high school and attend and later graduate from college. State test scores on the Nation’s Report Card are up considerably since 1998 too. And when adjusting for demographics, Florida, which is a majority-minority state, ranks highly on K-12 education compared to wealthier and whiter peers.

There’s still room for improvement. But the naysayers at the turn of the century have been proven wrong.

September 27, 2019 0 comment
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CourtsFaith-based EducationFlorida Education RevolutionKnow Your HistoryMyth BustersPrivate SchoolsSchool ChoiceVouchers

Florida’s Blaine amendment leaves many unanswered questions (Part 2)

Patrick R. Gibbons September 19, 2019
Patrick R. Gibbons

Florida’s First District Court of Appeal

This is the second of two posts on the judicial history of Florida’s Blaine Amendment with regard to public aid to private religious institutions. Part one can be read here. The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to weigh in on the constitutionality of state Blaine Amendments in 2020.

Lawyers defending Florida’s first school voucher program in Bush v. Holmes demonstrated the state historically allowed public funding to flow to many religious organizations providing public services, including through the McKay Scholarship for children with special needs. The First District Court of Appeal refused to acknowledge these programs.

Supporters of the Opportunity Scholarship program also cited several Florida Supreme Court cases which upheld aid to religious institutions as constitutional. But the appellate court found a way to ignore this precedent too.

Koerner v. Borck (1958) dealt with the last will and testament of Mrs. Lina Downey, who had donated a parcel of land to Orange County for use as a county park, but with the provision that Downey Memorial Church be granted a perpetual easement to access the lake for the privilege of baptizing members and swimming.

The court upheld the will, concluding,

“to hold that the Amendment is an absolute prohibition against such use of public waters would, in effect, prohibit many religious groups from carrying out the tenets of their faith; and, as stated in Everson v. Board of Education, supra, 67 S. Ct. 504, 505, “State power is no more to be used so as to handicap religions, than it is to favor them.”

In 1959 the Florida Supreme Court heard Southside Estates Baptist Church v Board of Trustees, a case in which the court ruled religious institutions could use public buildings (in this case a public school) for religious meetings.

The court was not persuaded that minimal costs associated with the “wear and tear” of the building constituted aid from the public treasury, and concluded there was “no evidence here that one sect or denomination is being given a preference over any other.”

In Johnson v. Presbyterian Homes of Synod of Florida, Inc. (1970), tax collectors for Bradenton and Manatee County challenged a law that gave property tax exemptions to non-profits operating homes for the elderly after a religious organization applied. Presbyterian Homes of Synod, a religious non-profit operating homes for the elderly, maintained a religious atmosphere, offered religious services and employed an ordained Presbyterian minister who conducted services every day except Sunday. Most residents were even practicing Presbyterians.

The Florida Supreme Court determined the tax exemption benefit was available to all, not just Presbyterians, and ruled:

“A state cannot pass a law to aid one religion or all religions, but state action to promote the general welfare of society, apart from any religious considerations, is valid, even though religious interests may be indirectly benefited.”

Nohrr v. Brevard County Education Facilities Authority (1971) dealt with the issue of government issue bonds potentially being received by religious schools. The Florida Supreme Court found no problem here either.

In all four cases the Florida Supreme Court held the law did not violate the constitutional prohibition on direct or indirect aid to religious institutions. In all instances, the court examined who benefited from the aid, and required that the aid benefit the general public and/or required that no religious group be favored over the other.

The appellate court majority brushed aside these arguments, noting that the Opportunity Scholarship was different because the financial aid came directly from the state treasury, making the scholarship “distinguishable from the type of state aid found constitutional.” In fact, it appears the appellate court restricted Florida’s “no aid” provision to “payment of public monies,” though it failed to consider other similar programs such as McKay.

Having crafted itself exemptions to prior state Supreme Court precedent, the appellate court cited cases in Washington (2002), South Carolina (1971) and Virginia (1955) where state supreme courts held that direct subsidies to students were, in effect, benefits to religious schools.

This directly contradicted the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris (2002), which determined the benefit to religious institutions from school vouchers were merely “incidental.”

The Florida Supreme Court had even weighed in on whether these benefits were direct or incidental during a 1983 case, City of Boca Raton v. Gilden, which upheld the city’s subsidy to a religiously affiliated daycare provider. The court declared:

“The beneficiaries of the city’s contribution are the disadvantaged children. Any ’benefit‘ received by the charitable organization itself is insignificant and cannot support a reasonable argument that this is the quality or quantity of benefit intended to be proscribed.”

The appellate court in Bush v. Holmes failed to understand that the constitutional question hinged not on the method of aid, but who was the intended beneficiary of the aid. Though Florida’s constitutional language may appear clear, its longstanding history of neutrality in funding medical and educational services at secular and religious institutions, has muddied the waters.

September 19, 2019 0 comment
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Education and Public PolicyEducation EquityEducation LegislationEducation PoliticsEducation Savings AccountsEducation SpendingFlorida Education RevolutionSchool Choice

A little better all the time, Part 2

Matthew Ladner September 4, 2019
Matthew Ladner

Editor’s note: Today, we offer Part 2 of a two-part post from redefinED executive editor Matt Ladner. You can read Part 1 here. Ladner’s commentary ends our series commemorating the 20th anniversary of the K-12 reforms launched by Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, collectively known as the A+ accountability plan.

One challenge to several of the A+ reforms is that they lack a natural constituency, which makes them politically vulnerable. The photo above is a good example of a natural constituency.

Not all policies, even worthy ones, necessarily animate people to appear at a state capitol in vast throngs. Bill de Blasio’s new administration, for instance, cast productive school grading and third-grade literacy policies aside without breaking a sweat and (lamentably) nary a murmur of protest. You can see what resulted when the mayor (who by his own confession “hates” charter schools) took them on here.

The most basic rule of politics is that organized beats unorganized every day of the week and twice on Sunday. Sadly, the folks who oppose most K-12 solutions – other than “hurl more money at the system and hope for the best” – have a high degree of political organization and engagement. They tend to have sympathetic allies working in bureaucratic agencies and commissions.

State law can attempt to compel them to do things but has a hard time compelling them to do something effectively. The families who have benefitted from state literacy policies or school grades largely are unaware of that fact, and thus do not constitute an effective constituency to defend or extend such policies.

The Florida Reading Scholarship, a recent program providing families with struggling readers funds to purchase services for them, might suggest a way forward. This program is relatively new and provides only a small subsidy — $500 — to students with a large problem (poor literacy skills). A primitive prototype version of this policy failed in an entirely predictable fashion when the No Child Left Behind Act funded the program through district budgets and left them in charge of program administration. You don’t need a Ph.D. in game theory to guess how that worked out.

You have to admit our technologies are getting better all the time. Now we can envision a supplemental services program that can interact with parents directly. Despite the many challenges that lay ahead in making the Florida Reading Scholarship program a success, a lack of a natural constituency would not be one of them. Onward.

Upper income families have engaged in multi-vendor education out of their own pocketbooks with a growing frequency (see trend on the far right, below). This also seems to be working out relatively well on the outcomes side of things (see two charts on the left).

A $500-per-year scholarship for struggling readers is only a small step in attempts to address the glaring equity issue in the chart above. But the first step is the most important step, and once again, Florida is taking that first step.

Right about now, we don’t even know how much of the differences seen in education outcomes are the result of school effectiveness, or lack thereof, and how much is due to what we see going on in the right side of the chart. Put me down for some of both, but hopefully future research will give guidance.

If you lived in normal times, you might think about working out the kinks to the Florida Reading Scholarship and going big with it if the results seemed promising. Just as a reminder however, the budget math looks unforgiving:

Grandma and Grampa Boomer already have called dibs on a great deal of expected revenue growth in the form of health spending; the middle of the chart indicates it’s already started. This means you’ll have to rely upon increases in the productivity of spending in the years ahead. Usually, this means adopting technologies to increase the productivity of labor, but this is easier said than done in the public sector.

Don’t feel overly daunted. Florida’s A+ plan increased the productivity of K-12 spending in a variety of ways after all. The young Florida adults in the early stages of their careers were far better educated than older generations. Florida’s public pensions are in relatively good shape. If you were, say, New York, none of this would be true, and you would have been spending approximately twice as much on per-pupil K-12 results and would not have gotten results as good as the ones you actually achieved.

So you need only increase the productivity of public spending in a politically sustainable fashion while the country struggles to cope with large imbalances in entitlement programs. Your ancestors had to stare down nuclear annihilation after defeating global fascism, which came right after the biggest global economic depression in human history.

See? It really is getting better all the time.

 

 

September 4, 2019 0 comment
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Achievement GapCharter SchoolsEducation and Public PolicyEducation PoliticsFlorida Education RevolutionSchool Choice

A little better all the time

Matthew Ladner September 3, 2019
Matthew Ladner

I used to get mad at my school (No, I can’t complain)
The teachers who taught me weren’t cool (No, I can’t complain)
You’re holding me down
Turning me round
Filling me up with your rules

I’ve got to admit it’s getting better (Better)
A little better all the time (It can’t get no worse)
I have to admit it’s getting better (Better)
It’s getting better
Since you’ve been mine

Getting so much better all the time!

— John Lennon and Paul McCartney

Editor’s note: redefinED concludes its commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the K-12 reforms launched by Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, collectively known as the A+ accountability plan, with Part 1 of a two-part post from executive editor Matt Ladner.

Given that Florida’s A+ Plan had reached the grand old age of 20, we started this series in March, looking back with a Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band theme. For those tuning in late you can catch up here.

I’m sorely tempted to reprise gobs of evidence showing that Florida K-12 has in fact been getting better all the time over the last 20 years with a certain Liverpool lads’ song jingling around in your head. To that end, the states with statewide averages for all students equal to or lower than Florida’s statewide average for Hispanic students on the 2017 NAEP fourth-grade reading exam (in English mind you) are presented below in red:

It would be jolly good fun to trot out a half-dozen graphics like this one, but let’s just pretend we already did that. See what I did there? With that little Jedi mind trick, an entire post just flashed through your mind’s eye with a Beatles mental soundtrack. Hopefully you enjoyed that, because now we’re going to look ahead to the future rather than back on the past.

What will be necessary to continue Florida’s K-12 progress that began during the A+ era?

Gov. Bush’s A+ Plan included a complex mixture of K-12 improvement strategies. The state graded schools according to a mixture of proficiency and growth. The state put in sanctions for prolonged failure, and incentives for improvement and performance.

Additionally, the state provided financial rewards for students earning high-demand professional certifications and college credit by exam, and created expanded options for families in the form of charter schools, private choice programs and digital courses. Florida lawmakers threw the kitchen sink at improving early literacy in particular.

As can be seen from the map, results have improved, and Florida lawmakers have made moves to build upon several of these policies.

The A+ Plan simultaneously became more prescriptive to schools while granting more freedom to families. In 1998, 69 percent of Florida’s black fourth-graders scored “Below Basic” in reading. It wasn’t just time to do something, it was time to do everything.

In 2017, Florida’s black fourth-graders displayed about two-and-a-half grade levels of average academic progress and better reading ability than their peers from 1998. Yet despite this progress, 43 percent of black students scored Below Basic in reading in the most recent NAEP. The work, in other words, is far from finished. More on that tomorrow.

Check back Wednesday for Part 2 of this two-part post.

September 3, 2019 0 comment
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Patricia Levesque describes public education in the year 2039

Doug Tuthill August 20, 2019
Doug Tuthill

If you hopped in Doc Brown’s DeLorean and traveled to the year 2039, what would your utopian public education system look like?

That’s the question Step Up For Students President Doug Tuthill posed to Patricia Levesque, CEO of the Foundation For Excellence in Education, on this episode of PodcastED.

For Levesque, utopia begins and ends with equalizing opportunity – putting more money, more power, and better information into the hands of parents who traditionally have had little of all three.

“If you give parents the ability to have power and leverage in (their child’s educational) process so they can curate…that is the ultimate form of accountability,” Levesque says.

Both Tuthill and Levesque believe that if you started building public education from scratch, funding systems wouldn’t look like what we have now. Funding would be based on each child’s unique needs – with an eye towards equal opportunity.

The two influential policy wonks also discussed equalizing access to out-of-school learning opportunities, including travel, computer science becoming a core component of every child’s education, giving teachers more control over their professional development through professional spending accounts, and raising teacher pay.

You can listen to this thought-provoking podcast below, or on the Apple Podcasts app. Thank you for listening.

https://www.redefinedonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Patricia-levesque-EDIT.mp3
August 20, 2019 0 comment
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Advocate VoicesEducation and Public PolicyEducation LegislationEducation PoliticsFlorida Education RevolutionParent EmpowermentParental ChoiceSchool Choice

An education choice advocate reflects on benefits of A+ plan

Catherine Durkin Robinson August 6, 2019
Catherine Durkin Robinson

Editor’s note: redefinED continues to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the K-12 reforms launched by Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, collectively known as the A+ accountability plan, with this post from Step Up For Students’ executive director for advocacy and civic engagement. In her first-person piece, she recounts how she became aware of the legislation that transformed education throughout the state and how it impacted her family.

Back in 1999, when Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and the Legislature decided to put the A+ Plan into effect — thereby increasing accountability for schools, rewarding them for improved outcomes and creating options for families – I was living in Boston and working on presidential visits and various campaigns for Young Democrats of America.

I knew my former home state was going through some changes, but I didn’t pay much attention.

That changed when my sons were born in 2000 and my husband and I decided, as much as we loved Boston, we would raise our children in the Tampa Bay area, surrounded by family and loved ones. At that point, education in Florida became my primary interest.

We returned to Florida and looked around. The academic landscape had changed from when I was a student in the ‘80s and a young teacher in the ‘90s.

In 1981, I rode a bus for 45 minutes (one way) from a middle class neighborhood in North Tampa to a struggling, low-income area in order to attend Young Junior High (now Young Middle Magnet) for seventh grade.

This was not my family’s choice.

Children of different ethnic backgrounds were bused to Young from all over Hillsborough County. Ours was a truly integrated school, filled with black, white and Hispanic students.

It was also a culture shock.

We all went from a neighborhood elementary school to this strange set of buildings in a part of town regarded as hostile and dangerous. Weird characters wandered on to our campus and routinely had to be escorted away. I remember feeling like the area around the school should have been made safe before bringing in children for schooling.

None of us felt a connection to the school or each other. We couldn’t put on plays or performances in the evening because it was too far a drive for almost everyone’s parents.

It didn’t seem to make much sense.  

I returned to my neighborhood schools for the rest of junior high (eighth and ninth grade back then) and on to high school for 10th-12th. We all knew which schools were good and which were not, but only through word of mouth. Nothing official. And no accountability for the children who suffered through a substandard education.

After graduating from the University of South Florida, I taught at an alternative high school.

Our students were overwhelmingly poor, minority, and male.

They came to our school one of two ways. They were either arrested and the Department of Juvenile Justice sentenced them to our program, or they were expelled, and the school district sent them to us.

Students could learn at their own pace and in a setting that encouraged their thoughtful participation. In the morning they took core academic classes, leaving the afternoon open for a marine-based curriculum. Students learned how to operate a boat or become SCUBA and lifeguard certified.

This was the first time I saw disadvantaged youth thrive and do well. As teachers, we visited each student’s home and talked with their families. We learned about who they were and where they came from, rather than trying to help them simply based on their age, socioeconomic status, and alleged crime.

I was allowed to teach interesting social studies classes, such as Religions of the World and Politics and Government. Local field trips involved taking students to a synagogue, mosque, and church. We had lunch with Hare Krishnas in Ybor City. We also secured grants that funded field trips to Washington, D.C.

Our students saw a whole world outside the one in which they lived. I often wondered if at-risk youth might actually avoid arrest or expulsion if this type of learning environment were offered before it was almost too late.

Ours wasn’t a school of choice, since the students were assigned to it. But it showed me how developing a curriculum based on the needs and interests of the students in my classroom was a step in the right direction.

By the time we returned to Florida and started looking at schools, my kids had a lot more options than I ever did. Thanks to the A+ plan, scholarships to attend private schools were available, and magnet programs were created that expanded students’ knowledge and prepared them for high school and beyond. Advanced Placement classes and dual enrollment got them ready for college. Virtual classes allowed for flexible schedules and off-site learning activities.

When my children were ready for preschool, I also returned to the classroom and had more options as well.

Charters and magnet programs were able to do what busing never accomplished – probably because parents respond better when presented with choices, rather than something compulsory. I noticed this in other areas, too. Parents who bitterly complained about the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test never showed a resistance to AP testing. Both were rigorous and challenging, but only one was seen as a choice.

I am dismayed when my friends on the left act as if there haven’t been any improvements these last twenty years. There is still work to be done — too many children are still trapped in substandard learning environments.  

But there is no denying the improvements that have benefited all of us. Maneuvering my children through the educational system was eye-opening, in more ways than one. Any parent who has options owes a debt of gratitude to Gov. Bush and the lawmakers who created this system of choice and accountability.

    

August 6, 2019 0 comment
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Education LegislationEducation PoliticsFlorida Education RevolutionSchool ChoiceTesting and Accountability

Jeb Bush’s A+ Plan anniversary: 20 years to the day

Donna Winchester June 21, 2019
Donna Winchester

Florida Gov. Jeb Bush signed into law on June 21, 1999, the A+ Plan for education at Raa Middle School in Tallahassee. The comprehensive reform plan called for greater school and teacher accountability, changing the landscape of education statewide.

“I think we’re in for a renaissance in public education.”

With these words, Gov. Jeb Bush signed into law on June 21, 1999, a bill that set in motion his vision for the future of education in Florida.

The A+ Plan, which had been Bush’s top campaign promise when he ran for governor, aimed to toughen standards for teachers, students and schools. It called for the state to assign letter grades to all schools, end social promotion and institute statewide testing in grades 3 through 10.

The plan’s philosophical underpinnings ran deep.

According to testimony Bush delivered before the U.S. House of Representatives three months after the bill-signing, its foundation rested on three fundamental principles: meaningful and undiluted accountability that would allocate different consequences for success and failure; zero tolerance for the latter, which Bush acknowledged could be “extremely difficult and painful”; and the belief that Florida’s education system must be child-centered, not system-centered, or even school-centered.

The most controversial provision of the plan allowed students in failing public schools to obtain vouchers that would pay tuition and fees at participating private schools, including nonsectarian and religious institutions. It was this provision that set off a firestorm of controversy from voucher opponents that resulted in a lawsuit filed on behalf of the Florida Coalition for Public Education, which consisted of 17 organizations including the NAACP, the Florida PTA and the League of Women Voters.

Twenty years later, critics still argue the merits of vouchers. Some continue to argue the merits of the A+ Plan itself. But it’s hard to argue with the fact that, largely as a result of the plan, Florida’s families today enjoy access to one of the country’s most robust sets of education options, including public school choice, public charter schools, virtual learning and homeschooling. Many also have access to private school scholarships for low- and middle-income families, students with disabilities and bullied students.

In an opinion piece published Wednesday in USA Today, Bush reflected on these options, as well as on the upswing in student performance since 1999. He credited the positive turnaround to Florida’s willingness to continue to adopt bold and innovative education policies and expressed optimism that even more success can come in the next 20 years – as long as the state continues to “keep pushing the envelope until each and every child gets the great education they deserve.”

To read a series of stories authored by redefinED contributors commemorating the 20th anniversary of the A+ Plan, click here.

June 21, 2019 0 comment
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Education and Public PolicyEducation PoliticsFlorida Education RevolutionKnow Your HistoryParent EmpowermentParent VoicesParental ChoiceSchool Choice

Remember the rebels

Ron Matus May 30, 2019
Ron Matus

Tracy James, foreground, and her daughter, Khaliah Clanton-Williams, are greeted by principal Maria Mitkevicius and administrator Mary Gaudet at the Montessori School of Pensacola. Khaliah was one of the first students to use Florida’s “first voucher,” the Opportunity Scholarship, in Fall 1999. PHOTO: Michael Spooneybarger

Editor’s note: 2019 marks the 20th anniversary of the far-reaching K-12 changes that Gov. Jeb Bush launched in Florida, including creation of the first, modern, statewide private school choice program in America. To highlight those changes, redefinED embarked upon a series of articles that examine Bush’s “education revolution” and how it continues to reverberate. Today’s piece spotlights a mom and daughter who participated in Florida’s historic Opportunity Scholarship.

PENSACOLA, Fla. – Tracy James finished the graveyard shift to find her car a casualty of the “voucher wars” – and her 8-year-old, Khaliah, needing another ride to school.

This was 20 years ago, when this Deep South Navy town became the front in the national battle over school choice. In June 1999, Florida’s new governor, Jeb Bush, had signed into law the Opportunity Scholarship, the first, modern, statewide, K-12 private school voucher in America. Khaliah and 56 other students in Pensacola were the first recipients, and now enmeshed in a political clash drawing global attention.

CNN came. A Japanese film crew showed up. So did a member of British Parliament. All wanted to see the “experiment” a Canadian newspaper said “will shape the future of public education in this state and perhaps across the United States.” Tracy and Khaliah were in the thick of it, with Tracy among the most outspoken of an unconventional cast of characters. The single mom with the self-described rebel streak wouldn’t hide her joy at this opportunity for her only child – and refused to cave to anybody who suggested she was being “bamboozled.”

“If you want something better for your children,” she told one paper, “you would do the same thing.”

Not everybody appreciated her resolve.

Tracy walked out of her shift as a phlebotomist to find her car sabotaged, three tires flat as week-old Coke. She called her dad, who said he could take Khaliah to her new school, one Tracy could not afford without the scholarship. The flats left Tracy shocked and ticked – and more determined.

I guess I need tougher skin, she thought. Because we ain’t going back.

***

Lots of folks know Ruby Bridges. But Khaliah Clanton-Williams? Maybe one day.

The original Opportunity Scholarship students, their parents, and the five private schools that welcomed them have never gotten their due. After an epic legal battle, the Florida Supreme Court ruled the school choice program unconstitutional in 2006, and the decision in Bush v. Holmes seemed to close the chapter. But it didn’t. Many of those whose lives were touched by the scholarship have untold stories, with some still unfolding in ways that attest to the power of that experience.

In one sense, the Opportunity Scholarship was as small-scale as it was short-lived. Students were eligible if their zoned public schools earned two F grades in a 4-year span, and in 1999 only two schools – both in Pensacola – fell into that category. At the same time, most private schools sat it out. Among other restrictions, the law barred them from charging tuition beyond the scholarship amount of $3,400 to $3,800. At its height, the Opportunity Scholarship served 788 students.

And yet, it loomed so large. Florida’s “first voucher” stirred the imagination about what could be with a more pluralistic, parent-driven system of public education. It exposed the festering dissatisfaction many parents had with assigned schools. It enabled and amplified voices that still aren’t heard enough.

Pensacola may be best known for its Blue Angels and sugar-sand beaches. But most of the parents who applied for the school choice scholarships were working-class black women – nursing assistants and bank tellers, cooks and clerks, Head Start workers and homemakers. They had a lot to say about schools in Pensacola’s low-income neighborhoods, and for a few months in 1999, they had the mic.

***

Khaliah’s assigned school was modest red brick, five blocks from her home, named for the district’s first “supervisor of colored schools.” Khaliah would be starting kindergarten, so Tracy stopped to visit. She never got past the front office. “It was a zoo,” she said. “Kids were running around. They were screaming. There was no discipline. There was no structure.”

Nobody with the school acknowledged her, so after a few minutes, Tracy left … for good. She turned to her only option: another district school near her mother’s house, two miles away. Tracy said her mom, a former custodian for the school district, became Khaliah’s guardian so Khaliah could attend. But that school didn’t pan out either.

One day, Tracy watched through a window as kids in Khaliah’s class danced to music blaring from a boom box. She found the teacher in a side office and asked what was going on: “ ‘She said, ‘It’s reading time.’ I said, ‘They’re not reading.’ “ Tracy opened her eyes wide for emphasis.

Khaliah, meanwhile, shy and soft-spoken, was falling behind. “I had a hard time concentrating because it was so loud,” she said. “I’d ask for help and it was like, ‘just a moment.’ But the moment never came.”

Tracy heard about Opportunity Scholarships while working another job as a hotel desk supervisor. Some guests asked her in passing about local schools, and as fate would have it, they were lawyers with the Institute for Justice, the firm that would later help defend the scholarship in court.

Ninety-two students applied for the scholarships, including Khaliah, who had come back to live with Tracy. That exceeded the available seats in the four Catholic schools and one Montessori that opted to participate, so a lottery was held.

Khaliah emerged with a golden ticket.

***

Tracy took her time before deciding on a school. She read up on Catholic schools, talked to friends and co-workers who attended Catholic schools, learned everything she could about Montessori. She was intrigued by the latter – by the mixed-age classrooms, the cultivation of creativity, the curriculum that was so different. In the end, the rebel and her daughter decided they wanted different.

Khaliah Clanton-Williams, left, used an Opportunity Scholarship to attend the Montessori School of Pensacola from second through seventh grades. She and her mother, Tracy James, revisited the school last week for the first time in years. PHOTO: Michael Spooneybarger

Khaliah attended Montessori School of Pensacola from second through seventh grade, and, in Tracy’s words, “blossomed” in confidence and knowledge. She returned to public school in eighth grade (Tracy wanted her re-acclimated to public school before high school) and graduated from Pensacola High in 2010. For most of the next few years, she worked as a mortgage loan officer. She earned her associate degree in business administration from Pensacola State College in 2018. She’s on track to earn a bachelor’s in human resources management (with honors) in 2020.

Without the Montessori, Khaliah said, much of that would not have happened.

“It made me better,” she said. “I don’t think I would have gone to college. I don’t think I would have gotten my degree. (Montessori) made education more important. It was a higher standard.”

The upside wasn’t just academic. Tracy and Khaliah said nearly everyone in the school embraced Khaliah as family. There were only a few black students before a few more enrolled with the scholarships, but race was not a divide, they said. Khaliah made fast friends. They invited her to sleepovers, to ride horses, to U-pick blueberries. “These things were normal to them, but not to me,” she said.

Montessori co-owner (and head of elementary and middle school) Maria Mitkevicius said increasing diversity was a big reason the school opted into the scholarship program. So was the belief the school shouldn’t be limited to parents of means.

The staff knew the stakes, even if they didn’t know how much things might change. Twenty years after five private schools and 57 kids cracked the door, at least 26 private schools in Escambia County (Pensacola is the county seat) participate in Florida’s K-12 school choice scholarship programs, serving at least 2,163 students. Statewide, 2,000 private schools serve more than 140,000 scholarship students, with thousands more on the way.

“We thought this might change the face of education,” Mitkevicius said. “I guess it did.”

***

The news on Pensacola TV showed 10,000 sign-waving students and parents, marching at a 2016 school choice rally in Tallahassee with Martin Luther King III. As Khaliah watched it again last week, tears fell.

It hurt, she said, to see so many who still don’t have choice or fear their choices could be taken from them. At the same time, how nice to see strength in numbers.

“Back then,” she said, meaning 1999, “it was just us.”

Tracy James and her daughter, Khaliah, with former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush circa 1999. Bush championed creation of the Opportunity Scholarship program, which allowed Khaliah to attend a private school. PHOTO: Courtesy of Tracy James

Remembering back then is tough for Tracy too. Some in Pensacola’s black community could not understand why black parents would support anything connected to Jeb Bush. “We were looked on as kind of those people who are being arm twisted by the governor, like you’re letting the Republicans bamboozle you,” said Tracy, now a clinical recruiter for a Pensacola hospital.

It got ugly. Dirty looks. Heated words. The tires. Tracy said some friends and family stopped speaking to her, and she switched jobs because she felt she was being harassed for taking a stand.

But the rebel has no regrets.

“I wanted to try something different, I wanted to be different, I wanted a different opportunity for my daughter,” Tracy said. “From what I saw happening, I wanted to be able to make the choice, myself, of where she’d end up as an adult.”

“I had no idea that it’d turn out to be such a controversial issue,” she continued. “To be thrown into sort of the limelight of a political battle, I had no idea. I had absolutely no idea how important it would be.”

Or how much of a struggle.

“When we went through that program, I was thinking that was kind of the end of an era,” Tracy said. “But it was actually the beginning.”

***

The shy girl who helped pioneer school choice is now a tough-minded mom who needs more.

Khaliah is married to a paper mill machine operator, and their oldest, Kyrian, will begin kindergarten this fall. His zoned school is one of 11 D-rated schools in the district, so like her mom before her, Khaliah looked for alternatives. She applied to three higher-performing district schools through an open enrollment program, but all were full. On a second go-round, Kyrian got into a new elementary north of Pensacola. It’s not ideal. The drive will be up to 45 minutes each way, and Khaliah switched jobs – to drive for Shipt, Lyft and Uber – so she can have flexibility.

Still, she’s worried. Kyrian has special needs – he’s hyperactive, averse to change in routine and undergoing speech therapy – but has not been formally diagnosed with anything. At this time, he wouldn’t qualify for any of Florida’s private school scholarships.

The irony isn’t lost on Tracy and Khaliah. School choice helped them. They helped pave the way for more. Yet 20 years later, there still isn’t enough choice for Kyrian.

The rebel’s daughter said that just means the work isn’t done.

“I’ll continue to fight for my children as my mom fought for me,” Khaliah said. “I’m not taking no as an option.”

May 30, 2019 0 comment
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