2020 Presidential Election

Presidential candidates do not think all children are created equal

Chris Stewart February 28, 2020

Chris Stewart

Editor’s note: This column from redefinED guest blogger Chris Stewart first appeared Feb. 25 on Education Post.

I’m starting to notice a trend among the presidential candidates. I don’t think they’re vying to be a president who represents all Americans, just some. It sounds crazy but hear me out.

When Democratic frontrunners lavish attention on traditional public schools to the exclusion of charters, privates, and homeschoolers, it’s as if the worth of a child instantly plummets the moment they are enrolled in a disfavored school. As if their families don’t pay taxes and aren’t worthy as voters. Never mind the fact that many of the candidates have taken advantage of these same options.

Not to be outdone, President Trump got in on the action when he released a budget that cut funding for charter schools but increased funding for privates. Some of his supporters have told me not to worry because one, a president’s budget is a fictional thing, and two, the funding for charter schools is just being bundled together with other programs. It’s called “block granting” and that’s a good thing because it can give states the flexibility to use the money in a way that makes sense for their local context.

That sounds great in theory until you consider the fact that flexibility in a state like California, the largest charter system in America, could easily fall victim to union politics. Handing over charter school money would be a financial love letter to a fickle governor, one that would give him Thanos-like powers to snap his fingers and freeze charters startups.

But maybe I’m making too much of this.

The candidates would respond to me by saying they aren’t proposing the elimination of charter schools. They just want to slow their growth. And, the block-granting of federal funds isn’t the end-all of charter funding. And, after all, maybe there is more to life than charters. Most of the candidates are proposing enormous new investments that will grow school staff and provide more services to kids.

Who can complain about that? I can.

Yes, research shows that money matters in public education, but some of the nation’s biggest spenders are still hot zones of poor achievement and unacceptable results. Teachers unions and their allies have cleverly called for things like “community schools” as a main investment. It sounds good until you consider the fact that many of the existing community schools need help. Lots of it.

And no matter how much you wrap kids in services, it will still be a problem that our nation’s teachers aren’t recruited from the top of the class, their preparation is trash, and the support of many of those who teach in the toughest schools is nonexistent. To cover this with “I-stand-with-teachers” happy talk is to prove oneself incapable of true leadership.

We need a leader who will stand up for all families. We need someone who will fight for every American child equally. Today, parents from around the country are headed to South Carolina in hopes of meeting with presidential candidates to urge them to bring about “big, bold changes.” Because the fact is, every child deserves a better education, and our current system isn’t offering that.

We need people who can bring us together rather than continuing the bad practice of pitting parents against each other, then siding with the groups that want one form of schooling to be the only form of schooling.

Which leader is that?

I’m looking.

February 28, 2020 0 comment

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The state of the (teachers) union

John E. Coons February 14, 2020

John E. Coons

Somebody in the White House has been thinking. President Trump’s recent State of the Union address, while wanting perhaps in style, included a truly clever turn of the screw.

Trump stole an issue only Cory Booker among the Democrats dared to touch – school choice for low income families. Booker was ready to face the teachers union; the other candidates for the Democratic nomination were not, and now really cannot.

Trump now owns the issue, and it connects him to those individuals who are sick of having their kids conscripted for a school the child and family despise. Those persons had found the president wanting in this area, but he now will be a hero to thousands who have been crying for so long for an end to compulsion.

The details of any specific proposal will, of course, be crucial to its actual success. I trust this proposal will not be the sort of small and uniform voucher for rich and poor alike, the sort one associates with the late Milton Friedman. The rich do not need the help, and at most should qualify for a token subsidy. The need is centered on low and lower-middle income families who are simply stuck.

Could the federal government by itself afford to provide the necessary dollars for an authentic and sufficient subsidy for all the poor to have their choice of school? Of course not. But, properly designed, it could intensify popular awareness of the potential of reform at the state level.

One great stumbling block for school choice subsidies has been the 19^th century adoption by most states of so-called Blaine amendments to their constitutions. These raised legal barriers to all financial aid to religious institutions. Such laws greatly limit the states’ ability to aid the parents’ choice of religious schools which make up most of the private sector. Happily, the Supreme Court has before it litigation which could well eliminate the problem by holding these 19^th century relics of prejudice unconstitutional.

What will be the response of Democratic candidates to the dilemma Trump has posed for them? If they continue their hostility to forms of aid that allow the poor parent to choose, they will maintain the support of the teachers union but risk that of those low-income fathers and mothers who have enthusiastically stood for subsidies spendable in private school.

Trump now has in hand the sort of weapon he obviously prizes and perhaps should. He has his opponents clearly in his sights as hypocrites, the kind of slam they have so frequently given him. The Dems have made their careers as heroes of the poor. For whom will they be heroes now?

February 14, 2020 4 comments

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podcastED with Education Post CEO Chris Stewart: hold choice-hostile politicians accountable

redefinED staff February 6, 2020

redefinED staff

Chris Stewart’s “radicalization” on education reform came after he was elected to the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education in 2007 and witnessed what he saw as countless systemic inequities plaguing low-income families of color.

His recent report, The Secret Shame, How America’s Most Progressive Cities Betray Their Commitment to Educational Opportunity for All, finds that “…the cities we would most assume to be capitals of ’equity’ are in fact citadels of racial, economic and educational injustice.”

Stewart, chief executive officer of Education Post, has been fighting to change systemic failure for more than a decade. He holds little stock in optimism.

“Optimism is a privilege, not an entitlement,” Stewart says in this podcast with Step Up For Students president Doug Tuthill. “Optimism, false hope, pithy statements … we need to be sober adults and realize we are in the fight of our lives for a generation of kids who are being ill-served by people who say they care that hold power.”

Stewart believes it’s time for education choice advocates to “stop with the fluff” and dig down and fight. That means recognizing the importance of the education reform movement in holding choice-hostile politicians accountable.

Stewart also discusses the education policies of the current Democratic presidential primary contenders. He believes that in catering their education platforms to union leadership in order to win their endorsements, the candidates are alienating core Democratic Party voters.

Is there reason to be optimistic that any of this might change? That question and more on this episode of podcastED.

February 6, 2020 0 comment

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National poll shows voter support for education choice continues to grow

Lisa Buie January 24, 2020

Lisa Buie

A new poll from a national education choice advocacy group shows voter support for education choice remains strong, especially among minorities, millennials and Republicans.

The American Federation for Children poll, in its sixth year, revealed overall support at 69 percent among likely 2020 general election voters.

Support was strongest among Latinos and Republicans, with 82 percent of each group saying they favored empowering parents to use tax dollars designated for education spending to send their children to the public or private school that best serves their needs.

Millennials also strongly expressed support at 71 percent, while African American support posted at 68 percent. The only group surveyed that did not show majority support was Democrats, polling at 48 percent.

The sixth annual poll from the American Federation for Children shows overall support for education choice is holding strong.

Support was even greater for the proposed Education Freedom Scholarship, a federal scholarship tax credit that allows individuals and businesses to donate to instate nonprofit scholarship granting organizations that would provide scholarships for students to attend public, private, or career or technical schools of their choice. Seventy-eight percent of respondents overall – up 9 percentage points from last year – backed the program, including 83 percent of both Latinos and African Americans.

Millennials were not far behind with 78 percent approving. Seventy-seven percent of Republicans expressed support compared with 67 percent of Democrats.

Florida, which has been at the forefront of education choice nationally, is among about 18 states that offer a tax credit scholarship. The Florida Tax-Credit Scholarship program, administered by Step Up for Students, which hosts this blog, allows lower-income families to choose from a broad spectrum of private schools that participate in the program.

“This national survey is the premier benchmark for school choice opinion research across the country, and voters have consistently stated that they support these policies and want more K-12 options for their children,” John Schilling, president of the American Federation of Children, said in a news release Friday. “We fundamentally believe that every family, especially lower-income families, should have the freedom to choose the best K-12 education for their child—and the vast majority of Americans agree with us.”

A majority of respondents who said they plan to vote in their state’s Democratic presidential primary said they would be less likely to vote for candidates who say they want to eliminate federal funding for charter schools. Among those candidates are Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, both of whom have called for a temporary or permanent end to the $340 million program.

According to the poll, 56 percent of Democrats said that position would make them less likely to support a specific candidate. Among Latinos, 65 percent shared that view, compared with 62 percent of African Americans.

The poll also provided a breakdown of education choice options. For the fourth year in a row, support increased for education savings accounts, one of the most popular forms of school choice, with 80 percent of respondents backing the concept. Opposition to ESAs was at 14 percent, representing a drop of 2 percentage points from last year.

In 2014, Florida approved the Gardiner Scholarship program, an ESA that allows parents of children with unique abilities to personalize their child’s education by directing money toward a combination of programs and approved providers. Approved expenses include tuition, therapy, technology and a college savings account. Gardiner Scholarships serve 13,000 students and vary according to grade and county, with the amount for most students in 2019-20 averaging $10,400.

The survey fielded January 7-13 among 1,275 likely November 2020 voters. Interviews were conducted via live callers on landline and cell phones in English and Spanish. The base sample margin of error is +/- 3.5%.

January 24, 2020 0 comment

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fact-checkED: Sanders’ education choice claims in Florida op-ed misleading

Jon East January 16, 2020

Jon East

With the presidential primary election in delegate-rich Florida just two months away, Democratic candidates are beginning to knock on the door.

In a Monday column in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders found little to like about Florida’s public education system. But our focus is on educational choice and three assertions he made while insisting that “Florida is ground zero of a school privatization movement intent on destroying public education.”

“Each year almost $1 billion in state money goes to private schools instead of public schools.”

“These private schools operate with little to no accountability.”

“In many cases, their students’ math and reading skills have declined.”

These claims are misleading, at best.

Claim No. 1: The $1 billion citation draws attention but does not prove Sanders’ point. He implies that private school voucher and scholarship programs harm public schools financially, which is a longstanding and erroneous argument advanced by the Florida Education Association (FEA) that we have dealt with previously in this space. There is simply no evidence to support it.

Eight different independent financial studies all have concluded the scholarships, which cost less per student than the total amount spent in a traditional public school, save tax money that can be used to enhance public schools. Florida TaxWatch weighed in last year, finding existing scholarships cost 60 cents on the public school dollar. And the FEA lost its legal challenge to the 19-year-old Tax Credit Scholarship program in part because the trial and appellate courts summarily rejected its argument that public schools “have been and will continue to be injured by the scholarship program’s diversion of resources from the public schools.”

Claim No. 2: The qualifier in this assertion – that private schools operate with “little to no” accountability – gives Sanders some wiggle room in part because accountability is hard to objectively measure. But Sanders seems to dismiss entirely the accountability that is inherent with any school that survives only if parents choose it for their children.

That market concept may not appeal to a self-professed socialist but does have real-world consequences and, in the case of the state’s two scholarships for underprivileged students, gives genuine educational power to parents who typically have little.

As to the regulatory oversight, Florida’s largest program, the Tax Credit Scholarship serving 108,570 economically disadvantaged students this year, is ranked among the nation’s most aggressive. The students, schools and scholarship organizations are subject to roughly 17,000 words of statutory and agency regulations.

Among those requirements: scholarship students must take state-approved standardized tests; those test results are reported publicly every year; schools must submit annual financial reports by certified public accountants; and scholarship organizations must be audited each year by the state Auditor General and independent accounting firms.

Sanders is entitled to believe the program is not subject to sufficient regulation, but we rate his claim of “little to no” accountability as misleading.

Claim No. 3: Once again, Sanders uses an interesting qualifier – “in many cases” – in his assertion that scholarship students’ “math and reading skills have declined.” Eleven years’ worth of standardized test reports refute his claim.

Students who receive the Tax Credit Scholarship must take a nationally norm-referenced test each year approved by the state, and most take the Stanford Achievement. The test scores are sent to Florida State University’s Learning Systems Institute, which is paid to aggregate and report them publicly.

For the most recent year, 2017-18, scholarship students scored on average at the 47.4 percentile in reading and 45.2 percentile in math. That’s basically average, which is encouraging given that these scholarships students are among the poorest in the state and were among the lowest-performing students in the public schools they left behind.

More to the point, their annual gains have been remarkably consistent. The scores reflect that these low-income students have achieved the same annual gains as students of all income levels nationally.

In other words, they have increased, not declined.

Certainly the average doesn’t reflect every student. In the most recent report, about as many students – 0.6 percent – achieved extraordinary gains of more than 40 percentile points as those who dropped an equivalent amount. But Sanders’ qualifier that “many” students declined seems intended to distort the overall test findings. We rate it mostly false.

January 16, 2020 0 comment

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Public support for education choice continues to surge as some presidential candidates swim upstream

Patrick R. Gibbons December 11, 2019

Patrick R. Gibbons

While the reasons for Democratic presidential candidate and leading anti-charter stalwart Elizabeth Warren’s nearly 13-point polling plummet are multifaceted, a recent public confrontation with school choice supporters and the revelation that she sent her son to a $17,000-a-year private school likely contributed to the decline.

Warren’s strong anti-school choice stance probably isn’t working in her favor if education choice polls are any indication. A RealClear Opinion Research survey conducted this fall reported that 68 percent of Americans now support the concept of school choice.

The poll, sponsored by the American Federation for Children, included 2,014 registered voters. Forty-two percent identified as Democratic, 31 percent as Republican, and 28 percent as Independent.

Fully 70 percent of respondents said they support a federal tax credit scholarship program similar to the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship administered by Step Up For Students (which hosts this blog) that serves more than 100,000 lower-income students.

According to the American Federation for Children, the strongest support for a tax credit scholarship – 74 percent – came from respondents 45 to 54 years old. Meanwhile, 71 percent of black voters, the highest level of any racial demographic, were supportive. Latino voters also showed strong support with 69 percent favoring school choice.

In terms of political party, about 76 percent of Republicans and 64 percent of Democrats supported school choice options overall.

While 53 percent of respondents said they currently send their children to district-run public schools, given a choice, 70 percent would choose another educational option; 39 percent specifically identified their first choice as a private school.

The National Education Association, the nation’s largest teacher union and most vocal opponent of school choice vouchers and charter schools, has yet to endorse a presidential candidate for 2020. Though the union is expected to contribute millions of dollars to the presidential campaign, it remains to be seen if its endorsed candidate will be able to maintain an anti-education choice stance given public sentiment in favor of it, compounded by the fact that several swing states including Arizona and Florida have large education choice populations.

Other swing states, such as Michigan and Pennsylvania, have large charter school populations, and Pennsylvania also offers tax credit scholarships to thousands of lower- and middle-income students.

December 11, 2019 0 comment

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The system is winning. For now.

Chris Stewart November 29, 2019

Chris Stewart

More than 100 mainly black and Latino parents and education advocates from around the country attended an Elizabeth Warren event in Atlanta Nov. 21 to share how Warren’s recently unveiled education plan shortchanges children of color.

Editor’s note: In this commentary, originally published Nov. 26 on Education Post, Chris Stewart shares his thoughts on Elizabeth Warren’s recent encounter with charter school supporters and expresses gratitude for those individuals who had the courage “to take their grievances directly to the source of political power that seeks to deny them agency and a fair shot at finding options for their youth.”

It must have been mortifying for Democratic presidential hopeful Elizabeth Warren to have a loud group of Black parents—mostly mothers and grandmothers—shout her down at a campaign stop that was meant to highlight the importance of valuing Black women. As they chanted “our child, our choice,” a mantra in support of school choice (and against Warren’s proposed curb to federal charter school funding) she stood immobilized. Ayanna Pressley had to step in with a wagging finger to sternly lecture the protestors.

In that moment the Democrats’ battle over public education was on full display.

This reminds me of Fannie Lou Hamer who in the 1960s brought plain talk to the Democratic party that was ignoring the needs of southern, poor Black folks. The establishment worked all of its angles to silence her. They sent Roy Wilkins, the educated negro from the NAACP, to tell Hamer that she was ignorant and she should leave politics to the people who know best—people like him.

That encounter caused her to cancel her NAACP membership and say, “There ain’t nothing I respect less than the NAACP.” The Southern, poor and country Hamer would not be turned back, belittled, or silenced, even against crazy odds and the most powerful people.

I can’t help but think history repeats itself until we learn from it.

Today, Warren, a wealthy, White woman candidate who once supported and used school choice to her advantage—but now takes her cues from the unions representing America’s Whitest, most female profession—can’t handle the Black folks, so she turns to a surrogate.

That’s where Pressley, a college-educated, middle-class Black woman, whose hard-working mother living on the South Side of Chicago sent her to a prestigious private school that today costs $37,000 a year, eagerly volunteered to play the role of Wilkins.

And these mothers, fathers, grandmothers and guardians, who live in some of the poorest, most incarcerated zip codes in the country, traveled long distances to Atlanta, only to be told they are ignorant, like Hamer.

Those who wish to be president on the Democratic side want the most economically insecure families to wait for better schools. A fix is coming, they promise, like they promised for years. More money, more services, more staff in the same system of miseducation will make it all better. No need for expanding school choices, or for improving and diversifying the teaching profession, or for improving and modernizing our standards and curricula to better serve the needs of each and every child.

Be patient.

But how patient would middle-class people be if their kids were falling years behind in school? What do they do when the system isn’t working for their kids? Warren’s case is instructive. When the public system didn’t work for her son she put him in a private school. Ambitions for higher office have recast her as a champion of public schools who gets her education policy wholesale from unions and Diane Ravitch, the ranking leader of the unreform movement (and another private school parent turned public school zealot).

The education establishment, its unions and the politicians it controls are working to dismantle two decades of progressive education policy that offered families options beyond bureaucratized, politicized and unionized district schools. The public’s sympathy for striking teachers, the universal belief that the biggest problem with schools is lack of money and a general disregard for the experience of marginalized parents makes it an opportune moment to roll back education reforms.

The system is winning.

For now.

In the past few days, I’ve seen too many messages online scandalously demoting the protestors to ignorant nobodies who are being used by White, wealthy people in an attempt to destroy our perfectly amazing district schools. These claims come without the slightest realization of how much they expose many Democrats for being the elitist, racist people they accuse others of being.

While they constantly profess their love for the little guy, leading Democratic candidates constantly throw that little guy under the union bus if it helps their career prospects.

Families like those who make up the Powerful Parent Network—who are purposely redlined into the school districts where the only people who think the status quo is worthy of loyalty are the adults who draw their pensions from those schools—can’t be bamboozled by the system. They can’t sacrifice their children to some sketchy promise of a “public good.”

To be Black in America is a constant struggle for full humanity. Nobody knows that more than the guardians of the faces at the bottom of the well. Nobody knows that more than the mothers of the poor, the grandmothers of the children left behind, the caregivers to those who are Black, Brown, under-resourced, dyslexic, exceptional, medically fragile and academically thirsty in classrooms built on the lowest of expectations.

This week, I’m grateful for those mothers and guardians who boarded buses or planes, made signs and planned chants, and headed out for Atlanta to take their grievances directly to the source of political power that seeks to deny them agency and a fair shot finding options for their youth. I’m grateful that they spoke plainly, in their own vernacular, and made the leaders hear them—because ignoring them before the cameras and bright lights would have shown them for the classist hypocrites they are.

Hamer wanted a fundamental change in the power structure that made sure the underclass has a direct role in the system governing their lives. We can learn from that. Rather than discounting the parents who demand better school options, fair school systems and more resources, leaders should make sure they are seated in the power rooms when agendas are formed.

Warren isn’t alone in ignoring voices in the underclass about public schooling. Her competitors should be called out too. If Democratic candidates for president—indeed, candidates from all parties—wish to be true representatives of all Americans, they will stop taking sides in the education wars, stop pitting parents against each other, and stop acting as if children are less important the moment they enter a charter or non-traditional schools.

November 29, 2019 0 comment

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Howard Fuller went down to Georgia looking for a party’s soul to heal

Matthew Ladner November 27, 2019

Matthew Ladner

Democratic candidate for president Elizabeth Warren speaking at a rally Sept. 16 in Washington Square Park, New York City. Warren caused a stir last week when speaking to black and Latino charter school parents and supporters in Atlanta.

A recent protest of Elizabeth Warren’s education plan staged by a group of charter school parents at an event in Atlanta – which happened to include civil rights activist and education reform advocate Dr. Howard Fuller – resulted in a conversation between the senator and the parents that caused quite a stir. You can view the entire conversation here.

Go watch the video. I’ll wait.

Okay, good.

So, the big story coming out of this meeting has been Warren’s far-less-than-truthful denial about sending her children to private school. Her campaign subsequently admitted that her son attended public school “until fifth grade,” at which time he apparently attended a couple of different private schools.

But there were plenty of other interesting items in this conversation.

Warren protests at one point that Massachusetts and New Hampshire have good public schools. This, of course, is true, but Massachusetts and New Hampshire are two of the small handful of states with average six-figure incomes for families of four. If you examine data from the Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford University on student learning gains by poverty status, this is what Massachusetts and New Hampshire look like:

School effectiveness vs. free/reduced-price lunch eligibility; Massachusetts schools, all students, grades 3-8, from 2009-2016, sized by number of students

School effectiveness vs. school district socioeconomic status; New Hampshire districts, all students, grades 3-8, from 2009-2016, sized by number of students

On both maps, dark green represents high academic growth, and the right side of the charts signify a low percentage of students eligible for a free or reduced-price lunch. So, unless my eyes are deceiving me, the high academic growth schools in New Hampshire and (especially) Massachusetts cluster in the high wealth areas.

These schools may very well be “good,” but they aren’t exactly accessible.

Several of those high-poverty green schools on the left side of the Massachusetts chart are (you guessed it) charter schools. Just in case any of you are thinking this might be unfair and that every state’s growth chart is going to look like Massachusetts’ chart, take a look at this.

Warren claimed a few different times that she doesn’t oppose charter schools; she “just wants them held to the same standards.” Charter schools, however, because they are public schools, teach state standards and give state tests and get rated by the same metrics in all states.

Warren specifically mentioned Michigan as a state where charter schools don’t follow the same rules.

I suggest we exempt Michigan district schools from whatever “rules” Michigan charter schools have been exempted from. Michigan district schools have shown a big dose of academic stagnation over the last decade, whereas students in Michigan charter schools at least show improvement over time despite clustering in what may be the most economically challenged urban area in the country.

There’s more than one way to hold school sectors to the same standards, and it would be a better idea to free Michigan districts than to shackle Michigan charters.

It’s pretty clear watching the video that Howard Fuller has read the senator’s education plan, but the senator graciously offers to review it for him. Fuller, a former superintendent with the Milwaukee Public School System, sagely warns the senator that absent structural changes, many districts simply will absorb the funds she speaks of without improving.

The senator agrees, and cites a childcare block grant program for which she increased funding that suffered that precise fate; the money never reached the teachers. This experience perhaps ought to have informed the senator’s plan more than it appears to have done thus far.

The richest quote from this entire episode may have been one drawn from a New York Times piece about the issue, which quoted charter school operator Margaret Fortune:

“What would be happening in a fair society is we would be asked for our opinions, rather than having candidates saying, ‘I have a plan for you’ — to shepherd you into the very schools that you left on purpose.”

An especially interesting take coming from a black, lifelong Democrat.

November 27, 2019 2 comments