Advocate Voices

The 74 interview: Jack Coons on rethinking school funding, restoring authority to low-income families and his role in the Serrano v. Priest cases

Special to redefinED December 6, 2019

Editor’s note: Long-time education choice advocate and redefinED guest columnist Jack Coons recently sat for a three-hour interview with Bellwether Education co-founder Andrew J. Rotherham and Emmeline Zhao, senior editor for special projects at The 74. The result, in Rothman’s words, was “a thoughtful, thorough and once-in-a-lifetime conversation” in which Coons reiterated his decades-long belief in education equity and academic quality for all children, regardless of income level. Here are the opening paragraphs of the post, with a link to the full piece on The 74. Be sure to watch the video of Coons at the conclusion of the interview transcript.

It was a warm, sun-splashed day when Emmeline Zhao and I visited Jack Coons at his cozy bungalow in Berkeley, California. That day his son and granddaughter, an accomplished dancer, happened to be visiting for spring break, and the mood was light, with three generations under the same roof. A law professor by training, Coons was a fixture on the education landscape in California for decades and — unbeknownst to most — an influential character for public education across the country.

He litigated the three landmark Serrano v. Priest cases, which challenged California’s school funding structure, arguing that the state created a gross financial disparity between wealthy and poor districts due to its reliance on taxes on local real property.

Coons also created odd alliances around school choice and crafted one of the most enduring intellectual partnerships in education with Stephen Sugarman. Coons credits this to a generosity of spirit and shared intellectual curiosity. Whatever the reason, their partnership left its mark on California education policy and politics in ways that are still felt today.

Click here to read more.

December 6, 2019 0 comment

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podcastED: an interview with education choice advocate Virginia Walden Ford

David Hudson Tuthill December 5, 2019

David Hudson Tuthill

Education choice advocate Virginia Walden Ford served as the inspiration for a new independent movie that chronicles the creation of the Opportunity Scholarship Program in Washington, D.C.

Editor’s note: For more than two decades, education choice advocate Virginia Walden Ford has tirelessly championed families and students living in lower-income neighborhoods to ensure that all children have the academic options they deserve.

After growing up in Little Rock, Ark., during the battle for school integration, Walden Ford led the fight for the Opportunity Scholarship Program in Washington, D.C. Her passion for education equality was ignited as she witnessed, as the single mother of three children, the need for more education choices for all families.

Now, her story has been made into a movie starring Uzo Aduba, Matthew Modine and Vanessa Williams. Step Up For Students, which hosts this blog, is bringing three free screenings of the film to Florida Dec. 8, 9 and 10 in Jacksonville, Orlando and Tampa, respectively. Walden Ford will be present at all three shows and will do a talk-back following the Tampa screening.

The Jacksonville and Orlando shows are sold out, but RSVPs are still being accepted for the Tampa screening here.

Step Up For Students advocacy coordinator David Hudson Tuthill recorded an exclusive interview with Walden Ford Tuesday in which she discussed her children’s diverse academic needs, the effect of neighborhood drug and gang activity on their learning, and her growing conviction that someone had to stand up and be the voice for children in the D.C. area and across the country.

We hope you enjoy the podcast.

December 5, 2019 0 comment

Advocate Voices ArchivED Customization Education equity Podcast School Choice

archivED: Virginia Walden Ford on two generations of school choice advocates

Travis Pillow November 23, 2019

Travis Pillow

Editor’s note: Each Saturday in November, redefinED is reprising a podcast from our archives, reminding readers that we have a wealth of audio content to complement our written blog posts. Today, we revisit a November 2016 interview with Virginia Walden Ford, an education choice advocate and pioneer, in advance of three Florida appearances Ford will make in December to promote the new film Miss Virginia.

Two of Virginia Walden Ford’s children went to public schools and thrived. They had access to mentoring programs and classes that nurtured their talents. But it was the experience of her youngest child, William, that led her to become a school choice advocate.

In middle school, he started to show signs of academic struggles. At the same time, drugs and gang activity were on the rise in the family’s working-class neighborhood in the nation’s capital.

“I always said I would never lose my kids … to the streets, but I knew that if I didn’t do something, then the possibility that this child would not succeed was right staring me in the face,” Ford says.

She found a private scholarship that allowed him to enroll at Archbishop Carroll High School, where he started doing better “almost immediately.” He told his mother that, for the first time, he felt surrounded by adults who cared about his education almost as much as she did.

“That was my first time realizing that if a child is an environment that meets his needs, then he will thrive and he will excel,” Ford says.

That’s the kind of turnaround story Denisha Merriweather can relate to. She changed her own academic trajectory after enrolling in a private school with the help of a Florida tax credit scholarship. On the latest edition of our podcast, she talks with Ford about using her own experience to advocate for educational options in the political arena.

Ford helped launch D.C. Parents for School Choice in 1998, and became an advocate for the Opportunity Scholarship Program. After years working in education reform in the nation’s capital, she recently returned to her home state to serve as executive director of the Arkansas Parent Network.

As a child, she was part of a group of black students chosen to help desegregate the Arkansas public school system, a decade after the Little Rock Nine first broke the color barrier. She says her parents, both educators, taught her that her involvement in her children’s education did not end when she dropped them off at school. She needed to be an advocate.

Ford talks with Merriweather about navigating the tribalism of school choice politics, the awkwardness that comes with praising pro-school choice Republicans when many of her friends are Democrats, and brushing off accusations that she serves as a “mouthpiece” for various groups. She says she tells fellow parent-advocates to carry pictures of their children to help stay focused on what matters.

“Every time you get discouraged, and every time you get sad, and every time you lose a battle, look at those children and say, ‘You are who I’m working for, you are who I’m fighting for, and I won’t give up,'” she says.

November 23, 2019 0 comment

Advocate Voices Commentary and opinion Progressives and ed reform School Choice

Education choice and ‘How to Be an Antiracist’

Doug Tuthill November 20, 2019

Doug Tuthill

Ibram X. Kendi, best-selling author and Founding Director of the Antiracist Research and Policy Center at American University, became at age 34 the youngest recipient of the National Book Award for Nonfiction for “Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America.” Kendi is a former assistant professor of African American history at the University of Florida. PHOTO: Stephen Voss

When I was a teacher union president in the early 1990s, I gave an interview with our local newspaper in which I criticized the educational inequalities that were being exacerbated by public magnet schools. Many found my criticisms hypocritical because I was an education choice advocate who had helped launch one of our community’s first magnet schools a decade earlier and had enrolled my two children in a magnet school.

But not all education choice programs are inherently good. Those that perpetuate and increase inequalities undermine public education and the public good. My criticisms in that interview were not aimed at education choice in the abstract, but rather in how education choice was being implemented in our community.

I thought about that interview and the controversy that ensued as I was reading Ibram X. Kendi’s new book, “How To Be An Antiracist.” Kendi is a Florida A&M graduate (Go Rattlers!) and a professor at American University in Washington, D.C., where he teaches history and international relations. He is also the founding director of American University’s AntiRacist Research and Policy Center.

Kendi is a systems thinker. To Kendi, racism isn’t about white people disliking black people, or light-skinned blacks feeling superior to dark-skinned blacks. Racism is a set of systemic policies and practices that use race to perpetuate power inequities. Groups use racism to help maintain their social, political, and economic advantages.

Kendi defines anti-racism as actively working to dismantle those systemic policies and practices that use race to perpetuate power inequalities. And he says there is no neutral ground. All of our policies and actions are either racist or anti-racist, including our nonactions. Nonaction in the face of racism is racist because it allows systemic racism to persist.

“There is no such thing as a nonracist or race-neutral,” Kendi writes. “Every policy in every institution in every community in every nation is producing or sustaining either racial inequity or equity between racial groups.”

As a systems thinker, Kendi supports racial discrimination when it is used to undermine systemic racism by redistributing power in ways that create greater equity: “If discrimination is creating equity, then it is anti-racist. If discrimination is creating greater inequity, then it is racist. Someone reproducing inequity through permanently assisting an overrepresented racial group into wealth and power is entirely different than someone challenging an inequity by temporarily assisting an underrepresented racial group into relative wealth and power until equity is reached.”

Kendi’s take on the systemic nature of racism and anti-racism are not new. The Black Power movement in the 1960s and ‘70s was built on a similar analysis, as articulated by activists such as Malcolm X, Kwame Ture (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee), Omali Yeshitela (International People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement), and Bobby Seals and Huey Newton (Black Panther Party).

What is unique, at least to Kendi, is his personal journey. The path he describes in his book suggests he arrived at his understandings through personal experiences and the insights they fostered rather than an in-depth study of Black Power literature. His openness about his struggles to develop a satisfactory understanding of his relationship to racism as a young black man is refreshing and enlightening, although not without criticisms.

Thanks in large part to the ongoing advocacy of long-time educator and community organizer Owusu Sadaukai, or Howard Fuller as he is best known in the education choice community, today’s education choice movement is deeply grounded in an anti-racist and anti-poverty agenda. The movement has largely embraced Fuller’s social justice rationale for education choice and consequently focuses much of its energy on restructuring public education in ways that expand opportunities for low-income, minority, and special needs children and their families.

Without ever having met Fuller, Polly Williams, or other social justice warriors in the early education choice movement, my concerns in the early 1990s about how public magnet schools were increasing inequality aligned with Fuller’s agenda and eventually led me and many other left-of-center progressives to join the social justice wing of the education choice movement.

If Black Power advocates from Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael) to Ibram X. Kendi are correct in identifying racism as the systemic use of race to perpetuate social, economic, political, and education inequities, how can my fellow progressives continue to defend public education policies and practices that advantage the powerful while systemically disadvantaging low-income people of color? How can they oppose Fuller’s social justice approach to education choice and still be anti-racist?

These are questions more progressives need to consider. They can start by reading Kendi’s book.

November 20, 2019 0 comment

Advocate Voices ArchivED Customization Education and Public Policy Education savings accounts Parental Choice School Choice vouchers

archivED: Revisiting a podcast with school choice and political power Howard Fuller

Travis Pillow November 2, 2019

Travis Pillow

Howard Fuller, founder and director of the Institute for the Transformation of Learning, served as superintendent of Milwaukee Public Schools and became nationally known for his support of fundamental education reform.

Each Saturday in November, redefinED is reprising a podcast from our archives, reminding readers that we have a wealth of audio content to complement our written blog posts. Today, we revisit an August 2015 interview with civil rights activist, education reform advocate and academic Howard Fuller.

Ever since social justice advocates joined forces with free-market conservatives to create the groundbreaking Milwaukee Parental Choice program in the early ’90s, there have been ideological divides in the school choice movement.

Because most places have fewer school options than parents want, and private school choice programs have usually targeted disadvantaged students in some way, similar left-right coalitions have formed all over the country.

Howard Fuller sits squarely in the social justice camp. When other private school choice supporters try to make eligibility universal, he often objects, on behalf of disadvantaged students he fears will be short-changed and in support of principles staked out by the late Polly Williams and others who helped create the Milwaukee voucher program.

Hence his concerns about the new, near-universal education savings account program recently created in Nevada. In our latest podcast interview, Fuller says this sort of intramural debate is almost inevitable in a movement that spans ideological boundaries.

“The only way we could have avoided that would have been to say we’re not going to have parent choice for low-income people, because you couldn’t get to where we got to without pulling together the type of coalition that was pulled together,” he says.

Despite their philosophical differences, Fuller can find some agreement with those, like Matthew Ladner, who support universal eligibility.

Fuller says it can make sense to offer scholarships to some families higher on the income scale, especially if funding levels are “graduated” so they receive smaller amounts. That can help build a stronger base of political support. However, he says, there should still be a cut-off at some point, so school choice programs aren’t subsidizing private-school tuition for the wealthy.

He acknowledges some of the points Ladner and others have made. Even the wealthiest families, he says, have access to public schools, which sometimes are walled off in exclusive enclaves inaccessible to low-income families. That said, Fuller notes state laws tend to treat public and private schools differently.

“Maybe what’s happening is, the generation behind me (in the school choice movement) doesn’t make those same distinctions that I’m making,” he says.

Ultimately, Fuller says, he’s trying to raise a deeper issue. Private school choice programs should aim to be social equalizers. It’s the poor who are most short-changed by the existing education system, and who often lack the political power to fix that inequity.

“I’m always looking at the fact that no matter how we try to skim over it, talk about it, intellectualize it, or whatever, the system is set up to favor people who have more resources,” he says. “… If we do not fight to make sure that there are programs out here that give poor people a leg up, give them some more opportunity — if we don’t fight for that, it’s not going to happen.”

Can Nevada’s universal program do more for low-income families? We recently discussed the possibilities with Seth Rau, who’s working on the ground there.

November 2, 2019 0 comment

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Bridging the gap between left and right on education choice

Catherine Durkin Robinson September 24, 2019

Catherine Durkin Robinson

“If you care about children, parents, and communities, you can’t vote for Bernie Sanders. He’s the teachers’ union candidate.”

This is the message educational opportunity activist (and CEO of Education Post) Chris Stewart posted on Twitter over the weekend.

Too many parrot this type of argument, and it’s hurting our movement.

Never mind that the teachers union didn’t endorse Bernie Sanders in the 2016 election, and an endorsement this time around remains a long shot.

The idea that the millions of Bernie supporters lined up to vote for him don’t care about children, parents, or communities is weak.

It’s also false.

Bernie supporters believe Medicare for All, free college, new housing laws and student loan forgiveness – to name just a few issues – will help a great many children, parents, and communities.
I told Stewart that.

His response?

“Middle class warriors unite.”

I organize hundreds of thousands of lower-income parents in Florida, and many of them are single-issue voters when it comes to statewide elections. State lawmakers control state programs, such as education choice. Our governor, state representatives and state senators – along with local school board members – are finding it increasingly difficult to get elected if they oppose vouchers, scholarships and charters. Programs many parents credit with saving their children’s lives.

National elections are more nuanced, and most of us on the left try to balance all our concerns – women’s rights, climate change, gun violence, education of all types – when considering who to support.
Are these strictly middle class concerns? Perhaps.

I don’t know many people in the shrinking middle class, so I’ll have to take Stewart’s word on that one. Perhaps he knows them better than I do.

Last week, I attended 50CAN’s summit in Connecticut, and Howard Fuller was our keynote speaker. He said: “How do you get to be progressive if you oppose the self-determination of a people? And this fool from Vermont don’t know nothin’ bout what’s happening on 29th and Capitol Drive.”

Now that’s an interesting argument! It’s also clear, concise and well under 280 characters.
It also has the added benefit of being true. Bernie does not understand what life is like for millions of children zoned out of a decent educational option.

There are compelling reasons why Bernie Sanders, and his supporters, must reconsider their views on charter schools and voucher programs. Let’s articulate the reasons and encourage those inclined to agree with us a chance to catch up.

I wouldn’t suggest it if I hadn’t seen it work. Multiple times.

We all have roles to play. My role is to work with the right to advance the cause of education choice for all children. I’ve devoted my career to that cause.

Part of my role also includes representing the people with whom I identify in other ways. Showing those I work with on the right, many of whom I respect and admire, that feminist, socialist, agnostics are more than the stereotypes caricatured on Fox News.

I mingle with righties and plant seeds, knowing many of my colleagues around the country have never met a socialist in person. They usually discover my hardcore liberal leanings early on and hardly ever hide their surprise.

In many instances, I’m the only true progressive they’ve ever met. Maybe the only one they will ever meet.

I answer their questions. I listen to them. I am polite, funny and endearing. Most, if not all, end up respecting me despite themselves.

Then I go back to my family reunions, neighborhood parties, ACLU meetings and Bernie Sanders rallies and do the exact same thing.

I mingle with lefties and plant seeds. When someone rails against charter schools or vouchers, I tell them to check their privilege. I remind them that they benefit from education choice and oppose it only for people who can’t afford it. I show those on my side for most issues that ed choicers are more than the stereotypes caricatured on “Democracy Now!”

They can’t quite believe someone actively working for progressive causes supports all ed choice, not just the buy-a-house-in-a-good-neighborhood variety that works so well for them.

This is what I’ve seen as a result, from both sides: People think about issues in ways they otherwise wouldn’t.

On the right, they’re open-minded because I support the cause to which they too have devoted a great deal of their professional life.

On the left, they pause and hear me because I’m one of them.

I’ve helped dozens of friends, loved ones and … comrades? … think differently. I’ve changed hearts and minds.

That doesn’t mean everyone listens.

Many who lead different segments of our movement don’t subscribe to the belief that when we use weak arguments and fail to convince potential allies, we are to blame. Not them.

The fault, as always, lies with us.

And that’s OK, if we learn from it. Refine our arguments. Take a different tack.

It’s not OK if we keep repeating the same mistakes.

Talk to those of us who live and breathe on the side you’re trying to persuade. If you want to convert white, suburban, college-educated, left-leaning parents – and you do, believe me – then pay attention to the one writing this.

Argue more effectively.

Work a different angle than, “If you don’t agree with me, you don’t care about kids.”

Come on. Even on Twitter, we can do better than that.

September 24, 2019 0 comment

Advocate Voices Education equity Education reporting Education savings accounts Florida Tax Credit Scholarship Parental Choice School Choice Tax credit scholarships

Two opposing forces strike similar tone on education equity

redefinED staff September 20, 2019

redefinED staff

SUFS president Doug Tuthill speaks at the Chicago Ideas festival in 2018. PHOTO: Chicago Ideas

What would be the likely outcome if the president of the nation’s largest tax credit scholarship program and the president of the state’s largest teachers union were asked similar questions by a reporter at an NPR and PBS member station?

If you think there’d be little agreement, a few sparks, or even a whole lot of fireworks, you wouldn’t be wrong. At least not usually.

But as WFSU Public Media news director Lynn Hatter recently learned, while Doug Tuthill and Fed Ingram may differ on the details, both want to bring parity to education. Both say the state hasn’t gotten serious about addressing equity in public education. And both are passionate about finding ways to provide a quality education to every Florida student.

“Most middle-class families, their kids are able to play sports, they’re able to do afterschool arts programs, they have summer camps, etc.,” Tuthill told Hatten. “Low-income kids don’t have any of those developmental activities.”

Click here to listen to more snippets of Hatter’s interviews with both Tuthill and Ingram.

September 20, 2019 0 comment

Advocate Voices Blog guest Gardiner Scholarship Parent Voices Parental Choice Private Schools School Choice Special needs education

Commentary: Special education is more complex than many realize

Donna Berman August 23, 2019

Donna Berman

Despite being told her son, Brandon, would never learn to read, Donna Berman persisted in her quest to find an appropriate education setting for him where he could thrive. Brandon died Sept. 10, 2017, at the age of 19.

Editor’s note: The Orlando Sentinel recently published commentary arguing that private schools that accept vouchers discriminate against children with special needs. A Volusia County parent of a special needs child begs to differ. Donna Berman’s son, Brandon, who had autism and a brain tumor as well as muscular dystrophy and seizures, was denied admission to a local public school. Berman tells Brandon’s story in a response to the Sentinel, published Thursday, noting that until Brandon received a Gardiner Scholarship to attend a private school, he was “a space-age kid stuck in a stone-age system.”

Special education is a complex topic, dealing with dozens of laws, hundreds of unique needs and thousands of children across the state. It’s a topic that deserves better and deeper discussion than recently presented.

A recent column by Scott Maxwell (“Voucher schools can reject kids with disabilities,” Aug. 7) argued that private schools can discriminate against children with disabilities. However, individual public schools can also reject students with disabilities. I know this from personal experience. Worse still, the column was published while Volusia County public schools are under investigation by the Justice Department for discriminating against students with autism.