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    • Voices for Education Choice
    • factcheckED
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    • Dan Lips
    • Chris Stewart
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Author

Adam Emerson

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Adam Emerson

Editor of redefinED, policy and communications guru for Florida education nonprofit

Blog AdministrationCharter SchoolsTechnology and Innovation

On for-profit education, what motivates a reporter

Adam Emerson December 16, 2011
Adam Emerson

If it feels to the education reformer that The New York Times and The Miami Herald have made grand attempts to gore the growing presence of for-profit education providers, it’s because they have. But there are many false assumptions that lead the critic to suppose these are the transgressions of the “liberal media.” If choice advocates and education entrepreneurs want to overcome this adversity, it’s important to know what factors lead to headlines like “Cashing In On Kids.”

It first helps to survey a typical newsroom, and I don’t mean a survey of the political inclinations of its inhabitants. In many ways, the liberal-conservative chasm is irrelevant to what sparks investigations like we saw of K12 Inc. in the Times. Consider the newsrooms that shaped Times reporter Stephanie Saul — The Clarion-Ledger in Jackson, Miss., The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and Long Island’s Newsday. The traditional “beat” structure of these newsrooms and their “City Desks” has remained largely unchanged for decades, and it is centered around the coverage of public institutions — public schools, city councils, police departments and statehouses.

Now Saul is no “beat” reporter, but most daily and metropolitan newspapers employ an education reporter, and that means those reporters invariably cover their local school boards, whether they’re in New York City or New Baltimore, Mich. These reporters generally spend many days of the week in school district offices, talking with superintendents and scanning the e-mail correspondence of school board members. If they’re doing their job right, these reporters are applying a healthy dose of skepticism to every message they hear or read from these sources. But that is beside the point. They are immersed in issues and developments that are in the public interest and they are writing from public institutions.

In this world, for-profit education providers are nothing less than an insurgence into what is traditionally considered “public.” Their operations are, naturally, opaque, whereas newspapers demand sunshine — if not for their stories then for the public for whom they claim to write. This conflict informs a bias that is nearly absolute among reporters: A profit-making school or university is concerned primarily with making a profit; the education of its children is secondary.

I suffered from this bias myself when I was a reporter covering education for nearly 10 years at newspapers in Michigan and Florida. I was hardwired, just like all my colleagues, to examine any public policy or proposal that had the ultimate effect, however insignificant, of putting profits in someone’s hands. So, of course, the burgeoning sector of for-profit higher education opened several avenues for inquiry: Who was attending these schools, and how were these colleges recruiting these students? How much of the college’s revenues came from publicly backed student loans, and what was the institution’s loan default rate? And, perhaps the juiciest question: What were these companies paying in campaign contributions to elected officials?

I chased stories of students who filed lawsuits against these schools because they couldn’t transfer the credits they earned to more traditional institutions. I covered attorney general investigations that found heavyhanded recruitment of underqualified students and that these colleges overpromised the return on the students’ investment. This is the prism through which I viewed for-profit education and its unprecedented growth. And I was not alone.

This does not condone the worst of Saul’s reporting of K12. The Times story suffered from a striking lack of balance, and there was little that took the reader to the ideal path toward greater accountability and higher standards in online learning. But it does show that as for-profit companies increase the size of their footprint by investing in charter school management and online education, the scrutiny they face will be heightened for the ages of the children they serve and for the sweep they bring into primary and secondary education.

I have since left newspapering to help develop the policy and communications initiatives for a Florida program that administers a publicly funded private school option to 38,000 low-income children, and I have learned to exercise more nuance and sophistication in our expanded universe of public education. It is unfair to assume that children are being treated with malice by schools that keep one eye on the bottom line, especially when these schools must follow the regulations required of all private providers in any given state. But it is difficult to imagine that the culture in any newsroom will soon be superseded by one that considers how for-profit schools could help us find greater educational innovations with efficiency. So in the meantime, our education entrepreneurs would do well to understand what motivates an enterprising reporter. It may not be the partisan motivations we assume.

December 16, 2011 2 comments
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Blog AdministrationCharter SchoolsEducation and Public PolicySchool Choice

Michigan charter bill passes; cross-district enrollment effort stalls

Adam Emerson December 15, 2011
Adam Emerson

Earlier today, the Michigan Senate approved a measure that ultimately removes the limits on the number and location of charter schools in the state, ending a battle fought almost entirely along party lines. The House approved the legislation yesterday, and Gov. Rick Snyder is expected to sign it into law.

The charter bill is one among several education reform initiatives embraced by Snyder that also would mandate the state’s cross-district enrollment policy in every school system and would extend dual enrollment in colleges and universities to students in private high schools.  Of those three efforts to enhance school choice, the charter initiative has enjoyed the greatest momentum. The cross-district enrollment measure, which would require any public school to open its doors to students from other districts as long as it has seats, has stalled in committee.

Over at Jay Greene’s blog, Matt Ladner applauds the Legislature’s action to expand charter schools, but admiringly hopes for the day “when complacent check-book choice districts might reconsider their decision not to admit students whose parents happen not to be able to afford a $400,000 mortgage.”

December 15, 2011 1 comment
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Blog AdministrationEducation and Public PolicyReligious EducationSchool Choice

Proposed repeal of Florida’s Blaine Amendment off state ballot — for now

Adam Emerson December 14, 2011
Adam Emerson

A Florida judge has ruled that language in a proposed repeal of Florida’s Blaine Amendment is ambiguous and misleading, and has ordered the Secretary of State to remove the proposal from the 2012 ballot for now, The Associated Press and St. Petersburg Times are reporting.

But the victory could be short-lived for the Florida Education Association, which challenged the amendment. Although Circuit Judge Terry Lewis found the ballot summary misleading, he’s letting Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi rewrite the summary for another review.

December 14, 2011 0 comment
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Blog AdministrationEducation and Public PolicyReligious EducationSchool Choice

Private school options empower more than just children

Adam Emerson December 14, 2011
Adam Emerson

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

December 14, 2011 2 comments
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Blog AdministrationEducation and Public PolicyFundingTechnology and Innovation

On next-generation funding

Adam Emerson December 7, 2011
Adam Emerson

Writing in Education Week, Paul T. Hill, the director of the Center on Reinventing Public Education, says today’s school funding arrangement developed haphazardly, a product of politics and advocacy, not design:

Simply put: Our current education finance system doesn’t actually fund schools and certainly doesn’t fund students. Rather, it pays for districtwide programs and staff positions. Much of it is locked into personnel contracts and salary schedules—and most of the rest is locked into bureaucratic routines. It’s next to impossible to shift resources from established programs and flesh-and-blood workers into new uses like equipment, software, and remote instructional staffing. Yet to foster and maximize technology-based learning opportunities, we must find ways for public dollars to do just that—and to accompany kids to online providers chosen by their parents, teachers, or themselves.

December 7, 2011 0 comment
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Blog AdministrationCharter SchoolsSchool Choice

Number of charter school students soars to 2 million

Adam Emerson December 7, 2011
Adam Emerson

From The Associated Press:

The number of students attending charter schools has soared to more than 2 million as states pass laws lifting caps and encouraging their expansion, according to figures released Wednesday.

The growth represents the largest increase in enrollment over a single year since charter schools were founded nearly two decades ago. In all, more than 500 new charter schools were opened in the 2011-12 school year. And about 200,000 more students are enrolled now than a year before, an increase of 13 percent nationwide.

“This 2 million student mark is quite significant,” said Ursula Wright, interim CEO of the nonprofit National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, which released the study. “It demonstrates increased demand by families who want to see more high quality education options for their children.”

December 7, 2011 0 comment
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BipartisanshipBlog AdministrationCatholic SchoolsEducation and Public PolicySchool Choice

What it (once) meant to be a Democrat

Adam Emerson December 2, 2011
Adam Emerson

This month, former Senator George McGovern frames his beau ideal of the crusading and committed progressive in his new book, What It Means to Be a Democrat. Addressing issues as varied as education, defense spending and universal healthcare, McGovern reminds the reader that “if there ever was a moment to define ourselves boldly, to stick to our ideals, it is now.” But now, McGovern’s ideal Democratic defense of public education is much narrower than it was when he ran for president 40 years ago.

“Yes, I’m sure that some private academies offer students more one-on-one attention and perhaps more intellectual stimulation than the neighborhood public school,” he writes. “But that doesn’t change my strongly held view that public funds should be invested in public education … Voucher programs that use public money to send kids to private school only divert money away from the overall goal of making U.S. public schools as robust as possible.”

When he ran for president in 1972, however, McGovern’s support for education was drawn more broadly. As Election Day neared, McGovern proposed his own tuition tax credit plan to help the parents of elementary and secondary schoolchildren offset the costs of a private or parochial education, just as advisers to Richard Nixon had done. Politically, McGovern wanted the Catholic vote, but this pretends that he was a maverick among liberal Democrats in wanting to aid families choosing a private, even faith-based, education. He was not.

Hubert Humphrey proposed his own tuition tax credit plan when he ran against Nixon in 1968. And McGovern joined 23 Democratic senators in 1978 to co-sponsor a plan championed by one of the nation’s most prominent Democrats, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, offering $500 in tax credits to families paying private school tuition.

“We cannot abandon these schools and we will not,” McGovern announced to a throng of Catholic high school students in Chicago in the fall of 1972, according to the Washington Post. Catholic schools, McGovern added, are a “keystone of American education,” and without government help, families would lose the right to give their children an education in which spiritual and moral values play an important role.

Presidential candidates were born to flip-flop, but McGovern’s newest manifesto reminds us how far Democrats have strayed from a movement they once breathed life into. Moynihan was prophetic in 1981 when he wrote that as vouchers become more and more a conservative cause, “it will, I suppose, become less and less a liberal one.”

If that happens, he added, “it will present immense problems for a person such as myself who was deeply involved in this issue long before it was either conservative or liberal. And if it prevails only as a conservative cause, it will have been a great failure of American liberalism not to have seen the essentially liberal nature of this pluralist proposition.”

December 2, 2011 0 comment
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BipartisanshipBlog AdministrationCatholic SchoolsEducation and Public PolicySchool Choice

George McGovern on vouchers now — and then

Adam Emerson December 1, 2011
Adam Emerson

NOW: From the book, What It Means to Be a Democrat, published this month by Blue Rider Press, former Senator and presidential candidate George McGovern writes:

Yes, I’m sure that some private academies offer students more one-on-one attention and perhaps more intellectual stimulation than the neighborhood public school. But that doesn’t change my strongly held view that public funds should be invested in public education. Especially now, with a growing array of public charter schools, parents have more choice than ever if they don’t like what they see at the traditional school down the street. But voucher programs that use public money to send kids to private school only divert money away from the overall goal of making U.S. public schools as robust as possible.

THEN: From the Sept. 20, 1972, Washington Post, “McGovern Pledges Support For Aid to Private Schools”:

CHICAGO, Sept. 19 — Sen. George McGovern, calling Roman Catholic schools a keystone of American education, pledged his support today of federal tax credits to help offset tuition costs at parochial and other “bona fide” private schools.

“We cannot abandon these schools and we will not,” the Democratic presidential candidate said here this morning before a bubbling crowd of Catholic high school students.

Without government help, he told them, their parents would lose the right to give their children an education in which spiritual and moral values play an important role.

December 1, 2011 0 comment
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