Author

Adam Emerson

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

While flawed, a new effort shines light on the demand for school choice

Adam Emerson November 30, 2011

Adam Emerson

The Brookings Institution’s ranking of school choice met with mixed results today, and properly so. But one conclusion that may escape attention should have profound implications for choice and school governance in the years to come: One of every two households engages in some form of school choice, and more would do so if given the chance.

The report is limited to an examination of quality and competition in the nation’s 25 largest school districts, but this hides the sweep of the enterprise. The Brown Center on Education Policy didn’t just look at public school choice within each individual system. It surveyed private options in each district’s boundaries, factoring in publicly funded alternatives such as vouchers or tax credit scholarships and paying attention to how performance is assessed. And it considered whether and how districts have embraced virtual education.

Thus, author and center director Russ Whitehurst writes:

… more than 50 percent of parents of school-aged children have engaged in some form of school choice, albeit primarily in the form of residential choice and private school tuition: two socially inequitable means of determining where a child attends school. There is little doubt based on the long waiting lists for popular public schools of choice that many more parents wish to exercise choice than are currently able to do so, and schools of choice consistently generate more positive evaluations from parents than assigned schools.

Each district was given a letter grade determined by factors as varied as the enrollment at “alternatively available schools” — which included charter and voucher enrollments — and student assignment systems where “preferences are maximized.” But, honest intentions notwithstanding, the methodology may be misleading. For instance, seven Florida counties make the list, with Duval County (Jacksonville) getting the highest overall ranking within the state. With apologies to Rick Hess, Duval has done little to actively enhance school choice.

While the Duval County school board has begun to authorize more charter schools in the Jacksonville area in just the last year, Duval is near last among Florida districts on the Brookings index in density of charter schools, according to 2010-11 data from the Florida Department of Education. Just 2.7 percent of the public school population in Duval is enrolled in charter schools. By comparison, Miami-Dade County’s charter school enrollment is at 10.2 percent of the county’s total public school population, but is ranked just 20th of 25 districts overall at Brookings.

The State of Florida has done more to create the conditions for choice that Dade has embraced, just as it has created and enhanced the means-tested tax credit scholarships to private schools that have penetrated nearly 5 percent of the eligible population in Duval County. The growth of, and prospect for more, publicly funded private school options led Duval County school board chairman W.C. Gentry to tell a radio interviewer one year ago, “Fundamentally, [school choice] is very bothersome. The notion that we would effectively dismantle a system of public education and give students and parents choice and go do whatever they choose to do is anathema to the basic underpinnings of our society.”

This is no attempt to discredit a report that was intended to celebrate “a fundamental rationale … in creating a vibrant marketplace for better schools.” In identifying an expanded definition of public education and a demand for more and better school options, Whitehurst brings sunlight to the differences between school systems in how they meet the needs of parents, and those differences often disappoint. Still, if the intent of the index is to create public awareness, a deeper dive is necessary.

November 30, 2011 0 comment

Blog Administration Customization Private Schools School Choice

The Quiet Audacity of Michigan

Adam Emerson November 28, 2011

Adam Emerson

I spent the Thanksgiving holiday in my home state of Michigan, where labor and public employee unions exhibit outsized-influence in the public square. If you want to know just how much influence, ask recalled Representative Paul Scott. But for all the union supremacy that could sound alarms on any expansion of school choice in the Wolverine State, the sweep of several education measures hasn’t drawn national headlines the way other reforms have in neighboring Midwestern states.

The policy debates within the state have tended to focus on the proposed increase of the cap on the number of charter schools, but this overlooks other bills that could have a profound effect on the number of quality educational options as well as on the way school boards govern public education.

One notable effort would expand dual enrollment in Michigan’s colleges and universities to high school students in private institutions, removing the requirement that those students would have to enroll first in a public school and calling for the state to pick up the tuition bill. But just as importantly, school districts would have to extend their information and counseling services on college enrollment options to private school students who want to participate.

This would clear what the Michigan Catholic Conference has called the “unnecessary hurdles” to all students who want an early start on their postsecondary studies, and the conference clearly has the urban poor at Catholic high schools in mind. A spokesman for the Michigan Education Association, however, has called the proposal a back-door voucher, and the Michigan School Boards Association wants to know what’s going to happen to its share of the state School Aid Fund.

The union and the school boards largely stayed silent on the plan until the bills passed their last committee by a 2-to-1 margin, mostly along party lines. This Democratic and union opposition adds to other legislative efforts in Michigan that could rightfully be labeled progressive, such as a move requiring public schools to open their doors to students from other districts as long as they have seats. Few outside the state have taken notice, but each initiative rethinks the way we govern public education through artificial boundaries.

Requiring districts to guide private school students on their dual-enrollment options would begin to redefine the governing role of school boards as answerable to parents, who become the primary customers here. Eliminating the boundaries dividing school districts can enable a student in Detroit to access an education in, say, Grosse Pointe, making the system truly public.

Teachers aren’t marching on Lansing yet, but Michigan is bringing audacity to a reform effort that rethinks the way we deliver a public education.

November 28, 2011 0 comment

Blog Administration Education and Public Policy School Choice

A look into Constrasting Models of State and School Choice

Adam Emerson November 23, 2011

Adam Emerson

RedefinED contributor and American Center for School Choice associate Ashley Berner has reviewed Boston University professor Charles Glenn’s newest book and look into comparative school choice policy, Constrasting Models of State and School Choice. Berner, the Oxford-educated co-director of the Moral Foundations of Education Project, takes to The Hedgehog Review, where the full review can be found:

Educational philosophy asks four distinct but related questions: What is the purpose of education? What is the nature of the child? What is the role of the teacher? And, finally, where does authority about these matters rest? Charles L. Glenn’s book focuses on the fourth question, that of the political philosophies that underwrite distinctive educational systems. Hovering in the background of Glenn’s work, of course, are the first three questions—those that concern the nature of the child, the aims of education, and the teachers’ authority—for it is disagreement about these things that necessitates the political arguments in the first place.

November 23, 2011 1 comment

Blog Administration Charter Schools Education and Public Policy

Overheard in Florida

Adam Emerson November 18, 2011

Adam Emerson

“I’m concerned that our Legislature is succumbing to the mega-Wall Street charter school operations that are certainly not local and are far removed from the public.” — Dan Boyd, superintendent of the Alachua County school system, to the Gainesville Sun, on his fears that a Florida law encouraging the expansion of high-performing charter schools will attract profit-making academies to his district.

“We’re not from Wall Street, we’re from Fort Lauderdale.” — Jon Hage, the president and CEO of Charter Schools USA, in the same Gainesville Sun story.

November 18, 2011 0 comment

Blog Administration Charter Schools Demographic Research Education and Public Policy

Californians like charters

Adam Emerson November 18, 2011

Adam Emerson

From the Los Angeles Times:

Charter schools have won over about half of California voters, but these independent, non-traditional public schools are not widely viewed as the solution to the state’s education problems, according to a new poll.

Among those surveyed in the USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times poll, 52% had a favorable opinion about charters; only 12% had an unfavorable impression.

Asked whether charter schools or traditional schools provided a better education, 48% gave superior marks to charters; 24% considered traditional schools more effective.

“As people learn more about what charter schools are, they tend to like the idea of choice,” said USC professor Priscilla Wohlstetter, who directs the university’s Center on Educational Governance.

But further in the story:

Far more people favored increasing funding for traditional schools over the strategy of creating more charters, by a 64%-21% tally. Nor are voters inclined to hand over low-performing public schools to outside operators, including those that run charters.

November 18, 2011 0 comment

Blog Administration Parent Empowerment Parental Choice Unionism

Ohio mom jailed for crossing school zones launches parent union

Adam Emerson November 17, 2011

Adam Emerson

Kelley Williams-Bolar, the Akron, Ohio, mother who spent 10 days in jail for enrolling her daughters in a high-performing school district outside her attendance zone, has formed the Ohio Parents Union, according to the Dropout Nation blog. Editor RiShawn Biddle writes:

Williams-Bolar is taking her place alongside parents such as Gwen Samuel, Matt Prewett and Hanya Boulos to launch the nation’s fifth parents union. The Ohio Parents Union is still in its infancy, and according to Williams-Bolar in an e-mail to Dropout Nation, still working with families to map out a full agenda. But Williams-Bolar’s new group is already getting help from the Samuel and the Connecticut Parents Union; Samuel has already introduced Williams-Bolar to the growing network of Parent Power activists and to Whitney Tilson, whose e-mails reach into the core of the overall school reform movement.

November 17, 2011 1 comment

Blog Administration Education and Public Policy Unionism

Andy Rotherham occupies educational inequality

Adam Emerson November 17, 2011

Adam Emerson

This column from Andy Rotherham appearing today on Time.com is so well worth reading that it’s hard to edit it down to a few excerpts. It’s the most prescient and fair-minded argument on where to direct our “Occupy” anger in the cause for social and economic justice, ending with a plea to the Occupy Wall Street movement to “demand the kind of radical change we need to create a school system that lives up to our values rather than mocking them.”

On economic inequality: “… when it comes to giving Americans equal opportunity, our schools are demonstrably failing at their task. Today zip codes remain a better predictor of school quality and subsequent opportunities than smarts or hard work. When you think about it, that’s a lot more offensive to our values than a lightly regulated banking system.”

On ideas to foster equal opportunity: “… our politicians are too skittish to take on special interests or too wrapped up in ideology to acknowledge that no single solution — for instance, school choice, ending the federal role in education or just addressing poverty — will fix our education system.”

On the teacher union embrace of the Occupy movement, what Rotherham calls “a sad irony”: “The unions are hardly the only cause of our educational problems, but they’re not doing enough to fix them. In ways large and small, they defend practices and policies — things like how teacher pay is factored into the amount of money that is allotted to individual schools — that disadvantage low-income students. Can the Occupy movement square this circle? We’ll see.”

November 17, 2011 0 comment

Blog Administration Education and Public Policy Jack Coons School Choice

Acceptable American Inequality

Adam Emerson November 11, 2011

Adam Emerson

David Brooks addresses a fictional foreign tourist in today’s New York Times by presenting a guidemap to acceptable and unacceptable American inequality. “Dear visitor, we are a democratic, egalitarian people who spend our days desperately trying to climb over each other,” Brooks writes, and I’m reminded of a passage in Harvard University professor Paul E. Peterson’s book, “Saving Schools,” which addressed the fiscal equity movement of the 1970s. Peterson tries to help the reader understand why the equity movement ultimately ran up against entrenched interests, highlighting specifically the challenges redefinED hosts John E. Coons and Stephen D. Sugarman faced when championing the Serrano case in California and the Rodriguez case in Texas. Coons, Sugarman and others had conceived a powerful idea, Peterson writes:

Equal protection before the law implies that all school districts within a state should have the same fiscal capacity. But that idea came up against the basic fact that those with more money want to spend more on their children’s education, just as they want to spend more on housing, transportation, and all the other good things in life. To be told that their child’s school shall have no more resources than any other school in the state runs counter to the desire of virtually all educated, prosperous parents to see their own children given every educational advantage. Fiscal equity was divisive.

The evidence that Coons and Sugarman had unearthed struck at the inequalities in spending between rich districts and poor districts, and it led the pair on a four-decade long mission to champion the cause of school choice. A commitment to family choice in education, Coons would later write, “would maximize, equalize and dignify as no other remedy imaginable.” Has the opposition to choice led to another form of acceptable American inequality?

November 11, 2011 0 comment