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  • Home
  • ABOUT US
  • Content
    • 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
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    • Microschools
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    • Private Schools
    • Special Education
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    • 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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Author

Ron Matus

Ron Matus
Ron Matus

Ron Matus is director for policy and public affairs at Step Up for Students and a former editor of redefinED. He joined Step Up in February 2012 after 20 years in journalism, including eight years as an education reporter with the Tampa Bay Times (formerly the St. Petersburg Times). Ron can be reached at rmatus@stepupforstudents.org or (727) 451-9830. Follow him on Twitter @RonMatus1 and on facebook at https://www.facebook.com/redefinedonline.

Catholic SchoolsCoronavirus / COVID-19Education and Public PolicyFeaturedPrivate SchoolsSchool Choice

Anxious private schools in limbo while additional federal relief on hold

Ron Matus April 17, 2020
Ron Matus

St. Andrew Catholic School in Orlando applied for enough federal relief funding to cover two months of payroll for 51 employees.

Private schools across America are in a state of uncertainty after a $349 billion federal relief program for millions of small businesses and nonprofits ran out of funding Thursday and Congress failed, for now, to agree on a plan to keep it rolling.

The Paycheck Protection Program, part of the $2 trillion pandemic rescue package, maxed out 13 days after it began accepting applications and banks began approving some 1.6 million forgivable loans.

A plan to replenish the fund, perhaps with another $250 billion, still seems likely. So private schools hoping for federal assistance should not hesitate to apply.

It may be the most help they’ll get.

Private schools bleed enrollment during economic downturns and, in this case, are already facing tuition losses and other financial challenges. The other federal relief streams targeted to education appear unlikely to yield them more than a trickle. The PPP is no panacea, but it can offer a short-term respite – and a morale boost for the turbulence ahead.

St. Andrew Catholic School, in the predominantly black Orlando community of Pine Hills, applied for enough funding to cover two months of payroll for 51 employees.

Finding out the application was on hold was “disheartening,” said principal Latrina Peters-Gipson, whose school was in the national spotlight in 2017 when newly inaugurated President Trump paid a visit. “If we don’t get this loan, we may start having to lay some of our (35) instructional staff off. Which would be devastating. They have been very committed and dedicated to the students of the community.”

All but five of St. Andrew’s 325 students use state school choice scholarships for low-income students to cover most of tuition. But the school still relies on significant support from the local parish and business community, neither of which can contribute what they did in the past. The school also anticipates students leaving as more and more parents are laid off from jobs and uprooted from their homes. More than 50 percent of St. Andrew’s parents work at Walt Disney World, Peters-Gipson said; another 20 to 30 percent work in the hotel industry.

“St. Andrew, for my babies, this is their home,” Peters-Gipson said. “I’ve been trying to tell my parents to just breathe, let’s see what happens. So with this loan, I can know the school can be taken care of, and I can tell my babies their home is taken care of.”

Thursday’s sobering developments came just as some private schools learned they had been approved for the loans.

The PPP offers forgivable loans to small businesses and nonprofits with fewer than 500 employees, including private schools and charter schools. The loan amount is up to 250 percent of an employer’s average monthly payroll, with a $10 million cap. If the employer maintains that payroll for eight weeks, the loan is forgiven. The loans can also be used for interest on mortgages, rent and utilities.

It’s unclear how many private schools applied for the funding, but it’s likely hundreds did from Florida alone. The Sunshine State has nearly 2,700 private schools serving 380,000 students, including more than 2,000 schools that participate in that state’s robust array of private school choice and education choice scholarships. Step Up For Students, which hosts this blog, administers four of those programs.

April 17, 2020 0 comment
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Coronavirus / COVID-19Education and Public PolicyFeaturedFlorida Tax Credit ScholarshipGardiner ScholarshipNewsPrivate SchoolsSchool Choice

Private schools starting to see some federal relief

Ron Matus April 15, 2020
Ron Matus

Abundant Life Christian Academy in Broward County is among several Florida private schools that will begin receiving federal relief funds through the Paycheck Protection Program.

Federal relief funds are starting to trickle in toward private schools, offering at least some short-term relief to a sector that is likely to be hard hit by the coming economic slump.

The aid is through the Paycheck Protection Program, a $349 billion slice of the $2 trillion relief package that’s aimed at helping American workers and businesses stay afloat in the wake of the pandemic.

The PPP offers forgivable loans to small businesses and nonprofits with fewer than 500 employees, including private schools and charter schools. The loan amount is up to 250 percent of an employer’s average monthly payroll, with a $10 million cap. If the employer maintains that payroll for eight weeks, the loan is forgiven. The loans can also be used for interest on mortgages, rent and utilities.

Small businesses and nonprofits began applying for the PPP loans April 3. This week, some private schools began receiving approval notices from their banks.

In Broward County, Fla., the church affiliated with Abundant Life Christian Academy applied for a PPP loan for both it and the school, said principal Stacy Angier. On Monday, it got word the school would receive $320,000 to help pay its 50 employees and continue serving its 462 students. Angier was hopeful the funds would be in hand next week.

“It’s huge. No. 1, because it helps to carry payroll and keep staff members working right now. But also because we will have to carry payroll beyond the normal time frame for the school year,” Angier said. “I have some students who are going to need extra support this summer to be ready for the fall. We have some that are challenged by this online learning platform, particularly those with special needs.”

Angier said revenues were already down “significantly,” even with 80 percent of Abundant Life students using some type of state school choice scholarship. Growing numbers of parents are being laid off and can no longer afford the gap between tuition and scholarship. But Angier told them they would find a way.

Once the PPP opened up, thousands of small businesses flooded banks with a “tsunami of applications.” In some states, private school groups worked hard ahead of time to notify as many private schools as possible that they, too, were eligible (see here, here and here).

Florida is home to one of the biggest private school sectors in America, with nearly 2,700 private schools serving 380,295 students. More than 2,000 of those schools participate in a variety of education choice scholarship programs that together serve more than 160,000 students in K-12. (Another 130,000 students use state funds to attend private pre-schools.)

The largest of those choice programs, the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship, serves about 100,000 students. The Gardiner Scholarship, the nation’s largest education scholarship account program, serves another 13,000. Both are administered by nonprofits such as Step Up For Students, which hosts this blog.

It’s not clear yet how many private schools in Florida applied for the PPP. More than a dozen contacted by Step Up representatives this week said they had; most were still awaiting word on approval.

HOPE Ranch Learning Academy was among those that got good news. It will be receiving $261,000.

“During this time of uncertainty, the PPP program’s most valuable help is to secure income protection for all of our staff so when we get clearance to return to work, we can do so immediately with our entire staff and not lose some in the process,” Jose Suarez, the school’s founder and executive director, said in an email.

Josh Longenecker, founder and headmaster of The Classical Academy of Sarasota, said his school applied for the loan April 8 – and got approval five days later. It’s set to receive $280,000 to help cover expenses for 47 employees serving 365 students. “It’s a huge help because we don’t know what the future will hold,” Longenecker said. Besides current expenses, the money “will also provide us with a backup plan if enrollment doesn’t pick up in the fall.”

Through Monday, banks had processed nearly 900,000 PPP loans worth $215 billion, including 52,000 in Florida. By some predictions, PPP funds may be gone by the end of this week, but talks are underway for a second round, with a pitch from Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin for $250 billion.

Suarez had advice for private schools that had yet to apply: Don’t wait.

“The application process was unbelievably easy to complete,” he said. “However, it does require historical data from 2019 payroll. A school that does not have clear wage, benefit, and payroll tax breakout will have difficulty in completing the application.” 

It’s possible private schools may get relief from other funding streams in the CARES Act.

On Tuesday, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos announced $3 billion in block grants from the Governor’s Emergency Education Relief Fund would be quickly distributed to states, with Florida’s cut at $173 million. DeVos stressed flexibility with the funding, suggested it be applied to distance learning needs, and included charter schools and private schools in the mix. Florida education officials have yet to offer details.

April 15, 2020 0 comment
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Charter SchoolsCoronavirus / COVID-19Education ChoiceFeaturedNewsPublic School ChoiceSchool ChoiceVirtual Education

“We’re not changing the rigor.” In the wake of closures, this school isn’t letting academics slide

Ron Matus April 9, 2020
Ron Matus

Dayspring Academy secondary school principal Tim Greenier and assistant principal Jennifer Smith address students in a virtual morning assembly, encouraging them to continue focusing on academics in their online environment.

Editor’s note: Scroll to the end of this post to watch a portion of Dayspring Academy’s virtual morning assembly, in which assistant principal Jennifer Smith encourages students to “finish this year strong.”

PORT RICHEY, Fla. – The new, online, morning assembly at Dayspring Academy began one day last week with a montage of smiling teachers, set to theme music from “Saturday Night Live.” The secondary school principal and assistant principal kept it laid-back, with their ball caps and coffee mugs. But a few minutes in, they had a serious message for 350 middle and high school students watching on screens at home.

“School” is different now, but it’s still school. Course work needs to be done. Tests are coming up. We need to finish the year strong.

“I want everybody to know this,” principal Tim Greenier said, clasping his hands for emphasis. “We’re not changing the rigor.”

“You need to have this education to be prepared for next year,” he continued. “If we were to just stop now, none of you would be ready for next year. And it would create a challenge. We’re just not prepared to do that.”

Across America, schools are scrambling to figure out what’s doable and appropriate as tens of millions of students switch at a snap to distance learning. Many have decided to go light on academics.

But not all of them.

Dayspring is a PreK-12 charter school with 935 students, 50 miles north of Tampa. When the closures happened, it already had a good bit of digital tech in its tool belt. It quickly filled gaps with devices and connections, then sought to construct an online environment that could approximate the style of learning, built around the Core Knowledge curriculum, that existed on its four brick-and-mortar campuses.

The result: Class is still in session. Dayspring elementary students alone have four, 30-minute core classes every morning, using Schoology and Google Classroom platforms with teachers and classmates. After lunch, they do about two hours of art, dance and other electives. Time for group projects is worked in. So is one-on-one time with teachers. From 3 to 4 p.m., most of them cluster for school clubs, from Legos to ukuleles.

Dayspring students are still being graded and tested. They will still have final exams and report cards. And if attendance is an indicator of engagement, the school is locked in. It averaged 35-45 absences a day before the crisis. It’s averaging six a day now.

“We don’t expect to skip a beat,” said John Legg, a former state senator who co-founded Dayspring 20 years ago with his wife, Suzanne Legg. “We think we’re going to use muscles we haven’t used before and strengthen them. We’re going to be sore. But it’s because we’re developing new muscles.”

At this point in America’s big experiment, Dayspring doesn’t appear to be the norm. State officials in Michigan decided online learning won’t count towards seat-time requirements this year. State officials in Oregon initially told virtual charter schools they had to shut down. It’s not hard, via this database from the Center for Reinventing Public Education, to find districts that have deemed online learning “optional,” or determined their schools won’t be grading students.

On the flip side, there are districts pushing hard (like this one), and charter schools and other schools of choice doing likewise (like these, these, and these). In Rhode Island, Gov. Gina Raimondo told students: “This isn’t vacation. This isn’t time to chill out at home. This is school. Work as hard and as serious as you would as if you were in real school.”

In the 16 years Dayspring has been graded by the state, it’s earned 15 A’s. Forty-eight percent of its students are low-income; 27 percent are students of color. That’s compared to 56 percent and 39 percent for the district it resides in.

Legg is a rare bird. A former chairman of the Senate Education Committee, he was regarded by members of both parties as knowledgeable, thoughtful, even-keeled. He recently earned his doctorate in education, with his dissertation on early college high schools. (Legg is also a member of the board of directors for Step Up For Students, which hosts this blog.)

It doesn’t seem right to hold up any school as a model right now. The challenges are so huge and varied. Nobody has all the answers. But it also doesn’t make sense to ignore schools, like Dayspring, that continue to aim for learning gains.

In Ms. Speer’s third-grade class this week, 25 students dove into colonial America. Ms. Speer had them post their questions about colonists into a program called Nearpod. Within a minute, what looked like Post-it notes mushroomed across the screen. How did the Pilgrims survive on the Mayflower? Why were they only in North America and not any other country? Did people celebrate any holidays such as Christmas, Halloween, Easter, or even their birthdays?

“Guys,” Ms. Speer said through the screen, “your questions are amazing.”

In Ms. Manczak’s class, 20 fourth-graders learned soil types, contrasted physical and chemical weathering, and were reminded “humous” isn’t “hummus.” Ms. Manczak put on a master class in multi-tasking. She deftly called on students, fed them bite-sized bits of knowledge and navigated a new learning platform without breaking a sweat. Some of her students were still adjusting to mics and mutes and chat functions, but disruptions were minimal.

In sixth-grade history, Mr. Marecki used a unit on the Industrial Revolution as fodder for debate about whether teachers, lawyers, military officers or the CEO of Apple should make the most money. One student argued for military officers: they’re willing to give up their lives to protect others. True, said another, but teachers trained them for success. Ah, but “anybody can grow up to be a teacher,” said a third. “Only certain people can, like, become a CEO.”

Mr. Marecki smiled without raising an eyebrow.

Dayspring is making changes as teachers learn what works and what doesn’t. There’s consensus the middle school classes should be longer than 30 minutes. There’s worry the more advanced students aren’t being challenged. There’s a desire to provide more social engagement, but a realization they just don’t know how yet.

“We’re building this plane as we’re flying it,” Legg said.

Not easy for any school right now. But at Dayspring, sitting on the runway wasn’t an option.

https://www.redefinedonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Morning-Assembly-Thursday_-April-2-_-9_00-AM-4m6.7s-5m3.4s-Axgm-7UcPLo-2401.mp4
April 9, 2020 2 comments
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Coronavirus / COVID-19Education ChoiceFeaturedGardiner ScholarshipMcKay ScholarshipNewsPrivate SchoolsSchool ChoiceSpecial Needs EducationVirtual Education

At this school for students with special needs, it’s can-do that’s infectious

Ron Matus April 1, 2020
Ron Matus

Bryce, a student at HOPE Ranch, connects with his teacher, Ms. Suzanne, and his parents who joined from remote locations.

HUDSON, Fla. – All four of Patricia Larkin’s kids have special needs, and all were making good progress at HOPE Ranch Learning Academy, a private school known for its equine therapy program. So when the coronavirus pandemic forced the single grandma to briefly veer into homeschooling, she got a little panicky.

“My children have to be on a routine. And when our country came to a halt, we knew something was going to happen with the schooling,” said Larkin, 59, who is raising three grandchildren and a grandniece. “I tried as hard as I possibly could to do the routine, but I’m not a teacher.”

Two things came to Larkin’s rescue: School choice scholarships, which allowed her children to stay at HOPE even though she just got laid off as a property manager. And the school itself.

The HOPE Ranch staff of 43 rallied around a parent-shaped plan to tailor distance learning to their 150 K-12 students, most of them on the autism spectrum.

“We had to re-invent school in a week. Those were 18-hour days nonstop,” said Jose Suarez, the school’s founder and executive director. Given gaps with devices and connections, “We had to come up with a system that was low tech, that could be deployed regardless of whether there was a computer in the home or not, and could be deployed on a daily basis.”

The early result: Rave reviews from parents like Larkin, who called the plan “brilliant.” And high hopes for the next steps, including a virtual version of equine therapy, the school’s main draw.

Lead teacher Ms. Terri, top left, connects with HOPE Ranch students each morning in an online ‘Social Group.’

A key question in the dash to distance learning is the impact on millions of students with special needs. Some school districts, fearful of being sued by parents of students with disabilities for not providing equitable services, have put a hold on learning for all students. Others are moving ahead, but in ways that aren’t making parents of students with disabilities happy. This is hard, tangled terrain.

In Florida, a national leader in education choice, it remains to be seen whether charter schools or private schools do any better. Those 2,600-plus schools, serving 700,000 students, aren’t getting much coverage. Even if they were, it’s risky to draw generalizations from a few schools, given how diverse those sectors are, and how varied the challenges for students with disabilities.

Florida, though, does present a unique window. It has long offered learning options to parents of students with disabilities. In 1999, it created the McKay Scholarship, a voucher for students with disabilities that now serves 30,000 students a year. In 2014, it created the Gardiner Scholarship, an education savings account for students with special needs that’s now serving more than 13,000 students. (It’s administered by nonprofits like Step Up For Students, which hosts this blog.)

Those scholarships help support a growing number of private schools that serve students with special needs, some of them exclusively. HOPE Ranch, nestled on an oaky stretch of sand hill an hour north of Tampa, is one of them.

Suarez said his team started discussions about remote learning in early March. But they kicked into high gear on March 13, when Gov. Ron DeSantis essentially ordered all public schools in the state to close. Staff quickly surveyed parents about digital capacity, and while not every family had enough computers or tablets for every child, they had phones that could suffice in the short term.

HOPE also asked parents to list their biggest concerns, and the parents were clear. We don’t want our kids falling behind, academically or socially. We don’t want them on computers all day. We don’t want to be their teachers.

The HOPE staff fashioned their plan on that input. Individualized learning packets would be distributed every week. Parents would be given a general schedule with deadlines, but with enough flexibility to figure out the best track for their kids. Using Google Hangouts, teachers would do a half-hour visual chat with each student at a set time every day.

The vast majority of Florida students returned to “school” on Monday, March 30. On Thursday and Friday of the prior week, HOPE teachers did trial runs with the chat platform. By Sunday night, Larkin’s kids were giddy. “They were, ‘I can’t wait! I can’t wait!’,” she said. “They knew they were going to see their teachers.”

HOPE Ranch student Nicole connects with her teacher during a half-hour visual chat they have every morning.

Larkin’s boys – Chad, 12, and Jordan, 7 – are both autistic. Her girls – Bryanna, 10, and Nicole, 10 – are both diagnosed with ADHD and PTSD. All four struggled in public schools. But at HOPE, Larkin said, their teachers know their specific challenges, and work diligently on specific remedies. Jordan, for example, used to avoid “circle time” with classmates because of extreme shyness. But rather than trying to force him to conform, his teachers let him stay back until he felt comfortable. Eventually, he joined on his own.

Bryanna has struggled with maintaining focus. So how sweet it was, Larkin said, that on her first chat on her first day back, Bryanna stayed locked in. “I thought I was in the Twilight Zone,” Larkin said. “They engaged like they were person to person in front of each other.”

HOPE teacher Kevin Trevithick said for his 13 high school students, the quick shift to distance learning has been a lesson unto itself.

“It’s time to adapt and move forward,” he said. “That’s the biggest thing I’ve tried to convey to them.”

One student is resisting the chats, said Trevithick, a former public school teacher, but the others are having fun with the novelty of the situation and the new technology. One told him he’s not a morning person, and now that he can set his own schedule, he’s getting more done.

Can this new way of “school” work for long? Trevithick said some students may get tired of being cooped up. But “people are incredibly adaptable,” he said. “If it’s something where this is the way it has to be, then I do think the majority of them will do just fine.”

The can-do attitude is infectious. Parents like Larkin are having to quickly navigate platforms and apps they never heard of, like Calendly and Adobe Scan. But when they learn they can do it, she said, the next challenge looks a little less daunting.

In the meantime, more programming is coming. On Friday, HOPE is rolling out “virtual chapel” and a virtual social skills class, which will allow the students to stay connected and interact. On Monday, it will begin online speech, occupational and ABA therapy, led by local district employees assigned to the school.

Monday is also the kickoff for the “Virtual and Interactive Horsemanship” class. HOPE students learn to ride, groom and care for a stable of horses. Along the way, they learn teamwork, resourcefulness, problem solving – and get some boosts for their self-esteem. Larkin said the horses helped Jordan, her youngest, come out of his shell. “He mounts those horses … and he’s beaming,” she said. But can it possibly work wonders when it’s online?

It’s working with her kids in the other settings, Larkin said.

So why not?

April 1, 2020 0 comment
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Charter SchoolsCoronavirus / COVID-19Education ChoiceFeaturedNewsSchool ChoiceVirtual Education

Switch, now, to online learning? This charter school org was ready

Ron Matus March 26, 2020
Ron Matus

Natalie Keime, ESOL coordinator and sixth-grade intensive reading teacher at Somerset Oaks Academy in Homestead, delivers a virtual lesson to her students from her home.

About a decade ago, Fernando Zulueta was making a presentation to school district officials in Florida about why his charter school support company, Academica, needed to expand into online learning. For one thing, he told them, charter schools serviced by Academica must better serve students who need flexibility because of their talents (say, an elite gymnast) or their challenges (say, homebound because of illness). For another, he said, you never know when a natural disaster – maybe even a pandemic – might necessitate a transition into virtual instruction.

Fast forward to coronavirus 2020.

Academica, now one of the biggest charter support organizations in America, was among the first education outfits in America to shift online as thousands of brick-and-mortar schools were shuttered. The company began planning for potential closures weeks in advance. And when the closure orders were given in Florida, it trained thousands of teachers, distributed thousands of laptops, and acclimated tens of thousands of students to a new normal – in a matter of days.

“I’m not a doomsday prepper,” Zulueta said. “But when you do the work we do, you have the responsibility to be prepared … and to evaluate risks and contingencies in the future.”

On March 13, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis ordered all public schools in Florida to extend spring break a week so students would not return to school. At the time, the vast majority of Florida districts were about to start their spring break, while a handful of others were ending theirs.

Most of the Academica-supported charter schools in Florida were still a week from break. But by March 16, about 40,000 of their 65,000 students logged into class from home. By week’s end, most of the rest had, too. Within days, Academica’s Florida schools were reporting, based on student logins, nearly normal attendance rates.

“I had a little bit of mixed reaction” when the call came to transition, said Miriam Barrios, a third-grade teacher at Mater Academy of International Studies, an Academica-supported school in Miami. Ninety-nine percent of Mater’s students are students of color; 97 percent are low-income. “A lot of these families don’t have computers. So, it was a little scary.”

“But overall things have gone so well, much better than I expected,” Barrios said.

“It ended up feeling a lot like being in school,” said Claudia Fernandez-Castillo, a parent in Miami whose daughters, ages 11 and 12, attend another Academica-supported school, Pinecrest Cove Academy. “They made the kids feel very comfortable with this massive change in their little lives.”

Academica services 165 charter schools in eight states, including 133 in Florida. Somerset, Mater, Doral and Pinecrest are its main networks. According to the most rigorous and respected research on charter school outcomes, students in all four networks are making modest to large gains over like students in district schools.

It remains to be seen how well schools in any sector respond to what is an unprecedented crisis, and what the impacts will be on academic performance.

School districts are mobilizing quickly. In Florida, most of them still have a few days to prep before the bulk of students return to “school” March 30. To date, there’s been little coverage of how Florida’s 600-plus charter schools are coping (though there’s been a glimpse here and there for charters elsewhere.) Ditto for Florida’s 2,700 private schools. Some are proving nimble and capable. But given the big resource disparities, it’s an open question whether others with large numbers of low-income students have the technology and support they need to turn on a dime.

For Academica, online learning is familiar territory. The organization supports three virtual charters in Florida. It offers online courses for students in its other Florida schools. For a decade, it’s also had an international arm, Academica Virtual Education, that serves thousands of students in Europe who need dual enrollment classes to earn specialized diplomas.

Given the events in China, Zulueta said his team began considering, in January, the possibility of school closures in America. The urgency ramped up in February, when the spread of coronavirus in Italy began affecting Academica students in that country.

In mid-February, Academica-serviced schools in the U.S. sent questionnaires to parents, asking if they needed devices and/or connections for distance learning. They ordered what they needed to fill the gaps. When Gov. DeSantis made what was effectively a closure announcement March 13, Zulueta said, “we were already ready to rock and roll.”

The day after the announcement, Academica used online sessions to do basic training in online instruction for 150 administrators. Over that weekend, it trained 3,000 teachers. Meanwhile, schools distributed several thousand laptops to families, in some cases through drive-through pick-ups. Zulueta said the need ranged from 4 percent at some Academica client schools to 20 percent at others.

Schools also immediately let parents know what was coming Monday.

Zulueta, who has three daughters in Academica-serviced schools, witnessed the new normal at his kitchen table.

“They got up. They logged in. And they went right to class,” he said. His daughters and their classmates wore their usual uniforms. The schools did their best to stick to established bell schedules. “We wanted to keep it as close to what they did at school as possible.”

Like students at Academica-serviced schools throughout Florida, television production students at Doral Academy Preparatory High School have quickly adapted to a virtual learning environment.

Academica uses an online learning platform it created itself. It’s integrated with a number of other tools, including Zoom, the video conferencing software with the “Hollywood Squares” look.

Fernandez-Castillo, the mom at Pinecrest Cove Academy, said she watched over the weekend as friends who are Academica teachers practiced the new online platform with each other. Barrios, the Mater teacher, said she contacted her students’ parents after her training on Friday to tell them she would be testing the platform at 8 that night if they and their children wanted to join. Eight to 10 families did. But she still had some anxiety about Monday morning.

“I thought it was going to be a freak show,” Barrios said. “The computers are going to crash, the kids are not going to log in … “

That’s not what happened. Monday morning was “a little jagged,” she said, because some students experienced technical difficulties and couldn’t log in right on schedule at 8:30. But by 8:50, 90 percent of her students were in. “It was amazing,” she said.

Barrios and other teachers used Monday to get their students familiar with the new set up. Any glitches, like problems with Internet access, were minor, she said. Over the next few days, she and her students quickly cleared little hurdles, like students learning to keep their mics on mute until it was their time to speak, and how to use chat functions to indicate they had a question.

Barrios doesn’t think there’s a long-term substitute for the dynamics of an in-person classroom, where students, in her view, can more easily “bounce ideas off one another.” But as a next best thing, she said what her school is doing is far better than nothing, and not bad at all.

Fernandez-Castillo agreed, and pointed to other upsides. “Everybody’s thrilled with the way this has been done,” she said, referring to other parents. “I think it glued the (school) community together even more.”

March 26, 2020 4 comments
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Catholic SchoolsEducation ChoiceEducation EquityFeaturedFlorida Tax Credit ScholarshipGardiner ScholarshipMcKay ScholarshipNewsParental ChoicePrivate School ScholarshipsPrivate SchoolsSchool Choice

How school choice puts all hands on deck

Ron Matus March 18, 2020
Ron Matus

Academy Prep Center of Tampa is a rigorous private middle school for students who qualify for need-based scholarships. Modeled after Nativity Mission Center in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, students attend school 11 hours a day, six days a week, 11 months a year.

Seventeen years ago, a group of business and community leaders in Tampa Bay decided to renovate rather than raze an old, abandoned public school. The spooky building with stately red brick once served generations of Cuban and Italian kids in Tampa’s historic Ybor City neighborhood. The group wanted to restore its former glory by transforming it into a premier private middle school for black and Hispanic students. With help from a then-fledgling school choice program, that’s what happened.

Today, Academy Prep graduates routinely matriculate to top high schools and colleges. And as a new paper published by the R Street Institute spotlights, it’s but one example of the kind of civil society engagement unleashed by the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship, the nation’s largest private school choice program. (The scholarship is administered by nonprofits like Step Up For Students, which hosts this blog.)

Written by Victoria Bell (she authored it while associate policy director for educational opportunity at the Foundation for Excellence in Education; she’s now assistant director of K-12 education relationships at The Philanthropy Roundtable), the case study explores an underappreciated dynamic core to private school choice. Creation of the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship in 2001 energized parents, educators and an incredibly diverse mix of non-governmental entities to expand educational opportunities for Florida’s most disadvantaged students.

The scholarship allowed existing private schools to be a bigger part of the solution. It spawned creation of new private schools. It empowered educators to create new models. It empowered parents to choose them, or not. Bell offers examples of all that. Community groups, like the one behind Academy Prep, where nearly every student uses a tax credit scholarship, got involved. So did hundreds of churches and faith leaders. So did hundreds of corporations, thanks to a funding mechanism that allowed them to donate towards scholarships in return for tax credits. All of this happened voluntarily, with government offering incentives but an otherwise light touch.

The result: Better outcomes at less cost. The program now serves more than 100,000 low-income students, with an average annual family income of $25,743. And the academic outcomes are encouraging. A study released last year by the Urban Institute found scholarship students are 20 percent more likely to earn bachelor’s degrees than like students in public schools. This, even though other rigorous research shows scholarship students were, on average, the lowest performers in their prior public schools. And that the scholarship is worth 59 percent of total per-pupil funding for students in public schools.

The scholarship is a “successful example of public policy and civil society combining to solve a problem,” Bell concludes. “More Florida students than ever before have access to educational environments that are equipping them with the skills they need to pursue the American dream.”

I’m especially grateful Bell included the scholarship program’s impact on Catholic schools. As she notes, the scholarship is a key reason Catholic schools in Florida, unlike Catholic schools in virtually every other state in America, are not continuing to disappear. Enrollment has remained steady in recent years, and even ticked up slightly. Knowing how much Catholic schools have delivered high-quality education to low-income families for generations, this trend line has yet to get the recognition it deserves, either in Florida or beyond.

Bell focused on the tax credit scholarship, but there’s no doubt Florida’s ever-expanding menu of choice programs is stoking similar reactions. More than 130,000 students are enrolled in private pre-schools with help from Florida’s Voluntary Pre-Kindergarten program. More than 30,000 students with disabilities use the McKay Scholarship to attend private schools. Another 13,000 use the Gardiner Scholarship (also administered by Step Up), an education savings account for students with special needs.

The Gardiner Scholarship is still shy of its sixth birthday, but there are already 10,000 vendors in its orbit, from tutors to therapists to private schools. As this new wave of choice expands, look for an even more amplified response from civil society – and even more hands on deck.

March 18, 2020 0 comment
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Demographic ResearchEducation and Public PolicyEducation ChoiceFeaturedHope ScholarshipNewsParental Choice

Parents of bullying victims: Florida school districts failing to inform about school choice scholarships

Ron Matus March 13, 2020
Ron Matus

Florida school districts are routinely failing to notify parents of bullying victims that their children are eligible for new school choice scholarships aimed at giving them safer options, say parents who responded to a survey about the new program.

Districts are required by law to notify parents about Hope Scholarships after bullying incidents are reported. But 71 percent of Hope parents surveyed by the Learning Systems Institute at Florida State University said they learned of the scholarship through other means, such as private schools, internet searches and social media.

The survey size is small – 49 of 122 parents who secured the Hope Scholarship in its inaugural year. But their responses may help explain why two years after its creation, the scholarship is only serving a few hundred students, even though tens of thousands of students every year meet the eligibility criteria.

There are 368 Hope students this year, up from 127 in year one.

“Nobody at the public school told us anything about it even after repeated instances of bullying and us complaining about it,” one parent wrote.

“The school seemed very hesitant to give me the (Hope Scholarship notification) form,” wrote another. “I had to go to the office and basically demand it and make them sign it.”

Former Florida House Speaker and now Florida Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran spearheaded creation of the Hope Scholarship in 2018. The first-of-its-kind scholarship gives victims of bullying, harassment and similar incidents the option to attend private school or transfer to another public school.

The new report is rife with heart-wrenching quotes. One victim was slapped in the head 20 times in class. One had his head slammed against a concrete wall so hard it made him dizzy. Another had his lunch stolen nearly every day by kids who would eat it, step on it and throw it in the garbage. “I was crying in the car,” said the parent of another, “and (my child) is like, please mama, I don’t want to go back to that school.” The school climate, said yet another, was “like a slaughterhouse.”

Two thirds of the parents disagreed or strongly disagreed that the incidents were investigated in a timely manner or taken seriously by the district. Many expressed frustration with district officials who didn’t know the legal requirements for Hope – or, in their view, didn’t want to follow them.

By law, school districts must inform parents about the Hope Scholarship within 15 days after incidents are reported. They must provide the parent with a completed Hope notification form that verifies the incident was reported and the parent was informed. The form is needed to start the application process.

“Staff seemed to view the completion of the form as admitting their own guilt in some way,” one parent wrote. “There was resistance to signing at first until I produced the statute and accompanying memo from the (Florida Department of Education).”

In light of an ongoing debate about policies regarding LGBTQ students at some private schools, it’s worth noting that several Hope parents said their children were bullied in district schools because of their actual or perceived sexual orientation.

“He was ostracized from his peers and when kids would hang out with him, they would get bullied as well or told to watch out, if he touches you he’ll make you gay too,” said one. “My son was repeatedly called names such as f—–, gay boy, loser, etc. along with adult language,” said another.

Hope Scholarships are worth about $7,000 a year. They are funded by contributions in return for sales tax credits on motor vehicle purchases. So far this year, taxpayers have contributed $42 million.

The parent survey is part of a program evaluation required by statute. The Florida Department of Education hired the Learning Systems Institute.

Among other findings:

·       Most Hope Scholarship recipients are white (48 percent). Most were in middle school (47 percent). Bullying was the most common incident reported (34 percent).

·       Most respondents said the application process was easy (83.7 percent) and most disagreed or strongly disagreed that it took too long (75.5 percent).

·       Seventy-three percent said finding a safe school using the scholarship was very easy or somewhat easy. Twenty-seven percent found it somewhat or very challenging.

·       Respondents gave their children’s new schools high marks for safety, environment and engagement. On a scale of 1 to 4, overall ratings for the new schools averaged 3.58, compared to 1.85 for the prior schools.

One Hope parent said her son was two grade levels behind in reading in his prior school “because of all the issues.” But in his new school he revved two grade levels ahead.

“It’s the best experience I could have ever hoped for,” she said.

March 13, 2020 0 comment
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Commentary and OpinionDemographic ResearchEducation ChoiceEducation ResearchFeaturedFlorida Tax Credit ScholarshipSchool ChoiceVouchers

Extra! Extra! More good news about Florida schools

Ron Matus March 5, 2020
Ron Matus

When it comes to Florida’s public education system, good news does not travel fast.

The latest examples: Two encouraging reports that got zero traction in mainstream media circles.

The first is a rigorous study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research. It found that as America’s largest private school choice program grew, so did positive impacts on Florida’s public schools.

The second is the latest College Board report on Advanced Placement. Florida again ranks No. 3 in the percentage of graduating seniors who’ve passed college-caliber AP exams, even though it has a higher percentage of low-income students of any Top 10 state but one.

To date, neither report has received any coverage from any of the scores of mainstream media outlets in Florida, including the dozens that report state education news. (The choice report did get a thorough write up in Education Week.) Nor, as far as I can tell, has either report gotten even a perfunctory attaboy from the mainstream organizations that represent Florida parents, teachers and school boards.

This is not a surprise (see here, here and here) but it’s still a shame. Florida public schools haven’t reached the promised land. But they’ve come a long ways since the 1990s – when barely half of Florida students graduated from high school – and shouldn’t be denied accolades from those who claim to be their biggest supporters. One sad reason why is because acknowledging their progress would mean conceding that the expansion of education choice has not hurt Florida’s public education system – and probably helped it.

The new NBER paper shows exactly that.

As the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship expanded – it now serves more than 100,000 low-income students – students in Florida public schools most impacted by the competition saw higher test scores, fewer absences and fewer suspensions. In other words, Florida public schools didn’t get decimated when more parents got more power to choose. They got better. (The scholarship is administered by nonprofits such as Step Up For Students, which hosts this blog.)

How dissonant to hear, in the report’s wake, nothing but crickets. Especially now. The Florida Tax Credit Scholarship has never faced more media scrutiny.

Ditto for Florida’s other private school choice options. Last year, the state’s leading newspaper editorialized that creation of the state’s newest K-12 voucher, the Family Empowerment Scholarship, was “the death sentence for Florida’s public schools.” A sham “analysis” that followed warned of dire financial consequences for districts – and managed to spawn at least 10 news stories statewide.

This year’s coverage of a proposed expansion for the new scholarship (also administered in part by Step Up) is hardly more grounded. This week, it spurred a five-alarm op-ed from a school board member whose district has the state’s biggest black-white achievement gap. “Vouchers hurt all,” read the headline. “Time is running out,” the board member wrote, “to save traditional public schools from the steady march to privatization by the Florida Legislature.”

The shrug at Florida’s Advanced Placement success is even more curious. I’m a broken record about this (see here, see here, see … 😊), so I won’t belabor the point. And I’ll continue to agree with thoughtful critiques. But the outcomes here are yet another sign that Florida public schools continue to get better at serving the low-income students who are now a solid majority.

Of the 53,543 graduates in the Florida Class of 2019 who passed an AP exam, 40.3 percent got an exam fee reduction available to low-income students. Of the Top 10 states, only California had a higher rate, at 42.2 percent. The two states ahead of Florida, Massachusetts and Connecticut, had fee reduction rates of 18.6 percent and 14.9 percent, respectively.

Given that it’s low-income parents who are most apt to seek school choice options, shouldn’t traditional public school supporters be the first to shout these results from the rooftops? Maybe if media coverage didn’t suggest the sky was falling, they’d venture up there – and see the big picture of a public education system that really is getting better.

 

March 5, 2020 0 comment
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