Author

Scott Kent

Scott Kent manages strategic communication for Step Up For Students. A graduate of the University of Missouri School of Journalism, he spent 30 years in newspapers, the last 25 as an editorial writer and opinion page editor in Georgia and Florida. Additionally, he was opinion page editor at the Daytona Beach News-Journal. He can be reached at skent@sufs.org or (727) 451-9832. Follow him on Twitter at @ScottKent66 and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/redefinedonline.

fact-checkED: Family Empowerment Scholarship not ‘a hit to public schools’

Scott Kent November 1, 2019

Scott Kent

Editor’s note: This post is another in our fact-checking series, one that focuses solely within the arena of educational choice. The goal of fact-checkED is to bring clinical precision to complex issues that are easily misunderstood, aiming to counteract incorrect information before it continues to circulate.

An Oct. 30 news story in the Gainesville Sun about the Family Empowerment Scholarship (FES) included an uncontested assertion by the Florida Education Association that the new program will drain money from public schools:

Researchers from the state’s teachers union say according to their calculations with those averages, the program will pull $1.2 million to 1.3 million from the Alachua County School District and $2.2 million to 2.4 million from Marion County Public Schools.

“It’s a hit to public schools,” said Eileen Roy, Alachua County school board member. “Parents need to know that it’s $1 million less to help their children. This is a very scary move, and we can’t afford to ignore it.”

The article continues:

Shortly after the program passed, the Florida Education Association projected that the scholarships would divert $11 million from Alachua County Public Schools over the next five years. For Marion County, they predicted a $19 million loss.

This is false.

It’s appropriate that this claim was published around Halloween, because it perpetuates what amounts to a ghost story aimed at frightening people.

Leave aside the school board member’s us-versus-them statement that “parents need to know that it’s $1 million less to help their children” – which completely ignores the low-income parents in her county who see the new scholarship as a way to help their children find the right education environment. Do they not count in her social order?

Instead, let’s focus on the math.

Florida has 18 years of financial data from the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship (FTC), on which the new scholarship is modeled. Eight different independent fiscal impact studies have concluded the FTC saves taxpayer money that can be re-invested in public schools. Not a single study has shown otherwise. That’s because the value of the scholarship is less than what taxpayers spend per student in district schools.

A Florida Tax Watch report on the “true cost” of public education, released in March, determined the FTC scholarship in 2017-18 was worth 59 percent of all categories of per-pupil spending for district schools, which Tax Watch calculated to be $10,856.

The new FES vouchers, like the current FTC scholarships, average between $6,775 and $7,250.

Florida will spend about $130 million this academic year to award Family Empowerment Scholarships to 18,000 students. If you add the basic per-pupil funding increases over the last two years to update the Florida Tax Watch calculation from 2017-18, it would cost the state about $200 million to educate the same students in district schools.

It’s worth noting that the Florida Education Association was the lead plaintiff in a years-long lawsuit that sought to kill the FTC scholarship. The Florida Supreme Court ultimately dismissed the suit in 2017, after a lower court found the plaintiffs couldn’t provide any evidence that the program harmed public schools. That included an “analysis” similar to the one the union has trotted out against the FES.

Finally, the state doesn’t pay school districts for empty seats in classrooms, regardless of why students left. If they move to another district, or out of state; if their parents decide to home-school them; or if they leave to attend a private school and their families pay tuition out of their own pockets, the impact on the districts in per-pupil funding is the same.

Oddly, it only seems to become an existential threat to public education when a low-income student takes advantage of a scholarship or voucher to attend the school of his or her choice.

November 1, 2019 0 comment

Education and Public Policy Education legislation Education politics Family Empowerment Scholarship News School Choice

Education choice a top priority for Legislative Black Caucus

Scott Kent October 29, 2019

Scott Kent

Florida’s Legislative Black Caucus, which includes 21 House members and six senators, emphasized the importance of education last week in Tallahassee.

When Florida’s Legislative Black Caucus unveiled its priorities for the 2020 session at a media conference Tuesday in the Capitol, it was unsurprising that PreK-12 education was among the first mentioned. What raised eyebrows, though, was the group’s acknowledgement that school choice should be a part of it.

“We believe in investing in public education,” said Rep. Bruce Antone, D-Orlando, the group’s chairman who also serves as the ranking minority member of the House Education Committee. “And we also believe in school choice.”

For many Democratic politicians and African-American leaders, school choice is the limburger cheese of the education deli (despite the fact that many of their constituents support it). So for Antone to publicly offer even a thin slice of it was newsworthy.

That’s probably why he quickly qualified his statement: “But in terms more so of school choice, in the public school system.” He likely was referring to magnet schools, perhaps also charter schools, although the latter have become politically volatile.

Still, that “more so” seemingly leaves the door cracked ever so slightly to other, more controversial, choice options, such as vouchers and education scholarship accounts (ESAs).

Some members of the caucus support opening it wider.

Rep. Wengay Newton, whose wide-ranging district includes South St. Petersburg and parts of Manatee, Sarasota and southern Hillsborough counties, was one of five caucus Democrats who voted in the 2019 session for SB 7070, the bill that created the new Family Empowerment Scholarship.

“School choice is a black choice,” Newton said Thursday. He sees it as a tool to help close the “school to prison pipeline,” whereby black students are statistically more likely to receive harsh discipline in public schools than their white counterparts. He cited Florida Department of Juvenile Justice data from 2017-18 on the number of school-related arrests for children of color in the Tampa Bay area – 603 in Hillsborough, 458 in Pinellas, 206 in Manatee and 91 in Sarasota counties. Many are younger than high school age.

“If an African-American kid gets in a fight in the southern part of St. Pete, that will result in them being sent to juvie jail,” Newton said, “but if it happens in an affluent part with a white kid, it will result in a suspension.”

Newton sees education choice as immediate relief for minority children who can’t wait for an unfair system to change.

“Parental school choice is a jet ski, while a traditional school is like a cruise ship,” he said. “If a kid falls off a cruise ship it might take 20 miles to turn around and rescue him. A jet ski can do a quicker response.”

To critics who charge that private school vouchers drain funds from public schools, Newton responds that tax dollars already are being spent on privatized juvenile justice. He would prefer those dollars provide low-income and minority students with education opportunities that will keep them out of the system.

“I told our chairman (Antone) that we can’t shackle black kids to this system,” Newton said. “If you’ve got cancer you need chemo. Robitussin isn’t going to do it.”

Newton said Antone’s rhetorical nod to choice, however modest, was not the result of any compromise negotiations with the caucus’ pro-choice members. Rather, it was an acknowledgement of the diverse opinions within the group.

“He’s saying you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do for your district,” Newton said. “He’s letting members support other options. He wasn’t binding every member to support only public schools.”

He said that although a majority of the caucus has yet to support expanding choice, they have no desire to take it away from the nearly 120,000 students currently attending their chosen schools on the Florida Tax Credit and FES scholarships, some 35,000 of whom are black.

October 29, 2019 0 comment

Customization Education politics School Choice vouchers

Misplaced nostalgia for public education

Scott Kent October 22, 2019

Scott Kent

Father Knows Best, an American sitcom starring Robert Young and Jane Wyatt, chronicled the lives of the Andersons, a middle-class family living in the Midwest in the 1950s.

Conservatives have been accused of wanting to take the nation back to an idealized version of a homogenized America, such as the ones portrayed in the squeaky-clean 1950s sitcoms “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet” and “Father Knows Best,” before the political and cultural upheaval of the 1960s. (Sometimes they’re right.) Critics point out that wasn’t the reality, nor ideal, for many Americans, particularly those who were excluded from many sectors of society because of their race, sex, or sexual orientation.

Many who defend public education against private-school vouchers are guilty of a similarly misplaced nostalgia.

In a recent Scotusblog symposium on the upcoming U.S. Supreme Court case Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue, Alice O’Brien, general counsel at the National Education Association, took Montana’s side in the dispute over whether its constitution can prohibit public funds being directed to private religious schools via parental choice.

She writes that most state constitutional education provisions reflect “common understandings” that include “a uniform quality system of public education is essential to democratic self-governance,” and “entangling the state in funding religious education leads to sectarian conflict.”

This history is true given the fact that many of these provisions have their roots in the 19^th century, when Horace Mann led the common school movement, followed by John Dewey in the early 20^th century. Making a free education available to the entire public, regardless of a student’s class, gender, religion, ethnicity, or country of origin, was seen as a great social equalizer and assimilator, as well as a way to impart shared civic values on the citizenry, making for a stronger, stable democracy.

David Labaree, professor at the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University, has called public education “an institution that for much of our history helped bring us together into a community of citizens.”

Today that approach appears as quaint as “Little House on the Prairie.” Not that the old days of public education were kumbaya either. Just ask black students who were forced to attend segregated schools.

Common schools and uniform systems of public education require shared beliefs among their stakeholders. Look around the nation’s political and cultural landscape. Do you see a lot of communality?

From professional athletes who kneel during the playing of the national anthem to the meaning of the Betsy Ross flag, Americans can’t even agree on a shared vision of patriotism.

O’Brien worries about vouchers sparking sectarian conflict (ironic, given the fact that Montana’s education provision is a de facto Blaine Amendment, itself a product of anti-Catholic bigotry) when schools already are riven by the secular conflicts of the culture wars.

The Cato Institute has cataloged the discord in K-12 education in its Public Schooling Battle Map (currently undergoing maintenance, but many of the items are available on Twitter at @PubSchoolFights). There are the evergreen clashes between parents and school officials over textbooks, reading assignments, and curricula. But there’s also the teacher who got fired for using an incorrect pronoun for a student. Dress codes that critics say unfairly impact black girls. Schools named after historical figures some find problematic.

Our tribal instincts are being triggered constantly. If one side came out in favor of oxygen, the other side would refuse to breathe.

Americans have been drifting apart for a while, and it’s not getting any better. Perhaps that’s to be expected in a nation of 330 million people that is more pluralistic than it has ever been, and growing more so. The public can’t even agree on the purpose of public education.

Into this bubbling cauldron we’re going to impose a uniform system of schooling that inculcates civic values.

Whose values?

These clashes in part reflect changing mores, but also the atomization of American culture and the customization of individual lifestyles. The old gatekeepers have fallen and the doors flung open to a myriad of choices for the populace. Personal technology facilitates people choosing what they want to consume (be it entertainment, information, food, or virtually any product), when and where they want to consume it. They can select exactly what aligns with their tastes and their daily schedules.

These modern citizens are not going to subject themselves to a one-size-fits-all education. They expect to get what they want, and demand the same freedom of choice in other aspects of their lives.

Believing that centralized education delivery systems can meet all these desires is as misguided and unrealistic as thinking what America needs is more Ward and June Cleavers.

The ones most satisfied with public education will be the ones setting the agenda. Replacing those in power making the “wrong” decisions with those who will exercise the “right” judgment only trades one perceived oppressor for the other, leaving the minority chafing at the majority’s new rules imposed on them. The disputes may change, but the frictions remain. Worse, when policy becomes a zero-sum calculation, these back-and-forth battles elevate the stakes of elections, which intensifies political strife. Rinse and repeat.

The relief valve for this pressure cooker is to give more families a diverse array of education options and the freedom to choose the ones that best align with their children’s needs and their values. Access cannot be income dependent. That’s why vouchers, scholarships and other assistance are necessary to provide equal opportunity.

That approach still promotes the ideal of public investment in education for all, without limiting it to a single delivery system – one that is ill-suited to accommodate the competing wants and needs of its diverse clientele in a modern world (if it ever truly was).

There’s no going back. Nostalgia should not be an excuse to deny giving more parents more choices in their children’s education. Education should reflect the way the world is, not the way people want it to be.

October 22, 2019 0 comment

Education Research News School Choice

School leaders to their communities: Are we communicating yet?

Scott Kent October 4, 2019

Scott Kent

When it comes to connecting with the parents and communities they serve, many school leaders sound like Strother Martin in the movie “Cool Hand Luke”:

“What we’ve got here is failure to communicate.”

That’s the conclusion of nearly half of the 500 school leaders nationwide surveyed in the recently released “The State of K-12 Customer Experience 2019.” Conducted by K12 Insight, a Herndon, Virginia-based school research and communications firm, with support from the National School Public Relations Association and the National School Boards Association, the report solicited input from superintendents, central office staff, building principals and school board members.

Only about half of the participants believed their school district could engage and build trust with parents and community members. Slightly more than half (56 percent) were confident in their ability to effectively communicate with their own employees.

Many parents would agree. According to a 2017 study by Rice University researchers, parents listed family and community engagement as the most important element of satisfaction with their child’s school — and that districts frequently fail to meet their demands.

Only 34 percent of the more than 7,200 public school parents surveyed said they were “very satisfied” with family and community engagement. Only 29 percent believed they had a voice in running their child’s school. Parents also expressed low rates of satisfaction with administration and staff members’ eagerness to ask for input.

According to the K12 Insight survey, educators are well aware of the consequences when trust is lacking – “it often leads to unnecessary distractions and siphons quality resources away from their core focus: educating children.”

School quality doesn’t seem to matter — even academically strong schools said they struggled to connect with their communities. Not surprisingly, though, size matters — the bigger the district, the greater the communication gap. School leaders representing districts with fewer than 75,000 ranked their customer service quality higher than those from school districts with 75,000-plus students.

That speaks to the unwieldiness of large bureaucracies and centralized systems. There’s ample anecdotal evidence – perhaps your own experience – of parents expressing frustration with an unresponsive administration, and navigating red tape. Even well-meaning administrators who would like to help might feel overwhelmed.

Another contributor: state legislatures that impose layer upon layer of regulation on districts, so that schools become more accountable to lawmakers than they are to parents. If schools had fewer top-down mandates to comply with, they might have more flexibility to connect with their communities. And if parents had more control over their children’s education, school officials might be more receptive to addressing their needs.

Decentralizing education delivery systems and giving families more choices might go a long way toward restoring bonds between educators and parents. The Rice University study found that 50 percent of parents at private schools, and 47 percent of those at charter schools, were “very satisfied” with how their schools communicated with them.

That may be because parents were able to find the schools that best match what they desire for their children – and that those schools are better able to provide them with what they want. Those that don’t won’t last long if enough families go elsewhere.

Certainly, districts can try harder to engage parents (in the K12 Insight survey, 19 percent of school leaders reported that they have no district employee tasked with monitoring customer service quality). More information, more assistance, and more empathy with parents might build more trust.

Ultimately, though, districts face structural barriers to closing the communication gap. They can be overcome by giving parents more say in their children’s education, and better access to the teachers and administrators who deliver it.

October 4, 2019 0 comment

Charter Schools Customization Education equity Education Research Florida Tax Credit Scholarship Parental Choice Private Schools School Choice Tax credit scholarships vouchers

A roadmap for the future of education in Florida

Scott Kent September 13, 2019

Scott Kent

Two decades ago, Florida planted the seeds of ambitious education reform that have proved fruitful. The Sunshine State has seen significant improvements in academic achievement and graduation rates – Education Week recently ranked the state fourth in the nation in K-12 achievement for the second year in a row — while simultaneously expanding opportunities for families to choose the education settings that work best for their children.

But even as the roots of success continue to take hold, the tree of knowledge requires further cultivation to ensure it thrives for all students over the next 20 years — and beyond.

That’s the conclusion of the “Horizons 2040 Project,” a report released Wednesday by the Florida Council of 100, a private, nonprofit organization of business, civic and education leaders (including the school superintendents of Miami-Dade, Collier and Orange counties). A roadmap for policymakers, it recommends a mixture of investments in traditional public education resources – including boosting teacher pay — and expanding choice opportunities that have coincided with the state’s climb up the rankings ladder.

The report establishes 11 values, emphasizing that resources must be “focused on the classroom, not administration,” and allocated “where they have the greatest impact.” Outcomes should be objectively measured, and superior results should be rewarded. All spending decisions should be “targeted and performance-driven,” with the key question being: “Where does the public investment provide the greatest student return?”

Choice is a vital component to finding those answers. Students must be provided with as many “learning environments and educational options” as possible so that education can be tailored to meet the needs of each student. That not only creates more diverse opportunities to learn and the ability to customize education. It also imbues a sense of ownership.

Indeed, the report argues that accountability begins with accepting responsibility, which requires students to “personally own” their education – “a path chosen is always more likely to be followed than one that is rigidly dictated.”

Members of the Council’s PreK-12 Education Committee spent three years visiting 23 public and private schools — 16 district-run schools, six private schools serving low-income students on state scholarship programs, and one charter school — to examine various “best practices” for 21^st century learning. (The committee was led by John Kirtley, chairman of Step Up For Students, the state’s largest K-12 scholarship funding organization and which hosts this blog. In addition, Step Up President Doug Tuthill was an ex-officio member of the committee.) These included:

Evans High School in Orlando, a community school that provides students with wrap-around social services to improve overall learning.
Academy Prep Center of St. Petersburg, where students go to school 11 hours a day, six days a week. The report notes the school environment “feels like a second family.”
West Florida High School of Advanced Technology in Pensacola, which partners with businesses to provide students college- and career-ready education.
Hialeah Gardens High School in Miami, which pairs career academies with rigorous academics to create post-graduation pathways for all students.

“One of the most important things that we saw was how leadership established a culture of achievement at a school,” Kirtley said. “One of the best examples of this was the principal of Northwestern High School in Miami. This school is in one of the most challenging neighborhoods in the state. Its students face challenges outside of school that most of us can’t even imagine. And yet this principal took the school from an F to an A in just a few years.”

From those experiences the committee identified nine “Beacons” that illuminate “Paths to Prosperity.” The report calls pre-K through third grade the “make-or-break educational years in a student’s life.” Thus, the first beacon is to ensure that all students arrive in fourth grade adequately prepared. The path to that achievement includes heavy emphasis on beefing up VPK with more year-round support services and assessments, and providing parents with more information on programs and performance.

The report also recommends infusing schools with specialized support personnel to help academically (such as math/literacy tutors) and socially/behaviorally (not only counselors, but also community volunteers serving as morning door greeters).

Beacon 3 addresses the important role teachers have in shaping children’s lives and the difference a good teacher makes in academic achievement — as well as Florida’s struggles to recruit and retain quality educators. It notes that the state’s average teacher pay ranks 46th in the nation, about 20 percent below the national average. The report recommends changes in teacher training, certification, and support, but first and foremost advocates for better pay and benefits. That could include housing and childcare subsidies, and forgiving student loans.

It’s an issue that cuts across ideological and partisan political lines.

“One message that we heard very clearly, over and over, is that teacher salaries need to increase. It just has to be done,” Kirtley said.

Beacon 7 acknowledges that students learn in myriad ways, and come from many different (and sometimes shifting) backgrounds. Creating personalized learning environments would help meet the needs of every student. Adopting mastery-based education (MBE) is one method of allowing students to learn at their own pace, without being tied to a time-based, classroom schedule. Providing funding directly to students would facilitate more diverse, non-traditional learning environments, making education more portable and flexible, and equalizing opportunities.

Horizons 2040 presents an ambitious vision of education’s future, but it’s not pie-in-the-sky. It’s grounded in the track record of a 20-year experiment, with the attendant knowledge of what has worked and what hasn’t. It’s not a giant leap into the unknown so much as the next step forward.

September 13, 2019 0 comment

Education and Public Policy Education legislation Education politics Myth busters School Choice Testing and Accountability vouchers

Accountability comes in different forms

Scott Kent June 25, 2019

Scott Kent

Editor’s note: One of the most pervasive of all education choice myths is the one that claims schools that accept scholarships are not held accountable to the public for their success — or failure. We looked at the “no accountability” myth last week but take a deeper dive in today’s post. You can see more myth busting here, or by clicking the link at the top right-hand corner of this page.

Many cultures around the world have a common trope: a mythical creature parents invoke to scare their children into behaving. It goes by different names – the bogeyman, Baba Yaga, El Coco – but the admonition is usually the same: “If you don’t do as I say, so-and-so is going to get you!”

Critics of education choice deploy their own bugbears to frighten the masses.

For years these critics have argued that voucher programs divert tax dollars from public schools to “unaccountable” private schools. That’s been a popular talking point for opponents of Florida’s new Family Empowerment Scholarship:

“There are no systems in place for accountability.” “A wild west of unregulated, unaccountable voucher schools.” “Tens of millions of public dollars each year for primarily religious private schools that have no public accountability.”

(This is on top of other terrifying rhetoric such as, “The way Florida sells ‘choice’ relies heavily on gaslighting its citizens.”)

Cue the spooky organ music.

In reality, voucher schools are subject to two forms of accountability: the top-down regulatory model, albeit with a lighter touch than what public schools receive; and the kind you get from the bottom-up through parental choice, something few public schools face.

The debate shouldn’t be whether voucher schools should be regulated and held accountable (they are). Rather, it should be about finding the right mixture of different methods.

Public schools face large degrees of government regulatory accountability, from standardized testing, to curriculum, to teacher certification, to restrictions on how they can spend funds, and on and on. Private schools aren’t “unregulated,” as many critics claim. Florida law, for example, includes nearly 12,000 words of regulations governing schools that participate in the state’s tax credit scholarship program.

Those schools must provide parents information about teacher qualifications; test students in grades 3-10 in reading and math on state-approved national norm-referenced tests; and conduct annual financial reports if the school receives more than $250,000 from any scholarship source, to name just a few. Schools are also subjected to health, safety, fire and building occupancy inspections. Starting in 2019-20, new participating schools must be inspected by the Florida Department of Education before accepting any scholarship students.

Regulations that are burdensome can deter private school participation in voucher programs, which limits choices (and the quality of those choices). Making private schools subject to the same regulations as public schools would defeat the purpose of choice, which is to eliminate sameness and encourage diversity and innovation, allowing parents to customize their children’s education.

There’s a compelling argument that district schools are overregulated, often made by the stakeholders themselves. Teachers and parents complain about too much testing, too much paperwork, too much programmed instruction. “Just let me teach!” is the cri de coeur of many educators.

Like private and charter schools, public schools should be allowed more flexibility to operate, so they can better meet the needs of their students. It’s not about favoring one system over another. It’s about choosing students over systems, and allowing their families to seek the best options.

Putting that choice in the hands of parents represents the most direct and effective form of accountability. Their decision to attend or not attend a school serves as the ultimate oversight. If a school fails to deliver, it loses students and resources as dissatisfied parents look elsewhere.

This form of accountability is in short supply in public schools, particularly in low-income areas, where parents generally can’t afford to move to a neighborhood with a better school or pay tuition for a private school. They are stuck attending the school they are zoned for, regardless of whether it is working for their child.

These district schools are supposed to be accountable to their government overseers, but the consequences can’t match the immediacy of a parent’s decision to act now. How many public schools are closed for non-performance? How long does the process take? When public schools are deemed to have performed poorly, the response often is to advocate spending more money on them, in the misguided correlation between inputs (dollars) and outputs. What kind of accountability is that?

Letting parents decide has demonstrable benefits. For 10 consecutive years, Florida Tax Credit Scholarship students – who are among the most economically disadvantaged and lowest- performing students in the public schools they leave behind – have achieved the same solid test score gains in reading and math as students of all income levels nationally. In addition, an Urban Institute study released earlier this year found that students using the scholarship are up to 43 percent more likely to enroll in four-year colleges than their peers in public schools, and up to 20 percent more likely to earn bachelor’s degrees.

Regulatory accountability can be a blunt instrument. A school’s overall positive grade can’t account for the individual students who aren’t benefiting, for whatever reason. It may not even be related to academics. Parents evaluate their children’s success and satisfaction with schools on far more criteria than test scores. They need a variety of options, and the means to exercise that choice.

To make informed choices, parents need as much knowledge about schools as possible – relevant data (graduation rates, curriculum, turnover in students and faculty, etc.), as well as consumer feedback, i.e., a Yelp or TripAdvisor for schools.

But they already know better than any technocrat what makes their child tick. Self-interest is a powerful motivator – and an effective antidote to the hobgoblins and phantasms aimed at undermining it.

June 25, 2019 0 comment

Education politics Education reporting Family Empowerment Scholarship Myth busters School Choice

Debunking the ‘no accountability’ myth

Scott Kent June 19, 2019

Scott Kent

Editor’s note: Misinformation abounds across the education choice landscape, adding confusion to an already complex issue. The redefinED team is dedicated to shining a light and providing the facts. Today’s post debunks an oft-repeated misconception: Private schools that accept scholarships are not held accountable. You can see more myth busting here, or click the link at the top right-hand corner of this page.

Education choice critics have argued for years that voucher programs divert tax dollars from public schools to “unaccountable” private schools. That misperception has now become a popular talking point for opponents of Florida’s new Family Empowerment Scholarship.

A recent opinion piece in the Orlando Sentinel implies that voucher schools fail to hire qualified teachers, that they are unable to prove they’re educating students, and that they are not transparent with their finances.

The Ocala Star Banner opined that the FES “opened the door” to spending tens of millions of public dollars on schools with “no public accountability, no common testing procedures and generally no teacher certification parameters.”

Meanwhile, the Florida Education Association in a recently released report warns that the state’s new education bill could cause public schools to lose almost $1 billion in the next five years and references an Orlando Sentinel series that “revealed the lack of oversight and accountability over private schools operating in Florida.”

In truth, voucher schools are subject to two forms of accountability: the top-down regulatory model, albeit with a lighter touch than what public schools receive; and the kind you get from the bottom-up through parental choice, something few public schools face.

Florida devotes nearly 12,000 words of regulations governing the Tax Credit Scholarship. Among them: Schools must provide parents information about teacher qualifications; they must test students in grades 3-10 in reading and math on state-approved national norm referenced tests; and they must conduct annual financial reports if the school receives more than $250,000 from any scholarship source.

Schools also are subjected to health, safety, fire and building occupancy inspections. Starting in 2019-20, new participating schools must be inspected by the DOE before accepting any scholarship students. Read more here.

In addition to these external regulations, parents who are dissatisfied with their private schools can vote with their feet and take their scholarship students elsewhere. That ability represents the most immediate and direct form of accountability: If the schools can’t deliver, they lose students and the money that follows them.

That kind of accountability is in short supply in district schools, particularly in low-income areas, where parents generally can’t afford to move to a neighborhood with a better school or pay tuition for a private school.

June 19, 2019 3 comments

Advocate Voices Bipartisanship Common Ground Education politics Education reporting School Choice

The human face of education

Scott Kent February 1, 2019

Scott Kent

Rarely do we hear about what those on the front lines of education think – the parents and students.

If you could illustrate media coverage of education choice, it would resemble a bird’s-eye view of a vast industrial complex: machinery greased by politics, walls whose mortar is money, and a maze of piping and tubing to deliver hot and cold takes.

What’s often missing is the human element.

Sure, most stories about choice focus on the actors surrounding the programs: legislators, school board members, teachers union officials, think tank wonks, activists. The primary concern is how policy affects institutions, and which side is winning the debate.

Rarely do we hear about what those on the front lines think – the parents and students.

I know this because I used to be part of the problem. I was a newspaper editorial writer and editor for 25 years before joining Step Up For Students, which hosts this blog. In my former life, I wrote dozens of opinion pieces on school choice, almost always relying on the input of legislative combatants. They were the decision-makers and influencers who were well-versed in the details and arguments, and usually easily accessible.

Now, having descended from the ivory tower and moved to the other side of the media lens, I’m tasked with reaching out to families who benefit from education choice to learn their stories. The difference in perspective has been eye-opening.

Parents who support choice are not ideologues. Most are extremely practical; they want what’s best for their child, not what’s advantageous for a certain side. Many will eschew partisan and identity politics to vote their naked self-interest.

They express frustration with a school system that is unresponsive to their needs, often while acknowledging they have no animus toward traditional public education. Indeed, parents will say they themselves succeeded in public schools, or even have other children who are doing well in a traditional setting. But the current setup isn’t working for one or more of their kids, and they are desperate to find alternatives that work.

Often, a parent will be moved to tears describing the obstacles he or she faces, be they bureaucratic or financial, or when attempting to express the relief that comes with seeing a child thrive in a new environment made possible by a choice program.

These families come in so many shapes and sizes, with so many individualized needs, it’s impossible to fit them all under one rubric. They need solutions, not excuses. Their stories need to be part of the narrative.

That’s not to say that pols and professionals have no stake in the issue, or nothing to contribute. Or that there aren’t legitimate questions about the impacts on school districts, or public education writ large.

Furthermore, although newspapers and media platforms publish letters and columns from parents of students in choice schools, rarely do you see those parents and their anguished pleas for help in the news stories and house opinion pieces, intertwined in the narrative with the professionals.

The media have no problem putting faces on other policy disputes, such as how welfare reform will affect the single mother on public assistance, or the working family of four living paycheck to paycheck who lacks health insurance. The same desire to humanize should be applied to education reform.

Keeping the focus on politicians makes it easier for people to choose sides based on who’s supporting or opposing: “Well, if he’s for it, then I’m against it,” or vice-versa. Seeing a sympathetic civilian might force more folks to give the issue additional thought.

A staple of local education coverage involves going into traditional public school classrooms and talking to students in order to highlight academic achievement, or an interesting new program (such as a robotics lab) the district is eager to publicize. And that’s great. They deserve the attention.

Yet, the same curiosity isn’t applied to choice students – not even when they’re gathered in one convenient place. In January 2016, some 10,000 parents, students and school administrators, along with several pastors from around the state, marched in Tallahassee to protest a lawsuit by the Florida Education Association aimed at dismantling the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship. (Later that year, a state appeals court affirmed the constitutionality of the scholarship program). The media coverage almost uniformly excluded interviews with the families who would be most affected by changes in the system.

Assignment desk editors: In 2017-18, nearly 450,000 students in Florida attended a public charter school or used a tax credit scholarship or ESA to attend a private school. That’s a lot of stories to be told.

February 1, 2019 0 comment

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