Commentary and Opinion

Commentary and opinion

The uncommon common school

John E. Coons April 1, 2020

“ … A common murderer, possibly, but a very uncommon cook.”

— Saki, “The Blind Spot”

A few years ago, an eminent author-educator – let us call him or her “X” – renounced a short-lived flirtation with and promotion of school choice. X returned in remorse to a preceding career as supporter of the compulsory assignment of the children of not-so-well-off families to their local common school. Such mothers and fathers, like most parents, value their legal authority over just where, and from whom, their own flesh and blood will learn what’s what; sadly, they can’t afford to exercise it.

Now, X clearly knew this, and was, I think, in that brief defection to school choice, a would-be friend of the poor, yet, like too many of our pedagogical elite, was wedged in an intellectual bunker. That specific dark hole featured, and does yet, a set of empirical assumptions about government schools that picture their world as sufficiently uniform in method and message to serve as the common experience for both rich and poor – for every child.

Hence, justifiably, that same routine may be imposed, in whichever school, upon those families over whom the government holds sufficient economic (not legal) power. These, we see, are the poor who cannot escape by moving residence or by paying tuition at St. Athanasius. At the public school, everybody learns the same stuff anyway, so … no big problem.

This image of an education that is truly “common” may have been comforting to professional minds like that of X who longed to behold and be part of some “one best system.” And, by extension, the news of this reality lulled, and does yet, much of the American public conscience by its appearance as a happy truth coming from those who really know.

The mass of us thus can join X in the sedated apprehension of a school system truly common in its core mission and method. That ruling image quite logically encourages our widespread assurance that any “public” school serves as a proper place to teach successfully those young citizens who can be trusted to maintain our civic ideals (and, especially, that child of the poor whom it rescues from family ignorance).

Prudently, the apologist concedes that, human nature being what it is, this intended civic and intellectual payoff will be not quite universal; it is simply the best that the mind of man can deliver short of Plato’s recommendation that elite society snatch all babies permanently from their parents’ corruptive influence.

Furthermore, this flourishing homogeneity among the product of the common school would be insurance against those forms of civic and social division ever threatened by the disharmony of content method – and even civic purpose – represented in our motley-minded private schools. This image of an ideal and extant order of truly common state schools versus another of incoherence just could have nagged serious minds like that of X even during his/her season of pro-choice.

The would-be altruist was, and remained, in a personal vocation to the poor; but only for that one brief season did he/she suppose that even these have-nots could be trusted to choose from a broad private menu whatever would be best for their own child and society.

Soon, and to X’s dismay, in what now could seem the real world, he/she witnessed a near monopoly of the pro-choice conversation by apostles of a “pure” unregulated market in schooling, made as it had been imagined by the late Milton Friedman. That is, roughly, every child, whether rich or poor, would receive a voucher of equal dollar amount; government would leave the seller (school) free to charge whatever extra it could lure from the buyer (parent). If low-income families found themselves clustered in cheap and chancy private schools, such is life; there were to be no rules that would encourage their admission by the seller.

If in fact it was that cruel image of school choice which drove X (and many another) back to the support of our military-style draft of the poor, that could be understandable. X’s decision would then have been consistent with the popular conception that public schools all at least try to teach the same stuff in the same way. X went for what seemed the lesser of evils; and the poor would thus learn the same as the rich.

For better of worse, that picture of symmetry appears to me untrue, even among schools of the same district – even from room to room in the same school. It was untrue of our own family experience with five children who spent a bit over half their semesters enrolled in public schools. Our story is confirmed today, not only in professional media and tattle but, more directly, in the tales of today’s school parents – some in appreciation of such rich variety, more in disappointment.

Teachers, it would appear, are still free humans with their own world views, personalities and talents; they assign their own students ideas of history and civics quite incompatible with the classroom down the hall. Next year, some will feature the anomalous and discredited 1619 Project, others the profound scholarship of James Loewen’s “Lies My Teacher Told Me.”

This jungle of minds could be taken as the pride rather than the scandal of the “public” school, in part a happy, if paradoxical, effect of their very status as public – a governmental entity. Even our courts have shown concern for the (limited) “right” of the public teacher to speak her own mind. And, much more important, is the intellectual umbrella provided the off-beat instructor (ironically) by the hungry domination of the system by the teachers union which effectively shelters all teacher performance but extreme ideology or factual quackery.

The message of the “public” schoolroom is neither uniform nor predictable. And that would be fine, if only the parent were empowered to choose, experience, switch – to be a parent.

April 1, 2020 0 comment

Commentary and Opinion Demographic Research Education Choice Education Equity Featured School Choice

Hard work, not ‘magic Cubans,’ led to Florida’s Hispanic literacy surge

Matthew Ladner March 30, 2020

Matthew Ladner

You, dear reader, look as though you could use some distraction from the viral apocalypse. Like many good stories, this one flashes back to the past to inform the present.

A decade ago, while an analyst at the Goldwater Institute, I participated in a debate concerning choice versus curriculum reform. Yes, people were confused about whether those things were mutually exclusive a decade ago, as they are today. (Spoiler alert: choice helps curriculum reform).

In any case, the debate prompted me to ask myself which states had done a lot of both choice and testing accountability. This in turn led me to look closely at the NAEP scores of Florida and to consider that former Gov. Jeb Bush had aggressively sought to improve literacy instruction by creating a variety of public and private choice mechanisms.

Staring at fourth-grade NAEP scores by race/ethnicity on my computer screen, here is what I discovered.

The conversation around K-12 in Arizona at the time frequently involved an “if you control for student demographics, we are kind of average” story. This was part of a fable with a thousand faces; you will hear different versions of it in different states. In Arizona, the story involved kids immigrating from Mexico who were unable to read Spanish. In Minnesota, I’ve heard tales told in hushed voices about Hmong kids. In more than one southern state, I’ve heard allusions to scores of white kids scoring quite high when they weren’t anything of the sort. The details vary, but the moral is always the same: “We here in state X, we’ve got the really hard-to-educate kids.”

The fact that Florida’s Hispanic students were reading approximately a grade level higher than the average for all students in Arizona required the development of a new rationale. That new rationale was the magic Cuban theory. Florida’s Hispanics are Cubans, the story went, and they are wealthy. “Obviously we can’t expect to do that with our Hispanic students,” the theory concluded.

I related the magic Cuban theory to an audience at the first ExcelinEd conference held in Orlando. Given the advantage of local knowledge held by many audience members, the crowd laughed out loud at the absurdity of the stereotype. Despite living in a distant patch of cactus, I had spent enough time in the Florida Keys with my grandfather to develop a lifelong taste for ropas viejas and to know better.

The magic Cuban theory could never survive scrutiny. First off, Florida’s Hispanic community is vastly more diverse than appreciated by distant stereotypes, with Cubans constituting a minority among Hispanics. Second, Florida saw large increases in literacy among multiple ethnic groups. Magic Haitian theory anyone?

Finally, buried deep in the data explorer, NAEP has a variable that allows you to break down Hispanics by subgroup. NAEP, alas, discontinued this variable, but we do have it for both 1998 (the year before Jeb Bush took office) and 2002. It would have been great to have data from additional years, but note that the 2002 NAEP came before the adoption of the third-grade retention policy. Between 1998 and 2002, Florida policymakers had adopted major education reforms, but not all the reforms.

Here is what the gains looked like during the 1998 to 2002 period.

Florida’s Cuban-Americans scored well, but they were not driving gains. As a rough rule of thumb, 10 points on NAEP exams approximately equals an average grade level’s worth of progress. In other words, we would expect a group of fifth-graders given the fourth-grade test to do about 10 points better. The Mexican-American gains were very large, very meaningful and very statistically significant.

By the way, those eighth-graders from 2002 are approaching their mid-30s now. With all of today’s troubles, and considering those around the bend, Florida chose wisely in not succumbing to the soft bigotry of low expectations, instead making an all-out effort to teach literacy. Life is hard, but life is really hard if you can’t read.

March 30, 2020 0 comment

Commentary and Opinion Coronavirus / COVID-19 Education and Public Policy Education Equity Featured School Choice

Will this pandemic force us to boldly address inequities in our schools?

Special to redefinED March 27, 2020

Special to redefinED

Editor’s note: This commentary by Laura Waters, a mom, education blogger and former school board president in New Jersey, first appeared March 25 on EducationPost. The daughter of New York City educators and parent of a son with special needs, she writes frequently about the need to listen to families and ensure access to good public school options for all. Her observations on school inequities in her state are arguably observable nationwide.

I live right off Route 206, a mostly two-lane road that begins in the Pinelands of southern New Jersey, winds 130 miles north to Stokes State Forest, and ends in Dingman Township, Pa. One 12-mile stretch of 206 connects Princeton, Lawrence Township (where I live), and Trenton, the state capitol.

As COVID-19 affects, well, everything — here, we’re currently in something close to a lockdown, with a 158 percent jump in confirmed cases during the last three days — New Jersey’s educational inequities come into sharp relief.

Think of this stretch of Route 206 as an emblem of America.

Princeton Regional Public Schools, a district where only 8 percent of students are economically disadvantaged and 80 percent of 10^th graders meet or exceed benchmarks in reading, created a “Pandemic Response Team” that has issued a 10-page booklet explaining how students will continue to learn at home. Every student has a laptop or iPad, as well as internet access; if necessary, the district will fill in any gaps. Special education students have daily to-do lists and “teachers will send individualized guidance and support to parents through email.”

The district website lists separate letters from each of its principals detailing daily expectations. At Princeton High School, for example, “teachers will post content … and [students] will have a minimum of one hour of coursework for each class each day.” At elementary schools, students will have four hours of coursework per day and “one or more of our teachers [will] check-in with each pupil and his or her family multiple times per week via telephone calls, e-mails, Class Dojo or some other means.”

Now let’s travel 12 miles south to Trenton where 70 percent of students are economically disadvantaged and 22 percent of 10^th-graders meet or exceed benchmarks in reading. The district has a booklet labeled “Health-Related School Closures” that says, “a series of learning experiences has been created for students by grade levels.” There is a one-page letter from the superintendent that says “the current school closure is not a vacation” and “students are expected to log on to Google daily for at least four hours daily and complete assignments in Google classroom” using a one-page reference of free online education programs. If a family doesn’t have a computer or online access (for comparison, in demographically-similar Camden only 30 percent do), parents can “pick up a paper packet from their school.”

Or not. Just up the district website:

The district has exhausted all of the printed packets; the district is closed and our vendors have limited resources in printing out additional packets. Therefore, no additional copies are available until further notice.

If you are a Princeton High School student, you get six hours of online instruction a day and regular check-ins with teachers.

If you are a Trenton Central High School student who happens to have a laptop and access to the internet, you get up to four hours of online instruction with no assured teacher contact. If you don’t have a laptop and internet access you get nothing.

This disparity in opportunity and access was true before the pandemic, but now we see the gaps more clearly. Oh, the data was always there: according to state Doe, 72 percent of third-graders at this Princeton elementary school read at or above grade level; at this Trenton Elementary school, 11 percent do. Ninety percent of Princeton High graduates enroll in postsecondary programs but 51 percent of Trenton Central High graduates do. (It’s 12 percent at Trenton’s alternative high school where 445 students are enrolled.)

These starkly disparate numbers haven’t swayed New Jersey to do anything in the last half-century but throw more money at the problem with no impact on student outcomes. While we seem susceptible to bromides like those from the state teacher union that proclaim, “NJ schools rank first in the country,” parents stuck at home now have an unfiltered view of our deficiencies.

Of course, these opportunity gaps aren’t limited to a two-lane road in New Jersey. Camden superintendent Katrina McCombs says the school shutdown “has just exacerbated the inequalities.”

Colin Seale writes,

The coronavirus pandemic is revealing new layers of inequity that may end up setting us back even further. Education leaders are tackling the unexpected challenge of providing distance learning as the primary mode of instruction for weeks, months, and possibly the remainder of the school year. How can school systems that struggle to deliver equitable results in a standard brick and mortar setting overcome the added challenges inherent in distance learning?

Meria Carstarphen, superintendent of Atlanta Public Schools, told NPR:

The inequities that we often talk about have a spotlight during this crisis. So if you’re wealthy or of a better socioeconomic means, you can get an access to tests, still get access to the support you need for your students. But that’s not true in communities where there’s high poverty and high need.

We’re all trying to stay healthy and keep our loved ones safe. It’s hard to think beyond this day or this week. But I think we must. Jonathan Rauch of the Brookings Institute says “plagues drive change.” Rahm Emanuel says, “you never let a serious crisis go to waste. Things that we had postponed for too long, that were long-term, are now immediate and must be dealt with. This crisis provides the opportunity for us to do things that you could not do before.”

We have to do things we thought we could not do before. We have to drive change. Otherwise, your location on a 12-mile stretch of road represents whether or not your third-grader can read or your high school graduate will go to college or get a job. It may have taken a pandemic to enable us to see this clearly, but here we are. Do we have what it takes to address systemic inadequacies, to innovate and buck a broken system? I hope so, but I don’t know the answer.

March 27, 2020 0 comment

Blog Guest Commentary and Opinion Coronavirus / COVID-19 Education Choice Featured Jonathan Butcher Parent Empowerment School Choice

Social distancing: a perfect opportunity for parents to find out what their children are learning

Jonathan Butcher March 26, 2020

Jonathan Butcher

Coronavirus is interrupting life in general and education specifically. As parents in the U.S. adjust to school closures and the potential for their K-12 child’s coursework to continue online, families should come to realize that they will be exposed to more of what their children are learning.

For some, this will be new.

Wall Street Journal editor Serena Ng wrote recently from Hong Kong, where schools have been closed since Feb. 3, that she now can “see every detail of every lesson.” Ng says, “I previously had only a vague idea about what they were learning in school.”

All parents should be able to know what their children are learning, and for those paying attention in the coming weeks, the virus offers a chance for them to do just that. Working parents who juggle jobs and their children’s school activities while managing a home haven’t been neglectful if they don’t know what happened in fourth-period math on a given day (try asking a teenager what happened in class). Some simply have relied on schools to decide on instruction.

For others, this focus on content has been there all along.

March 2-4, the Institute for Classical Education and the Great Hearts Foundation held the National Classical Education Symposium, an event featuring sessions on teaching the Great Books, from “The Confessions of St. Augustine” to “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.” Great Hearts’ charter schools, which started in Arizona and have expanded to Texas, base their curriculum on these works. (You can find a complete list of the books students will be studying here.)

School districts are not always so transparent. As Matt Beienburg at the Goldwater Institute explained earlier this year, even if state law allows parents to review their child’s curriculum, they can do so only on school premises; in some cases and in some districts, there are limits set on when parents can see the material. Again, parents are not lazy if they don’t always know what is in their child’s syllabus.

When parents know what is being taught, they can effectively advocate for meaningful change. The reading wars over phonics versus whole language instruction are still with us today, while the Common Core debates over a national curriculum have simmered in time for everyone to scrutinize the New York Times’ 1619 Project.

The Project, a set of essays accompanied by K-12 curricular materials, “aims to reframe the country’s history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of our national narrative.” Slavery and the racism that followed are a blight on our nation’s past, but the Times has taken the idea too far according to many scholars. Pulitzer Prize-winning historians, leading intellectuals and even the Times’ own fact-checkers have criticized the essays, citing inaccuracies.

For thousands of parents, the initiative is not just a problem for someone else’s school. The Times and the Pulitzer Center have successfully advocated for integrating the material into some of the nation’s largest and most-high profile school systems, including Chicago, Newark, Buffalo and Washington, D.C. In Florida, Florida A&M University highlighted the Project in September 2019 and has hosted events on the topic with Florida State University.

Critically, the Times on March 11 issued a correction to a central premise of the essays, saying that not all colonial revolutionaries fought the British to protect the institution of slavery. If the Times heeds other warnings from experts, this modest correction should not be the last. Meanwhile, the Times already has disseminated the original curricular materials to schools.

Developments like these are among the many reasons why the next few weeks of school closures and online instruction are an important opportunity for parents to catch up on what is happening at their child’s school. When parents send children back to brick-and-mortar schools, they should do so ready to raise questions, prepared with more information.

Parents practicing “social distancing” in the coming weeks should use this period to get closer to their child’s school assignments.

March 26, 2020 0 comment

Commentary and Opinion Coronavirus / COVID-19 Featured

Some good news amidst the doom and gloom

Matthew Ladner March 24, 2020

Matthew Ladner

Schools will reopen after we cancel the apocalypse. We just can’t be sure yet what that will look like.

I’m writing from my social isolation home base in Arizona, attempting to offer hope on the pandemic and passing along SeattlePI’s Christina Ausley’s list of good-news stories about the outbreak. According to Ausley, some reasons for optimism include:

Distilleries across the United States are making hand sanitizer instead of booze and are giving it away for free, as reported by NBC News.

Science Alert reports that doctors are developing passive antibody therapies to transfuse blood from those who have recovered from the virus. The antibodies from the transfused blood attack the viruses of the new host. From the article: “Nobody is expecting passive antibody therapy to become a silver bullet for the new coronavirus, but as something that could help us flatten the curve while other treatments are developed, it could make a huge difference, if we all act together – and act quickly.”

Live Science reports that scientists have figured out how coronavirus hijacks lung cells to produce more viruses, which can aid in the creation of drugs or vaccines.

The New York Post explains how Canadian scientists have isolated and replicated the Covid-19 virus, a major step toward development of a vaccine.

Vaccine trials are underway in China and the United States according to the New York Post and SeattlePI, respectively. Meanwhile, better tests with faster results are on the way according to News 5 Cleveland.

The Guardian reports that a Japanese flu drug is being tested to see if it impacts Covid-19. Two doctors write in the Wall Street Journal that some of these drug treatments show promise in shortening the run of the disease, which would be enormously helpful in preventing an Italian-style healthcare system disaster.

A few other developments: The White House says new legislation will allow tens of millions more protective masks to reach U.S. healthcare workers, and AccuWeather reports that a new study has found high temperature and high relative humidity reduces transmission rates. I never thought I would yearn for a Phoenix summer.

Physician Charlene Babcock describes in a YouTube video how innovators have figured out how to keep multiple patients alive with a single ventilator. Meanwhile, you can click here to see how the 3D printer community is making ventilator parts and improving ventilators.

The situation almost certainly will get worse before it gets better. I don’t know how this will end, but I’m confident that we are not going to spend the next 18 months in quarantine, and that schooling will return at some point after we parents all try to make sure learning continues on our own.

Hang in there.

March 24, 2020 0 comment

Commentary and Opinion Coronavirus / COVID-19 Customization Education and Public Policy Education Choice Featured Homeschooling Microschools School Choice Technology and Innovation Virtual Education

How Covid-19 could fuel school choice

Scott Kent March 20, 2020

Scott Kent

It’s the end of the world as we know it.

Well, not literally. (We hope.) But when American society comes out the other end of the Covid-19 crisis, it almost certainly will operate differently in many ways. The scale of change will depend on the length of the lockdown the nation is enduring. We’re roughly two weeks into it – a mere speed bump, relatively speaking – and already we’re seeing a reshuffling whose effects likely will be felt for years afterward.

For example, with movie theaters closing and no idea of when they might reopen, studios are exploring different ways to distribute first-run films. Streaming services already deliver content to homes and mobile devices, but the longer the quarantine lasts, the more consumers become comfortable without theaters. Eventually, when the “remain in place” orders are lifted, there may be little incentive for studios to release as many movies as they have in the past to whatever theaters remain. A new business model will have emerged.

We could see a similar displacement on education. As “social distancing” has entered the mainstream lexicon, so too have people been introduced to distance learning.

Public schools have been closed from coast to coast, with at least two states already announcing that their students will not return this academic year. Districts are scrambling to transition within days from traditional in-person instruction to daily video classes and online lessons. It’s a massive undertaking in an incredibly compressed timeframe that involves getting teachers quickly up to speed on the process, while ensuring students have the technology to access the content.

As with streaming movies, virtual schooling is not new. Some 375,000 students already attend online school in more than half the states. K12 Inc. and other online education providers are offering resources to districts and parents during the Covid-19 pandemic. For many, this will be their introduction to education outside its traditional forms. Some may have been completely unaware of its existence.

What happens if they like it?

After being forced to see education through a different lens, and being required to innovate, how many won’t return to the old ways, and instead be inspired to use these tools to create new ways of delivering education? Suddenly, brick-and-mortar walls vanish, and attendance zones don’t matter. If home is the classroom, teachers can reach students from anywhere.

How many families and educators might embrace the flexibility such methods offer?

Approximately 2 million U.S. students are homeschooled. Mike McShane, writing at EdChoice, points to the 2019 Schooling in America survey that shows that around 13 percent of American parents would like to homeschool their children if they could – and that only about 3 percent actually do. The Covid-19 crisis has given many the opportunity to conduct a trial run to see if it suits them.

How many teachers will be inspired to create new models, much the way former public school educators have established microschools?

Education choice itself could go viral.

Of course, the opposite could happen. If first impressions matter, distance learning done poorly – and many districts are rushing into place a new instruction they are ill-prepared and equipped to provide — could sour educators and families on the concept, making them long to return to the familiarity of brick-and-mortar schools.

Clearly, these alternatives won’t fit everyone’s needs or desires. Beyond those who are satisfied with their zoned school (or magnet school), the traditional public school has become central to American society. It is part of its daily, and yearly, rhythms (although those tempos just changed faster than a Neil Peart drum solo).

In addition, many families, particularly lower-income households, rely on their public schools to provide food, child care and health care (and the disruptions caused by Covid-19 raises concerns about more effective ways to deliver those services).

Not all children will learn effectively through virtual schooling, and not all homes make for appropriate classrooms. Many students — and teachers — thrive on the in-person interaction a traditional school provides.

For those reasons, the Covid-19 era isn’t likely to lead to the elimination of traditional public schooling. Nor should it. Education choice is about expanding options, not contracting them, so students can find the one that fits them best.

However, the longer this break from the status quo lasts, the more Americans will become accustomed to the “new normal” in education — and perhaps become more receptive to its evolving forms.

March 20, 2020 0 comment

Blog Guest Charter Schools Commentary and Opinion Education and Public Policy Education Choice Featured Parental Choice Private Schools School Choice

Transportation a crucial second-generation policy issue for education choice

Michael McShane March 17, 2020

Michael McShane

This map, included in a new EdChoice study titled “Transporting School Choice Students,” illustrates the great disparity among states in regard to transportation opportunities for students who parrticipate in education choice. The study’s co-author provides Florida-specific insights from the study in today’s blog post.

Florida is known as a land of school choice, and rightfully so. It is home to multiple large private school choice programs and a vibrant charter school sector. Its largest district proudly celebrates the fact that almost three-quarters of its students attend a school of choice.

Criticizing Florida on school choice policy feels a bit like calling out a typo in Shakespeare or complaining about a walk during a game where a pitcher throws a no hitter. I don’t want to nitpick here.

That said, Florida is a great example of the second generation of policy questions that the expansion of school choice asks. During the first generation of school choice advocacy and school choice policy, proponents were working to start programs and clear just a little space in the state’s schooling landscape to try something new and different. They met with great success, that should be celebrated.

But just like winning the lottery causes you to have a bigger tax bill, expanding school choice creates a new set of challenges that supporters need to tackle. A vibrant school choice system needs a supporting infrastructure. And perhaps there is no more important piece of the infrastructure puzzle than transportation.

Put yourself in the shoes of a parent who was just awarded a tax credit scholarship, or who just won a charter lottery to the school they have been hoping to send their child to for years. Think of the elation, the feeling that this is their lucky day. Their ship has finally come in.

But then imagine that family realizing that transportation is not part of the deal. Their child can attend the school, if they can get her there. But they can’t. How heartbreaking. It would be like running a marathon but twisting your ankle on the last mile.

This is the case for far too many families across the country. While I don’t live in Florida, I have to imagine it is the case for some Florida families as well. What’s more, this scenario doesn’t contemplate the families who don’t even bother applying for a scholarship or a slot in a charter school because they know that they cannot make transportation work.

These experiences were what motivated the new research paper I wrote with my colleague Michael Shaw, called Transporting School Choice Students. In it, we survey state pupil transportation statutes to see what requirements are placed on schools to provide transportation to students choosing a school outside of their geographically-assigned school, whether by inter-district enrollment, charter schooling, or going to private school.

What we found was an incongruous briar patch of mandates and flexibility that varied among and even within states. Some states support some forms of choice and not others. Some allow flexibility in funding but don’t put requirements on it. Still others support some classes of students (like students in schools that have been identified as failing or students with special needs) but not others. Some support choice across the board, and others don’t support choice transportation at all.

Looking at Florida law, we identified that with respect to inter-district transfers, Florida does not require districts to provide transportation. For charter school students, mandatory funding exists for students, but through contiguous districts only, and for private school students, districts and private schools have the flexibility to work out arrangements for pupil transportation, but there are no requirements. In each of these cases, we see limitations on the ability of students to access schools of choice based on the transportation options available.

At the same time, Florida is one of the only states to provide transportation funding in their private school choice programs. The Florida Tax Credit Scholarship program and the Family Empowerment Scholarship program allow participating students to apply their scholarship funds to necessary transportation costs (amongst other allowable uses). Also, students can get a $750 tax credit scholarship specifically to support transportation to another public school district, if they so choose.

Allowing scholarship dollars to be used for transportation is a no-brainer, and every private school choice program in America should create it as an allowable use. That said, too many scholarships are funded at low levels that already stretch school budgets. Further dividing that money will only make the problem worse. Creating specific additional funding streams to cover transportation is a better solution. It is more expensive, but will make the prospect of choice more real for more families.

Even Michael Jordan had to practice every day if he wanted to get better. Florida is no different. It might be the Michael Jordan of school choice, but it can always do more to help more students. Solving the transportation puzzle is one way to do that.

March 17, 2020 0 comment

Commentary and Opinion Coronavirus / COVID-19 Featured

Covid-19 a challenge to health, education, society at large

Matthew Ladner March 16, 2020

Matthew Ladner

Influenza victims crowd into an emergency hospital near Fort Riley, Kansas, in 1918.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

— The Second Coming, W.B. Yeats

Yeats published this poem almost century ago, in November of 1920. It reflects the immediate past in the terrors of the Great War, but less than 20 years later, the world plunged into a still more ghastly conflict. In addition to our forebearers’ collective efforts to kill each other, this period witnessed a terrible pandemic, the Spanish influenza, which infected 27 percent of the world’s population and killed tens of millions worldwide between 1918 and 1920.

One hundred years later, the Covid-19 pandemic challenges our health system, schools and society at large. Difficult days, weeks and months lie ahead.

A group of concerned physicians are calling the current pandemic a Pearl Harbor moment. Many states have called for school closures as a mitigation strategy. I’ve read a great deal of debate about whether these closures are wise, because bad things happen to students and families when schools are closed, and circumstances may vary across states. Children seem resistant to Covid-19, whereas the fatality rate among the elderly appears alarmingly high. It isn’t hard to imagine asymptomatic but infected children staying with their grandparents and…

Nevertheless, severe cases of Covid-19 (a sizeable minority of total cases) reportedly require weeks of hospitalization on ventilation for patients to survive. We only have so many ventilators, so many hospital beds, so many surgical masks. Social isolation, cancelling large social events, closing schools, etc., constitutes an effort to slow a geometric infection rate and buy time.

For those who suspect these concerns are overblown, note that Italian doctors have been forced by harsh circumstances to ration ventilators by age just a few weeks after the discovery of the first infection. Buying time to ramp up the production of needed equipment and supplies will be enormously disruptive, but it may also represent the least bad option.

The Florida Department of Education has launched an emergency response page for tracking school closures. Keep an eye on it. In the meantime, a great many families have begun a chaotic pickup game of homeschooling. This pandemic is not to be underestimated, but neither is human ingenuity. The first great disruption of the 2020s has arrived, but here’s to hoping that the centre can hold.

March 16, 2020 0 comment