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Poll confirms widespread support for school, parental choice

redefinED staff
redefinED staff

New research from a national polling organization shows 65% of more than 1,100 registered voters surveyed support school choice while 16% are unsure. The results are true across party lines, with 75% of Republicans, 61% of Democrats, and 60% of Independents saying they strongly or somewhat support school choice.

Meanwhile, 55% of voters polled say that some or all of the funds the federal government set aside for K-12 education should be directed by parents, with 21% saying that none of the funds should be directed by parents and 24% unsure.

Regarding school choice, the poll asked: School choice gives parents the right to use the tax dollars designated for their child’s education to send their child to the public or private school which best serves their needs. Generally speaking, would you say you support or oppose the concept of school choice?

Support was strongest among Black voters, with 69% answering affirmatively, followed closely by Asian voters (68%); Hispanic voters (67%) and white voters (64%).

On the second question, the poll asked: The federal government allocated $190 billion towards K-12 education from stimulus packages since March 2020, which would essentially be $3,400 for every K-12 student in the country. How much of that funding should be directed by parents?

Here, support was strongest among Black voters, with 66% in favor, followed by Hispanic voters (58%); Asian voters (55%); and white voters (52%).

American Federation For Children president and CEO Tommy Schultz observed that while the pandemic underscored the need for additional school options, public support for school choice is nothing new.

“This year already, at least a dozen states have enacted new school choice programs or expanded existing programs because they’re recognizing just how popular this issue is amongst K-12 families,” Schultz said. “We are grateful that lawmakers are listening to the needs of families, but millions of children are still waiting for better options. We will continue fighting for those kids and to empower parents with the funds meant to deliver a high-quality education.”

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AnalysisCustomizationDemographic ResearchEducation and Public PolicyEducation ChoiceEducation ResearchEducation Savings AccountsFamily Empowerment ScholarshipFeaturedGardiner ScholarshipMcKay ScholarshipParental Choice

Study details change in Gardiner families’ spending patterns

Patrick R. Gibbons
Patrick R. Gibbons

The longer students remain on Florida’s Gardiner Scholarship program, the more likely their parents are to spend money on curriculum, tutoring and specialized services, a new working paper finds.

The study, “Distribution of Education Savings Accounts Usage Among Families,” by Michelle Lofton of the University of Georgia and Martin Lueken of EdChoice, examines the spending patterns of families on the scholarship program over multiple years. It is the largest of its kind to date.

The Gardiner Scholarship, created in 2014 and named after State Sen. Andy Gardiner’s family, provides parents of students with special needs with a scholarship worth an average of around $10,000. It is set up as an education savings account (ESA) where parents can use the funds on more than just school tuition and fees. They also can purchase textbooks, school supplies, curriculum, tutoring, therapies and more. 

The scholarship is currently limited to students with specific needs such as autism, Down syndrome and spina bifida. Last year, 17,508 students received a Gardiner Scholarship, with more than 9,000 enrolling in one of 1,870 private schools.

According to the researchers, family spending patterns change the longer they remain on the program. As families become more familiar with the program, they begin to spend more money on expenses other than tuition and fees, representing a desire to further customize their child’s education.

The study also finds rural families are more likely to spend the scholarship on curriculum and instruction than on private school tuition.

“These findings imply that families enrolled in ESAs are learning from prior usage and are able to customize education to areas beyond tuition over the course of their child’s educational life cycle,” the researchers wrote.

Since 2015, families have averaged 21 purchases, spending $8,373 a year. Usage increased from 60% of funds in 2015 to 88% by 2019.

Expenditures on tuition increased by 11%, or $550 over that time. But expenditures on instructional materials, specialized services, and college tuition savings plans increased considerably more — instructional materials by 400%, or $1,375, and specialized services by 200%, or $450.

The number of purchases increased over time as well. In 2015 families averaged just nine purchases, but by 2019 families were averaging 30 purchases a year.  

Spending varied by race and income as well.

Parents of Black and Hispanic students spent more of their scholarship, on average, than white students. They were also 7 to 9% more likely to spend the scholarship on school tuition than white students.

Parents in the top-quartile income areas spent more money on fewer items but spent less on tuition and more on tutoring and specialized services than families in bottom-quartile income areas.

The Gardiner Scholarship will become part of the Family Empowerment Scholarship for the 2021-22 school year, though the ESA component of the program will remain exclusive to children with special needs. Florida’s McKay Scholarship, a voucher program for students with special needs, will also merge with the Family Empowerment Scholarship in 2022.

Parents or guardians may apply for the scholarship here.

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Commentary and OpinionCoronavirus / COVID-19Course ChoiceCustomizationDemographic ResearchEducation ChoiceFeaturedHomeschoolingParental ChoiceSchool Choice

American K-12 has been permanently changed by the pandemic

Matthew Ladner
Matthew Ladner

And these children that you spit on

As they try to change their worlds

Are immune to your consultations

They’re quite aware of what they’re going through

David Bowie, Changes

A district school superintendent recently told me: “COVID has kicked the education reform can down the road 15 years. I’m not sure we are all aware of the implications yet, but the belief that we are returning to 2019 ‘normal’ is folly.”

Wired reported this month on the increase in homeschooling during 2020:

In 2019, homeschooled students represented just 3.2 percent of U.S. students in grades K through 12, or around 1.7 million students. By comparison, 90% of U.S. students attend public school. But a March 2021 report from the U.S. Census Bureau indicates an uptick in homeschooling during the pandemic: In spring 2020, 5.4% of surveyed households reported homeschooling their children (homeschooling being distinct from remote learning at home through a public or private school).

By fall 2020, the figure had doubled to 11.1% … The U.S. Census Bureau’s survey indicates that homeschooling rates increased across all ethnic groups in the past year, and the greatest shift was among Black families, who reported a 3.3 percent rate of homeschooling in spring 2020 and 16.1% later in the fall.

Tyton Partners made another set of estimates based upon a survey of parents. Nothing looks revolutionary at first glance in these estimates, but look closer and you can feel the earth shift under your feet.

 

The Tyton estimates show a less profound (but still sizeable) move to homeschooling. You probably shouldn’t get overly attached to either estimate because the situation is very fluid, and we’ll know better in the fall. Even if the Tyton numbers are closer to reality, as the Wired article notes, the ease with which people can homeschool has increased, as have the incentives to do so.

There will be no putting this toothpaste back in the tube.

If the Tyton estimates are accurate, district and private schools will have suffered their largest single-year declines in history while charter schools, micro-schools and homeschools enjoyed large increases in enrollment, and supplemental pods emerged spontaneously to educate 7 million students. We see, for instance, a rate of charter school enrollment almost four times that of the average between 2000 and 2018. The shakeup likely isn’t finished.

The largest decrease in enrollment nationwide came from kindergarten students, with parents choosing to “redshirt” rather than enroll them in fall 2020. A National Public Radio survey of 100 school districts found an average kindergarten enrollment drop of 16%.

Assuming most of those families choose to enroll for fall 2022, schools likely will have to shift teachers out of first-grade assignments (where there will be fewer students) into kindergarten assignments (where there will be more). Which school sector they sort themselves into and at what rate also will be of interest. A back-of-the napkin estimate of the number of redshirted kindergarteners based upon the typical size of recent cohorts and the 16% figure would fall between 500,000 and 600,000 students.

The Wired article contains a point-counterpoint between a representative of the American Association of Superintendents and the Black Family Homeschool Educators and Scholars. The Superintendent’s representative makes the usual worried statements about money for the system. The Black homeschool advocate seems much more focused on the interests of students:

… Ali-Coleman, of Black Family Homeschool Educators and Scholars, warns against over-emphasizing the limitations of low-income families. She says that not all homeschooling families are necessarily financially privileged, either, pointing to Fields-Smith’s research on single Black mothers who homeschool their kids in spite of low-income status.

Moreover, adequately funded public school systems can still harm children of color: More money won’t shield a child from unequal discipline, a biased curriculum, or a pervasive school-to-prison pipeline that disproportionately pushes Black youth out of schools and into criminal justice systems.

Sure enough, when you plot academic growth for Black students in the top five spending states – in order, New York (1); Connecticut (2); New Jersey (3); Vermont (4); and Alaska (5) – in the Opportunity Project at Stanford University explorer, only Alaska has a rate at or above the national average.

 

 

Of greater interest still will be Tyton Partners’ estimated 7 million students who engaged in supplemental pods. These students remained enrolled in another school online but joined small education communities to do so.

The Tyton Partners survey found 15% of parents made shifts in their child’s schooling situation this past fall. More change is likely on the way for this fall. In the medium to long term, the most significant change likely will be the availability of entirely new sectors and methods of education.

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Commentary and OpinionCustomizationDemographic ResearchEducation and Public PolicyEducation ChoiceEducation SpendingFeaturedParental ChoicePrivate School ScholarshipsSchool Choice

Florida is overcoming ‘systemic privilege’ by putting students before the ‘system’

Special to redefinED
Special to redefinED

Editor’s note: This commentary from William Mattox, director of the Marshall Center for Educational Options at the James Madison Institute, appeared Friday on RealClear Policy.

Throughout America, a very important – and highly racialized – conversation is taking place about overcoming injustice. Here in Florida, that conversation has often gone in a markedly different and very promising direction. And schoolchildren of color are among the greatest beneficiaries.

The conversation in Florida, at least as it pertains to education, has focused on what might be called “systemic privilege.”

If you are unfamiliar with this (de-racialized) mash-up term, try this: Go to a public forum and suggest that all families should be treated fairly – that all parents should have access to the per-pupil funds for their children even if they choose to educate them outside the public school system.

Then, watch the defenders of “systemic privilege” come out of the woodwork. 

“You want to take money out of the public school system,” they’ll say. “We should be spending more on the public school system, not on school choice alternatives for students outside the system.”

To the defenders of “systemic privilege,” the system is more important than the students. And the people who benefit from the system’s privileged position matter more than the families trapped within its coercive tentacles.

Thankfully, here in Florida, a bipartisan (and multi-ethnic) coalition of leaders have been working to end “systemic privilege.” Over the last two decades, they have succeeded in adopting education choice policies that enable low- and middle-income parents to find the learning environment that best meets their children’s unique needs, aptitudes, and interests. 

As a consequence, nearly half (48%) of all Florida K-12 students currently attend something other than their zoned public school. And the Florida Legislature just passed a measure adding 61,000 students to Florida’s K-12 scholarship rolls.

Lest there be any doubt, Florida still has some work to do – in education and in other areas. But the Sunshine State has done more to end “systemic privilege” than any other state. And Florida students are greatly benefitting.

In fact, Education Week now ranks Florida No. 3 in the nation in K-12 student achievement. A research team from Harvard and Stanford found that, over the last quarter-century, Florida students showed greater learning gains than the students in all but one other state (even though Florida increased per-pupil spending less than every other state!).

And a recent study found that the (mostly minority) students in Florida’s largest school choice scholarship program are more likely to go to college – and to graduate – than their public school peers. 

So, the future is bright for Florida’s students – and not just for those taking advantage of Florida’s new learning options. In fact, a recent National Bureau of Economic Research study found Florida public school students showed significant academic improvement after school choice was adopted (presumably because greater competition spurred greater public school achievement).

In other words, Florida’s rising tide of education choice is lifting all boats. And while ending “systemic privilege” in K-12 education is not the only “justice” issue Americans should be concerned about, no other policy reform is apt to do more to alter the trajectory of the next generation than education choice.  

During the civil rights era, the city of Atlanta used to boast that it was the City Too Busy to Hate. Considering its remarkable success in K-12 education, Florida now probably ought to be known as the State Too Busy Creating Bright Futures for All Our Students to Let Haters Divide Us Along Racial Lines.

Which may just be another way of saying, once again, that Florida is the Sunshine State.

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AnalysisCharter SchoolsCustomizationDemographic ResearchEducation and Public PolicyEducation ChoiceEducation Savings AccountsFeaturedNewsParental ChoicePrivate School ScholarshipsSchool Choice

National survey shows Black parents continue to support education choice

redefinED staff
redefinED staff

While school choice policies are overwhelmingly popular across all major demographics, Black parents, when provided a definition of those policies, support them to a higher degree than white parents according to a new survey from EdChoice.

The survey, which included 405 Black parents of K-12 students as well as a nationally representative sample of 1,134 K-12 school parents, shows 81% of Black parents favored vouchers, 10 percentage points higher than the supportive share of white parents. Notably, there was no difference in support between low-income Black parents and high-income Black parents.

Meanwhile, 80% of Black parents support education savings accounts compared to 76% of white parents; support for charter schools is slightly higher among Black parents at 74% compared to 73% for white parents.

 

For the survey, vouchers were described as a system that allows parents the option of sending their child to the school of their choice, whether that school is public or private, including both religious and non-religious schools, using tax dollars currently allocated to a school district to pay partial or full tuition for the child’s school.

Income levels were broken down into low income (less than $35,000); middle income ($35,000 to $75,000); and high income (more than $75,000). Support for vouchers among those levels was 79%, 83% and 79%, respectively.

The survey described education savings accounts as a government-authorized savings account with restricted but multiple uses for educational purposes that can be used to pay for school tuition, tutoring, online education programs, therapies for students with special needs, textbooks or other instructional materials, and future college expenses.

Level of support among income levels was slightly more varied on this question, with 75% of low-income families, 86% of middle-income families, and 81% of high-income families showing favor for education savings accounts.

The survey described public charter schools as public schools that have more control over their budget, staff and curriculum and are exempt from many existing public school regulations.

The survey queried respondents on several other education-related topics and returned these key findings:

·       Black parents have maintained similar levels of comfort when it comes to their children returning to in-person learning when compared to March. Nearly half of Black parents believe it will be safe for their children to go back by September 2021.

·       Nevertheless, both Black and Hispanic parents are more likely than white parents to prefer schooling take place at home in some capacity. Just over 40% of Black parents signaled they would like schooling to occur at home three or more days per week after the pandemic.

·       Over two-fifths of Black parents say they are currently participating in or looking to form or join a learning pod – an increase of 5 percentage points since March. Hispanic parents remain more interested in both pods and tutoring than both Black and white parents.

·       Both Black and Hispanic parents are more likely than white parents to believe that offering additional resources for their children would be beneficial for their development this upcoming school year.

·       Black parents are less likely than both white and Hispanic parents to either vaccinate themselves or their children.

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Commentary and OpinionCustomizationDemographic ResearchEducation and Public PolicyEducation ChoiceEducation ResearchFeaturedParental ChoiceSchool ChoiceSpecial Needs Education

New Brookings study on Texas special education cap disturbing on multiple levels

Matthew Ladner
Matthew Ladner

President Harry Truman famously opined that incoming president Dwight Eisenhower, a former five-star general, would have a rough go of things.

Observed Truman: “He’ll sit here, and he’ll say, ‘Do this! Do that!’ And nothing will happen. Poor Ike—it won’t be a bit like the Army. He’ll find it very frustrating.”

State lawmakers attempting to boss around a vast sprawling field of public schools in their state bring this remark to mind.

I thought we had hit peak utopianism with No Child Left Behind legislation’s goal of 100% student proficiency by 2014, but then the Common Core project came along and instructed otherwise. Neither project ended well, and since 2009, American academic achievement has been in decline.

If lawmakers are on their A-game, they can create incentives and constituencies for improvement, but apparently the failings of the central planning strategy must be continually relearned. State lawmakers have a hard time commanding public school staffs to do things they aren’t keen on doing. Enforcement mechanisms are in short supply, and in the end, the door to the classroom closes and the teachers decide how to spend class time.

Things might be different, however, if officials in the capitol attempt to compel school personnel to do things they were kind of inclined to do, like when the Texas Education Agency covertly created incentives for public schools to provide fewer special education services. You can’t find evidence of creative or passive resistance evident in this new chart on the Texas cap from the Brookings Institute. Instead, we see rapid compliance:

Brookings has a new study on the Texas special education cap that features this chart. Without public hearings or legal authority, the Texas Education Agency created an entirely arbitrary cap of 8.5% of students in local education agencies (districts or charters) who should receive special education services. If your Local Education Agency served more than 8.5% of students (both the national and the Texas averages were much higher) the Texas Education Agency would audit and otherwise harass you to move you into compliance.

The agency separately created a covert standard on disportionality in special education rates between White and Black/Hispanic students.

Two things are horrible about the above chart. First off is the fact that this misbegotten policy ever existed in the first place, but second is how quickly compliance occurred.

While it is worth noting that some Texas local education agencies did provide more than 8.5% of students special education services, the statewide average for all public schools moved exactly to 8.5% before the Houston Chronicle wrote an expose exposing the practice in 2016.

The Brookings scholars tracked long term outcomes across student groups.

We find that, for students already in SE before the policy went into effect, the likelihood of SE (editor note: special education) removal increased by 13% as a result of capping overall SE enrollment. These reductions in SE access generated significant declines in educational attainment for previously classified SE students, who were 2.7% less likely to complete high school and 3.6% less likely to enroll in college. Lower-income students experienced even larger decreases in high school completion and college enrollment.

Texas schools stopped providing special education services to students at an accelerated rate, they then dropped out of school at a higher rate, and enrolled in college at a lower rate. Now for an entirely different type of horror, consider the second major finding of the study:

Black SE students more intensely affected by the Black disproportionality cap, we find increases in the likelihood of completing high school by 2% and enrolling in college by 4.6%. 

Texas kicked Black students out of special education only to observe their high school graduation and college enrollment rates improve. If we are going to go with Occam’s Razor, it seems very likely that a great many of those students never should have been labelled in the first place. Which doesn’t speak well of our system of identifying students for special education services.

I would like to thank Florida’s former Sen. John McKay for pioneering the concept of a choice program for students with disabilities. The latest edition of the American Federation for Children’s guidebook listed 21 states with choice programs for children with disabilities, and new legislation passed this year.

Students in these states have not been entirely left to the tender loving care of a bureaucracy. Parents have options outside the public school system to see to the needs of their children. This is a fundamentally humane policy, and it should be employed everywhere – Texas more than anywhere else.

The central concept of federal special education law is to provide an “Individual Education Plan” for students with disabilities. This is, however, often hollow, and in the case of Texas, authorities charged with carrying out this charge instead covertly executed a plan to deny services.

The best Individual Education Plan is one in which you get to decide who provides services to your child. The worst sort of plans depend entirely upon what a bureaucratic system decides to give you.

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Commentary and OpinionCustomizationDemographic ResearchEducation and Public PolicyEducation ChoiceFeaturedParental ChoiceSchool Choice

Teachers want some PODS!

Matthew Ladner
Matthew Ladner

BB International School in Pompano Beach, Florida, is an example of how education choice opens the door to more fun and less bureaucracy. Here, first- and second-graders in Alexa Altamura’s class mix academics with enrichment.

What teachers need are PODS (All together now!)

Teachers want those PODS! (Everybody)

Teachers love those PODS, PODS,

PODS are what they need (PODS are what they need)

Okay, so now that I’ve got a song stuck in your head for the rest of the day (week?) let’s discuss an EdChoice survey that shows teachers love learning pods. And that includes teachers from every K-12 sector:

The research shows some 87% of charter school teachers are either “very interested” or “somewhat interested” in teaching in a learning pod; 59% of all teachers are interested. Schools just might want to find a way to give teachers what they want, especially given the fact that the same survey shows families also want multiple options for their children this fall:

Oh, and then there is the new Tyton Partners survey showing that families dropped more of their own money on learning pods last fall than on private school tuition:

It would be interesting to survey former teachers on what they think of pods. Every state has a large pool of experienced teachers, many of whom tapped out of the profession in frustration of various sorts. Could they be tempted back into the teaching profession by new school models with more fun and less bureaucracy?

I’d love to find out, because we need all the effective teachers we can get.

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Commentary and OpinionDemographic ResearchEducation and Public PolicyEducation ChoiceEducation PoliticsEducation ResearchFeaturedParental ChoiceSchool Choice

Let’s try getting back to basics as a remedy for public education’s woes

Patrick R. Gibbons
Patrick R. Gibbons

What’s faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive and able to leap tall buildings at a single bound?

Is it a bird? Is it a plane?

No, it’s public education!

Since the time of Horace Mann’s common school in the 19th century, American educators, politicians and commentators have been asking public education to take on multiple heroic tasks.

Mann not only wanted to educate the population, he wanted to assimilate and integrate immigrants. Some political commentators still share a similar view, though the idea of using public education to make America a melting pot has largely fallen out of favor.

A popular opinion today places the foundation of American democracy, as well as its very survival, in the hands of public education. These latter claims are growing louder as school choice gathers steam and the country fractures further into polarization.

But the public education system as we know it today was not instrumental in establishing the United States. In fact, diversifying and later desegregating education came about during Reconstruction, and after Brown v. Board of Education, neither of which occurred democratically; one came about via the U.S. military and the other by the court system.

America’s polarization can’t be blamed on school choice either. About 10% of the student population in the U.S. attends private K-12 schools today, a little less than was recorded way back in 1889, when 11.2% attended private schools, and lower still than the 14% peak in 1959. (You can see a chart of public and private school enrollment from 1869-70 to 2009 here.)

Compare this to less polarized countries like the United Kingdom, where 7% of students attend private schools; Germany, where 9% attend private schools; or even France, where 14% attend private schools. Each of those countries allows students to attend private schools at public expense.

Public education’s ability to heal political fracturing, if it is even possible, won’t come about because we mandate that schools teach the “right things.” In fact, fighting over what our schools should teach is part of the problem.

Across the country, including here in Florida, Republican-controlled legislatures have tried to ban incorporating lessons from the controversial New York Times “1619 Project,” or even elements of critical race theory. Some states already have banned these lessons.

It’s not hard to see why. Those on the political right and left in America don’t see the country, or its history, the same way. In fact, we seem to view opposing views as insulting to our very being.

The Pew Research Center found that those who identify as left-of-center in the U.S. and UK share more similar views about their respective countries and histories than people on the right. According to Pew, people who identify as left-of-center view their countries with shame while people on the right view their countries with pride.

Focus groups in U.S., UK find Left and Right see the same aspects of history through a very different lens.

Who decides what version of America should be taught in public education? The authoritarian impulse is to have whoever holds the reins of power decide, rather than allow ideas to compete on their merits alone.

Politics is a zero-sum game. If you want to learn critical race theory in Idaho, too bad – it’s already been banned.

The nature of these zero-sum fights between the Right and Left is why the Cato Institute’s Public Schooling Battle Map has documented nearly 100 politicized cultural fights over education in 2021 already.

It’s only going to get worse as more of our personal preferences, morals and viewpoints are politicized in an increasingly pluralistic nation.

Polarization may be impossible for education to fix. In fact, we may be setting public education up for failure if we try.

Private schools in Florida’s education choice programs operate largely outside of that political zero-sum game. Private schools are routinely bashed by critics over their freedom to teach from textbooks and curriculums they choose rather than what politicians have chosen. The same critics who bash a Christian school for teaching Creationism need to take a step back and realize that same freedom grants another school the right to teach critical race theory or the 1619 Project.

Public education can’t do everything, especially when we disagree so strongly about any goal beyond education’s most basic mission. Perhaps instead of trying to make private schools function like public ones we should be doing the opposite: allowing public schools the freedom to teach like private ones, with parents free to choose among the schools that best match their needs and values.

Forcing people into schools, certain ways of teaching or thinking, or banning competing ideas isn’t going to create unity. It’s going to do the opposite.

Getting back to basics – teaching students how to think rather than what to think – would be a great start as far as education missions go. That task alone is heroic enough without asking teachers to also be the saviors of American industry or democracy.

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