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Parent Empowerment

Commentary and OpinionCustomizationEducation and Public PolicyEducation ChoiceEducation Savings AccountsFeaturedParent EmpowermentParental ChoiceSchool Choice

Commentary: Let’s start trusting families to make the right choices for their children’s education

Scott Kent April 8, 2021
Scott Kent

Editor’s note: You can read how three choice scholarship families plan to use their federal stimulus checks to supplement their children’s education here.

Congress recently passed a $1.9 trillion COVID relief bill that includes $1,400 direct payments to most Americans and their dependents. That followed the $600 checks Washington distributed liberally in December, and $1,200 payments Uncle Sam handed out last spring.

Free money! To do with as you please!

It’s interesting how that strategy is often frowned upon when it comes to K-12 education. Consider the opposition to education savings accounts. Giving people a pot of money to spend on their children’s education? Why, they can’t be trusted to make the right decisions!

“Parents can be fooled by inflated grades that make them believe their child is doing better, as well as hucksters who promise miracles with computer systems and magical thinking.”

“The bill … provides that parents, not educators, be the evaluators of their children’s educational progress.”

“I heard in committee that families should ‘shop around.’ We’re asking our most disadvantaged, least engaged families, to ‘shop around’?”

That’s the messy part about freedom: Sometimes people use it in ways you wouldn’t.

Critics of private school vouchers, and education savings accounts in particular, argue that this money properly belongs in more-trusted hands – public schools. Not public school parents, mind you, but public school districts, where the professionals can make wiser choices on how it will be spent.

This favors institutions over individuals and bolsters a ruling class that purports to know what’s best for you.

This mindset is hardly new. Benighted commoners have always needed to be protected from themselves by their enlightened betters – or so the latter rationalized it. Freedom threatened the proper order, sowed chaos – and, of course, dislodged the powerful from their perches.

The printing press is one of history’s great social disruptors. By making the printed word more available to the masses, it democratized knowledge. That not only took dead aim at the economic security of those who were tasked with copying texts by hand. It also decentralized authority by undermining the gatekeepers who decided what ideas would be published and how they would be disseminated.

One of the earliest beneficiaries of the printing press was Martin Luther, whose challenges to Catholic orthodoxy were read far and wide, spurring the Protestant Reformation.

In his novel “The Justification of Johann Gutenberg,” author Blake Morrison imagines a dialogue in which Gutenberg explains to a skeptical monk what he envisioned his new invention would accomplish:

Gutenberg: To help men and women be literate, to give them knowledge, to make books so cheap even a peasant might afford them: that is my hope, yes.

[…]

Head monk: The word of God needs to be interpreted by priests, not spread about like dung.

Gutenberg: I do not wish to despoil the Word.

Head monk: But it will happen. To hand it about to all and sundry is languorous. Would you have ploughmen and weavers debating the Gospel in taverns?

Gutenberg: If that is what they want to do.

Head monk: But what of the dangers? It would be like giving a candle to infants.

Education choice is to the public education professional class what the printing press was to the clerisy in the 15th century.

April 8, 2021 0 comment
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Blog GuestCommentary and OpinionEducation and Public PolicyEducation ChoiceEducation EquityFeaturedJack CoonsParent EmpowermentParental ChoiceSchool ChoiceUnionism

From where will common sense emerge?

John E. Coons April 2, 2021
John E. Coons

“Confusion now hath made his masterpiece.”

— Macbeth, Shakespeare

Our national fuddle over the role of government (public?) schools during the pandemic is yet another throwback to the days of their inception in the 1840s. Their founders saw these conscriptive institutions as a mechanism for control and enlightenment of the children of low-income families, mostly immigrants, whose social and religions caste needed redesign.

What history confirms is that, while the specific ideology of the system was to change with the cultural winds, the public school has managed always to maintain its control over the minds and bodies of the poor, both parent and child. These remain the instrument of whoever controls the state’s “free schools” and enjoy their per-pupil tax support.

From Protestant patriots to John Dewey Nationalists, the Supreme Court and, today, the teacher union bosses, our public schools for the poor have ever functioned as a paternalistic intellectual dominion. As always, they serve the comfort and purpose of a controlling elite, even though these cadres have failed either to raise test scores or to achieve the civic enthusiasm of its drafters.

The advent of a Democratic White House has brought little hope of deliverance from the teacher union for lower-income parents, whatever has been their vision of the intellectual and social future of their child. To the contrary, the president for whom I voted has specifically endorsed the enduring vision of the unions with new money to maintain the conscription of their lower-class subjects.

Some today suppose that our epic indifference to the civic hobbling of child and parent shows signs of public remorse and possible repair. Indeed, states like Ohio and West Virginia have, over union resistance, taken surprising legislative steps to empower parents at the expense of the monopoly.

Moreover, there is a growing awareness that criticism of, and resistance to, our proprietary unions of government employees is something wholly different from the classic and healthy competition and compromise between employer and union in the profit-seeking part of our private economy. Incompetence or sloth of the worker in private business is hurtful to both employer and fellow employees; each has a stake in the survival and success of their joint enterprise.

As yet, there is no guarantee of a general reform that empowers families which are unable to afford private tuition and have come up loser in the charter lotteries. The charters themselves are under constant threat from the union. The Supreme Court, though it will annihilate the “Blaine” amendments, is not about to order vouchers or other specific remedy in the offending states.

And it is from there, our 50 “sovereign” jurisdictions, that fundamental reform must come. As always, the solutions will come out of practical politics and the awakening and broad engagement of those with most at stake – the not-so-rich family and its political heroes.

It is paradox, but fact, that the final rescue of parent and child could come, in large part, as a liberal enterprise.

Milton, enjoy the irony.

April 2, 2021 0 comment
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Commentary and OpinionEducation and Public PolicyEducation ChoiceEducation PoliticsFeaturedParent EmpowermentParental ChoiceSchool Choice

The big lie about school choice

Special to redefinED March 29, 2021
Special to redefinED

Soft-spoken and reserved, Rosa Parks did not want a big to-do about her proposed charter school; she simply wanted to help the children in her neighborhood.

Editor’s note: This commentary from Step Up For Students’ director of policy and public affairs Ron Matus appeared Friday on Real Clear Education.

If school choice is a right-wing plot to destroy public education – and we’re hearing that a lot as lawmakers across America consider choice bills this spring – somebody forgot to tell the late Rosa Parks. In the 1990s, Parks tried to start a charter school.

Four decades after her transcendent act of courage on that Montgomery bus, Parks saw black students in Detroit falling through the cracks. In an effort that won kudos from President Bill Clinton, she proposed the Rosa and Raymond Parks Academy for Self-Development. It would be a charter school under community control, dedicated to teaching “dignity with pride, courage with perseverance and power with discipline.”

The rich history of education choice is filled with stories like these involving individuals associated with the Left who pushed for greater schooling options, driven by a need for equity, opportunity, diversity, justice.

Those stories have been all but canceled, as politicians on the Left try to identify school choice with the Right and befoul it with demagogic myths that school choice is racist, that it’s a profiteers’ con, or that it’s crushing public schools. In these tragically polarized times, one big lie – that school choice sprouted from conservative ground – fuels them all.

In the early 1980s, Democratic Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a champion for educational pluralism, warned against this kind of partisan warfare. Tribal politics were beginning to warp what had been, just a decade earlier, a progressive policy aim. If choice “prevails only as a conservative cause,” Moynihan said, “it will have been a great failure of American liberalism not to have seen the essentially liberal nature of this pluralist proposition.”

This spring, Republican lawmakers in 30 states are leading the charge to create or expand educational choice. Parents of all political stripes owe them a debt of gratitude. History will look kindly on those who stood up for the rights of parents, no matter their social standing or political leaning, to control the educational destinies of their children.

Republican support obscures an inconvenient truth for those on the Left: school choice has deep roots across the political spectrum.

It’s easy to unearth those roots, from the centuries of black struggle for educational opportunity to the thinking of liberal academics who advocated vouchers in the 1960s and 1970s to the thousands of alternative schools and home-school enclaves that lean libertarian and left and bristle at anything that smacks of coercion and uniformity.

Thankfully, millions of parents see through the smokescreens. And over the past year, the pandemic has turned out to be the best de-fogger. Frustration with school closures has led more parents than ever to see the value of options.

I hope this growing appreciation for choice spurs a reshaping of the narrative. If some on the Left are experiencing cognitive dissonance as they warm to the merits of a supposedly right-wing policy, they should rest easy. Their embrace of vouchers and charter schools, and education savings accounts puts them in good company.

They’re with Wyatt Tee Walker, “Martin Luther King’s field general,” who went on to start a charter school in Harlem, and Martin Luther King III, who headlined a school choice rally in 2016 that drew 10,000 people. They’re with legendary labor leader Cesar Chavez, who championed a Chicano “freedom school” and predicted a flourishing of nontraditional schools that reflected America’s diversity. They’re with Senator Moynihan, who, in the 1970s, promoted a private school-tuition=tax credit bill that drew 50 cosponsors – 26 Republicans and 24 Democrats.

I realize my limitations as a messenger here. So let me recommend a primer from an actual expert: James Forman Jr. The Yale law professor and Pulitzer Prize winner authored a 2005 paper with a title that says it all: “The Secret History of School Choice: How Progressives Got There First.”

Ultimately, the Rosa and Raymond Parks Academy for Self-Development didn’t happen. But it’s clear that Parks, herself the product of a private school education, saw value in having alternatives to district schools – not because she wanted to destroy them, but because she wanted more options for the kids who desperately need them.

Forget the big lie. If you stand for choice, you stand with Rosa Parks.

March 29, 2021 1 comment
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Education and Public PolicyEducation ChoiceEducation LegislationEducation Savings AccountsFeaturedNewsParent EmpowermentParental ChoiceSchool Choice

Education savings account bill takes first step in Missouri Senate

redefinED staff March 25, 2021
redefinED staff

Republican Rep. Phil Chrisofanlli is sponsoring a bill that would allow families more control over education spending.

A bill that would establish an education savings account program in Missouri had its first hearing Tuesday in a Senate committee.

HB 349 would establish the Missouri Empowerment Scholarship Accounts Program, allowing taxpayers to claim a tax credit of up to 50% of their tax liability for contributions to educational assistance programs. The funds would be placed in education savings accounts that families could use for tuition, textbooks, tutoring and other education services.

Bill sponsor Rep. Phil Christofanelli said the legislation provides a remedy for the state’s education system.

“I think it is agreed across all ideologies and political beliefs that at times Missouri falls behind in its attempts to provide these students with an education that allows them to realize their full potential,” Christofanelli said. “This bill seeks to fill that void.”

Among those speaking in favor of the bill was a representative from the American Federation for Children as well as a former teacher and parent who said the bill would provide more choice for parents and bolster the performance of Missouri students.

“Adopting a one-size-fits-all policy from the state level has not been the best solution,” Sarah Hartinger said. “While this debate over school choice continues every year, Missouri students and education results suffer. As an educator and a mother, this breaks my heart, and we must do better.”

Among those who argued against the bill was Keith Rabenberg, who spoke on behalf of the Missouri School Boards Association. Rabenberg suggested that reports that Missouri schools are failing are “isolated incidents” and that public school districts “are doing a good job, and oftentimes do an excellent job.”

Education savings accounts have been debated in both Missouri chambers over the years. The same act stalled in the Senate in 2019.

March 25, 2021 0 comment
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Blog GuestCommentary and OpinionEducation and Public PolicyEducation ChoiceEducation EquityFeaturedJack CoonsParent EmpowermentParental ChoiceSchool Choice

Choice and the civic soul

John E. Coons March 19, 2021
John E. Coons

“Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.”

G.B. Shaw, Maxims for Revolutionists

Shaw’s wit suggests the primary harvest of our “public” school systems for children of the poor and for their parents. We have only recently learned of its relatively dim outcome as measured by standard tests of basic learning.

This monolith of 19th century design is, at last, damned by professional media for its dimming effect upon the intellectual, economic and social prospects for these children of poverty who are collected by the state with a warrant for their presence in a certain “public” school of the city. Like criminal suspects who can’t afford bail, these kids will stay here for rehabilitation.

The evidence of student learning today consists mostly of comparative test scores and their relation to parental social types. This much is no longer in doubt: Those lucky kids whom a lottery has delivered to mom’s chosen charter school learn more of whatever is taught; and this holds true whether the parent has any particular mindset or sophistication.

I am no statistician; I merely read the conclusions of these respected scholars of numbers and their significance. What I can hope to contribute comes only as a conviction of a long observer of this scene that the civic effects at stake in our wars over parental choice count more than any puff or decline in test scores.

These social consequences would be important even were chosen schools merely equal or even trailing in their scores. Our literature on this subject wants for insight that numbers alone can’t give – a sense of the long-term effect upon the souls and minds of those humans who experience intellectual and moral exit from the dignity and civic responsibility so dear to the luckier among us.

Shaw’s ambiguous tweet make us ponder.

For 59 years, I have written and/or taught the structures of schooling here and abroad and the roles of parent and child as I and others perceive them. Yet my experience as a middle-class human with five children, plus now their descendants, is still my best claim to insight.

It is limited and often flawed, but I trust it to be as reliable as that of other patriarchs who hail from the 1920s and claim some insight from experience. And, further, I can even imagine my message as common sense for old and young.

It is essentially this: There are two profoundly corruptive symbolisms in our making the poor family be the servant of the state, as we do. The device encourages a mindset in both parent and child that is (in manner, not content) faintly suggestive of that which Beijing seeks to secure among the Uighurs. Their child is to be made happy with a life of moral and intellectual suppression.

The American child of the poor shall, by contrast, be made happy by the state with no clear moral suppression at all; they will be assured that the good life is whatever one chooses for his or herself – but, of course, just so long as you remain good.

“Good?” But you just told me to choose the way I want; now you tell me always to be good to my neighbor. Just why must I do that when it gets in the way of my own plan?

Yes, okay, I’ll obey the law; one must. Is that all you mean? Outside of that, who is there to tell me what’s “good?”

In our public school, the mind of the American child of the poor could be, but is never allowed a clear portrayal of the crucial relation between human freedom and an authentic moral good. I will not here review what I think to be the necessary structure of that relation. My bibliography is full of the particular version of it which I would trust.

The second poisonous implication, and at least as corruptive of the social order, is the unsubtle message of the school system to the non-rich parent and her child regarding the role that each is being assigned to play in this society.

“Here is your status as parent: You produce the child whom you then shall feed, clothe and care for until we call upon you to deliver him or her to a school which the state shall identify, there to learn this truth that it teaches. You shall continue to provide for the physical needs of the child until high school graduation; up to a point, the state will leave you free to express to the child your own view of the good life.”

This reality is corruptive of the civic order through its enduring effects upon the minds and hearts of both child and parent. Watching their loving but decommissioned parents, the child grasps that “Mom and Dad must surrender without alternative; being a parent is a form of intellectual and moral vassalage to some higher order called ‘the state,’ which makes P.S. 22 the vehicle for its message to me. At dinner, my folks may fret at my report of the day’s lessons or classroom events, but they can do nothing such as finding another school.”

Parenting and marriage itself gradually appear as downside experience with very little independence and authority, and lots of grief. “Who needs it? Will I ever want to lose my own freedom to such a trap? Not as long as I can hang with a gang – and probably never.”

The parents’ own experience of impotence in the shaping of their own child’s mind has its equally poisonous effect upon both their personal and civic visions. To strip them of authority is a clear invitation to reassess their own identify.

“This society wants me helpless to shape the mind of my own child in the manner so precious to the rich. Oh well, at least it has spared me responsibility for whatever happens in the streets and the civic order. It’s not all bad; I will just stop worrying about it and enjoy whatever government has to offer poor people like me.”

Shaw has his point. This corruption of the civic souls of child and parent is the poisoning of society.

March 19, 2021 0 comment
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Commentary and OpinionCustomizationEducation and Public PolicyEducation ChoiceEducation LegislationEducation Savings AccountsFeaturedGardiner ScholarshipParent EmpowermentParent VoicesParental ChoicePrivate School ScholarshipsSchool Choice

Commentary: Choice advocate dispels myths about education savings accounts

Special to redefinED March 10, 2021
Special to redefinED

Katie Swingle of Winter Haven frequently champions the rights of parents to make educational decisions for their children.

Editor’s note: This piece from Katie Swingle, an active school choice parent and advocate in Polk County, appeared in the Lakeland Ledger in response to a column published in the Ledger in February.

As a mother whose children benefit from Florida education scholarships, I was offended by the recent “Your Turn” column by the Rev. Ray Johnson (“‘Scholarship’ program threatens education,” Feb. 17).

He’s alarmed that under education choice, parents, not educators, evaluate their children’s educational progress. Apparently, he doesn’t trust parents to know what’s best for their own children. Perhaps he should meet some of the hundreds of thousands of scholarship families over the years who moved mountains trying to find the best learning environment for their children.

I’m one of them.

He uses scare tactics to misrepresent how education savings accounts work, likening them to “gift cards.” My son Gregory, who is on the autism spectrum, receives the Gardiner Scholarship for special-needs students. That program, which has been around since 2014, operates as an ESA, similar to how Senate Bill 48 would transform the Florida Tax Credit and Family Empowerment scholarships for lower-income students.

We do not receive a debit card. Funds are deposited into an account. Purchases must be made from a list of pre-approved items and services. If something is not on a list, parents must submit a pre-authorization request that is reviewed by a committee and approved before the money can be spent. I know this to be a rigorous process.

To continue reading, click here.

March 10, 2021 0 comment
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Advocate VoicesCommentary and OpinionCommunity LeadersCustomizationEducation and Public PolicyEducation ChoiceEducation EquityFeaturedMicroschoolsParent EmpowermentParent VoicesSchool ChoiceVoices for Education Choice

Micro-schools could be answer for low-income Black students

Special to redefinED February 27, 2021
Special to redefinED

Glenton Gilzean speaking in September on a podcast about his early entrepreneurial experiences. Listen to the full interview at https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=3417597471621950.

Editor’s note: This commentary from Glenton Gilzean Jr., president and CEO of the Central Florida Urban League and former Pinellas County School Board member and Florida A&M trustee, appeared earlier today in the Orlando Sentinel.

 When I became president and CEO of the Central Florida Urban League, it was clear that our community faced some incredible challenges. Yet, I always believed that the path forward began with education.

Generational poverty stems from a vicious cycle that we’re all too familiar with. While our organization has helped upskill thousands to compete for high-paying, high-skilled jobs, this is a Band-Aid solution. If our goal is to end this cycle, our fight must begin with children.

For generations, children in low-income Black communities have endured a sub-par education model and these underperforming schools not only hurt our children, but our entire community.

According to the Orlando Economic Partnership, the average net worth for Black adults in Central Florida is less than $18,000 annually, compared to more than $215,000 for white adults. This overt discrepancy is a direct result of a failing education system. Without innovation, these failures will continue to compound as parents are forced to choose between feeding their families and supplementing their children’s education.

With a lack of support both at home and in school, the interest of our children to engage in their learning wanes. While I believe that every child is born with a thirst for knowledge, those in our community are born into a drought with no end in sight.

We can change this. Imagine a school with only a handful of students, learning in a safe and welcoming environment. With such small numbers, their teacher can work with each student, developing and following a personalized learning plan.

Aptly called micro-schools, this is the reality for those with means. But if the state passes a new education choice bill, this can become a reality for those in underserved communities too. Simply put: the low-income Black children who need them the most.

Senate Bill 48, sponsored by Sen. Manny Diaz Jr. (R-Hialeah Gardens), combines five education scholarship programs into two. The bill also extends the use of education savings accounts (ESAs), currently only available to the Gardiner Scholarship for special-needs students and the Reading Scholarship, to the newly merged income-based scholarships.

These accounts could be used to cover private-school tuition, technology, tutoring, curriculum and other approved items. Families would have the flexibility to spend their education dollars, providing them access to the learning environment that best fits their children’s needs.

This bill puts us on the cusp of providing these youth with a high-quality learning environment that will begin to close both the historical achievement gap, the school-to-prison pipeline, and the growing COVID-19 learning gap.

The past year has demonstrated that, now more than ever, families require educational options. Most children have regressed, struggling to maintain even the most basic curriculum. Throwing these students back into an unsuccessful system will further exacerbate their situation.

While the benefits for our youth are clear, micro-schools also provide economic opportunities. If parents have the freedom to spend their children’s education dollars through ESAs, they will demand providers that meet their needs. Entrepreneurs will invest in our communities and this cannot be understated.

As a result of the pandemic, over 40% of Black-owned businesses have closed, while the Black unemployment rate is hovering around 10%, four points higher than the state average. Networks of micro-schools would not only our lift up our children, but their families too.

My organization knows first-hand the success of ESAs. The Urban League partnered with several Orange County Public Schools to register more than 700 students to receive supplemental tutoring funded by the Florida Reading Scholarship. This was a blessing for parents who were unable to afford tutoring for their children.

We now have the opportunity to take ESAs to the next level and positively impact not hundreds, but thousands of children. I pray that our elected representatives listen to their constituents. Please fund students over systems, put money in the hands of parents who know what’s best for their children, and bring micro-schools to communities that desperately need them.

February 27, 2021 0 comment
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Commentary and OpinionEducation and Public PolicyEducation ChoiceEducation EquityEducation LegislationEducation Savings AccountsFeaturedParent EmpowermentParental ChoicePrivate School ScholarshipsSchool Choice

Further evidence that Florida’s lower-income students will benefit from access to ESAs

Doug Tuthill February 17, 2021
Doug Tuthill

There are many important policy improvements in Florida Senate Bill 48, the innovative education choice legislation sponsored by Sen. Manny Diaz Jr. that is receiving so much national attention. But my favorite enhancement is the creation of education savings accounts (ESAs) for lower-income families.

This year, Florida is providing scholarships to about 140,000 lower-income families via the Florida Tax Credit (FTC) and Family Empowerment Scholarship (FES) programs. Currently, these scholarships can only be used to pay private school tuition and fees, or transportation costs to attend an out-of-district public school. The scholarship amount cannot exceed the annual cost of tuition and fees at a student’s chosen private school. If a student is eligible for a $7,000 scholarship but the tuition and fees at her private school are $6,000, then that student’s scholarship will be only $6,000.

This year, 17% of our FTC/FES scholarship recipients received scholarships that were, on average, $641 less than a full scholarship. That means 23,800 students, who researchers say are the state’s lowest-income and lowest-performing students when they receive a scholarship, did not get $15,255,800 in scholarship funds they were financially eligible to receive.

If the Florida Legislature and Gov. Ron DeSantis agree to turn these scholarships into ESAs, then every scholarship student will receive the full scholarship amount, and any funds not spent on tuition and fees may be spent on additional education services and products such as tutoring, books, summer school, and software.

Some private and charter schools already are planning to create afterschool tutoring and summer enrichment programs to serve families with excess ESA funds. Families also may use ESA funds to purchase services from their neighborhood district schools and certified teachers who create their own afterschool and summer programs. More small business development, especially in lower-income urban communities, is a benefit of the enhanced spending flexibility families have via ESAs.

An important feature of ESAs is that unspent funds roll over so parents may spend them in future years. Some elementary and middle school families, for instance, probably will roll over unused ESA funds to help pay for high school expenses, which are often unaffordable for scholarship families.

Sen. Diaz’s bill is a long way from becoming law. But Florida’s legislative leaders, in collaboration with our governors over the last 25 years, have made steady progress toward providing our state’s most disadvantaged students with more effective and efficient learning options.

I am confident that the education choice bills that become law this summer will continue this trend.

February 17, 2021 0 comment
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