Parent empowerment

podcastED: an interview with education choice advocate Virginia Walden Ford

David Hudson Tuthill December 5, 2019

Education choice advocate Virginia Walden Ford served as the inspiration for a new independent movie that chronicles the creation of the Opportunity Scholarship Program in Washington, D.C.

Editor’s note: For more than two decades, education choice advocate Virginia Walden Ford has tirelessly championed families and students living in lower-income neighborhoods to ensure that all children have the academic options they deserve.

After growing up in Little Rock, Ark., during the battle for school integration, Walden Ford led the fight for the Opportunity Scholarship Program in Washington, D.C. Her passion for education equality was ignited as she witnessed, as the single mother of three children, the need for more education choices for all families.

Now, her story has been made into a movie starring Uzo Aduba, Matthew Modine and Vanessa Williams. Step Up For Students, which hosts this blog, is bringing three free screenings of the film to Florida Dec. 8, 9 and 10 in Jacksonville, Orlando and Tampa, respectively. Walden Ford will be present at all three shows and will do a talk-back following the Tampa screening.

The Jacksonville and Orlando shows are sold out, but RSVPs are still being accepted for the Tampa screening here.

Step Up For Students advocacy coordinator David Hudson Tuthill recorded an exclusive interview with Walden Ford Tuesday in which she discussed her children’s diverse academic needs, the effect of neighborhood drug and gang activity on their learning, and her growing conviction that someone had to stand up and be the voice for children in the D.C. area and across the country.

We hope you enjoy the podcast.

December 5, 2019 0 comment

Customization Education choice Education equity Featured Gardiner Scholarship Parent empowerment School Choice Student spotlight

Even out here, education choice for Eli

Ron Matus December 4, 2019

Ron Matus

Eli Conner, shown here with his mother, Stephanie Conner, and his sister, Madeline, benefits from the flexibility offered by the Gardiner Scholarship, Florida’s education savings account for students with special needs. The Conners have crafted an education regimen that includes therapy, home school and private school for Eli. PHOTO: Lance Rothstein

Editor’s note: To learn more about Eli and to hear his story in his mother’s words, please watch the video at the end of this post.

LaBELLE, Fla. – In his family’s backyard, Eli Conner, 13, wobbled across a 20-foot tightrope, pretending to be the hero in a rescue scene from a “Despicable Me” movie.

Using foam hand grips hanging from another rope, he pulled himself toward a big oak at the end of the line. “You’re getting closer,” encouraged his mom, Stephanie Conner. “Now touch the tree.” Eli finished with a triumphant tap.

“One handed,” said Mom. “Nice.”

Eli, who communicates mostly through sign language, has been diagnosed with cerebral palsy and other developmental delays. A few years ago, he was scared and struggling in a traditional school. A few weeks ago, he couldn’t do the tightrope.

Now he can.

And now, thanks to a cutting-edge education choice scholarship, his family is confident they will see his growth continue to accelerate.

Even in this remote town near the Everglades, there are more educational resources than meet the eye. It just takes the right tool to assemble them. The Conner family did that with the Gardiner Scholarship, Florida’s education savings account for students with special needs. It gave them flexibility to devise an education regimen – therapy, home school, private school – that was just right for Eli.

The scholarship, Stephanie Conner said, “changed everything.”

The Gardiner Scholarship has allowed Eli to gain a year’s worth of knowledge in a year’s worth of time for each of the past three years. PHOTO: Lance Rothstein

Stephanie Conner describes herself as a stay-at-home mom. She is a former public and private schoolteacher. Her husband, Joel Conner, is a graphic artist and adult education teacher from a family of educators, including his father, a former superintendent of the local public schools. The Conners have four children, three of them adopted. All four use education choice scholarships.

Eli and his sister, Madeline, 9, use the Gardiner Scholarship, the largest education savings account program in America. Created by the Florida Legislature in 2014, it now serves 13,112 students, including 449 in rural counties. Three thousand more are on a wait list. The Conners’ 5-year-olds, Meizi and Gideon, use the new Family Empowerment Scholarship for working- and middle-class families. Created by the Legislature this year, it’s already reached its cap of 18,000 students.

Without intending to be trendsetters, the Conners are using the Gardiner Scholarship in a novel way that underscores the potential for schools to unbundle their services – and better serve families. (More on that in a sec.) Their experience also shows the upside of giving parents more power to shape their children’s educational programming – even in rural areas – where myths about education choice not being viable persist despite this, this and this.

LaBelle, pop. 4,640, is not postcard Florida. It’s laid-back, fringed with cabbage palms, a pit stop between Lake Okeechobee and Fort Myers. It’s also the county seat of Hendry County, a patch of farm country blanketed by sugar cane that holds fewer humans per square mile than Kansas.

The Conner kids are fourth-generation Hendry County. They have plenty of family nearby, which is why, pre-Gardiner, the Conners were on the verge of a heart-breaking decision. Family? Or therapy? To be closer to the therapists Eli needed, they kept thinking they’d have to uproot to the city. “It was always a terrible feeling to have to even consider giving up one or the other,” Conner said. “Family support, when you’re dealing with special needs, is indispensable.”

Thanks to the scholarship, they never had to make that choice. This is Eli’s third year using the Gardiner Scholarship, and the first for Madeline, who has been diagnosed with bilateral congenital deafness.

The combination of therapies, home school and private school have been the perfect combination for Eli. PHOTO: Lance Rothstein

Like growing numbers of parents with education savings accounts, the Conners are “customizers.” They use the funds to mix and match educational products and services in addition to, or beyond, school. In their case: home school materials; therapy sessions and equipment (for speech, occupational and sensory integration therapy); and partial tuition at International Christian Academy, a private school a block from their home.

Several times a year, Stephanie Conner takes Eli to Orlando for three weeks of intensive therapy. The rest of the time, she does daily therapies with Eli and Madeline, many involving tools purchased with Gardiner funds. “Peanut balance balls” help them both improve motor skills. A microphone helps Madeline better enunciate words. An array of spoon-like tools helps Eli with his speech, with Mom using them to strengthen muscles in his mouth.

For Eli, the positive effects spill over into academics. Depending on the subject, his proficiency ranges from a first- to fourth-grade level. He reads at a third-grade level. But over the past three years, he’s gained a year’s worth of knowledge in a year’s worth of time. And sensory integration therapy has made it possible for him to learn in more settings, from field trips to classrooms. “His ability to sit still and not be overwhelmed by sights and sounds … has allowed him to participate,” Conner said.

The private school piece is key. So is the way the school offers its services. The youngest Conners go full time. Eli goes for PE, lunch and a science/social studies class. Madeline goes for PE. For the older siblings, the school charges partial tuition. It has unbundled its services in a way that more and more parents will appreciate and other schools, public and private, would be wise to consider.

“If someone wants to be part of our school, I’m going to let them,” said International Christian Academy founder and principal Tracy Co. “I thought it was a good fit for them and it’s worked.”

The school serves 80 full-time students in K-12. More than half are non-white. More than 80 percent use state scholarships. (Sixty use either the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship for lower-income students or the Family Empowerment Scholarship. FTC, FES and Gardiner are administered by nonprofits such as Step Up For Students, which hosts this blog.)

Eli has been warmly welcomed. During a recent kickball game, his classmates erupted in cheers when he booted a low liner up the middle. At first base, he fist bumped the coach.

The boost to Eli’s social skills is also bolstering his academics, giving him more confidence and more ability to focus and learn, Conner said. Between therapies, home school and part-time private school, she said, “this has just been the perfect combination.”

Perfect combinations really are possible. Even out here.

December 4, 2019 0 comment

ArchivED Education and Public Policy Education politics Parent empowerment Podcast School Choice vouchers

archivED: Revisiting a podcast with Jeb Bush

Denisha Merriweather November 16, 2019

Denisha Merriweather

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush spoke with former Step Up For Students intern Denisha Merriweather in June 2016 about school choice, parent empowerment and the politics of education.

Editor’s note: Each Saturday in November, redefinED is reprising a podcast from our archives, reminding readers that we have a wealth of audio content to complement our written blog posts. Today, we revisit a June 2016 interview with former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush conducted by former Step Up For Students intern Denisha Merriweather.

When it comes to politics, I’m not alone. Many members of my generation don’t align with either major political party. Our views don’t always fit the traditional left-right mold. But we also aren’t tied to the status quo. We are willing to break from tradition to make a difference.

Our willingness to embrace change is one cause for optimism that Jeb Bush said he found in this crazy political season. In a new interview, we talked about education politics, the importance of creating new educational options, and what politicians might learn if they spent more time in the classroom.

The former Florida governor says that on the campaign trail, he saw a backlash against some aspects of education reform. The solution, he said, is to use a bottom-up approach that puts more power in the hands of parents by giving them more choices and better information.

“If you start with the premise that this about educating children, and families are the most important political jurisdiction for their child – to be nerdy about it – the money would follow the child, not the school system,” he said.

One promising way to do that, he said, is to give parents education savings accounts, which will allow them to send their children to public schools or private schools, or to teach their children at home, or hire tutors and therapists, or even (my favorite) save for college.

While running for president, he released a plan that would have allowed states to create ESAs that could help parents pay for every stage of their child’s education, from preschool to grad school. And it would have given low-income parents direct control of federal Title I dollars that would have gone to their child’s school.

As I think about my own student loans, the notion that ESAs could be used to save for higher ed certainly piques my interest.

Bush has returned to his role as chairman of the Foundation for Excellence in Education, and he said one of the organization’s top priorities is identifying states that are prepared to be “bold” about creating ESA programs. Scholars were talking in the late 1970s about an idea that sounded a lot like education savings accounts, but nothing came of it. Fortunately, this new iteration of the concept does not seem to be lying dormant.

Some opponents of school choice have implied low-income parents don’t know enough to pick the best school for their child. All too often, people who oppose giving them options have a patronizing attitude.

Educators need to respect the ability of low-income parents to decide what’s best for their children, Bush said.

“The government doesn’t trust people near or at the poverty level,” he said. “For some reason they think they are stupid. They’re just poor. ”

To make those decisions, he said, all parents need better information, like a report card on the schools in their area, and detailed information on how their own children are progressing, so they’ll know which schools might be a good fit. This isn’t exactly a radical new invention. But for most parents, that simply doesn’t exist, and it should.

Parents need to be informed of the options that exist around them. If they don’t have that information, they’ll probably send their kids to the school that’s right around the corner, the one the bus goes to, even if they may be better off somewhere else – like I was.

Bush said that when he was governor, he sat in courtrooms hearing family law cases to learn about problems in the state’s child welfare system. To learn about education, he visited hundreds of schools around the state. He joined principals knocking on the doors of children who were chronically absent, and spent time in teachers’ lounges.

“They thought I had horns because I was for vouchers, but I learned a lot from them,” he said of the educators he met in public schools. “They’re not the problem. It’s the system that’s not working.”

Everybody has their plan or their theory or their own advice to give, but many times, politicians don’t actually have first-hand knowledge when they make decisions that can change children’s lives. If they spent more time in schools, or talking to low-income families about their kids, that might help pull education out of the ugly vortex that’s consuming national politics.

“Don’t you think that there should be a left-right coalition for reform, when you’re empowering low-income families?” Bush asked during our interview. “I don’t think that has to be a Democrat issue or a Republican issue.”

Gov. Bush has been advocating for school choice for more than 20 years now, and his zeal doesn’t seem to be fading.

November 16, 2019 0 comment

Charter Schools Customization Education equity Jack Coons Parent empowerment Parental Choice School Choice vouchers

A no-loser solution?

John E. Coons November 15, 2019

John E. Coons

The City School District of the City of New York is the largest school system in the United States, with over 1.1 million students taught in more than 1,800 separate schools. The department covers all five boroughs of New York City and has an annual budget of nearly $25 billion.

New York City’s “public” schools offer many parents a choice among providers – if their child happens to be gifted as measured by scores on a test.

The five most elite of the “choosable” schools require a score in the 99^th percentile for admission. According to the New York Times (Oct. 11, 2019), “ … [D]ozens of other gifted programs … throughout the city generally require students to score in the 90^th percentile.”

Parents of smart kids – and they alone – enjoy what amounts to a voucher. Their choices, it is claimed, can in many lower-income neighborhoods, intensify the racial segregation of those local schools as they are abandoned by the more brainy; or so we learn from the Times.

Any unnecessarily segregated system will be disfavored by many of the public, including those, like myself, who marched in Selma, authored several federal reports on segregation in Chicago and Evanston public schools and served on President Jimmy Carter’s National Panel on Education – and would do it all again.

If New York’s very selective system of parental choice effectively segregated by race, it seems imperative to ask whether this is the only way to respect and preserve the very real value of high intellectual aspiration. Are integration and quality incompatible?

For critical consideration by the professional educator or critic, I cite the half-dozen model statutes and popular initiatives published over three-plus decades by Stephen D. Sugarman and myself. For the curious but busy, it may be more convenient to stick with our explanatory addendum or “Education by Choice: The Case for Family Control” (1978). I regret that this sounds vain; blame it on my age and the despair of watching the city schools and their hapless victims.

Somehow, this society must find ways of protecting the moral, intellectual and stylistic integrity of participating schools while treating both racial and economic integration of families as equally important and compatible with parental authority, which for this observer is paramount. Devices to serve all these values will, of course, require some compromise.

For example:

The school could be free to fill 75 percent of its seats as it prefers; the balance would be selected by lottery among unchosen applicants.

The schools must provide basic information about itself in a public manner.

If the school is private or charter (the teacher unions insist that charter schools are private schools; I agree) it could teach religion to all pupils but could not require an unbeliever to assent or participate in ceremony.

The school could enforce a minimum standard of learning by dismissal (with hearing). Ditto for behavior.

As for tuition imposed by the school above the value of the governmental support for the parent, there are various approaches. One is simply to disallow it for low-income parents, permitting graduated add-ons for those above. Of course, the basic grant should match, or at least approach, an amount sufficient to sustain a “common” school.

Enough. Let the union rise in horror. There is nothing in all we have written that would discourage the formation of strong teacher unions of the sort common to the private sector. There is everything to be said for tough teacher organization that can insist upon a fair share of the good stuff, always aware that, if they get too greedy, their own jobs will cease to exist.

Today’s “public” schoolteachers do not face that risk. They should.

November 15, 2019 0 comment

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Charter schools and the unbundling of K-12 education services

Doug Tuthill November 8, 2019

Doug Tuthill

Step Up For Students president Doug Tuthill

Editor’s note: This post is an edited version of a talk Step Up For Students president Doug Tuthill delivered in October to the Florida Charter School Conference in Orlando.

Products and services in many industries are in the process of being unbundled. Thirty years ago, we had to buy albums to own our favorite songs. Now we can buy individual songs and bits of songs online.

Classified newspaper ads used to be a cash cow for daily newspapers. But no more. Craigslist’s unbundling of classified ads is a key reason daily newspapers are dying.

The demise of cable TV may be next as streaming services such as Netflix unbundle programing. Shopping malls are closing as Amazon unbundles retail shopping, and banks are responding to the unbundling of banking services by licensing unbundled banking applications in a new business model called “banking as a service.”

Now the process of unbundling public education services has begun. Thus far, this unbundling has included magnet schools, charter schools, dual enrollment, virtual schools, course choice, micro-schools, home schooling, workspace, and scholarships and vouchers to help families pay for private schools.

But the real game changer will be Education Scholarship Accounts (ESAs). ESAs are going to accelerate the unbundling of public education services.

ESAs are publicly-funded financial accounts that families use to purchase state-approved education products and services for their children. Instead of a school district spending a student’s public education dollars, through ESAs state government allows a student’s family to spend these dollars.

About 18,000 Florida students will have ESAs this school year through two programs — the Gardiner Scholarship for students with special needs/unique abilities, and Reading Scholarship Accounts for struggling readers in district elementary schools. These students’ families will use their ESA funds to purchase products and services, such as public and private school courses, afterschool tutoring, physical and occupational therapy, speech therapy, education hardware and software, summative and formative assessments, curriculum material, and books. Over the last two years, Florida families have used ESA funds to purchase products and services from over 10,000 education providers.

The number of families using ESAs will probably increase in the future. In six years, Florida could have 200,000 families spending $1.5 billion annually through their ESAs. This much purchasing power in the hands of families presents opportunities and challenges for Florida’s charter schools.

There will be competition to serve these families. Charter school companies in other states are exploring coming to Florida with offerings beyond schools. Some are planning to open charter and private schools with robust afterschool and summer programs. Others are planning to sell onsite and online courses, and one is exploring partnering with ride-sharing services to help transport students to in-school, afterschool, and summer programs. Think “Uber for Kids.”

Home schooling is the fastest growing education choice option in the country. Charter schools could be selling this population access to classrooms, computer and science labs, afterschool and summer programs, and onsite and online courses.

With the possible exception of Miami-Dade, most Florida districts will be slow to offer services to ESA families. Florida charter schools could help fill this void.

Dayspring Academy charter school in Pasco County moved quickly to create an afterschool tutoring program after the Reading ESA became law. It is now one of Florida’s top providers of ESA-funded tutoring services. (Dayspring founder and chief financial officer John Legg is a board of directors member for Step Up For Students, which hosts this blog.)

Other charters could follow the Dayspring example. Entrepreneurial Urban Leagues across Florida are also moving quickly to develop afterschool and summer reading programs for families with reading ESAs.

The unbundling of products and services inevitably leads to innovative ways to rebundle them. Spotify is a good example of a company facilitating rebundling in the music industry. Spotify empowers and enables music listeners to organize songs from diverse artists into customized playlists and share these lists with others. Spotify empowers customers to have a greater sense of ownership over their music since they now control how their “albums” are assembled. They also have access to the diverse playlists of millions of other music fans.

We need to replicate an appropriate version of the Spotify experience in public education. Educators need to be empowered and enabled to rebundle their services and products so that families can purchase highly effective customized instruction for each child with their ESA funds.

The unbundling and rebundling of education products and services is coming. Charter schools can help drive this train or follow the example of daily newspapers and get run over by it.

It’s their choice.

November 8, 2019 0 comment

Blog guest Education and Public Policy Education equity Education savings accounts Jonathan Butcher Parent empowerment School Choice

Helping students succeed in school and life with education savings accounts

Jonathan Butcher November 6, 2019

Jonathan Butcher

Editor’s note: Senior policy analyst Jonathan Butcher is co-editor and one of nearly two-dozen contributors to “The Not-So-Great-Society,” a new volume released today by The Heritage Foundation. Butcher’s chapter on education savings accounts, in which he explains the original Arizona model and describes how ESAs have evolved in large part due to upgrades in Florida and North Carolina, is reprinted here in its entirety.

Beta-propeller protein-associated neurodegeneration (BPAN) is a rare genetic disorder.[1] Caused by a mutation in a gene related to the body’s production of protein, researchers have documented less than 70 cases in medical research since it was first described in 2012.[2] The National Institutes of Health says that individuals with BPAN experience seizures and lose physical and intellectual functions over the years as the nervous system deteriorates.[3]

Libby Bradford, age 10, is one of these cases.

Libby is confined to a wheelchair. She cannot talk and must use a device that follows her eye movements in order to communicate. By her first birthday, Libby was visiting 11 therapists each week, says her mom, Liz.

As Libby grew and approached school age, Liz wanted to work with her own, traditional, school district. “We truly tried with a public school,” Liz says. “Toward the end of the time [she was in a district school], we did everything by the book,” she says. But it just was not working.[4]

Libby “is an extraordinarily complex kid,” Liz says. After trying different “workarounds,” as Liz describes them, and trying to talk with school staff about Libby’s needs, the situation had deteriorated too much for Liz. “I was in the classroom a fair amount and I found out more than I ever wanted to know about how it was run,” she says.

“It just got to the point that we had to get a lawyer because of safety and a complete lack of education,” Liz says. “By the end, she was throwing up on the way there. The anxiety was pretty intense. This was not a safe environment for her.” Fortunately, this story has a happy ending.

In North Carolina, students like Libby are eligible for education savings accounts, flexible spending accounts that allow parents to customize their child’s learning experience or choose a private school.[5] Liz applied for an account for Libby, and “she has done beautifully,” Liz says.

With an account, parents remove their child from the assigned government school, and the state deposits a portion of a child’s funds from the state education formula into a private account that parents use to buy education products and services for their child. Lawmakers in Arizona, Florida, Mississippi, Nevada, and Tennessee have enacted similar proposals.[6] Parents can buy textbooks and other learning materials, hire a personal tutor, find education therapies, pay private school tuition, and even pay for college classes or deposit account funds in college savings accounts—all with the taxpayer resources already designed for a child in state education budgets. Parents can save unused account funds from year to year.

Today, Libby attends a private school, and is the only student with BPAN there—or possibly anywhere, Liz says. Libby works with a speech therapist who modifies the curriculum so that Libby can keep up with her classmates, and this allows Libby to be in a mainstream classroom.

“The children have embraced her, the school has embraced her,” Liz says. “For the first time ever, she is being taught. She had been written off. She’s been given the opportunity to learn and absolutely embraced it.”

Education savings accounts and the reality of choice in education

Wealthy families have always had “school choice”—they can move to another school district or send their children to private schools. Over the past 30 years, some 7,000 public charter schools—schools with independent school boards that generally enroll any student who applies, subject to space—have opened around the country to give all students more choices in education, but especially those whose parents cannot find (read: afford) a new neighborhood in which to live.[7] More than half of all U.S. states have some form of K–12 private school voucher or other scholarship option—though these options are largely limited to children from low-income families or children with special needs.[8]

All of these learning opportunities bring hope to students who are struggling in an assigned district school. And, today, students have so many more learning opportunities than what they find in the four walls of a classroom. Education savings accounts create the possibility that a child could, for example, take classes at a local district school, visit a personal tutor, and enroll in online courses. Again, parents can even save money in their child’s account from one year to the next, helping to ease the pressure of saving for college.

The accounts are the nation’s newest form of parent choice in education. Yet in just the past eight years, even the ways families and students use the accounts to access education services has changed, as demonstrated by the experiences of students in Arizona and North Carolina.

Arizona. To protect taxpayers and students, accounts such as these must be designed carefully to make sure that resources are being used for student learning and that fraud or unauthorized spending is contained. In Arizona, the first state in which lawmakers enacted education savings accounts in 2011, the state issues prepaid Visa cards to account holders.[9] The state education department places restrictions on the cards, so that they cannot be used to pay travel agents or restaurants, for example.

The state department of education makes quarterly deposits to the savings accounts, and families must complete an expense report at the end of each fiscal quarter before the department makes the next deposit. This method has served account holders well, though, like anything else, it is not infallible. The department might not discover a payment for an unauthorized item or service until after the purchase has been made, which requires the agency to try to recover the funds.

Still, initial audits indicated that Arizona’s payment system was limiting the number of times parents—intentionally or unintentionally—misused the cards. In 2016, a state auditor report on the accounts said the agency established various processes to help ensure that program monies are spent appropriately, including preventing transactions at merchants whose goods and services are not related to education, such as fast food restaurants and lodging, and has worked with the Treasurer’s Office and bank to automatically deny these transactions.[10] Research finds that approximately 1 percent of account monies had been misspent at the time of the audit.[11]

North Carolina. North Carolina legislators and agency personnel learned from the experiences of Arizona account holders. State lawmakers enacted the accounts in 2017 and contracted with a company that specializes in facilitating payments among teachers, schools, and merchants to monitor parent transactions.[12] Instead of giving parents Visa cards and checking expense reports or asking parents to seek reimbursement, North Carolina’s contract with ClassWallet tasks the payment-processing company with applying its system to the new accounts.

ClassWallet already works with schools around the country and provides payment platforms that allow teachers and parents to use school resources to buy materials, such as books, from local vendors and online retailers, such as Amazon.[13] Teachers initiate a transaction by using ClassWallet’s online tool to make a purchase. ClassWallet’s records allow the company to confirm that the teacher is authorized to make the purchase, and that the chosen vendor is part of the ClassWallet payment system. Then, the payment processor transfers the money from the school’s account to the vendor without the teacher even seeing the money.

Likewise, with North Carolina’s education savings accounts, parents visit the company’s online portal, choose an item or service, and ClassWallet confirms that the purchaser and the vendor are in the system before transmitting funds. This three-tiered system of oversight—where ClassWallet sees the beginning, middle, and end of each purchase—helps to ward off misuse.

District schools have struggled for years to have such effective oversight. It is not uncommon for city or state inspector generals to discover financial fraud in a school district after millions have been stolen over the course of five years or more.[14] But even with Arizona’s original education savings account model, the department of education could identify misuse at the end of one fiscal quarter and suspend or even close an account—preventing ongoing loss of taxpayer money. North Carolina and ClassWallet’s system give parents the flexibility to pay for multiple products and services simultaneously while limiting the potential for misuse.

As this book went to press, Arizona officials signed a contract with ClassWallet to operate the payment functions of the state’s savings accounts, similar to North Carolina’s system. Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction Kathy Hoffman said the new services would be “phased-in over the next several months.”[15]

Helping students from all walks of life

People are already using financial technology for their personal banking needs. Surveys have found a marked increase in the number of adults who use online banking systems and make purchases online. Between 2011 and 2015, the percent of individuals ages 18 to 29 who used mobile banking increased from 45 percent to 67 percent.[16] For adults ages 30 to 44, the use of mobile banking went from 29 percent to 58 percent, a key indicator demonstrating that this generation of parents is uniquely prepared to adapt to an online Web portal, or even a smart device, to make purchases for their child’s education.

Parents’ access to a wide variety of learning options that fit their child’s needs is just as important as oversight mechanisms. The education savings account “gives me the ability to find someone who might not be in [our insurance] network but who understands my child and provides services that she couldn’t get previously,” Liz says. “We have an occupational therapist who ‘gets’ Libby. A huge part of it is just that they know her and she is not a textbook case.”

Students from all walks of life are using the accounts today. In Arizona, the state Department of Education reports that while children with special needs constitute more than half of account holders, 6 percent of participants are students previously assigned to a failing public school, 13 percent are children from active-duty military families, 5 percent were adopted from the state foster care system, 6 percent are Native American students, and 10 percent are siblings of existing account holders.[17]

In North Carolina, where adopted children and students in military families are eligible along with children with special needs, more than 1,400 families applied in the first year for just 350 available accounts.[18]

For Liz and Libby, the accounts mean more than an education. Their lives and the lives of those around them are being changed through Libby’s courageous example—and through the creative, groundbreaking innovations stemming from the connection between education savings accounts and financial technology. “They don’t see the bright orange wheelchair or the device in front of her or the braces she has,” Liz says. “They truly do adore her.”

“The parents have come to me to say how thankful they are that she is in their class. How the children talk to her and understand her, they whisper in her ear, tell her stories. It’s just amazing to see,” Liz says. “It gives you a lot of hope for our future.”

[1]National Institutes of Health, U.S. National Library of Medicine, Genetics Home Reference, “Beta-Propeller Protein-Associated Neurodegeneration,” https://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/condition/beta-propeller-protein-associated-neurodegeneration (accessed June 3, 2019).

[2]Kjersti Eline Stige et al., “Beta-Propeller Protein-Associated Neurodegeneration: A Case Report and Review of the Literature,” National Institutes of Health Clinical Case Reports, Vol. 6, No. 2 (February 2018), pp. 353–362, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5799652/# (accessed June 13, 2019).

[3]National Institutes of Health, U.S. National Library of Medicine, Genetics Home Reference, “Beta-Propeller Protein-Associated Neurodegeneration.”

[4]This story about Libby as told to the author by Libby’s mother.

[5]General Assembly of North Carolina, Session 2017, Senate Bill 257, https://www.ncleg.net/Sessions/2017/Bills/Senate/PDF/S257v8.pdf (accessed June 3, 2019).

[6]Jonathan Butcher, “A Primer on Education Savings Accounts: Giving Every Child the Chance to Succeed,” Heritage Foundation Backgrounder No. 3245, September 15, 2017, https://www.heritage.org/sites/default/files/2017-09/BG3245.pdf.

[7]Rebecca David and Kevin Hesla, “Estimated Public Charter School Enrollment, 2017–2018,” National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, March 2018, https://www.publiccharters.org/sites/default/files/documents/2018-03/FINAL%20Estimated%20Public%20Charter%20School%20Enrollment%2C%202017-18.pdf (accessed June 3, 2019).

[8]EdChoice, “The ABCs of School Choice,” January 16, 2019, https://www.edchoice.org/research/the-abcs-of-school-choice/ (accessed June 3, 2019).

[9]Arizona Department of Education, “Empowerment Scholarship Account—Parent Handbook: A Guide to Utilizing Your Empowerment Scholarship Account,” for school year 2018–2019, https://cms.azed.gov/home/GetDocumentFile?id=5c25284f1dcb250a1c4e90eb (accessed June 3, 2019).

[10]Arizona Auditor General, Performance Audit Division, “Arizona Department of Education: Department Oversees Empowerment Scholarship Accounts Program Spending, But Should Strengthen Its Oversight and Continue to Improve Other Aspects of Program Administration,” Report No. 16-107, June 2016, https://www.azauditor.gov/sites/default/files/16-107_Report.pdf (accessed June 3, 2019).

[11]Author calculations. See Jonathan Butcher, “My Turn: Voucher Fraud Is Terrible, But Put It Into Perspective,” Arizona Republic, July 18, 2017, https://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/2017/07/18/voucher-fraud-terrible-but-put-into-perspective/484733001/ (accessed June 3, 2019).

[12]North Carolina State Education Assistance Authority, “Education Savings Account: Information for Parents and School Administrators,” http://www.ncseaa.edu/pdf/ESA_Program_Overview.pdf (accessed June 3, 2019).

[13]ClassWallet, “How It Works: Spend Management 2.0,” https://www.classwallet.com/how-it-works.htm (accessed June 3, 2019).

[14]See, for example, Arizona Auditor General, “Santa Cruz County Superintendent: Theft of Public Monies,” November 25, 2005, https://www.azauditor.gov/reports-publications/counties/report/santa-cruz-county-school-superintendent-theft-public-monies (accessed June 3, 2019), and Doug Donovan and Liz Bowie, “Former Baltimore County Schools Leader Dallas Dance Pleads Guilty to Perjury,” The Baltimore Sun, March 8, 2018, https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/baltimore-county/bs-md-dallas-dance-trial-20180305-story.html (accessed June 3, 2019). For more, see Jonathan Butcher, “The Scourge of School-District Fraud,” National Affairs, No. 39 (Spring 2019), https://www.nationalaffairs.com/authors/detail/jonathan-butcher (accessed June 3, 2019).

[15]Arizona Department of Education, Office of Superintendent Kathy Hoffman, letter to Empowerment Scholarship Account families, July 25, 2019, https://myemail.constantcontact.com/Information-and-Updates-Regarding-the-ESA-Program.html?soid=1107647512252&aid=tvwcu7fbGPI&mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiWVdVME16ZG1OREprT1RZNSIsInQiOiJzb2NQcVdDck5iWTV2V0JtSklyZ1ZQdFBBVWE2dmRGWXl5c1dYcVZvV05Jbmp3MVJ0a1pqN0VJcW84SkZGTlwvY2VEU3F6aTlOYlo0SGhGMDZKV1wvdFpiSzZjdXBwY2hEd0ZFaWx0ckpWR1JsMzc5S3M0WE1UaHZxNWV6MW54XC96MyJ9 (accessed August 21, 2019).

[16]Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, “Consumers and Mobile Financial Services 2016,” March 2016, https://www.federalreserve.gov/econresdata/consumers-and-mobile-financial-services-report-201603.pdf (accessed June 3, 2019).

[17]E-mail correspondence with Karla Escobar, Arizona Department of Education, and Sarah Raybon, Arizona School Tuition Organization Association, April 11, 2019.

[18]North Carolina State Education Assistance Authority, “Education Savings Account Summary of Data,” February 12, 2019, http://www.ncseaa.edu/documents/ESA_Summary_Data.pdf (accessed June 3, 2019).

November 6, 2019 0 comment

Education savings accounts Parent empowerment Parental Choice School Choice

Education savings accounts put families in charge

Patrick R. Gibbons October 25, 2019

Patrick R. Gibbons

Florida has been a leading K-12 innovator for years, so it is no surprise it became the first state to offer education savings accounts (ESA) to children in public schools.

Launched in 2018 to 5,375 students, the Reading Scholarship provides students in third through fifth grades accounts worth up to $500 to pay for tutoring, afterschool and summer school reading programs, books and other services dedicated to improving literacy.

This year, the Florida Legislature appropriated $7.6 million to fund the scholarship program.

Students must be struggling learners, scoring a “1” or “2”, the two lowest scores, on the Florida Standards Assessment. Level 2 students are described as “below satisfactory” and likely needing substantial support for the next grade. Students scoring Level 1 are considered to have “inadequate” reading skill and highly likely to need substantial support. Students who are English language learners are given priority.

After they receive their children’s reading scores, parents apply through Step Up For Students, one of two approved non-profit scholarship administrators in Florida (and host of this blog). Once the Florida Department of Education ensures students are enrolled in public schools in eligible grades, parents are awarded a $500 scholarship to help improve the literacy of their child.

For now, parents are reimbursed for purchases within two to three weeks. But that system could change.

Florida’s other ESA program, the Gardiner Scholarship for students with special needs, functions in a similar method. However, Step Up developed a proprietary software program called “MyScholarShop,” allowing parents to directly purchase products and services through their ESA. To date, the parents of nearly 5,000 children have used MyScholarShop to make over 65,000 purchases totaling $19.2 million. MyScholarShop allows Gardiner parents to directly purchase thousands of pre-approved items. In addition to MyScholarShop, parents can use their education savings accounts to directly pay for services from over 9,000 approved vendors, tutors, and medical professionals, without having to wait for reimbursement.

This year 4,039 students have been found eligible on the Reading Scholarship, with 1,690 already funded and more applications on the way.

The Central Florida Urban League in Orlando is a leading proponent of the program, helping hundreds of students apply in the first two years. The chapter even developed and promoted a reading program after partnering with several Orange County public schools.

In the program’s first year, the League partnered with nine public schools to provide tutoring to more than 700 disadvantaged students. With the help of the reading scholarship and a $100,000 donation, hundreds of struggling fourth- and fifth-grade students received free tutoring services.

“It has been a godsend for parents who struggle and can’t afford tutoring for their children,” said Glen Gilzean, the League CEO. Gilzean says other Urban League chapters in Duval, Miami-Dade and Pinellas counties plan on developing their own partnerships with local public schools. Gilzean is the former vice president of family and community affairs at Step Up For Students, the non profit that administers the reading scholarship and hosts this blog.

Charter schools are getting involved, too.

Dayspring Academy may enroll about half of the current Pasco County reading scholarship students, says John Legg, a former state senator who was a primary sponsor of the Gardiner Scholarship and is the CFO of the charter school. Legg is currently a board member of Step Up For Students.

Dayspring offers an hour-long math and tutoring program that meets twice per week during the school year for students in second through fifth grade who score 1, 2 or 3 on the FSA. Dayspring has about 60 students participating in the afterschool program, with nearly 40 enrolled through the Reading Scholarship.

Before the Reading Scholarship was available, the charter school could afford to offer afterschool tutoring for only 30 minutes.

“We could not do this without the Reading Scholarship because the cost would be too great,” Legg said. The math portion of the program is supplemented through a separate grant, according to Legg.

As the program grows, more public schools are expected to participate. Staffers at several school districts, including Liberty, Columbia and Hillsborough counties, have expressed interest in the program.

“It’s a starting point,” says Gilzean, “but it really does make a difference.”

States wishing to emulate Florida don’t have to copy the program word for word. Since reimbursement programs are harder on low-income families, and the fact that many families use the scholarship to pay for tutoring, a program could function like a traditional voucher to be used at schools or tutoring centers. Eligibility doesn’t have to be limited to public school students or confined to just reading.

Such a program might be available for all students, including private school, charter school, homeschool and public school students, and be used to help pay for afterschool and summer school programs, tutoring for reading and math, to help students with disabilities receive speech, behavioral, or occupational therapy, or provide mentoring and job training for at-risk students and students with special needs.

Giving parents command of K-12 funding in this way may very well be the future of education.

Florida’s two separate ESA programs come the closest to that future, but no state has blended such a diverse array of options together into one program for all students. The race is on to see which state will be first.

October 25, 2019 0 comment

2020 presidential election Education and Public Policy Education politics Parent empowerment School Choice Voices for education choice

What’s in a name?

Catherine Durkin Robinson October 24, 2019

Catherine Durkin Robinson

Should we refer to our movement as “education choice” or “education freedom”? That’s a big discussion these days. Which would better rally our supporters? Which would encourage opponents to give this movement a second glance?

Those are questions I was recently asked, and I fought the urge to say, “Who cares?”

Is it a national movement without national advocates organized to fight for and defend it?

I don’t think so.

The response to the latest threat from a presidential nominee highlights this situation perfectly.

Democratic front-runner Elizabeth Warren said recently that as president, she’d cut back federal funding for charter schools. She also spoke out against vouchers, promising to end them entirely.

Cue the histrionics from proponents of choice, especially from people who understand presidential politics and the part we play (or don’t) in all of it.

We do that pretty well. Get hysterical. Write op-ed pieces giving Democrats a stern talking to. Tweet with hashtags and emojis. Hold retreats where we discuss, and argue, how best to reach out to people on the left who are inclined to support us, yet inviting very few from that camp into the discussion, and then quietly ignoring their words of wisdom.

Afterward, it’s back to business as usual.

First of all, these are state programs. Calm yourselves.

Secondly, the teacher unions organize and mobilize on a national scale. We don’t. We don’t provide cover for candidates to do the right thing. We don’t get out the vote. We don’t even call on millions of teachers, parents or students around the country to raise hell.

Why wouldn’t Warren support the teacher unions?

We don’t provide an alternative.

A reporter recently called an organization supporting education choice simply to ask it about registering people to vote. The response? The org stopped registering people to vote.

How’s that for brave?

Would the teacher unions or school districts do that?

I don’t think so.

Legally, all are well within their rights to register people to vote. Yet those on our side stopped.

And we expect candidates to risk political suicide when we won’t even fight for ourselves?

That’s not much of a movement, so who cares what we call it?

Discussing this name issue at a recent conference, two conservative leaders said to me, loud and proud, that “education freedom” wouldn’t be the right choice to attract Democrats because Democrats don’t care about liberty or freedom.

When the organizers asked later how to bring more liberals and progressives on board, I suggested limiting the influence of those who despise them.

How’s that for an idea?

I also told them to get bold.

Ask progressive candidates why a woman can be trusted to choose an abortion, but not her child’s school.

When I suggested this, an older, male Libertarian winced and said that was too polarizing and would turn away the very people we want.

Did you get that?

He told a progressive feminist her argument wouldn’t work with progressive feminists.

So miss me with that bipartisan jazz. Too often, our work is used to rally support for Republicans with little concern for reaching across the aisle. I’ll know we truly want bipartisan support, including white suburban left-leaning moms like me, when more of us are included in the conferences and conversation.

When we organize nationally.

When we use effective arguments.

When our talking heads aren’t homogenous.

When our talking heads start looking more like me and our parents.

In a recent speech endorsing Bernie Sanders for president, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez talked about her family exercising their freedom of education choice by moving from the city to Westchester County in order for her to attend its schools.

How did we respond?

Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos tweeted at AOC that she must, therefore, support school choice for all.

We’ve allowed our message and the important issue of helping low-income children escape generational poverty, to be owned by two of the more polarizing figures in American politics today: Donald Trump and Betsy DeVos.

This tweet gave newspapers permission to use headlines like “Betsy DeVos Informs AOC She Just Used a Conservative Talking Point.”

A conservative talking point? That’s news to this socialist. I thought it was a talking point used by anyone who cares about kids, regardless of their political persuasion.

That’s the message we need to promote.

That’s a movement we can all get behind.

Call it whatever you want.

October 24, 2019 0 comment

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