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  • ABOUT US
  • Content
    • Analysis
    • Commentary and Opinion
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    • News Features
    • Voices for Education Choice
    • factcheckED
  • Topics
    • Achievement Gap
    • Charter Schools
    • Customization
    • Education Equity
    • Education Politics
    • Education Research
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    • Education Spending
    • Faith-based Education
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    • Special Education
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    • Virtual Education
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  • Multimedia
    • Video
    • Podcasts
  • Guest Bloggers
    • Ashley Berner
    • Jonathan Butcher
    • Jack Coons
    • Dan Lips
    • Chris Stewart
    • Patrick J. Wolf
  • Education Facts
    • Research and Reports
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    • Hope Scholarship Program Facts
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    • FES Basic Facts
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Podcast

Advocate VoicesFaith-based EducationPodcastPrivate SchoolsProgressives and ed reformSchool ChoiceTax Credit Scholarships

podcastED: Pastor Robert Ward – Educational choice gives black parents hope

Ron Matus January 9, 2019
Ron Matus

Pastor Robert Ward, founder of Mt. Moriah Christian Fundamental School in south St. Petersburg.

If anybody doubts the passion for educational choice in black communities, come visit Mt. Moriah Christian Fundamental School in predominantly black south St. Petersburg, Fla. and chat with its founder, Pastor Robert Ward.

Ward started the private micro-school for grades 6-8 in 2011 with three students. Now it has 56. And now it’s routinely turning away children because there are waiting lists, both for the school and for the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship for lower-income students, the largest private school choice program in America. (The scholarship is administered by nonprofits such as Step Up For Students, which hosts this blog.)

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“Parents are beating on our doors to get in,” Ward said in this redefinED podcast. “We actually have stretched even our level of comfort in terms of capacity, to try to turn away as few parents as possible. But we’re very limited in our capacity.”

Dejected parents cry in the lobby, Ward said, “really with the loss of hope for their child.”

Pastor Ward is representative of a core constituency for choice that is blatantly overlooked by critics and the press. In Florida, where choice has taken root like nowhere else, there are hundreds of community leaders like Ward who represent communities of color and who wholeheartedly embrace choice. Like Ward and south St. Pete, those leaders and communities lean heavily towards the Democratic Party.

All but one of the students at Mt. Moriah school are black. All but three use state-supported choice scholarships, including 39 who use tax credit scholarships. Perhaps it’s no surprise, given that the outcomes in the school district that encompasses St. Petersburg are especially bleak for black students.

Black students in Pinellas County perform far worse on state tests than not just white students in Pinellas, but black students in every urban district in Florida. In 2018, for example, 23.9 percent of black 10th-graders in Pinellas passed the 10th grade reading test – the test they must pass to graduate – compared to a statewide average for black 10th-graders of 34.6 percent. (Statewide, 65.1 percent of white students passed. In Pinellas, 64.3 percent passed.)

The tragic trend lines go back to when schools in St. Pete were more racially integrated then they’d ever been (under a court-ordered desegregation plan), and arguably the best funded they’d even been (before the Great Recession.) They’ve persisted, Ward said, “because there’s not enough focus on what the real need is.”

“It goes back to that one-size-fits-all mentality or approach to the learning process,” Ward said. “Unfortunately, that’s just not reality. One size does not fit all. Students come from different backgrounds, different environments, different problems, different issues, that all have an effect on how we behave, how we learn, how we feel in the learning process. So I think we have to take all of that into consideration. And I think we also have to establish an environment where parents feel there’s hope.”

Also on the podcast with Pastor Ward:

  • On why choice should be non-partisan: “Our kids are not Republicans. Our kids are not Democrats. Or independents. Or liberals. Our kids are kids. … My mother and father never focused me on a political position in terms of education. They simply focused me on the importance of education.”
  • On the importance of school staff who are community based: “It’s a huge piece. Because (the parent and teachers) don’t just see each other at school. They see each other in the community. They talk about issues that are going on in the community. They can relate to specific things within the community.”
  • On the benefits of empowering parents through choice: “When you give parents that option, and that ability, it frees up their spirit and their heart. It gives them hope. They light up, because they say, ‘Oh, here’s a place of hope. And I have the power to choose it.’ ”
http://www.redefinedonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/ward-FINAL-mp3.mp3

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January 9, 2019 1 comment
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PodcastSchool Choice

podcastED: Incoming House Education Chair Jennifer Sullivan

Ron Matus December 14, 2018
Ron Matus

State Rep. Jennifer Sullivan, R-Mt. Dora sits down with redefinED in the returning edition of podcastED.

Arguably no state in America has redefined public education more than Florida. So how fitting that the latest lawmaker to rise to one of the key policy making slots is a former homeschooler.

State Rep. Jennifer Sullivan, R-Mt. Dora, said being homeschooled gives her unique insights into parental choice and personalized learning that will inform her world view as new chair of the House Education Committee.

In this redefinED podcast, she points out she struggled to read as a child. Had she been educated in a Florida public school rather than at home – where her mom had more flexibility to try different approaches – she said she may have fallen short on Florida’s third-grade reading test and been retained.

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“As we did life, she read to me a lot. And we would work on it. But not in a way where I even knew we were working on it,” Sullivan said. “So when I was nine, it completely clicked for me. And I haven’t put down a book since.”

Sullivan, a conservative Republican, is all in for ed choice. But it may surprise some, given the caricatures of choice supporters, how much she emphasizes the equity and opportunity arguments – in part because of her own life experience.

Her family, she said, “wouldn’t have had the money to move into the really nice neighborhoods to go to the really nice public schools.” In a similar vein, students assigned to district schools that are not working for them “deserve better.”

Sullivan also makes clear that, in her view, expanding choice and strengthening public schools isn’t either/or. “I’m all for school choice. But I am not against our public schools,” she said. “Public schools are where the significant portion of students go to school. And if that’s where our students are, maybe that’s where the reform needs to take place.”

http://www.redefinedonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/sullivan-final-copy.mp3

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December 14, 2018 5 comments
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PodcastSchool ChoiceTax Credit Scholarships

Expanding options for military families – Sen. Tim Scott, podcastED

Travis Pillow April 20, 2017
Travis Pillow

Sen. Tim Scott

Sen. Tim Scott has seen how hard it can be for military families to find educational opportunities for their children as they move from one base to another.

His older brother was a command sergeant major in the U.S. Army. His younger brother is a colonel in the Air Force.

Their experiences trying to find schools for their children helped inspire the CHOICE Act. Scott’s legislation would create pilot scholarship programs on at least five military bases.

“I know firsthand that a parent doesn’t choose the base they go to, and therefore, can only hope and pray that the education is good,” the South Carolina Republican tells Denisha Merriweather, a Florida tax credit scholarship alumna, in our latest podcast interview.

April is the month of the military child, and several states are advancing proposals to create new educational options for military families — or help existing school choice programs better meet their needs.

Georgia lawmakers approved a bill creating open enrollment for families on military bases, while Florida is advancing legislation that would allow military parents to apply for tax credit scholarships year-round.

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April 20, 2017 0 comment
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Parental ChoicePodcastSchool ChoiceTax Credit Scholarships

Improving public education, by choice: Darryl Rouson, podcastED

Travis Pillow February 15, 2017
Travis Pillow

Rouson

Florida State Sen. Darryl Rouson went to Catholic schools from first grade through college. He wants low-income families from his district to have the same opportunity. He’s sent his own children to public schools, so he wants Florida’s public school system to be as strong as possible.

During a podcast interview with Denisha Merriweather, a Florida school choice alum now studying to become a social worker, Rouson, D-St. Petersburg, explains how his life experience has informed his view that supporting school choice and supporting public education are not in conflict.

“I want a high-quality, fully funded public education, but at the same time, I do not believe that one size fits all,” he says.

Rouson joined the Senate after a narrow win in a hard-fought Democratic primary. Education issues figured prominently in the race. His district encompasses the segregated neighborhoods of South St. Petersburg, an area whose academic struggles were chronicled in a Pulitzer Prize-winning series by the Tampa Bay Times.

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February 15, 2017 2 comments
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PodcastSchool ChoiceTax Credit Scholarships

Two generations of school choice advocates: Virginia Walden Ford, podcastED

Travis Pillow November 29, 2016
Travis Pillow

virginia-walden-fordTwo of Virginia Walden Ford’s children went to public schools and thrived. They had access to mentoring programs and classes that nurtured their talents. But it was the experience of her youngest child, William, that led her to become a school choice advocate.

In middle school, he started to show signs of academic struggles. At the same time, drugs and gang activity were on the rise in the family’s working-class neighborhood in the nation’s capital.

“I always said I would never lose my kids … to the streets, but I knew that if I didn’t do something, then the possibility that this child would not succeed was right staring me in the face,” Ford says.

She found a private scholarship that allowed him to enroll at Archbishop Carroll High School, where he started doing better “almost immediately.” He told his mother that, for the first time, he felt surrounded by adults who cared about his education almost as much as she did.

“That was my first time realizing that if a child is an environment that meets his needs, then he will thrive and he will excel,” Ford says.

That’s the kind of turnaround story Denisha Merriweather can relate to. She changed her own academic trajectory after enrolling in a private school with the help of a Florida tax credit scholarship. On the latest edition of our podcast, she talks with Ford about using her own experience to advocate for educational options in the political arena.

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http://www.redefinedonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/VFW-podast-edited.mp3

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November 29, 2016 0 comment
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Achievement GapCatholic SchoolsPodcastSchool ChoiceTax Credit Scholarships

Catholic schools belong in the ed reform conversation – Jill Kafka, podcastED

Travis Pillow October 25, 2016
Travis Pillow

Kafka with studentOver the summer, a group of Catholic schools in Harlem and the Bronx posted some attention-grabbing results.

Their students took the same tests as children in New York’s charter and traditional public schools. State data showed that, on average, all types of schools improved. But the Partnership Schools improved faster.

For the second-straight year, the results of this experiment in urban Catholic education lent credence to the idea that— like a few related efforts elsewhere in the country — it belongs in the larger effort to improve urban school systems, particularly for disadvantaged students.

“We really can be a proof point,” Jill Kafka, the executive director of the Partnership for Inner-City Education, says in the latest edition of our podcast.

“I think what we’re able to prove and show is that Catholic schools can be an excellent choice for parents in these neighborhoods,” she says. In addition to traditional and charter public schools, “we end up being the third leg of the stool. We can bring the excellence to the point where we are part of the education reform conversation.”

The six schools are looking to turn the tide in a city beset by enrollment declines and Catholic school closures that hurt surrounding communities.

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October 25, 2016 0 comment
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Education and Public PolicyEducation PoliticsPodcastSchool ChoiceTax Credit Scholarships

The school choice agenda in Congress – Rep. Luke Messer, podcastED

Travis Pillow September 26, 2016
Travis Pillow
Messer

Messer

Congressman Luke Messer has been telling his fellow Republicans they can’t just be against the federal government’s role in education policy. They also need to fight for something.

That’s one reason Messer, R-Indiana, helped launch the Congressional School Choice Caucus.

And he recently joined Denisha Merriweather, a Florida tax credit scholarship alum, for a podcast interview, in which he describes an agenda that could advance the cause on Capitol Hill.

He is sponsoring the Enhancing Educational Opportunities for all Students Act. The legislation would give states the option to allow federal Title I dollars to follow low-income students directly to whatever school they attend.

The bill would also extend two federal college savings programs to the K-12 level — a change Messer says might help middle-class families cover the cost of private school tuition.

The goal, he said, is to “help a cross-section of families” pay for schooling options that would otherwise be out of reach.

“We already have school choice in America for families who can afford it,” he says. “If you can afford to move, or afford to pay for a private school on your own, you have those options. The only real question is: What are we going to do for everyone else?”

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http://www.redefinedonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Messer_-edited.mp3

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September 26, 2016 0 comment
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Charter SchoolsPodcastSchool Choice

‘This is about kids. This is not about politics.’ – John Schilling, podcastED

Travis Pillow September 12, 2016
Travis Pillow

Many of the people pushing for more private school choice options around the country have two goals.

They want to make scholarships available to a broad range of students, including those in the middle class who don’t have access to the same choices as wealthy families. At the same time, they want to make sure school choice programs prioritize the needs of the most disadvantaged children.

Schilling portrait

Schilling

In our latest podcast interview with Florida tax credit scholarship alumna Denisha Merriweather, John Schilling says that if the school choice movement does things right, it can achieve both at the same time.

“It’s definitely better to have broader eligibility because you want more kids to be able to participate in these programs,” he says. At the same time, “our primary focus is, we want to make sure that low-income families are always first in line.”

Both of those goals make sense in principle, and Schilling says they also make sense politically. The school choice movement needs a broad, politically potent base of support among scholarship parents. And since it wants to win allies from both major political parties, it needs to be able to make credible appeals to social justice.

“We want to make sure that these programs are going to survive the push and pull of election cycles,” he says. “So in order to do that, you really have to have bipartisan support.”

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September 12, 2016 0 comment
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