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Happy 25th birthday, Florida charter schools! Here’s 25 reasons you’re appreciated.

Ron Matus
Ron Matus

Orlando Science School in Orlando, one of nearly 700 charter schools in Florida, focuses on science, technology, engineering and mathematics and is ‘home base’ for more than 1,000 Central Florida students representing diverse cultural and economic backgrounds.

The charter school movement in Florida started with a single school in Miami in 1996. Now it’s Florida’s most popular school choice option, with nearly 700 charter schools serving 330,000 students.

At the quarter century mark, Florida’s charter school sector continues to generate new fans among parents, including … me. 😊

Here’s 25 reasons why, in no particular order …

1. T. Willard Fair. If movements are judged by the company they keep, then it’s worth noting charter schools are backed by a who’s who of icons. Trail blazing and fiercely independent, Fair, the head of the Urban League of Greater Miami, co-founded that first charter school with …

2. Jeb Bush. Expanding parental choice and learning options, including charter schools, was/is vital to Gov. Bush’s vision. The Republican governor got a little help from …

3. Lawton Chiles, his Democratic predecessor. “Walkin’ Lawton” signed the charter school bill into law in May 1996, after it passed the Legislature with huge bipartisan support.

4. Rosa Parks. No direct Florida tie. But if you find anybody still clinging to “charter schools are a right-wing thing,” please let them know the First Lady of Civil Rights tried to start one.

5. Barack Obama. He liked charter schools so much, he vowed to double federal funding for them.

6. Bill Clinton. A “mistake,” he said in Orlando, for districts to keep fighting charters.

7. Rainbow coalition. Florida charter school students are 50% low-income, 63% Black or Hispanic.

8. Survey says. Parents of color are especially appreciative.

9. National model. Laws governing Florida charters are among the best in America. The best part is Florida charters are especially …

10. Accountable. The pitch from Matt Ladner: Parents don’t play.

11. Healthy competition. The best available evidence shows charters don’t hurt traditional public schools, probably help them, and probably help more as their numbers grow.

12. Let 1,000 flowers bloom. Here, here, here, here, here, here …

13. Black minds matter. Here’s but one good example.

14. Teacher power. Last I checked, Florida charters employed 14,000 teachers, more than nine states have teachers. (Hopefully we’ll have current data soon.) They appreciate the freedom.

15. They’re everywhere. If you’re near this gem of a charter in flyover country, don’t veer off U.S. 98 until you get a soft-shell crab sandwich.

16. Better outcomes. Students in Florida charters typically outperform district students on state and national tests. As but one example, see this chart showing NAEP results for low-income Black and Hispanic students.

17. Better yet. Charter school students in Florida are more likely than their district peers to graduate from high school, persist in college and earn more money.

18. Better grades. 74% of Florida charter schools earned As or Bs from the state. 61% of traditional public schools did.

19. Better rankings. Seven of the Top 30 high schools in Florida are charters, according to U.S. News.

20. Academica. Five of those seven are managed by Academica, the best charter org you’ve never heard of (but a key part of the cool story that is choice-rich Miami-Dade.)

21. Science! Charters like this one are killing it.

22. Rigor. Even in the pandemic.

23. Bang for the buck. Florida taxpayers spend 69 cents on the dollar on charter students versus district students. And for those district schools, there’s …

24. No drain. According to fresh research from a charter skeptic.

25. Rising tide. Charters are a big part of the big picture in Florida, which is more choice, better outcomes.

Icing on top …

My kid. My oldest began attending a charter school last fall. He’s thrilled he had options.

So are his parents. 😊

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Auditor General releases annual review of Florida scholarship programs

Lisa Buie
Lisa Buie

Launched in 2013, Piney Grove Boys Academy in Fort Lauderdale is one of more than 2,000 private schools that participate in Florida’s array of choice scholarship programs, including the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship.

In its sixth annual audit of Step Up For Students, the state’s largest nonprofit scholarship funding organization, the Florida Auditor General has issued what amounts to a clean bill of health.

The report included only one finding on data procedures, which have been or are currently being addressed by the organization, while more broadly concluding: “Our Reading Scholarship Accounts  audit procedures and tests of selected Step Up records and accounts found that Step Up generally complied with the applicable provisions of State law.”

The audit covered Step Up’s administration of four state-authorized scholarships in 2019-2020: the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship for K-12 students from low-income and working-class households; the Gardiner Scholarship for students with special needs; the Hope Scholarship for students who have been bullied in public schools; and Reading Scholarship Accounts that provide help for elementary public school students who are struggling in reading.

Collectively, the programs awarded scholarships to 143,320 students that year.

The report found that all reimbursements for student expenses in the Gardiner Scholarship program, which operates as an education savings account program, were in full compliance with the law.

“Our tests of Step Up records found that the Gardiner scholarship payments selected for audit were eligible program disbursements,” the report said. The report also found no compliance issues with the other four scholarship programs.

The only finding, auditors noted, related to Social Security numbers and whether Step Up was sufficiently restricting internal computer access to such numbers. It recommended that Step Up evaluate staff members’ access privileges to the database to ensure such access was necessary to perform their job duties and to document periodic evaluations of the necessity for access.

It also recommended that a system be established to remove access for staff members whose jobs no longer required it and grant temporary access to those who needed access only occasionally.

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Can we stop fighting about charter schools?

Special to redefinED
Special to redefinED

Editor’s note: This commentary by Eve L. Ewing, a sociologist of education whose research focuses on racism, social inequality and urban policy and the impact of these forces on American public schools, appeared Monday in the New York Times.

As an education researcher, a writer, and a former teacher, I’ve had the opportunity to talk with people all over the country about public schools. And wherever I go, there’s one question I can usually count on being asked:

“What do you think about charter schools?”

I know people want a cut-and-dried answer. Unfortunately, the discourse about charter schools has become more of an ideological debate, split neatly into opposing factions, than it is a policy discussion informed by facts. As long as Democrats play by those rules, they miss an important chance to reframe the debate altogether.

Instead of splitting across dogmatic “pro-charter” or “anti-charter” lines, the Biden administration should take a simpler, more transformative stance: demanding high-quality, well-financed schools for all children.

The research on charter schools gives fuel to both sides of the debate. Studies have found, at varying times and in varying contexts, all of the following: Charters have improved in effectiveness, but are less effective than their non-charter peers — yet are more effective for low-income students and students of color than for white and more affluent students. Charters are more likely to suspend their students than their non-charter peers.

To continue reading, click here.

 

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Uneasy lies the head that wears the tiara

Matthew Ladner
Matthew Ladner

Recently, I watched Liberty: the American Revolution.  The documentary includes a dramatization of letters Abigail Adams wrote to her sister while her husband served as United States ambassador to Great Britain.

Abigail was less than impressed with “his Britannic majesty” and the other members of the British royal family, a family she noted to be “inclined to corpulence.” She observed that the English boasted of the beauty of the English princess, but it took more than a tiara to impress Abigail Adams.

“Your simple American girl is much prettier,” she noted, concluding, “There is a servility of manners here, a distinction between nobility and common citizens, which happily is foreign to Americans.”

Abigail’s lack of deference and her inclination to judge beauty by her own standards came to mind when I saw a new ranking of state charter school laws. Back in 2018, I offered a light-hearted nudge to my friends within the national charter school organizations with a post titled It’s Time for Technocratic Beauty Pageant Charter Rankings to End.

The basic point I attempted to make is that the charter school movement has fallen into the habit of passing charter school laws that haven’t produced many actual charter schools. Ranking charter-lite charter laws highly in ranking exercises seems even more dubious. Alas, I failed to prove persuasive as the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools released a new ranking of charter school laws last week, again judging laws against a model bill.

Stanford University’s Opportunity Project, however, has created a new tool that might help illustrate the point, so I’ll try again.

The chart above is drawn directly from the Opportunity Project’s data explorer and shows the academic growth scores for the charter schools in the state of Indiana. Indiana’s charter school law has placed first multiple years in a row in both the National Alliance and National Association of Charter School Authorizers (NACSA) rankings.

In these charts, green dots denote charter schools with above average rates of academic growth, blue dots below average academic growth. The grey dots in the background are the shadows of every other school in the country.

Academic growth isn’t the only criterion for judging schools, let alone a perfect one. New schools full of students who just transferred in, for instance, might be at a disadvantage; this would apply especially to youngish charters. Some of these schools also are likely alternative schools doing dropout recovery. With those caveats in mind, let’s proceed.

So, what to make of the Indiana charter sector’s outcomes?

There certainly are some high performing schools – four schools with a rate of academic growth 20% or more higher than the national average. Note, however, that an equal number have rates 20% below the national average. Counting the dots in Indiana reveals 21 high growth green dots, 22 lower growth blue dots, and one school right on the national average.

Like Abigail Adams, suffering through hours of Britannic court pomp, color me less than overwhelmed.

Next, let’s look at Indiana’s neighbor, Wisconsin. Wisconsin ranks 39th in the National Alliance rankings, which is near the bottom, as there only are 45 states with laws).

Wisconsin has a smaller population than Indiana but more charter schools. Wisconsin has five times as many charter schools showing academic growth 20% or more higher than the national average than Indiana. Wisconsin, moreover, has zero charter schools with a rate 20% below the national average.

Call me crazy – it’s been too long since anyone has – but by my way of thinking, Wisconsin has a better charter law than Indiana because it has created more high-quality opportunities for students.

Now imagine you are working on charter schools in Texas, which came in 29th in the National Alliance ranking. Texas is a much larger state than Indiana, but note the ratio of dark-green schools to dark-blue dots in the Texas chart and compare it to the Indiana chart above.

How much servility of manners would we expect Texans to show towards the Indiana law? Texas appears to have approximately three times more charters with rates of academic growth 20% higher than the national average than Indiana has in total charter schools, after all.

In my opinion, we ought to judge the beauty of charter laws not by their adherence to a model, but rather by their outcomes. If the model law continues to coronate a law with a notable lack of seats, schools or academic growth, the tiara raises more questions about the model than it bestows glory.

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New government report shows ongoing increase in Florida families participating in education choice

Patrick R. Gibbons
Patrick R. Gibbons

A research arm of the Florida Legislature on Wednesday presented to the state’s Appropriations Subcommittee on Education a detailed 132-page report showing how Florida families are participating in education choice programs.

The report from the Office of Program Policy Analysis and Government Accountability (OPPAGA) expands upon the one-page summary produced for the past 12 years by Step Up For Students, the state-approved nonprofit funding organization that helps administer five scholarships for Florida schoolchildren.

OPPAGA reviewed 21 school choice programs, providing detailed descriptions of each program including the number and percentage of students participating. The report provides a county-by-county breakdown of students enrolled in choice programs throughout the state and provides demographic data for most of the choice programs.

According to OPPAGA, 86% of students attend public schools, 11% attend private schools, and 3% are educated at home. Of those public school students, 12% are enrolled in public charter schools.

Overall, 46% of all Florida K-12 students participated in a school choice option. Of the students exercising choice, 69% exercised a public school choice option.

Florida’s public schools, including choice schools, enroll nearly 2.8 million students. Public schools have “grown incrementally” according to the authors, increasing by about 62,000, or 2.2%, over the last five years. Of public school students, 63% are nonwhite; 55% are eligible for free or reduced-price meals; 14% are students with disabilities; and 10% are English language learners.

Charter schools grew 22%, with enrollment growing by more than 58,000 students over the last five years. Of charter school students, 70% are nonwhite; 43% are eligible for free or reduced-price meals; 10% are students with disabilities; and 10% are English language learners.

Home education grew the fastest of the three education sectors, increasing by 27% over the last five years by adding nearly 23,000 students.

Meanwhile, private school enrollment increased by about 52,000 students, or nearly 18% over the last five years. Private schools overall are 50% nonwhite.

Fifty-six percent of students who participate in the Family Empowerment Scholarship program for low-income and working-class families are nonwhite. Forty-seven percent of special needs students who participate in the Gardiner Scholarship program and 55% who participate in the McKay Scholarship program are nonwhite.

The Florida Tax Credit Scholarship, which serves low-income students, is Florida’s largest private K-12 scholarship program. That scholarship enrolled 113,120 students, up 41% over the last five years. About 73% of these scholarship students are nonwhite.

The public-school program enrolling the highest percentage of minorities is Jeb Bush’s Opportunity Scholarship program, with 74% of students being nonwhite. The Opportunity Scholarship allows students in the lowest performing public schools to enroll in higher performing public schools. Prior to being struck down by the Florida Supreme Court in 2006, that program provided scholarships for students to attend private schools as well. At the time, 86% of the students were nonwhite.

The program with the fewest minorities is Florida Virtual School, with 42% of its students being nonwhite. FLVS is also one of the few choice programs that have been shrinking, with enrollment declining by 9% over the last five years.

Among the other interesting findings, OPPA noted that:

·       Charter schools are the most popular alternative public school enrolling 323,385 students

·       Specialized public school programs were the second most popular option with 208,644 students enrolled in magnet schools; 185,699 students enrolled in career and professional academies; and 178,162 students enrolled in admission selective programs for gifted children.

·       Accelerated programs such as Advanced Placement, Dual Enrollment, Advanced International Certificate Education and International Baccalaureate have grown to a combined 366,101 students, up 22% from 300,224 students just five years ago.

·       Miami-Dade County Public Schools has three times as many students attending magnet schools as the next highest county, Orange.

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podcastED: Matt Ladner interviews Thomas B. Fordham Institute’s Chad Aldis

redefinED staff
redefinED staff

In this podcast video, redefinED’s executive editor speaks with longtime education choice advocate Chad Aldis, vice president for Ohio policy and advocacy at Fordham, wo previously served as executive director of School Choice Ohio and was Ohio State director for StudentsFirst.

Ladner and Aldis discuss a recent Fordham study that mapped out open enrollment policies across Ohio after some media outlets questioned whether open enrollment education choice policies exacerbated school segregation. The study concluded they do not, it brought to light something more alarming.

Under state law, districts choose whether to accept nonresident students. Most suburban districts in Ohio have kept their doors shut. Despite being public agencies – often boasting of being “open to all” – these school systems deny children access just because they don’t have the right address.

“Let’s be real about this … no, you’re not to open to everybody. You’re open to everyone who can pay the price of admission … The price of admission is property taxes.”

EPISODE DETAILS:

·       Aldis’s critique of the current system, which results in high-wealth suburban school districts “walling out” poorer students from urban centers, who have been shown to benefit the most from education choice

·       How Ohio’s open enrollment system is different in rural counties

·       How rules restricting charter schools to urban areas further restricts choices for minority and low-income families

·       Comparisons with another education choice state, Arizona

·       What can be done to correct the inequities caused by Ohio’s open enrollment choice system

LINKS MENTIONED:

 https://fordhaminstitute.org/ohio/research/open-enrollment-and-student-diversity-ohios-schools

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The 21st century ‘school bus’

Special to redefinED
Special to redefinED

Editor’s note: This post’s author, Emily Anne Gullickson, J.D., M.Ed., is president and founder of Great Leaders, Strong Schools and a former middle school teacher in Phoenix.

Emily Anne Gullickson

In 1939, representatives from 48 states developed a set of school bus standards resulting in a massive standardization of school transit systems in America. Last year, 26 million students in the United States boarded nearly 480,000 yellow school buses to go to their public school.

Almost 80 years later, a lot has changed in the technology and transportation industries, yet we continue to have a one-size-fits-all approach to transporting students.

School districts are struggling to provide efficient bus services in the face of escalating costs and increasingly complex education systems where more students attend public schools outside their neighborhoods.

Arizona recently was recognized as the most choice-y school choice state in the nation according to EdChoice. For 40 years, our state has led the way with public school options, beginning with open enrollment, which allows students to choose any school both within the boundaries of the school district in which the student rides and to transfer to public schools outside of their resident school district. With the onset of public charter schools in 1995, families truly were no longer limited to a geographically defined attendance zone in Arizona.

Yale University researchers compiled information in 2016 indicating that nearly one in two K-8 students in Maricopa County do not attend the district school to which they were assigned based on home address. The actual number is higher, as the analysis was conducted before the large pandemic shift and did not include homeschool families, online students, or students attending private or parochial schools.

Yet we still have not achieved giving all parents a real chance to truly have access to the full range of public education options. If transporting a student across town to a public school that is the right fit is a burden to a family, then that family does not actually have true access to public schools of choice.

Barriers also are experienced in our rural and remote communities. An optimal student transportation system is highly context-dependent; what works in a rural school district may not work in an urban or suburban district. Rural districts must use the same large buses to transport students as in Phoenix or Tucson, even when the number of students being transported and the geographic terrain does not justify them, resulting in empty seats, poor fuel efficiency and major wear and tear on the vehicles.

Arizona’s remote communities are not alone in having fewer alternatives than urban counterparts. According to the Community Transportation Association of America, approximately 28% of rural residents live in areas in which the level of transit service is negligible, and another 38% of rural residents live in areas without any public transit service. A choice is not a choice if you can’t get there, no matter how simple and accessible the open enrollment process is.

This fall, our sister organization A for Arizona hosted focus groups with school partners and community members about transportation barriers and solutions. The feedback that was shared served as inspiration for Arizona Senate Bill 1683, championed by Senate Education Chairman Paul Boyer, which provides innovation grants as an incentive and support to public school leaders wanting to rethink our school transportation system to better serve public school families.

These grants will allow a series of locally driven solutions to be tried and evaluated to lead to greater efficiency and cost savings, recognizing geographic and local needs and providing access for more families to the public learning options that best meet each child’s needs. 

With this transportation grant program, public school systems could leverage partners to improve operational and cost-efficiency as well as data collection, such as length of ride times, radio-frequency identification cards to track student ridership daily, and the latest GPS technology utilized in other modes of mass transit. GPS tracking for school buses also would empower parents to monitor a school bus’s status and exact location while capturing data for more efficient routing.

Other ideas such as neighborhood carpools and grants to parents are on the table here, too. Whatever it is that district and charter leaders are thinking about trying, they can pilot it with these grant dollars before trying to expand statewide. Transportation regularly is the least efficient component of a school budget and is about to break the budget of smaller schools and systems. Innovation is necessary, and these grants put some money on the table to help leaders do just that.

Under this bill, local school leaders who want to opt in with a grant proposal have the flexibility to design community-driven solutions while maintaining necessary protections for student safety and educational opportunity.

Now is the time to reimagine and rethink education – which must include how to get students to where they can learn best. 

 

 

 

 

 

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Mr. Burbleaf: Tear down this wall!

Matthew Ladner
Matthew Ladner

Ronald Reagan speaking at the Brandenburg Gate on June 12, 1987: Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!

In your author’s humble opinion, this chart from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute is the most revealing K-12 graphic of the last decade.

Ohio’s urban areas find themselves surrounded by districts that choose not to participate in open enrollment, featured in dark green. The children of Columbus, for instance, represented by the white star, appear to be surrounded by districts that do not offer open enrollment.

Later this week, this blog will offer a podcast interview with Chad Aldis, vice president for Ohio Policy and Advocacy at Fordham, whose research produced this map. Before criticizing the Ohio suburbs that deny open enrollment, let’s just put it on the table that a map of your state, if one existed, might look eerily similar to this one.

Unless, that is, you live in Arizona.

In Arizona, nearly all districts participate in open enrollment. Open enrollment students outnumber charter students nearly two to one in the Phoenix area despite its distinction as the nation’s largest charter sector.

Arizona has the largest state charter sector in the country, with nearly 20% of students attending charter schools. Ohio not only has fewer charter schools than Arizona; the schools are more geographically concentrated in urban areas. Ohio has a larger student population – 1.7 million students compared to 1.2 million in Arizona – but has far fewer charter schools overall and especially fewer suburban charter schools.

Data from the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools shows approximately 50 suburban charters in Ohio compared to 136 in Arizona.

The Brookings Institution measured the availability by the percentage of students with access to one or more charter schools in their ZIP code. Arizona led the nation with 84% of students having one or more charter schools in their ZIP code, whereas Ohio stood at 31.9%.

Your author is going to go way out on a limb at this point.

While it could be that the people running suburban districts in Arizona are unusually interested in stamping out economic and racial segregation because of the dry climate or … something … the level of non-district options held by suburban families has a lot to do with it. Scottsdale Unified, for instance, may accept 4,000 open enrollment transfers because 9,000 students who live within the boundaries of the district go to school elsewhere.

How is this working out for the kids?

Stanford University’s Opportunity Project linked state academic exams across all 50 states to allow comparisons between schools, districts and their associated charters, and counties. The chart shows the comparison for academic gains for poor children in the largest counties in each state: Maricopa County (Phoenix area) in Arizona and Franklin County (Columbus area) in Ohio.

The rate of academic growth for poor students in Maricopa County is 19.3% above the national average for all students. The rate of academic growth for Franklin County students is 2.6% below the national average. Maricopa County outperforms Franklin County across all eight subgroups available in the Stanford data.

What we see in the Fordham map at the start of this post isn’t working, but don’t look for shame alone to open the gates of opportunity for Ohio’s urban students. Only broad choice programs can create the incentives needed to tear down these walls.

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