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American Federation for Children

Commentary: “What do you think of Betsy?”

Catherine Durkin Robinson May 3, 2019

“What do you think of Betsy DeVos?”

I get this question a lot. Family members and longtime friends know me as a left-wing activist with over 30 years of experience advocating for everything from women’s reproductive rights to environmental causes to gun control.

I’m a card-carrying member of the ACLU.

My loved ones trust me.

I’m one of them.

A professional, liberal rabble-rouser.

Surely I hate U.S. Secretary of Education DeVos.

Right?

Wrong.

While I hold many of the most socialist views, I’m adamantly and unapologetically pro-school choice. As executive director of Florida Parent Network, I’ve been helping families protect and defend their choices for over six years.

I consider myself a progressive and yet support a movement that most progressive politicians oppose.

It’s hard for those who see things in tribal terms to come to grips with this idea.

I don’t have a problem with it.

I’ve been thinking for myself for years.

But I get it. There are so many issues, movements and campaigns out there, bombarding us with information every day, and we’re all fatigued by it. Most just want to know where their political leaders and champions come down on an issue. That’s how they know where they stand as well.

It’s not that they’re lazy or uninterested.

They’re overwhelmed.

I’m Irish and Jewish. A pro-choice feminist from a strong pro-life family. I’m a vegetarian who cooks chicken for friends and loved ones. I’m an anti-capitalist who routinely partners with Americans for Prosperity. I’m the granddaughter of Teamsters who thinks the teachers unions have done serious harm to American education.

I volunteer for Bernie Sanders.

I’m overwhelmed, too, but I don’t get to rely on my political heroes because I don’t have any. I don’t enjoy the privilege of deferring to someone else’s judgment.

I must research and dig for answers to find out how I think.

This means I’m exhausted most of the time.

I was fortunate this week to attend the American Federation for Children’s annual summit in Chicago, networking with educational choice activists from all over the country.

Our education secretary was the keynote speaker.

Here comes that question again.

What do I think of Betsy DeVos?

I like her.

This answer surprises everyone I know.

I agree with her on one issue, educational choice, but I find her agreeable in every way. In the few conversations we’ve had, she has proven herself to be open-minded, kind and generous.

My friends hate when I report this.

“You hardly like anyone, and you like her?”

My genuine and nuanced view of a divisive political figure causes those who trust me to think twice before dismissing someone based on what others think.

In this day and age, that’s a good thing.

Years ago, when Florida started the Gardiner Scholarship program, the Legislature didn’t allocate funding for Step Up for Students (which hosts this blog) to run it properly. Betsy made a personal donation to help us get started. It is a shame that parents, who’ve benefited from this program, have no idea how much she helped them.

She continues to work for children and families all over this country.

Betsy’s is an inclusive message, encouraging us to think outside the box about all the ways personalized learning can help our kids. At the AFC Summit Thursday night, she talked about post-high school learning, other than four-year colleges, that can open up a whole new world regarding career and technical education for our kids. She talked about establishing a federal tax credit scholarship program and the ways in which teachers should be able to control their own personal and professional development.

As she has often said, our movement is about more than vouchers.

I tell advocates in Florida that we don’t have to worry about the mess in D.C. and I follow that same advice. We are a statewide program. We don’t need to argue with opponents about Congress or the White House.

I liked and respected Betsy before she became education secretary and the mess that is D.C. has not changed that.

When asked about how she maintains civility and poise in the midst of such partisan vitriol and anger, Betsy said simply that she applies advice given to her by her father. Turn the page, he would say after challenging episodes. Keep moving. Start the next chapter.

That’s advice that will help all of us as we leave this summit of like-minded folks and tread back into a polarized country. I will keep thinking for myself and puzzling liberal loved ones. Betsy will continue advocating for those who need help the most. And all of us will keep moving.

May 3, 2019 1 comment

Bipartisanship Demographic Research School Choice

Poll shows increase in number of likely voters who support education choice

Donna Winchester January 19, 2019

Donna Winchester

A national poll conducted by the American Federation for Children shows that support for school choice stands at 67 percent, a 4 percentage-point increase from a year ago.

The poll surveyed 1,200 likely November 2020 voters to determine general support and opposition, posing the question, “Generally speaking, would you say you favor or oppose the concept of school choice?”

Annual polls by the American Federation for Children shows overall support for school choice had held steady over the past five years, in some cases growing in popularity.

Among the two-thirds of respondents who said they favor school choice, 40 percent said they strongly support it.

Survey results, released Thursday, show that support for school choice is broad across demographic categories. Latinos lead with 73 percent, followed by Whites with 68 percent and African Americans with 67 percent.

Eighty percent of Republicans support school choice, up from 75 percent in 2018, compared with 56 percent of Democrats, up from 54 percent. Sixty-nine percent of Independents voiced support for choice, up from 62 percent in 2018.

Millennials continue to be the most robust supporters of school choice in terms of age groups, with 75 percent voicing approval. Parents and grandparents, including those with children in traditional public schools, back school choice by a 3-to-1 ratio.

The survey also polled families on their preference for private versus public schools. While 58 percent of respondents said their children attend a traditional public school, only 35 percent of them said public schools are their first choice of school. Meanwhile, 59 percent of respondents said they would prefer for their child to attend a different type of school, with 29 percent citing a religious school, 18 percent a private non-religious school and 11 percent a charter school.

Almost three in five respondents selected three or more actions from a list of possible personal sacrifices they would be willing to make to send their child to a private school for free. About half said they would be willing to drive their child 25 miles each way to school; 46 percent said they would be willing to move 10 miles; and 41 percent said they would be willing to change jobs.

This year marks the fifth year that the American Federation for Children has conducted its National School Choice Poll. The survey fielded Jan. 6-10 with interviews conducted on landline and cell phones in English and Spanish. The survey had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percent.

January 19, 2019 0 comment

Advocate Voices Blog Guest School Choice

Coco Llenas: Wishing all families had education choice, now

Special to redefinED December 24, 2018

Special to redefinED

By Hergit “Coco” Llenas

I wish tomorrow was here already. I wish we could look at today’s school system from the vantage point given from 30 years into the future.

Let’s imagine it is 2050, and in the United States of America every child, rich or poor, has access to a high-quality education, and the parents have become accustomed to deciding what is the best environment for their little ones. The arbitrary lines that forced a child to go to a particular school is a concept long gone and forgotten. In fact, people remember those rules and laugh at the absurdity of it all.

While taking a tour inside a gray, prison-like building turned into a museum of an old school, a child asks:

“Mom, who lived in these cages?”

“I don’t know,” Mom says. “I just don’t know how human innovation and imagination was cultivated in between these rows of chairs lined up like an assembly line.”

In silence, everybody in the tour group asks themselves: “Why did we allow this system to go unchecked for so long? For 150 years!”

“Well,” says the museum guide, as if he heard the group’s thoughts, “change may take forever if it does not come from the people. The people decide when it is time to crawl out of the sunken place and move into the light.”

If it is not serving you, my child, then GET OUT! That was the cry which inspired the ed-reformers. Those brave pioneers fought to provide a conduit for children trapped in schools that weren’t working for them, so they could flee to a new world in K-12 education, just like the underground railroad shifted slaves from captivity to freedom.

Finally, the system started to readjust, to accept the healthy co-existence of more and more school choices, until freedom of choice emerged as the new normal.

Change in public education came, just like change in other arenas, such as acceptance of biracial marriage, the right of women to vote, and the desegregation of schools. Oh, wait! …

Why is the achievement gap never closed? Why does the school-to-prison pipeline continue to be fed with dark-skinned youth? And why does the union fight so hard to stop progress from arriving?

The logic that supported the persistence of such a monolithic public school system would sound barbaric to the ears of the audience in 2050. Just like it sounds barbaric to us that in medieval times, doctors didn’t know about bacteria, and, as a result, went into surgery without ever washing their hands.

This Christmas, I have a wish: That we won’t have to wait 30 years to see that school choice has been on the right side of history all along.

School choice can be adopted across this land now. And then, finally, families could enjoy the right to choose any kind of high-quality school for their children as one of their many other rights, regardless of their socio-economic status or race.

Hergit “Coco” Llenas is Director of Latino Outreach for the American Federation for Children.

Editor’s Note: This is the third in a series of posts where various members of the education choice world share an #edchoice wish. For Friday’s post, CLICK HERE.

COMING WEDNESDAY: Step Up For Students President Doug Tuthill shares a bevy of education and criminal justice wishes.

December 24, 2018 0 comment

Charter Schools Private Schools School Choice

DeVos pushes ‘most ambitious’ school choice expansion ‘in our nation’s history’

Travis Pillow May 23, 2017

Travis Pillow

INDIANAPOLIS – Education Secretary Betsy DeVos told a friendly crowd that President Trump will release a spending plan today to support “the most ambitious expansion of education choice in our nation’s history.”

But a lot of questions remain about how the federal government might achieve that expansion.

Speaking Monday at the American Federation for Children’s annual policy summit, DeVos offered few details about what a national plan would look like. But she outlined a series of principles.

School choice options would have to be accountable to parents, not officials in Washington. The new administration would avoid “creating a new federal bureaucracy or … bribing states with their own taxpayers’ money” — a subtle jab at Obama-era initiatives like Race to the Top.

States would decide whether to participate in the new federal push. DeVos said declining to create new options for their residents would be a “terrible mistake,” but one for which state-level politicians would have to defend.

“The future is bleak for millions of students if we only continue to tinker around the edges of education reform,” she said. “The time has expired for ‘reform.’ We need a transformation — a transformation that will open up America’s closed and antiquated education system.”

May 23, 2017 0 comment

Charter Schools School Choice

Where talking points fall short on federal school choice policies

Travis Pillow January 18, 2017

Travis Pillow

Have you heard? School choice is a bit of a hot topic in Washington lately.

But whether — much less how — the federal government should help expand parental choice can be a thorny question.

Indiana Rep. Luke Messer is one of the biggest school choice advocates in Congress. He’s also a federalist who wants to keep education policy decisions at the state level. But he’s said repeatedly that there are still things federal lawmakers can do to expand educational options.

During an event hosted by the Hoover Institution, he said a school choice “cavalry” has arrived in the nation’s capital, led by Education Secretary nominee Betsy DeVos.

“Frankly, this is a sea change in this movement,” he said, echoing comments made Tuesday by Sen. Lamar Alexander, who chairs the panel vetting DeVos. “Her ideas are in the mainstream.”

When the federal government and private school choice intersect, pundits often get confused. Two commonly distorted issues, federal mandates and school accountability, were batted around at the Hoover event.

Avoiding state mandates

Andy Smarick, a Maryland state Board of Education member and resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, said all the talk of federal school choice policy brings flashbacks of No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, teacher evaluations — areas where states enacted reforms, then the federal government got involved, and wound up jeopardizing the policies by raising the political stakes.

January 18, 2017 0 comment

Florida Schools Roundup

Florida schools roundup: Budget priorities, a teacher’s ‘Oscar’ and more

Compiled by redefinED staff January 13, 2017

Compiled by redefinED staff

Budget priorities: Preliminary education budget numbers from the Florida House PreK-12 Appropriations Subcommittee include a big bump for student uniforms and a big cut in teacher bonuses. The optional districtwide K-8 student uniforms program is budgeted for $14 million, up from $3.75 million a year ago. The Best and Brightest teacher bonuses program, which received $48 million last year, is tentatively budgeted for $13.95 million. Subcommittee chairman Rep. Manny Diaz, R-Hialeah, has told committee members that millions of dollars need to be cut from the budget for schools, and that no program should be considered off-limits. Gradebook.

A teacher’s Oscar: Lukas Hefty, the magnet program coordinator at Douglas L. Jamerson Elementary in St. Petersburg, is one of 35 U.S. educators to win a 2016-17 Milken Educator Award, which is often called the “Oscars of Teaching.” Hefty is the only educator from Florida selected. He wins $25,000 and will attend a Milken educator forum in New Orleans in March. Tampa Bay Times. WUSF.

False addresses: An investigation reveals that 97 addresses given by Calusa Elementary School parents and guardians are questionable and need to be checked further. About 370 students are scheduled to be rezoned out of Calusa’s boundaries to ease overcrowding, and many parents have long suspected that some students are there because they use false addresses. The Palm Beach County School District has not said what its next step will be. Sun-Sentinel.

District rezoning: Almost 1,000 students in Seminole County will change schools in August to relieve overcrowding at six elementary schools: Highlands, Keeth, Lake Mary, Layer, Winter Springs and Woodlands. Public hearings on the boundary changes are Tuesday and Jan. 24. Orlando Sentinel.

January 13, 2017 0 comment

Education Politics School Choice

Trump’s U.S. Education Secretary pick: A choice advocate with Florida ties

Travis Pillow November 23, 2016

Travis Pillow

President-elect Donald Trump wants a prominent school choice advocate to be the next U.S. Secretary of Education.

His decision to appoint Betsy DeVos, the chairman of the American Federation for Children, is widely being interpreted as a sign the Trump administration, along with a friendly Republican Congress, will use federal policy to aggressively push for expanded educational choice.

DeVos has some notable Florida ties. Among other things, her family owns the Orlando Magic.

And in interviews, including this one, she has often held up the Sunshine State’s choice approach as a model.

“I always cite Florida as, really, the furthest along in terms of providing the widest range of choices and the greatest access to those choices of any state in the country, and from a political standpoint, having real bipartisan support for these choices,” she said in an interview last year with Ed Pozzuoli, a South Florida attorney who’s a big backer of charter schools.

Perhaps it’s no surprise that former Governor Jeb Bush is a fan of the pick. Democrats for Education Reform, meanwhile, sharply criticized some of Trump’s positions but applauded DeVos’ support for charter schools.

November 23, 2016 0 comment

Florida Schools Roundup

Florida schools roundup: Retention decision, choice ratings and more

Compiled by redefinED staff August 29, 2016

Compiled by redefinED staff

Retention decision: A judge says the state erred in automatically holding back third-graders who do poorly on the state Florida Standards Assessments tests or opt out from taking them. Leon County Judge Karen Gievers says the state and six districts that were sued must provide students the option to present a portfolio of work that demonstrates their readiness for fourth grade. Gievers stopped short of ordering the state and districts to promote 14 students who were held back. Another hearing will be held today for students from Hernando County who were not given the option to present a portfolio. News Service of Florida. Associated Press. Orlando Sentinel. Tampa Bay Times. WFTV. WFSU. Sunshine State News. Politico Florida. The retention lawsuit has rekindled an old argument: Should third-graders who struggle with reading be held back? “The overwhelming majority of the research concludes that the practice does not help most students and ends up harming many,” said Bob Schaeffer, public education director for FairTest, a nonprofit that works to prevent the misuse of standardized testing. Tampa Bay Times. States with high opt-out rates could face penalties from the U.S. Department of Education. Education Week.

Florida tops in choice: The American Federation for Children ranks Florida’s Tax Credit Scholarship program as the top school choice program in the United States. The national advocacy group cites Florida’s accountability, its wide availability, its inclusion of disabled students, its limits on administrative expenses and the dollar-for-dollar tax credits for companies. Step Up For Students, which hosts this blog, helps administer the programs. redefinED. The Lake County School District has 1,462 students getting tax credit scholarships, a 24 percent increase over last year, and some school board members worry about how the district could absorb those students if opponents of the program successfully appeal a recent court ruling. Daily Commercial.

Recess movement: The parent-driven movement to provide students more time for free play at school is spreading across the United States. Several Florida districts have changed recess policies after lobbying from parents, and Rhode Island just initiated a law requiring 20 minutes of recess a day. Independent Journal Review.

August 29, 2016 0 comment