redefinED
  • Home
  • ABOUT US
  • Content
    • Analysis
    • Commentary and Opinion
    • News
    • News Features
    • Voices for Education Choice
    • factcheckED
  • Topics
    • Achievement Gap
    • Charter Schools
    • Customization
    • Education Equity
    • Education Politics
    • Education Research
    • Education Savings Accounts
    • Education Spending
    • Faith-based Education
    • Florida Schools Roundup
    • Homeschooling
    • Microschools
    • Parent Empowerment
    • Private Schools
    • Special Education
    • Testing and Accountability
    • Virtual Education
    • Vouchers
  • Multimedia
    • Video
    • Podcasts
  • Guest Bloggers
    • Ashley Berner
    • Jonathan Butcher
    • Jack Coons
    • Dan Lips
    • Chris Stewart
    • Patrick J. Wolf
  • Education Facts
    • Research and Reports
    • Gardiner Scholarship Basic Program Facts
    • Hope Scholarship Program Facts
    • Reading Scholarship Program Facts
    • FES Basic Facts
  • Search
redefinED
 
  • Home
  • ABOUT US
  • Content
    • Analysis
    • Commentary and Opinion
    • News
    • News Features
    • Voices for Education Choice
    • factcheckED
  • Topics
    • Achievement Gap
    • Charter Schools
    • Customization
    • Education Equity
    • Education Politics
    • Education Research
    • Education Savings Accounts
    • Education Spending
    • Faith-based Education
    • Florida Schools Roundup
    • Homeschooling
    • Microschools
    • Parent Empowerment
    • Private Schools
    • Special Education
    • Testing and Accountability
    • Virtual Education
    • Vouchers
  • Multimedia
    • Video
    • Podcasts
  • Guest Bloggers
    • Ashley Berner
    • Jonathan Butcher
    • Jack Coons
    • Dan Lips
    • Chris Stewart
    • Patrick J. Wolf
  • Education Facts
    • Research and Reports
    • Gardiner Scholarship Basic Program Facts
    • Hope Scholarship Program Facts
    • Reading Scholarship Program Facts
    • FES Basic Facts
  • Search
Tag:

D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program

Ashley BernerBlog GuestCommentary and OpinionCourse ChoiceCustomizationEducation EquityEducation ResearchFeaturedParental ChoicePrivate SchoolsSchool Choice

Why curriculum matters for private schools

Ashley Berner April 28, 2020
Ashley Berner

Editor’s note: This commentary from Ashley Berner, deputy director of the Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy and associate professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Education, is the third of a four-part series that examines the importance of high-quality materials for state leaders, schools, and parents.

Family background dictates a hefty portion of students’ academic outcomes (samples from the voluminous literature here, here, and here). It isn’t a shock to find out that kids from well-resourced homes out-score their less advantaged peers on standardized tests and high-school completion rates.

We all hope for schools that nullify the predicted trajectory, that push against the odds and facilitate social mobility. But because these schools are sadly a rarity, the field debates whether we should put our education reform eggs in the school-improvement, charter, and choice baskets, or rather into funding to diminish economic and social disparities.  

But two factors lie more firmly within schools’ control: curriculum and school culture. The two previous columns focused on current research and policy with respect to curriculum, with an emphasis on state leadership. I want to focus in this column on why curriculum should matter to private schools, particularly those with a religious framework.

Why should private school leaders take a fearless inventory of their curriculum, with a focus on the knowledge-building it offers and the quality with which it does so? For some leaders, learning that a knowledge-rich curriculum manifestly benefits students is a persuasive reason. They’re all in and want to know if their own school’s curriculum measures up. Others are not convinced, and to them, I offer at least three reasons why the exercise is worth undertaking.

First, they would be joining the most forward-looking and effective district and charter schools, many of which are surging ahead in achievement as a result. Progress is uneven, of course, but many state and district leaders are placing big bets on high-quality curriculum and instruction. Look at Duval County’s implementation of Eureka Math, Core Knowledge Language Arts, and Expeditionary Learning; Baltimore City Public Schools’ adoption of Wit & Wisdom; and Chicago Public Schools’ success with International Baccalaureate.

A knowledge-rich curriculum is a signature of high-performing charter networks, too, from Success Academy and Public Prep in New York, to Great Hearts, IDEA, and BASIS in the South and Southwest. These district and charter school systems offer potentially life-changing educational experiences to some of our nation’s least advantaged children. Even in states with generous private-school scholarship funding, do private schools want to fall behind, perhaps forever?

Second, parents really do care about academic content. It is true that first-generation families care first and foremost about school safety. But that is not the final word.

Patrick J. Wolf, distinguished professor of education policy and 21st Century Endowed Chair in School Choice in the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas, is the scholar of record on the Opportunity Scholarship Program (OSP) in Washington, D.C. – a voucher plan that helps a modest number of families send their children to private schools. His five-year study (here and here) found that what parents wanted for their children changed over time. Initially, they wanted a safe school that their children enjoyed. Over time, however, they came to want more: academic attainment, college preparedness and intellectual depth. Their vocabulary and focus changed. A better environment alone does not suffice.

 That parents care about academics comes out in other studies, too, such as a 2018 national survey conducted by Foundations and Donors Interested in Catholic Activities (FADICA). The organization found a link between parents’ perceptions that some Catholic schools did not provide sufficient intellectual heft, and low enrollment rates. And when Education Next’s 2019 nationally representative survey asked, “How much should schools focus on student academic performance versus student social and emotional wellbeing,” parents from all demographic backgrounds gave a resounding preference for academics – in some groups, by a ratio of 2:1.

Finally, and critically for religious schools, a robust worldview and a challenging curriculum need not stand in opposition. This is a point of contention in some religious circles. The debate comes down to whether knowledge that lies outside of a tradition’s sacred text(s) is viewed as part of the sacred order (and therefore good), or outside of it (and therefore damaging).

This is a complex issue. There is substantial variability between and especially within religious traditions. Most religious traditions celebrate the pursuit of the mind and view “reason” as a divine gift (for a small sample of a vast literature, see here, here, here, and here). This becomes a priority that influences these communities’ schools and accrediting bodies. Many religious schools, in other words, take a “high” view of intellectual formation and emphasize a rigorous liberal arts approach.

Other religious groups and their schools do not. As Mark Noll famously put it in 1994, “The scandal of the Evangelical mind is that there is not much of an Evangelical mind.” (He wrote not only as an eminent scholar but also as an Evangelical.) This skepticism can translate into a belief that non-Biblical, non-sacred texts are inherently wicked, or even to an overt rejection of academic success.

As a person of faith and a scholar of educational systems, it pains me to see religious “worldview” as an excuse for academically thin curricula and instruction. Our institute at Johns Hopkins reviews English, social studies, and soon science, materials for their depth and rigor. Among the explicitly religious curricula we have examined are some resources that we find poorly written and shockingly weak on academic content. What will be the consequences for children who graduate from institutions that choose these curricula?

Research suggests that many of them will be helpful contributors to society and law-abiding citizens. But what opportunities will have been foreclosed to them along the way? Which doors will have remained not only closed, but not even perceived? Religious school leaders, I would submit, have an obligation to provide not only spiritual formation but access to beauty, profundity, excellence – alongside the capacity to debate and critique artifacts that are deemed unworthy according to their particular tradition.

Most religious schools in other countries do this as a matter of course. In the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, most provinces of Canada, Indonesia, Israel, Sweden and France (to name a few), governments fund non-state schools generously and hold them accountable for academic results. These pluralistic systems separate schools’ ethos, which vary profoundly, from academic content, which should not. The most significant scholar of educational pluralism, Boston University Wheelock College of Education professor emeritus Charles Glenn, describes how school systems around the world thread the ethos and content needle here.

Of course, curricula are not morally neutral; all information is learned and interpreted through specific lenses, whether explicit or tacit. Some plural systems (the Netherlands is the most obvious example) fund curricular materials that are worldview specific and that also convey content deemed necessary for an educated citizenry.

Unlike many of our democratic peers, the United States will never have a common curriculum at the national or even at the state level. This does not mean, however, that religious schools should de-value intellectual knowledge-building, explicitly or implicitly. There are reasons (including religious reasons) to take knowledge seriously.

Read Ashley Berner’s previous posts in this series here and here. 

 

April 28, 2020 1 comment
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestLinkedinEmail
Advocate VoicesCommentary and OpinionEducation ChoiceEducation EquityFeaturedSchool Choice

Status quo mentality antithetical to education equity

Keith Jacobs January 31, 2020
Keith Jacobs

Editor’s note: As National School Choice Week winds down, Step Up For Students’ manager of charter school initiatives Keith Jacobs considers the challenge of achieving educational equity for all and the danger inherent in embracing the status quo.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Sitting in his Birmingham jail cell in 1963, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote of the progress for equality from post-reconstruction to the 1960s. 

He concluded that “the Negro’s greatest stumbling block in his strike toward freedom is the white moderate who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice.” 

That hits home for me.

Dr. King’s focus was to appeal to the moral compass of white leaders, urging them to promote justice, equality and fairness for blacks in the south. Let’s remember: Progress was not only hindered by hate groups, whose members threatened the lives and safety of blacks, but by average white citizens more concerned with maintaining peace and the status quo. 

Civil rights were the social justice issue of the 60s. Today, as we bring National School Choice Week to a close, we face a new one: educational equity for all. 

Education, often thought of as the foundation of civilization, has been slow to change and evolve. As we fight to improve it, our greatest stumbling block is still the “white moderate” – liberals or progressives with privilege in our present-day society.

Too often, their opposition (at worst) toward education choice or their silence (at best) has left our most vulnerable populations – mostly minorities, lower-income families, and students with disabilities – forced to rely on luck for better options rather than access. When children are prevented from realizing their true potential, it sometimes yields deadly consequences. 

Dr. King’s comments suggest that neighbors, clergy and politicians who think of themselves as friendly to progress but refuse to get involved are a big part of the problem.  Those who would make excuses or say change is impossible because “it’s always been like this.” 

Today, these same individuals complain about shortcomings in the education system at family gatherings and church functions but refuse to support options. Their lack of support suggests the attitude that “this is happening to ‘them,’ but my child is fine.”  

This type of privilege is a stain on the fabric of our social conscience. 

At the trisection of MLK Day, National School Choice Week and the annual convening of the Diverse Charter Schools Coalition in Washington D.C., where I am a participant, we must take an introspective approach and determine next steps.

There has been tremendous growth in the number of lower-income families and students of color, who also are culturally and linguistically diverse, in school districts across the nation. Why are they still so far behind?

Why are people still opposed to the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program that has helped so many students of color?

Why are children with disabilities locked out of the American dream? 

How can charter schools serving predominately minority students still be denied equal funding to expand successful programs, especially in the STEM field?

These are the questions we are grappling with today.   

If you turn your back on these kids, or would rather discuss district funding than the fight for equity for all, then you are reminiscent of the white moderate who stood aside while blacks were lynched, denied basic human rights, and restricted from voting. 

You are the reason why, 50 years after the march in Birmingham for civil rights, we needed a rally of over 10,000 advocates a few years ago in Florida to fight for education choice. 

Your endorsement of the status quo is the reason hundreds rallied in Tallahassee the day after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day this month to support better educational opportunities for students with disabilities. 

Forget parties and parades. 

Let’s finally give our marginalized communities what they need: equity and fairness.

It’s time for any who would think otherwise to get off their lofty post and support a cause that values students over a system. All students.

January 31, 2020 0 comment
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestLinkedinEmail
Advocate VoicesEducation ChoiceEducation EquityFeaturedParent EmpowermentParental ChoicePodcastSchool Choice

podcastED: an interview with education choice advocate Virginia Walden Ford

David Hudson Tuthill December 5, 2019
David Hudson Tuthill

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.

https://www.redefinedonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Miss-Virginia-EDIT.mp3

 

December 5, 2019 0 comment
2 FacebookTwitterPinterestLinkedinEmail
Vouchers

DC vouchers gain new momentum

Travis Pillow March 10, 2016
Travis Pillow

The voucher program in the nation’s capital, though small, holds outsize symbolic importance, in part because it’s the only private school choice program directly overseen by Congress. While its future looked uncertain after it wasn’t renewed late last year, it seems to have picked up new momentum. 

This week, in a letter to congressional leaders, Mayor Muriel Bowser and eight members of Washington’s city council said they support the “three-sector” approach of the SOAR Act, federal legislation that links funding for the district’s charter and traditional public schools with the re-authorization of the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program.

In the letter, released by House Speaker Paul Ryan’s office, the city officials wrote:

The SOAR Act provides equal amounts of federal funding for the [District of Columbia Public Schools], public charter schools and the [voucher program]. We understand that these funding streams are inextricably linked. We urge you to ensure that the SOAR Reauthorization Act (S. 2171/H.R. 10) becomes law before the end of this Congress so that this critical funding for K -12 education in the District of Columbia is not put in jeopardy.

Continue Reading
March 10, 2016 0 comment
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestLinkedinEmail
Blog AdministrationCharter SchoolsEducation PoliticsParental ChoiceProgressives and ed reformSchool Choice

President Obama should ‘get out of the way’ of D.C. voucher program

redefinED staff November 13, 2012
redefinED staff

Chavous

Kevin Chavous, a senior advisor to the American Federation for Children, criticizes President Obama in this recent Washington Post op-ed for not supporting the Washington D.C. voucher program and suggests a new approach for Term 2:

I have long been a supporter of the president, and I continue to applaud many of his education initiatives, including his embrace of charter schools. But his administration’s opposition to giving low-income families the full slate of educational options — captured when he zeroed out funding for the program in his budget this year, despite the earlier deal in which he agreed to reauthorizing the program for five years — is unacceptable. …

These roadblocks are part of a long history of the administration’s resolute opposition to the voucher program, from Education Secretary Arne Duncan rescinding 216 scholarships in 2009 to the department ignoring the positive results of a gold-standard study, conducted by its own Institute of Education Sciences, that found that D.C. voucher students graduate at a rate of 91 percent — more than 20 percentage points higher than those who sought a voucher but either didn’t get one or didn’t enroll in the program after being accepted. Because of the delaying tactics of the department, a credible — and federally mandated — new study of the program cannot be conducted unless the program enrolls hundreds of new students next year. …

On many occasions during his first term, President Obama demonstrated an ability to embrace education reforms that help kids, and I expect that to continue now that he has won a decisive reelection. What’s different about this one? This is an easy one: All he and his Education Department have to do is get out of the way and let a successful program work. Full op-ed here.

November 13, 2012 0 comment
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestLinkedinEmail
BipartisanshipCharter SchoolsEducation PoliticsParent EmpowermentParent TriggerParental ChoicePolicy WonksPrivate SchoolsProgressives and ed reformSchool Choice

In Obama’s Term 2, a historic opportunity to expand parental school choice

Peter H. Hanley November 13, 2012
Peter H. Hanley

President Obama has often called on us to be true to who we are as a people, as Americans. And in his second term, he has the opportunity to transform the education system back to our core – to where parents are primarily in charge of children’s educations.

We have paid a price for transferring authority and responsibility for educating children from parents to government entities. With mostly though not always good motives (remember Brown v. Board of Education), we allowed the dream of the government-owned and operated common school to live on despite overwhelming evidence that, in reality, it wasn’t working. A child’s educational destiny continues mostly to be a function of his/her zip code and the competence of strangers who sit on local school boards.

For more than three decades, a long, slow correction of this anomaly in American society has been underway. First, intradistrict and interdistrict transfers began to appear that allowed limited parental choice within some parts of the public school system. Then magnet schools surfaced, offering options such as vocational, talented and gifted, and language immersion programs, and responding to more demands. In 1992, charter schools emerged. Today they account for almost 6 percent of all public schools, approaching 6000 total, and the number grows steadily each year because the demand from parents so far is insatiable.

Thanks to my colleague at the American Center for School Choice, Gloria Romero, a new tool has appeared. The parent trigger empowers parents to make changes to their school when they are not satisfied. Already 20 states have considered the approach and seven have adopted laws.

Private school choice programs continue to gain support, too. And they have done so despite fierce opposition from forces that want to defend market share over a parent’s right to choose. Today, 32 such programs operate in the country. And in recent years, many school choice bills have either been passed by legislatures with Democratic majorities or signed by Democratic governors. Just as important, once enacted, these programs have only grown. No state has repealed a program or decided choice does not serve the public well. Moreover, the doomsday scenarios that opponents consistently forecast for public education systems have never happened.

It’s said you can’t argue with a river; it is going to flow. Parents are going to take back the authority and responsibility for educating their children. The river has been flowing for more than 20 years and the current is gaining speed. It’s time for more Democrats to stop arguing as families assert their fundamental and universally accepted American value that they know the best choice for their children. Democrats need to work in positive ways to transform our system. We need good schools and there’s plenty of room for all types – public, charter, and private.

President Obama has the life experience, as well as the political skills and credentials, to lead this transformation, and to make it less jarring and less confrontational.

Continue Reading
November 13, 2012 0 comment
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestLinkedinEmail
Blog AdministrationCharter SchoolsCustomizationEducation ResearchParent EmpowermentParental ChoiceSchool Choice

Obama’s inconsistency on school choice

Peter H. Hanley March 5, 2012
Peter H. Hanley

The Obama administration’s refusal to embrace parental choice in education is difficult to understand given its health care stance and the overall public policy direction that Democrats have advocated and embraced for decades. The most recent example is the controversy over the access to contraception under Obamacare.

Initially, the administration asserted that a woman’s and family’s right to choose to use contraception trumped whatever objections religious affiliated employers had to its use. Churches themselves were exempt, but not hospitals they operate. These religious employers would have had to honor the family’s right to choose contraceptives and at zero cost for all their employees. The White House backed off somewhat from the directive in the face of an uproar, but instead ordered that insurance companies have to offer and pay for such coverage separately when the religiously affiliated organization opts not to offer it.

This recognition of the family’s rights on such a personal and potentially life changing decision as contraception oddly does not carry over to education, which in the 21st century is more life changing than ever. Education once was third behind a good work ethic and a strong back for many middle class jobs. Today, education is a must for a middle-class standard of living.

Continue Reading
March 5, 2012 0 comment
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestLinkedinEmail
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • RSS

© 2021 redefinED. All Rights Reserved.


Back To Top