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education reform

Advocate VoicesCommentary and OpinionCommunity LeadersCustomizationEducation and Public PolicyEducation ChoiceEducation EquityFeaturedMicroschoolsParent EmpowermentParent VoicesSchool ChoiceVoices for Education Choice

Micro-schools could be answer for low-income Black students

Special to redefinED
Special to redefinED

Glenton Gilzean speaking in September on a podcast about his early entrepreneurial experiences. Listen to the full interview at https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=3417597471621950.

Editor’s note: This commentary from Glenton Gilzean Jr., president and CEO of the Central Florida Urban League and former Pinellas County School Board member and Florida A&M trustee, appeared earlier today in the Orlando Sentinel.

 When I became president and CEO of the Central Florida Urban League, it was clear that our community faced some incredible challenges. Yet, I always believed that the path forward began with education.

Generational poverty stems from a vicious cycle that we’re all too familiar with. While our organization has helped upskill thousands to compete for high-paying, high-skilled jobs, this is a Band-Aid solution. If our goal is to end this cycle, our fight must begin with children.

For generations, children in low-income Black communities have endured a sub-par education model and these underperforming schools not only hurt our children, but our entire community.

According to the Orlando Economic Partnership, the average net worth for Black adults in Central Florida is less than $18,000 annually, compared to more than $215,000 for white adults. This overt discrepancy is a direct result of a failing education system. Without innovation, these failures will continue to compound as parents are forced to choose between feeding their families and supplementing their children’s education.

With a lack of support both at home and in school, the interest of our children to engage in their learning wanes. While I believe that every child is born with a thirst for knowledge, those in our community are born into a drought with no end in sight.

We can change this. Imagine a school with only a handful of students, learning in a safe and welcoming environment. With such small numbers, their teacher can work with each student, developing and following a personalized learning plan.

Aptly called micro-schools, this is the reality for those with means. But if the state passes a new education choice bill, this can become a reality for those in underserved communities too. Simply put: the low-income Black children who need them the most.

Senate Bill 48, sponsored by Sen. Manny Diaz Jr. (R-Hialeah Gardens), combines five education scholarship programs into two. The bill also extends the use of education savings accounts (ESAs), currently only available to the Gardiner Scholarship for special-needs students and the Reading Scholarship, to the newly merged income-based scholarships.

These accounts could be used to cover private-school tuition, technology, tutoring, curriculum and other approved items. Families would have the flexibility to spend their education dollars, providing them access to the learning environment that best fits their children’s needs.

This bill puts us on the cusp of providing these youth with a high-quality learning environment that will begin to close both the historical achievement gap, the school-to-prison pipeline, and the growing COVID-19 learning gap.

The past year has demonstrated that, now more than ever, families require educational options. Most children have regressed, struggling to maintain even the most basic curriculum. Throwing these students back into an unsuccessful system will further exacerbate their situation.

While the benefits for our youth are clear, micro-schools also provide economic opportunities. If parents have the freedom to spend their children’s education dollars through ESAs, they will demand providers that meet their needs. Entrepreneurs will invest in our communities and this cannot be understated.

As a result of the pandemic, over 40% of Black-owned businesses have closed, while the Black unemployment rate is hovering around 10%, four points higher than the state average. Networks of micro-schools would not only our lift up our children, but their families too.

My organization knows first-hand the success of ESAs. The Urban League partnered with several Orange County Public Schools to register more than 700 students to receive supplemental tutoring funded by the Florida Reading Scholarship. This was a blessing for parents who were unable to afford tutoring for their children.

We now have the opportunity to take ESAs to the next level and positively impact not hundreds, but thousands of children. I pray that our elected representatives listen to their constituents. Please fund students over systems, put money in the hands of parents who know what’s best for their children, and bring micro-schools to communities that desperately need them.

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Commentary and OpinionCustomizationEducation ChoiceFeaturedMicroschoolsParental ChoiceSchool Choice

Innovative teacher recaptures spirit of the ‘little red schoolhouse’

Matthew Ladner
Matthew Ladner

Dynamic Micro-school aims to provide a powerful, student-centered learning environment focused in the unique interests, abilities and learning styles of each child.

MESA, Arizona – “Miss Laura! A chick! There’s a chick in the shed!”

The excited cry set students at the Dynamic Micro-school scurrying. My height advantage allowed me to see over the students’ heads to spy a noticeably protective mother hen. Moments later, I caught a glimpse of the long-awaited hatchling.

As the students broke out in a cacophony of celebratory conversation, I wondered to myself: What percentage of America’s youth attending school on Zoom or some other virtual platform are having this much fun? I’d put the over/under at 1% — but give me the under.

My next thought was: If this farm/animal rescue shelter/school is a glimpse into what’s possible for education, the future looks … well, fun!

Laura DeRoule, a 15-year veteran of Mesa public school classrooms, had, until recently, left the profession entirely. Endless test prep and teaching from a script left her burned out and unfulfilled.

“It just was a bunch of testing at that time where I felt like we weren’t really using what we found out,” DeRoule told her local newspaper in January.

The chance to run her own school got her back in the education game.

The Dynamic Micro-school meets at Superstition Farm in East Mesa. It never serves than a dozen students at one time, but that’s in part because families have the flexibility to choose their schedules. Some kids come daily, but others only occasionally. One student I met when I visited earlier this week was enrolled in a district distance learning program. Others were homeschoolers.

Among them were students who participate in Arizona’s Empowerment Scholarship Account program.

Delightfully, the once hard-and-fast distinctions that define “education” are beginning to blend, and the Dynamic Micro-school is a great example. Distance learning, homeschool and private choice program students are all, well, students. In a multi-age environment where everyone alternates between group efforts and doing their own thing, there’s little to distinguish one educational flavor from another.

These particular students were busy feeding ducks, chickens, goats, pigs and tortoises when I arrived. Oh, and donkeys. (My personal favorite of all the animals was a donkey named Migs. Migs was very friendly but voiced his opinion loudly and clearly to show he was hungry.)

There are any number of policy implications to this happy farm school – and more than a hint of the multi-educator world foreseen by Jack Coons and Stephen Sugarman.

Most Baby Boomers who went into teaching after college reached retirement eligibility long ago, and enrollment in colleges of education nationwide began to see sagging enrollment years ago. The need for teachers like Lara DeRoule to return to education will become increasingly acute year by year.

Put her and other innovative teachers like her in charge, or it’s game over, man.

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AnalysisEducation and Public PolicyEducation ChoiceEducation ResearchfactcheckEDFeaturedFlorida Tax Credit ScholarshipSchool Choice

Dispelling the ‘damaged goods’ myth about school choice scholarships

Ron Matus
Ron Matus

Students at all three locations of Academy Prep — Tampa, St. Petersburg and Lakeland — routinely matriculate to top high schools and go on to attend top colleges. All Academy Prep students attend on state scholarships.

There is no evidence that students who use Florida school choice scholarships return to public schools worse off academically.

But that doesn’t stop critics of education choice from repeating variations on that claim.

The Florida League of Women Voters is the latest to air this “damaged goods” myth. In a Feb. 21 newspaper op-ed criticizing Senate Bill 48, which would convert Florida’s school choice scholarships into education savings accounts, two of its officials wrote:

“Stories abound of children who return to their neighborhood public school after a private school closes, only to find they are far behind academically.”

But for the qualifier “after a private school closes,” the Florida League of Women Voters op-ed echoes a charge that choice opponents have been levelling for years (for example, here and here.)

We can’t say with certainty whether “stories abound.” But data to support such claims certainly does not.

The authoritative take on this issue comes from respected education researcher David Figlio, dean of the School of Education and Social Policy at Northwestern. For years, Figlio was tasked by the state of Florida with annually analyzing the standardized test scores of students using the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship, the biggest choice scholarship program in the nation. (The scholarship is administered by nonprofits such as Step Up For Students, which hosts this blog.)

In his 2011-12 report, Figlio addressed the academic performance of scholarship students who return to public schools. He wrote:

FTC participants who return to the public sector performed, after their first year back in the public schools, in the same ballpark but perhaps slightly better on the FCAT than they had before they left the Florida public schools. The most careful reading of this evidence indicates that participation in the FTC program appears to have neither advantaged nor disadvantaged the program participants who ultimately return to the public sector.

Figlio also wrote:

These pieces of evidence strongly point to an explanation that the poor apparent FCAT performance of FTC program returnees is actually a result of the fact that the returning students are generally particularly struggling students.

Subsequent analyses led to the same conclusion.

The best available evidence doesn’t point to shortcomings with choice scholarships. If anything, it underscores the need for even more options for the most fragile students.

Other evidence also turns the League of Women Voters claim on its head.

Thirteen years’ worth of test score analyses offer remarkably consistent findings about Florida Tax Credit Scholarship students. No. 1, they were typically the lowest-performing students in their prior public schools. And No. 2, they’re now, as a whole, making a year’s worth of progress in a year’s worth of time.

A 2019 Urban Institute study found even more encouraging results: The same students are up to 43 percent more likely than their public school peers to enroll in four-year colleges, and up to 20 percent more likely to earn bachelor’s degrees.

These outcomes don’t suggest damaged goods.

They suggest more students living up to their potential.

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Education and Public PolicyEducation ChoiceFeaturedNewsParental ChoicePolicymakersSchool BoardsSchool ChoiceTax Credit ScholarshipsVoices for Education Choice

Desire for equity drives district school board member’s passion for education choice

Lisa Buie
Lisa Buie

For Jon Arguello, there should be no “us” versus “them” when it comes to education choice.

The Central Florida entrepreneur made no secret of his support for choice during his successful campaign for a seat on the Osceola County School Board in 2020. Earlier this month, during a hearing on a Florida Senate bill that would streamline state K-12 scholarship programs and convert them to flexible spending accounts, he delivered an impassioned speech in support of the measure and defended his stance under direct questioning from Sen. Perry E. Thurston, D-Fort Lauderdale.

“I’ve been in the education world for a good amount of time,” the father of five said a couple of weeks later. “I’ve been involved in Catholic schools and public schools. I’ve learned what a useful program (education choice) is. I think opponents make it out to be this bogeyman, and it’s just not the case.”

The son of immigrants from Nicaragua, Arguello, 45, moved to the Orlando area from San Francisco with his family when he was 8 and grew up attending district schools and Catholic schools. An Army veteran, he earned his law degree from Barry University.  When he and his wife were young parents, they sent their three oldest children, who are now in college, to district elementary schools without giving it much thought.  

“We didn’t know about school choice,” he said. “But it became important to my wife and me as we got a little older and wiser.”

As their family grew, the Arguellos wanted to find an environment that blended academics with the Catholic Church’s world view and offered formal religious training. Catholic schools provided the ideal fit for that.

His children benefited from the income-based Florida Tax Credit Scholarship to help supplement tuition at one point, but as his businesses became more successful, they no longer qualified. Many family members and friends currently benefit from the scholarships.

“We continued to send our kids to private school and make that sacrifice,” he said, adding that he wished the program could be universal, with funding going directly to families so parents could control their children’s education.

Arguello, who had volunteered on various community boards but never held elected office, said he decided to run for the Osceola County School Board after reviewing the 25 duties of school board members listed in Florida Statutes.

“Those duties and responsibilities speak to my heart as a businessperson,” he said. “Education is very important to me.”

He said he wanted to use that business expertise to make sure the district is being a good steward of the public’s tax dollars and to provide oversight so that the schools he represents are equipped to successfully compete with other forms of education.

Arguello’s constituency, District 3, is an extremely diverse area in the Central Florida county’s southwest corner. It includes Poinciana, which is 53% Latino, 21.3% African American and 22.6% white, according to Census figures. The county experienced an influx of immigrants from Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria devasted the island in 2017.

“It’s a district that has been neglected and where people have been parked,” he said. “Things are not happening the way they should be in an active community. People are not clamoring to go to the schools in District 3.”

Arguello said many of the families lack the ability to exercise school choice the traditional way: buying a home in a desirable neighborhood or paying private school tuition. Opportunities in his region are limited, primarily due to a lack of high-paying jobs and transportation barriers.

“They can either take a service job in Osceola or drive an hour back and forth to Orlando,” he said.

The desire for equity is what drives him to champion education choice, which his opponent opposed.  A lot of people urged him as he was getting into the race not to bring up choice, calling the issue “a political loser.”

Arguello disagreed.

“Nobody should be able to tell a parent they can’t be the primary decider of where they kids go to school. That’s a winning thing. There’s really no downside to school choice. It’s all an upside.”

So, when friends from Americans For Prosperity and the LIBRE Initiative invited him to travel to Tallahassee and speak in support of SB 48, he didn’t have to think twice. (The two groups recently launched a six-figure joint campaign in support of the bill.) Afterward, his remarks drew some criticism from his district colleagues who questioned whether they were appropriate for someone representing a county school board.

Arguello said he represents the voters who elected him.

“We have a great communications team that speaks on behalf of the district,” he said. “I speak on behalf of the community, and I know that the community enjoys, participates in and takes advantage of school choice.”

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Charter SchoolsCommentary and OpinionEducation and Public PolicyEducation ChoiceEducation EquityFeaturedParental ChoicePublic School ChoiceSchool Choice

Can we stop fighting about charter schools?

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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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Commentary and OpinionEducation and Public PolicyEducation ChoiceFeaturedSchool Choice

podcastED: SUFS president Doug Tuthill interviews Walnut Hill Workshop’s Antonio Parés

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Special to redefinED

On this episode, Tuthill speaks with the founder of a Colorado-based organization that works with public and private education organizations to create new opportunities for students to receive education outside the traditional five-days-a-week, 180 days-a-year schooling model.

 Tuthill and Parés discuss Colorado laws that allow funding to be portable and how state-sponsored schools can serve students not enrolled full time in district or charter schools. They also discuss the empowerment and business opportunities for teachers and members of local communities to create businesses such as specialized tutoring and learning pods when education funding is portable. Both men believe children are always learning, and that society devalues educational opportunities outside of “traditional” schooling.

“I hope people take the opportunity COVID has provided to reflect on the system that we’ve had and think about how its reaction only furthered the inequities many of us had already seen and (begin to) wonder how we smooth those inequities out.”

EPISODE DETAILS:

·       Parés’ background as a teacher and a disruptor of traditional education models

·       Finding state statues that make education funding portable in Colorado and what can be created in other states

·       How public-private partnerships can break down false dichotomies about education choice, create win-win solutions and lift all boats

·       Small business opportunities for communities and teachers when education funding is portable

·       How COVID-19 has reshaped perceptions around traditional schooling and how the experience will shape education’s future

LINKS MENTIONED:

Prenda – The Neighborhood School Reimagined

MyTech High – Personalized, Customized Education

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Commentary and OpinionEducation and Public PolicyEducation ChoiceEducation EquityEducation Savings AccountsFeaturedParental ChoicePrivate School ScholarshipsSchool Choice

What school choice myths, invasive snails have in common

Ron Matus
Ron Matus

Editor’s note: fact-checkED is an occasional feature that brings precision to complex education issues that are easily misunderstood, aiming to counteract incorrect information.  

Giant snails are one of hundreds of invasive species that now call Florida home. They damage homes, threaten crops, smell terrible – and carry a parasite that can cause meningitis in humans.

They’re also impossible to wipe out. If it gets too dry, the snails just bury themselves until the rains return. Then they emerge “like zombies clawing their way out of a grave.”

Kind of reminds me of …. myths about education choice.

Legislative sessions are to ed choice myths what rainy season is to invasive snails.

With lawmakers considering choice bills in 23 states and counting, the myths are on the march. Especially the Terminator of all school choice myths (see here, here, here, here, here … ) that choice scholarships drain money from public schools.

In Florida, choice opponents are re-surfacing the myth (see here, here, here and the tail end of this here) to slime Senate Bill 48. That’s the bill that would convert Florida’s school choice scholarships into education spending accounts.

A little math can temporarily dispel this myth as well as a little salt can, well, dispatch a snail. (Not that we’d support that.)

When choice opponents in Florida make the drain claim, they’re referring to the two biggest scholarship programs. The Florida Tax Credit Scholarship now serves about 100,000 students each year. The Family Empowerment Scholarship serves about 36,000 students. The value of both scholarships is roughly the same – and so much less than per-pupil funding in district schools.

All-in per-pupil spending in Florida in 2017-18 was $10,856, according to a 2019 analysis by Florida Tax Watch. The average value of the tax credit scholarship that year was $6,447.

That’s 59 percent of the district cost. That’s why when you extrapolate scholarship spending over thousands of students, you don’t get a drain on public schools. You get taxpayer savings that can be invested in public schools.

To date, eight independent analyses of the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship have come to this conclusion. To date, not a single study has concluded otherwise.

The Florida findings are not an outlier. EdChoice has tallied 55 fiscal impact studies on choice scholarships. Forty-nine found savings for taxpayers. Two found net costs.

For the definitive busting of the siphoning myth, we suggest the chapter by Martin Lueken and Benjamin Scafidi in the indispensable “School Choice Myths.”

Sadly, media coverage of any of this evidence is, like a snail in dry season, rarely seen. 

For Floridians, here’s one more bit of remedial math. In 1999, when Florida awarded its first K-12 scholarship, average per-pupil spending was $4,804 for operational costs. (This operational figure is routinely cited as Florida’s per-pupil figure. In truth it’s a portion, but it still works as a comparison.) Choice opponents declared the apocalypse was upon us.

Two decades later, that per-pupil figure is $7,786 – or nearly $300 more than in 1999, once adjusted for inflation.

That’s with 180,000 students using K-12 scholarships.

Meanwhile, Florida’s academic outcomes now earn the Sunshine State a No. 3 ranking in K-12 Achievement from no less a fair arbiter than Education Week.

Choice opponents still say the end is near. They always will.

Even invasive snails won’t outlive the myths about school choice.

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Education and Public PolicyEducation LegislationFeaturedNewsSpecial Needs Education

Dual enrollment bill could expand college opportunities across the board

Lisa Buie
Lisa Buie

Editor’s note: To hear Dyani Peterson tell her own story, click here.

As a high school student at No Limits Academy in Melbourne, Florida, Dyani Peterson took dual enrollment classes from Eastern Florida State College.

She crushed it.

She graduated in 2020 with her high school diploma from No Limits, an associate degree from Eastern Florida, and was among those chosen to represent the college on the 2020 All-Florida Academic Team, which consisted of 166 students from the 28-member Florida College System.

The 21-year-old’s story is even more amazing given the fact she has arthrogryposis multiplex congenita,  a condition that results in decreased flexibility of the joints. The disease has progressed to the point where Peterson can move only her head.

“The dual enrollment program has ended up making me successful for my college career today,” said Peterson, who attended No Limits on a Gardiner Scholarship. “I know that with my complex physical disabilities and all the adaptions I needed, my tuition did not touch the cost of educating me, but No Limits Academy did it anyway, because they saw my future.”

Now a biomedical engineering major at Florida Institute of Technology, Peterson is urging lawmakers to support SB 52 and HB 281, which would set aside $12.5 million to cover the cost of dual enrollment for private school students as well as students who are educated at home. The bills, currently being debated in legislative committees, also include $16 million to cover the cost of summer courses for all dual enrollment students.

The legislation has been proposed for the past several years to correct a glitch in state law that happened in 2013. Funding issues occurred at that time when a change in the law shifted the cost of dual enrollment programs from colleges to school districts. Because school districts are state funded, the state picked up the cost. But private schools, faced with having to pick up the costs themselves, had no alternative but to limit their dual enrollment offerings.

Despite bipartisan support, the bills died in committee. Supporters hope 2021 will be the year the issue gets corrected.

Sen. Ray Rodrigues, R-Fort Myers, the bill’s sponsor, said this latest attempt to correct the problem benefits the state overall because students who participate in dual enrollment go to college at a much higher rate than their classmates and are more likely to earn college degrees than their peers.

And because the bills would provide relief to private schools, students like Peterson would benefit. While she was aware she could have gone to a district school and had her dual enrollment costs covered by the state, her condition required that she attend a private school like No Limits Academy, which specializes in educating students with complex physical issues.

No Limits Academy founder and director Laura Joslin said she’s proud of all that Peterson and her other dual enrollment students have accomplished. She encourages students whose abilities make college a suitable fit for them to pursue their dreams regardless of what it costs her school.

“I work hard to raise $100,000 in donations every year so that I can help my students overcome physical challenges to get the best education they possibly can,” Joslin said. “That includes dual enrollment.”

If approved, the new law would allow her to shift those dollars toward more equipment and staff so that more students at No Limits can receive a high-quality education.

And that might just lead to even more students with unique abilities earning college diplomas.

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