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Elizabeth Warren

Charter SchoolsCommentary and OpinionEducation and Public PolicyEducation ChoiceEducation PoliticsFeaturedSchool Choice

Charters have 99 problems, but private choice is not one of them

Matthew Ladner February 24, 2020
Matthew Ladner

Recently, the Trump administration proposed consolidating several federal education programs into a single block grant to states, including federal charter school funding. The same budget proposal calls for the creation a federal private school tax credit program.

In other circumstances, both ideas would be worth a tussle on the merits. But the House hasn’t passed much of anything in the way of a budget in a long time. Our Senate Olympians, meanwhile, busy themselves by admiring their own reflections and asking, “How are you today, Mr./Madame President?” leaving little time to consider serious proposals from the House in the unlikely event something of the sort were to occur.

Trench warfare over K-12 policy is all too real, but it’s taking place in state capitols rather than Gucci Gulch. Yet Conor P. Williams, a fellow at The Century Foundation, took this budget proposal seriously enough to suggest that the charter movement divert energy from the fight against an ongoing onslaught to launch an attack against … the private choice movement.

Williams starts his piece in The 74 with a highly questionable thesis: The charter movement’s problem is that it has too many friends rather than too few. He then misrepresents polling results before moving on to a slanted review of the research on education choice literature.

After the Question 2 debacle in Massachusetts, some charter advocates in that state attempted to curry favor with Sen. Elizabeth Warren by reciting a litany similar to that presented in Williams’ article. Warren was so deeply impressed with this effort that she called for the elimination of federal charter funding entirely in her run for president. (It was the unions, their camp followers and a whole lot of left-leaning voters who crushed Question 2 by the way, not anyone from the private choice movement.)

Last year, California lawmakers passed legislation that will grind charter growth to a halt. Did an association with private choice efforts cause this to happen, or was it the relentless efforts of the California Teachers Association? Imagine if Golden State charter advocates had recited a triangulation litany against tax credits. Would hundreds of thousands of children waiting on California charter school wait lists have a shot at new schools?

Color me skeptical.

In Arizona, charter opponents want to force charter management organizations to issue a request for proposal to manage new schools. Charter management organizations, in other words, would raise millions of dollars needed to build facilities but would then turn management of those schools over to outsiders.

Arizona districts would of course never build a new school again if required to abide by such a practice. The sheer lunacy of such proposals does not engender confidence that even the most ostentatious anti-private choice virtual signaling would soothe the savage anti-charter beast.

Every so often, people need to be reminded of things. On a Fordham Foundation panel back in 2011, Step Up For Students founder and chairman John Kirtley noted there were six charter schools in Jacksonville, Fla., and 90 private schools serving low-income students through tax credits. Kirtley further noted that not all of the charter schools primarily served low-income children. He asked his debate opponents how much longer single mothers with children in the schools should wait for school options.

I don’t recall much in the way of a coherent response. Some nine years later, there are more charter schools in Jacksonville, but you would have a difficult time indeed arguing there are enough.

Doomed efforts at Jedi mind tricks are no substitute for the actual practice of coalition politics. Charter advocates have plenty of enemies and too few allies. There is no room for unwarranted technocratic vanity in the expansion of educational opportunity. After all, students have only one shot at a quality education.

February 24, 2020 0 comment
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Florida Schools RoundupredefinED education roundup

Polk teachers who march threatened with firing, bills on aid forms and parental rights and more

Compiled by redefinED staff January 13, 2020
Compiled by redefinED staff

Marching teachers threatened: The top attorney for the Florida Department of Education says teachers who are taking today off to join the rally for education in Tallahassee could be fired for striking illegally. “A concerted failure to report for duty constitutes an illegal strike under Florida law,” Matthew Mears wrote Friday in an email sent only to Polk County Superintendent Jacqueline Byrd. Byrd said she asked the department for “guidance” and simply forwarded the email to employees to make them aware of the law, and “not as a threat from me to fire staff.” Teachers and their union leaders said they took it as a veiled threat. “Everything about that email was a disaster from the state level [to] the local level,” said Polk County School Board member Billy Townsend, who is attending the march and rally. “If this is a local decision, over my dead body will anybody be fired.” More than 1,000 Polk teachers are planning to make the trip to Tallahassee. Spectrum News 13. Lakeland Ledger. Tampa Bay Times. Orlando Sentinel. WTSP. WFLA. WFTS. More about today’s march by teachers in Tallahassee, and the legislative session that begins Tuesday. News Service of Florida. GateHouse. Orlando Sentinel. WLRN. Tallahassee Democrat. Politico Florida. Florida Politics. TCPalm. Florida Today. Lakeland Ledger. WSVN. WKMG. WTVT. WFTX.

More education bills: Several bills were filed just before Friday’s deadline to be considered by the Legislature. Among them are one that would require all high school students to file a Free Application for Federal Student Aid form to graduate, another spelling out parental rights in their child’s education and health care, and one that would make temporary funding increases to 29 school districts permanent and require districts to share any future voter-approved tax hikes with charter schools. Gradebook. Lakeland Ledger. Local government officials, such as school board members, would be allowed to carry weapons to meetings under a bill filed in the Legislature. S.B 1524, filed by state Sen. George Gainer, R-Panama City, would make an exception to the law prohibiting weapons at government meetings for school board members and other local officials. Members of the public attending the meetings would still be barred from being armed. News Service of Florida. Two bills would make significant changes to the way students are handled under the state’s Baker Act. Tampa Bay Times.

Students and suicide: Florida’s youth suicide rate has increased by 50 percent in the past 10 years, an epidemic that school and other officials say is hidden in plain sight online. There are 632,000 Instagram posts with with the hashtag #lifesucks, and another 550,000-plus tagged with #hatemyself. But there are also 2 million Instagram posts with the less obvious hashtag #kms (kill myself), hundreds of thousands under such #secretsociety123, and online users have developed code names for mental health disorders, such as Annie for anxiety and Sue for suicidal. Many teens who are depressed or suicidal say the first place they turn for help is not a mental health professional, a counselor or parents, but to social media. Sun Sentinel.

Mental health instruction: To meet the state requirement of giving students five hours of instruction about mental health, the Volusia County School District will provide monthly lessons conducted through PowerPoint presentations. In Flagler County, students will have 10 30-minute lessons in subjects designed to be age-appropriate. Daytona Beach News-Journal.

Native language testing: Some education officials say a bill that would require the state to allow Spanish and Haitian-Creole speakers to take required tests in their native languages raises issues of fairness for speakers of other languages. The Florida Department of Education says Florida ranks third in the country in the number of English language learning students, and they speak more than 300 languages. TCPalm.

Educators honored: Rob Paschall, a 5th-grade teacher at West Creek Elementary, has been named the Orange County School District’s teacher of the year. Others honored: James Leslie of Lake Weston Elementary was named principal of the year, Fred Ray of Carver Middle was chosen as the assistant principal of the year, and Maria Seijo, who works in the district’s Innovation Office, was selected as support person of the year. Orlando Sentinel.

Superintendent search: Politics and race have crept into the search for a new Hillsborough County school superintendent, tinging the process with strong feelings about certain candidates. The six outside candidates and the lone internal candidate, Harrison Peters, will interview Thursday. Despite the factions, school board member Steve Cona said, “I really believe that this job will be won in the interview.” Superintendent Jeff Eakins is retiring no later than June 30. Tampa Bay Times.

Vaping lawsuit: Lee County School Board members are giving consideration to joining the Brevard, Seminole and Palm Beach school districts in a class action lawsuit against Juul Labs, the manufacturer of e-cigarettes. The suit alleges that the company targets teens in ads, leading to health issues for students and disruptions in schools, which are forcing the districts to divert resources from other issues to deal with the vaping problems. Board members are expected to discuss the lawsuit within the next month. Fort Myers News-Press.

Partial dismissal sought: Attorneys for the Broward County School Board are asking for a partial dismissal in the case filed by families of the shooting victims at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018. They claim the suit goes beyond the scope of Florida law in the areas of school districts’ duties and responsibilities. WFOR.

School repairs: The Palm Beach County School District has spent about $61 million repairing and replacing school air conditioning systems since 2017. That investment has resulted in an overall decline in A/C problems by 7 percent, but an analysis of district records shows that some schools have had persisting problems. Palm Beach Post.

More on graduation rates: The Florida Department of Education reported last week that 86.9 percent of the state’s students who started high school in 2015 graduated last spring. But it also reports that the dropout rate is 3.4 percent. So what happened to the other 9.7 percent? Gradebook.  More reports about Florida school districts’ graduation rates. WFSU. WMBB. Charlotte Sun. Space Coast Daily. Orlando Sentinel. Panama City News Herald. WUWF.

Spelling bee winner: Caleb Rimpel, an 8th-grader from Christ the King Lutheran School, won the Flagler County Spelling Bee to qualify for the regional spelling bee in Jacksonville on Feb. 27. Daytona Beach News-Journal.

Personnel moves: The Sarasota County School District’s interim superintendent since mid-November, Mitsi Corcoran, was given a contract last week by the school board. Corcoran will paid $207,000 a year and receive an extra $1,150 a month for expenses. Sarasota Herald-Tribune.

Notable deaths: Dr. Ed Anderson, an Ocala dentist and one-term Marion County School Board member who helped the district desegregate schools in the late 1960s, died Jan. 3 at the age of 90. Ocala Star-Banner.

Charters and candidates: Charter schools have been among the most divisive issue among the leading Democratic candidates for president. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders have vigorously opposed them, while Mike Bloomberg is a strong supporter and has said he would push for more of them. Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg have been less vocal but have called for great accountability for charters. There are about 7,000 charter schools in the United States, and they education about 6 percent of the country’s students. Politico.

School elections: A third candidate has entered the race for the Clay County superintendent’s job. Melanie Dawn Walls joined former superintendent Charlie Van Sant in challenging incumbent Addison Davis. WJXT.

District marketing: The Hernando County School District is rolling out a new marketing plan that includes a new, soft blue and green district logo reading: Hernando School District: Learn it. Love it. Live it. The district paid the Sarasota marketing firm Voss & Associates just over $20,000 to develop the plan. Tampa Bay Times.

Hackers change school names: Hackers temporarily changed information provided from Google searches about several central Florida schools last week. Leesburg High School, for instance, was changed to Tatas High School, with the location changed to Skeezeburg and the principal being named “Megamind.” School officials from several districts are investigating. WOFL. WKMG.

Students and the law: Lee County sheriff’s deputies arrested an Estero High School student and accused him of having a stun gun and six bullets in his car in the school parking lot. Deputies also found cocaine residue in the student’s clothing. Fort Myers News-Press. A 15-year-old Flagler County student has been arrested and accused of hitting a teacher who was trying to break up a fight at Flagler Palm Coast High School. The teacher was not injured. Daytona Beach News-Journal. Flagler Live. A 13-year-old Lee County student was arrested and accused of threatening to kill students at the Alva School. WINK. WFTX.

Opinions on schools: Florida students deserve better than to have one of the lowest-paid education workforces in the nation at work in their classrooms. FEA president Fed Ingram, Miami Herald. Mass marches, such as the one planned by teachers today in Tallahassee, don’t change many minds. But they do focus public attention on what organizers want lawmakers to know their constituents care about.  Bill Cotterell, Tallahassee Democrat. Legislators need to put students first for a change, and teachers a close second. Sun Sentinel. Republican legislators will have to deliver to fulfill Gov. Ron DeSantis’ pledge to make 2020 the year of the teacher. Tampa Bay Times. Name an issue proposed by a Republican but viewed favorably by 97 percent of Florida Democrats … AND that increases government spending yet is supported by nearly 9 in 10 Florida Republicans. The answer: raising Florida’s base salary for public school teachers. Karen Cyphers, Florida Politics. Teacher pay and student performance must be the top priorities for the Legislature. John Legg, Florida Politics. Florida school districts are looking to the courts for help fighting vaping manufacturers to recoup costs for the damage they’re doing to students and the problems they’re causing the districts. Scott Maxwell, Orlando Sentinel. Florida needs to make sure that high school students earn credentials that will actually prepare them for life after graduation including college, further vocational training or entering the workforce with a high-paying job. Patricia Levesque, Tampa Bay Times. Non-English-speaking students should get the chance to show what they’ve learned by allowing them to take required state assessment tests in their native languages. Jochua Cora Santiago, Orlando Sentinel.

January 13, 2020 0 comment
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Florida Schools RoundupredefinED education roundup

Democratic candidates talk education, preview of session and teacher pay, contract impasse and more

Compiled by redefinED staff December 16, 2019
Compiled by redefinED staff
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December 16, 2019 0 comment
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2020 Presidential ElectionCharter SchoolsEducation EquityEducation LegislationEducation PoliticsFeaturedSchool Choice

Howard Fuller went down to Georgia looking for a party’s soul to heal

Matthew Ladner November 27, 2019
Matthew Ladner

Democratic candidate for president Elizabeth Warren speaking at a rally Sept. 16 in Washington Square Park, New York City. Warren caused a stir last week when speaking to black and Latino charter school parents and supporters in Atlanta.

A recent protest of Elizabeth Warren’s education plan staged by a group of charter school parents at an event in Atlanta – which happened to include civil rights activist and education reform advocate Dr. Howard Fuller – resulted in a conversation between the senator and the parents that caused quite a stir. You can view the entire conversation here.

Go watch the video. I’ll wait.

Okay, good.

So, the big story coming out of this meeting has been Warren’s far-less-than-truthful denial about sending her children to private school. Her campaign subsequently admitted that her son attended public school “until fifth grade,” at which time he apparently attended a couple of different private schools.

But there were plenty of other interesting items in this conversation.

Warren protests at one point that Massachusetts and New Hampshire have good public schools. This, of course, is true, but Massachusetts and New Hampshire are two of the small handful of states with average six-figure incomes for families of four. If you examine data from the Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford University on student learning gains by poverty status, this is what Massachusetts and New Hampshire look like:

School effectiveness vs. free/reduced-price lunch eligibility; Massachusetts schools, all students, grades 3-8, from 2009-2016, sized by number of students

 

School effectiveness vs. school district socioeconomic status; New Hampshire districts, all students, grades 3-8, from 2009-2016, sized by number of students

On both maps, dark green represents high academic growth, and the right side of the charts signify a low percentage of students eligible for a free or reduced-price lunch. So, unless my eyes are deceiving me, the high academic growth schools in New Hampshire and (especially) Massachusetts cluster in the high wealth areas.

These schools may very well be “good,” but they aren’t exactly accessible.

Several of those high-poverty green schools on the left side of the Massachusetts chart are (you guessed it) charter schools. Just in case any of you are thinking this might be unfair and that every state’s growth chart is going to look like Massachusetts’ chart, take a look at this.

Warren claimed a few different times that she doesn’t oppose charter schools; she “just wants them held to the same standards.” Charter schools, however, because they are public schools, teach state standards and give state tests and get rated by the same metrics in all states.

Warren specifically mentioned Michigan as a state where charter schools don’t follow the same rules.

I suggest we exempt Michigan district schools from whatever “rules” Michigan charter schools have been exempted from. Michigan district schools have shown a big dose of academic stagnation over the last decade, whereas students in Michigan charter schools at least show improvement over time despite clustering in what may be the most economically challenged urban area in the country.

There’s more than one way to hold school sectors to the same standards, and it would be a better idea to free Michigan districts than to shackle Michigan charters.

It’s pretty clear watching the video that Howard Fuller has read the senator’s education plan, but the senator graciously offers to review it for him. Fuller, a former superintendent with the Milwaukee Public School System, sagely warns the senator that absent structural changes, many districts simply will absorb the funds she speaks of without improving.

The senator agrees, and cites a childcare block grant program for which she increased funding that suffered that precise fate; the money never reached the teachers. This experience perhaps ought to have informed the senator’s plan more than it appears to have done thus far.

The richest quote from this entire episode may have been one drawn from a New York Times piece about the issue, which quoted charter school operator Margaret Fortune:

“What would be happening in a fair society is we would be asked for our opinions, rather than having candidates saying, ‘I have a plan for you’ — to shepherd you into the very schools that you left on purpose.”

An especially interesting take coming from a black, lifelong Democrat.

November 27, 2019 2 comments
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2020 Presidential ElectionEducation and Public PolicyEducation PoliticsParent EmpowermentSchool ChoiceVoices for Education Choice

What’s in a name?

Catherine Durkin Robinson October 24, 2019
Catherine Durkin Robinson

Should we refer to our movement as “education choice” or “education freedom”? That’s a big discussion these days. Which would better rally our supporters? Which would encourage opponents to give this movement a second glance?

Those are questions I was recently asked, and I fought the urge to say, “Who cares?”

Is it a national movement without national advocates organized to fight for and defend it?

I don’t think so.

The response to the latest threat from a presidential nominee highlights this situation perfectly.

Democratic front-runner Elizabeth Warren said recently that as president, she’d cut back federal funding for charter schools. She also spoke out against vouchers, promising to end them entirely.

Cue the histrionics from proponents of choice, especially from people who understand presidential politics and the part we play (or don’t) in all of it.

We do that pretty well. Get hysterical. Write op-ed pieces giving Democrats a stern talking to. Tweet with hashtags and emojis. Hold retreats where we discuss, and argue, how best to reach out to people on the left who are inclined to support us, yet inviting very few from that camp into the discussion, and then quietly ignoring their words of wisdom.

Afterward, it’s back to business as usual.

First of all, these are state programs. Calm yourselves.

Secondly, the teacher unions organize and mobilize on a national scale. We don’t. We don’t provide cover for candidates to do the right thing. We don’t get out the vote. We don’t even call on millions of teachers, parents or students around the country to raise hell.

Why wouldn’t Warren support the teacher unions?

We don’t provide an alternative.

A reporter recently called an organization supporting education choice simply to ask it about registering people to vote. The response? The org stopped registering people to vote.

How’s that for brave?

Would the teacher unions or school districts do that?

I don’t think so.

Legally, all are well within their rights to register people to vote. Yet those on our side stopped.

And we expect candidates to risk political suicide when we won’t even fight for ourselves?

That’s not much of a movement, so who cares what we call it?

Discussing this name issue at a recent conference, two conservative leaders said to me, loud and proud, that “education freedom” wouldn’t be the right choice to attract Democrats because Democrats don’t care about liberty or freedom.

When the organizers asked later how to bring more liberals and progressives on board, I suggested limiting the influence of those who despise them.

How’s that for an idea?

I also told them to get bold.

Ask progressive candidates why a woman can be trusted to choose an abortion, but not her child’s school.

When I suggested this, an older, male Libertarian winced and said that was too polarizing and would turn away the very people we want.

Did you get that?

He told a progressive feminist her argument wouldn’t work with progressive feminists.

So miss me with that bipartisan jazz. Too often, our work is used to rally support for Republicans with little concern for reaching across the aisle. I’ll know we truly want bipartisan support, including white suburban left-leaning moms like me, when more of us are included in the conferences and conversation.

When we organize nationally.

When we use effective arguments.

When our talking heads aren’t homogenous.

When our talking heads start looking more like me and our parents.

In a recent speech endorsing Bernie Sanders for president, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez talked about her family exercising their freedom of education choice by moving from the city to Westchester County in order for her to attend its schools.

How did we respond?

Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos tweeted at AOC that she must, therefore, support school choice for all.

We’ve allowed our message and the important issue of helping low-income children escape generational poverty, to be owned by two of the more polarizing figures in American politics today: Donald Trump and Betsy DeVos.

This tweet gave newspapers permission to use headlines like “Betsy DeVos Informs AOC She Just Used a Conservative Talking Point.”

A conservative talking point? That’s news to this socialist. I thought it was a talking point used by anyone who cares about kids, regardless of their political persuasion.

That’s the message we need to promote.

That’s a movement we can all get behind.

Call it whatever you want.  

October 24, 2019 0 comment
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Florida Schools RoundupredefinED education roundup

Panel backs Broward sheriff’s removal, insurance for armed teachers and more

Compiled by redefinED staff October 22, 2019
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October 22, 2019 0 comment
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Florida Schools RoundupredefinED education roundup

District investigations, superintendent’s election, makeup days for Dorian and more

Compiled by redefinED staff September 9, 2019
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September 9, 2019 0 comment
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Know Your HistoryProgressives and ed reformSchool ChoiceVoucher Left

On school choice & Green Apples

Ron Matus December 8, 2015
Ron Matus

This is the latest post in our series on the center-left roots of school choice.

green applesSurprising things sprout in the ideological compost that sustains the school choice movement, but not all grow to bear fruit. At the risk of jinxing their viability, let’s pause to marvel at the first shoots of an organic hybrid: Sprawl-hating, choice-loving Green Apples.Voucher Left logo snipped

Over the past year or so, a handful of “conservative” and “libertarian” think tanks and media outlets have thankfully drawn attention to the potential for expanded school choice to curb sprawl and benefit the environment (see here, here, here and here). As often happens with arguments about educational freedom, they dovetail nicely with positions advanced by folks from other perches on the spectrum.

Like Elizabeth Warren.

In her 2003 book “The Two-Income Trap,” Warren, now the senior U.S. senator from Massachusetts, boldly makes the case for “an all-voucher system” that would “shock” an education system that she says remains “public” in name only. Why would iconic “progressive” Elizabeth Warren want to shock public education with more choice? Because, she says, in no uncertain terms, doing so would expand the diversity of educational offerings, empower parents over bureaucrats and ease the “crisis in middle-class economics.”

In order to free families from the trap, it is necessary to go to the heart of the problem: public education. Bad schools impose indirect – but huge – costs on millions of middle-class families. In their desperate rush to save their children from failing schools, families are literally spending themselves into bankruptcy. The only way to take the pressure off these families is to change the schools.

Warren doesn’t include private schools in her universal voucher solution, but let’s give that a pass for now. (Hopefully we can more fully explore her positions on choice down the road.) Instead, let’s highlight the fact that Warren backed the notion of choice as a brake on sprawl:

If a meaningful public school voucher system were instituted, the U.S. housing market would change forever. These changes might dampen, and perhaps even depress, housing prices in some of today’s most competitive neighborhoods. But those losses would be offset by other gains. Owners of older homes in urban centers might find more willing buyers, and the urge to flee the cities might abate. Urban sprawl might slow down as families recalculate the costs of living so far from work.

The links between schools, zip codes and sprawl are obvious and, I think, deserving of more attention. I would think arguments for weakening them would resonate especially well with environmentalists; with the liberals, progressives and Democrats who are more likely than others to consider themselves environmentalists; and with mainstream news media looking for fresh angles on a complicated problem with repercussions in many directions. But will they?

On the one hand, the arguments for choice as an antidote for sprawl are still relatively new (as far as I can tell), so I won’t leap to my own conspiracy theories about why they haven’t surfaced with more zeal in more places. 🙂 On the other hand, as long as choice continues to be portrayed as right-wing, and as long as it’s “conservative” or “libertarian” groups who make the points, I fear it’ll be tougher for those arguments to bounce out of the echo chambers. So, I’ll keep my fingers crossed.

For what it’s worth, Elizabeth Warren wasn’t the only one talking choice and sprawl a decade ago, and not the only one whose credentials appear to be something other than “conservative.” In 2005, writer Daniel Akst made this pitch in the environmental news outlet Grist:

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December 8, 2015 0 comment
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