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McKay vouchers

FL Catholic schools show enrollment growth, again

Ron Matus January 27, 2014

Again defying national trends, Catholic schools in Florida showed enrollment growth for the second year in a row this year.

Enrollment in PreK-12 reached 84,750, up from 84,258 last year, a modest increase of 0.6 percent, according to data released Monday by the Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Enrollment was at 81,632 two years ago.

By contrast, Catholic school enrollment nationally, on the decline for decades, fell another 1.5 percent last year.

Publicly funded, private school choice programs in Florida are a big reason for the difference. Florida Catholic schools enroll students who use pre-K vouchers, McKay scholarships for students with disabilities and tax credit scholarships for low-income students. (The latter is administered by Step Up For Students, which co-hosts this blog.)

According to the conference, tax credit scholarship students in Florida Catholic schools increased 23 percent last fall, and 46 percent in fall 2012. McKay students jumped by 12 percent and 7 percent over the same span.

The latest numbers come as schools around the country celebrate National School Choice Week and National Catholic Schools Week. For a more detailed look at what’s going on with Catholic school enrollment in Florida, check out our story from last year.

Update at 12:10 p.m. on Jan. 28: The Catholic school enrollment numbers in Florida are on the upswing even if you exclude Pre-K. According to the conference, there were 73,714 K-12 students in Florida Catholic schools in 2011-12, 75,969 in 2012-13 and 76,500 in 2013-14. Percentage-wise, the K-12 increase over the past two years is 3 percent and 0.7 percent, respectively.

January 27, 2014 0 comment

Education Legislation Funding School Choice Virtual Education Vouchers

Private voucher schools hit by funding change to Florida Virtual School

Sherri Ackerman November 1, 2013

Sherri Ackerman

In a new twist on the legislative funding changes crimping Florida Virtual School, private schools that accept state-funded McKay Scholarships for special needs students may now lose money when McKay students take FLVS classes.

Rennick

Private schools learned last week about the possible fallout, which could result in students dropping Florida Virtual School courses or parents paying for what traditionally has been offered for free.

Many of the 1,200 private schools that accept the scholarships, which on average range between $3,977 and $7,019, don’t charge parents more for tuition, said Robyn Rennick of The Coalition of McKay Scholarship Schools. So they likely will withdraw students from FLVS courses or ask parents to make up the difference.

“Was this really what the Legislature intended when they changed this statute – hurting the parents of kids with disabilities?’’ the coalition asked in a notice to school operators Monday.

Of the roughly 27,000 students who receive McKay Scholarships, 790 are enrolled in FLVS classes. At many of the high schools that accept the scholarships, students are taking driver’s education and health courses offered by FLVS, Rennick said.

FLVS officials, who have watched enrollment plummet since the funding change, said they’ve already heard from private school administrators who say the proposed cuts will cause financial hardships and lead to withdrawal of students currently enrolled in FLVS.

“This is yet another unintended consequence of the new funding model – denied choice for children with disabilities working hard to get the best education they can possibly get,’’ Florida Virtual School spokeswoman Tania Clow said.

Department of Education officials plan to discuss the issue Friday morning during a regularly scheduled internal meeting. They declined comment Thursday.

November 1, 2013 2 comments

Blog Administration Charter Schools Magnet Schools Parent Empowerment Parental Choice Policy Wonks Private Schools School Choice Testing and Accountability

Balancing choice, regs in public education

Doug Tuthill April 24, 2013

Doug Tuthill

My recent post about the importance of including parental choice in our definition of public education accountability drew a thoughtful response from Melissa Webber, the parent of a special needs child.

She writes, “I’m not sure I agree with the writer’s explanation of accountability. While I support parental choice and have in the past taken advantage of the McKay Scholarship, I think choice is a separate issue not to be confused with accountability unless parent empowerment actually affects positive change of a program to bring it up to regulation standards. One of the private schools I visited had no certified teacher, made no attempt to comply with sunshine standards and they weren’t bound to provide services spelled out in Blake’s IEP. Basically, it served as a disorganized daycare for middle school ESE kids. It was an easy choice for me to opt for another public school program. However, my choice to do so did not make the school more accountable. There should be much more oversight to insure at least minimal standards are met so the children of less informed parents do not suffer in the name of choice.”

The public good is best served when public education operates with maximum effectiveness and efficiency. Highly effective and efficient schools are best possible through a combination of regulations and consumer choice. Regulations provide the floor below which no school should operate, but regulations alone can’t produce excellence. Excellence requires consumer choice.

Ron Matus’ recent story about one of Florida’s top charter schools included this quote from the school’s founder and principal, Yalcin Akin: “If they like us, they come to our school. If they don’t like us, they don’t come. We have to have a high level of customer service and a high level of performance – or we will not survive.”

This necessity to meet parents’ needs or go out of business is part of accountability, and helps fuel the drive for excellence. Last year, Akin’s school had a waiting list of about 1,500 students.

Now consider Melrose Elementary in St. Petersburg. Only one student chose to attend Melrose’s magnet program this year. All the other Melrose students were assigned there by the school board and, if they don’t show up, their parents can be sent to jail.

Melrose is more highly regulated than Akin’s charter school, but it is not more accountable. As long as students are forced by law to attend Melrose, it won’t go out of business, regardless of its effectiveness.

April 24, 2013 0 comment

Blog Administration Education Reporting Parental Choice School Choice Testing and Accountability

Parental choice is part of accountability

Doug Tuthill April 9, 2013

Doug Tuthill

Accountability in public education derives from a combination of government regulations and consumer choice. Historically, because we’ve had so little consumer choice in public education, regulations have been the dominant component of accountability. But now that school choice is becoming more ubiquitous, consumer choice is assuming a more prominent role.

Unfortunately, some of our most important public education policy wonks are devaluing the importance of consumer choice by using the term accountability as a synonym for regulations.

My friend and former colleague here at Step Up For Students, Adam Emerson, in criticizing the lack of required state assessments in Florida’s McKay Scholarship program, recently wrote on his Fordham Institute blog that:

“Virtually no accountability measures, however, exist in most of the nation’s special-education voucher programs, including the largest such program in the United States, Florida’s McKay Scholarship for Students with Disabilities.”

Parents choose to apply for and use a McKay Scholarship. If their needs are not being met at one of the more than 1,100 Florida private schools accepting the McKay Scholarships, they can vote with their feet and go to another school. To suggest this level of consumer choice equates with “virtually no accountability measures” is wrong.

Adam’s gifted colleague at Fordham, Mike Petrilli, made a similar error a few days later. He wrote that “Indiana’s voucher program has accountability in spades,” then ignored consumer choice and equated accountability only with required student testing and school grades.

April 9, 2013 0 comment

Blog Administration Charter Schools Education Legislation Education Reporting Funding Parent Empowerment Parent Trigger Parental Choice School Choice Virtual Education

Florida roundup: charter schools, school choice lotteries, gifted education & more

Ron Matus April 8, 2013

Ron Matus

Charter schools. Tampa Bay Times columnist John Romano uses the specter of for-profit charter schools to slam state lawmakers who support parent trigger: “They say tomato, I say morons.” Times columnist Bill Maxwell, meanwhile, highlights the success of Urban Prep Academies, a high-performing, all-male, all-black charter school in Chicago where, for four years in a row, every graduate was accepted into a four-year college.

The Palm Beach Post looks at lawmakers with charter school ties. The Lake Wales Charter School system is considering adding a second middle school, with the waiting list for the existing one at 360 and growing, reports the Winter Haven News Chief. The Athenian Academy charter in New Port Richey and the Pasco school district are clashing over whether the school has the right to expand, reports the Tampa Bay Times. A charter school in Miami Shores is getting better at private fundraising, reports the Miami Herald. The state’s charter school appeals commission recommends approval of a proposed Orange Park charter school twice rejected by the Clay County School Board, reports the Florida Times Union. Lawmakers should limit charter school to districts with failing schools, editorializes the St. Augustine Record.

School choice lotteries. A lot of parents in Palm Beach County are about to get bad news: They did not get their children into the district school choice they wanted. According to the Palm Beach Post, “At more than half of the choice programs, less than 1 in 3 students that applied got a seat. At four of the 185 choice programs, fewer than 1 in 10 students won a seat.”

Vouchers. The League of Women Voters asks if McKay vouchers and tax credit scholarships are constitutional in a Gainesville Sun op-ed.

Parent trigger. Former Board of Education member Julia Johnson responds to critics in this op-ed in the Tallahassee Democrat: “I don’t understand what a critic of parent empowerment meant when she recently wrote that it would use parents like “cheap napkins.’’ But I do know that low-income kids were used as a cheap paycheck and their schools were oftentimes used as a training ground for novice teachers and a depository for ineffective ones.” The Tampa Tribune writes up the debate. Pensascola News Journal columnist Shannon Nickinson doesn’t like it: “How about the state fulfilling its obligation to the public education system, rather than working to pass off that responsibility under the guise of “parental choice.”

Virtual schools. The Miami Herald writes up the bills that will expand digital education.

April 8, 2013 1 comment

Blog Administration Charter Schools Education Legislation Education Politics Grassroots Magnet Schools Parent Trigger Parental Choice Private Schools School Choice Tax Credit Scholarships Teacher Quality Virtual Education

School choice parents to rally at Florida Capitol

Catherine Durkin Robinson April 2, 2013

Catherine Durkin Robinson

About 1,000 people are expected for the rally in Tally.

“Where are the parents who support school choice?”

“Where are the parents who support parental empowerment?”

“Where are the parents whose children benefit from education reform?”

These are typical questions from traditional parenting groups, groups that sometimes say they represent Florida parents in all educational matters. They have to ask the whereabouts of moms and dads of more than 1.5 million schoolchildren of choice, because such parents don’t tend to be in their membership files.

To the extent these choice parents are low-income and single moms who choose options such as the tax credit scholarship, they do indeed tend to be less visible in the political sphere.

Get ready, because that’s changing.

Early Wednesday morning, families from all over Florida, from Miami’s inner city neighborhoods to rural Pasco County, will board buses with their children and teachers and travel five to 10 hours to get to Tallahassee for School Choice Day. Organizers expect more than a thousand participants to gather and show lawmakers, traditional parenting groups, and everyone else the real face of parental school choice.

They won’t look like right-wing corporations. There’s a good bet they will be racially and economically diverse. In other words, they will probably look like you and me.

April 2, 2013 6 comments

Blog Administration Education Research Funding Parental Choice Private Schools School Choice Tax Credit Scholarships Testing and Accountability

Fordham: Florida group wrong to resist state testing for school voucher students

Jon East March 26, 2013

Jon East

Emerson

The Fordham Institute took Florida’s McKay Coalition to task Monday for a survey the institute says “stoked emotions” about state tests at private schools that serve disabled students on state vouchers. In a post by parental choice program director Adam Emerson, the Institute chided the coalition for resisting academic assessment for the McKay Scholarship, which this year serves more than 26,000 students with learning disabilities and physical limitations.

“Virtually no accountability measures … exist in most of the nation’s special-education voucher programs, including the largest such program in the United States, Florida’s McKay Scholarship for Students with Disabilities,” Emerson wrote. “And the coalition of schools that oversees the McKay program appears to want to keep it that way — and it’s wrong to do so.”

Fordham remains a strong national supporter of parental choice, including charter schools, school vouchers and tax credit scholarships. But the institute also has called on the learning options to be held to account for the achievement of their students.

In its recent report, “Red Tape or Red Herring,” Fordham looked at the participation rate of private schools in voucher and tax credit scholarship programs in 11 states and surveys from 241 private schools that do and don’t participate, and found that testing requirements are not a significant deterrent. Only a quarter of the schools ranked state-required testing as a “very” or “extremely” important factor. The response rate among participating schools was 73 percent.

McKay countered with its own yes-or-no survey of Florida private schools participating in the state scholarship for disabled students. Its response rate was 40 percent.

March 26, 2013 0 comment

Blog Administration Charter Schools Education Legislation Education Politics Funding Magnet Schools Parent Trigger Private Schools School Choice Tax Credit Scholarships Teacher Quality Testing and Accountability

Florida roundup: charter schools, private schools, the Florida model & more

Ron Matus March 25, 2013

Ron Matus

Charter schools. The Tampa Tribune suggests a compromise is in the works on bills dealing with charter schools funding, facilities and accountability. Senate education leaders want a broader discussion about a proposal to give charter schools dibs on unused school buildings, reports Gradebook. Tampa Bay Times columnist John Romano lists support for “for profit charter schools” as another example of the Legislature not caring about popular opinion. A St. Lucie County School Board member raises the idea of converting a soon-to-be-shuttered school into a charter, reports TCPalm.com.

Private schools. The ones in Marion County are hurt by the recession, but the pain is mitigated by McKay and tax credit scholarships, reports the Ocala Star Banner. Unpaid volunteer teachers come to the rescue of a Brandon private school that experienced an enrollment dip. Tampa Bay Times.

Magnet schools. The Miami-Dade school district is looking to create a new MAST magnet school on one of the FIU campuses, but it hinges on funding from local communities. Miami Herald.

Parent trigger. The Panama City News Herald writes up Friday’s vote in the House Education Committee.

The Florida model. Education Commissioner Tony Bennett and Patricia Levesque, executive director of the Foundation for Excellence in Education, are among those participating in Maine Gov. Paul LePage’s education summit, reports the Kennebec Journal. More from WABI TV.

March 25, 2013 0 comment