One of Florida's leaders in expanding educational options within the public-school system is also innovating in a different way: Creating a two-tiered system for determining who can access those options.
The Miami-Dade County School Board is proposing to create a separate lottery for 5% of the spots in district-operated magnet and choice programs. These would be reserved for children of school district employees, who would also have access to the general choice lottery if their children were not selected in the employees-only lottery.
On one level, the proposal, and the support it garnered from United Teachers of Dade, underscores the magnitude of a cultural shift that has swept Florida's school districts.
Almost a decade ago, then-superintendent Alberto Carvalho touted the district's 500 magnet and choice programs, as well as the fact that the majority of its students attended a school of choice.
His quote from the time still resonates: “Rather than complain about the incoming tsunami of choice, we’re going to ride it.”
Now, the nation's third-largest district boasts that more than three in four of its students participate in some sort of choice program, and that there are more than 1,000 public school options.
The fact that a labor union would seek privileged access to that array of options as an employee benefit, much as it would advocate for more paid leave or higher salaries, underscores just how deeply choice has become ingrained in Florida's public education system.
But the demand for the proposal also underscores a troubling reality. Even in a district with a multitude of learning options, spots in the most sought-after public schools remain scarce commodities. Competition is so fierce that the unions who represent school district employees are using their leverage at the bargaining table to help secure privileged access for their members.
Of course, we have to acknowledge the bigger picture. Our state's teachers are underpaid, so it's no surprise cash-constrained districts are getting creative about devising new perks that don't carry an obvious price tag. Florida's seat time requirements, constitutional class size limits and other rules limit districts' ability to create room for more students in their most sought-after schools and programs.
These are complicated problems, decades in the making.
And they offer a humbling reminder of the work ahead. Until we solve the problem of scarce educational opportunity, groups that wield the most decision-making power in our public education system, at the collective bargaining table or elsewhere, will continue to seek new ways to rig the game.
Since Alberto Carvalho became Miami-Dade County Public Schools superintendent a decade ago, the number of charter school students in his district has tripled to nearly 70,000, while the number of low-income students using state scholarships to attend private schools has jumped five-fold, to 26,272. Parents in America’s fourth-largest school district now send their children to 570 non-district schools that didn’t exist or weren’t accessible 20 years ago.
So what’s a big district to do?
In the case of Miami-Dade, it’s ride the wave.
In a videotaped address for the American Federation for Children conference in May, and released by AFC Tuesday, Carvalho turned to a metaphor he’s used to powerful effect a few times before (see here and here):
“We anticipated this tsunami as it was approaching, and we made a determined decision,” says Carvalho, the National Superintendent of the Year in 2014 and National Urban Superintendent of the Year in 2018. “We decided and recognized that trying to swim under that tsunami of choice would only bring about our own demise. If we decided to outrun it, we would lose. If we allowed quite frankly to let choice be the trademark of others rather than ourselves embracing it, we would not be participants in the educational process of our students.
“So we embrace choice. We recognized that choice was powerful to every single community, every single family, every single child. So we developed a choice portfolio unlike any in the country today.”
Sixty-one percent of Miami-Dade students are enrolled in district choice – magnets, career academies, “international” programs like International Baccalaureate and Cambridge, etc. – up from 30 percent 10 years ago. Add charter schools and choice enrollment reaches 69 percent. Throw in private schools and it tops 70 percent. For context, consider that in Florida as a whole, 47 percent of students in PreK-12 now attend something other than assigned district schools.
Those who applaud the district’s theory of action don’t think it’s coincidence that academic trend lines are rising as choice is expanding. Among other notables, the district earned an A rating for the first time last year; hasn’t had an F-rated school in two years; and was a standout on the most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress.
“School systems of today, that rely and bank on one single approach to deliver education to their students, are losing the potential of choice,” Carvalho says in the video. “They’re losing the powerful relevance, rigor and relationships that choice brings to school. Our choice is an umbrella approach that reflects the ambitions, the dreams, the aspirations and quite frankly the opportunities that every single kid, regardless of the zip code they’re born into, should have. This is no longer a privilege. This is a right every single child in America must have.”
As fate would have it, Education Next also put a bit of a spotlight on Miami-Dade this week, with Paul Peterson, director of the Program on Education Policy and Governance at Harvard, interviewing yours truly about the district for The Education Exchange podcast. At the risk of jinxing both, I said Miami-Dade may be to big urban districts what the Tampa Bay Rays are to Major League Baseball: Low-cost (relatively speaking), innovative, fun to watch – and maybe even thriving amidst the competition.
Students at St. James Catholic School in North Miami, along with thousands of students at Catholic schools across the country, will celebrate National Catholic Schools Week this year from Jan. 27-Feb. 2.
Editor’s note: Catholic Schools Week, sponsored by the National Catholic Educational Association, is celebrated this year from Jan. 27-Feb. 2. Through events such as open houses and other activities for students, families, parishioners and community members, schools focus on the value that Catholic education provides to young people as well as its contribution to local communities. This year’s theme is Catholic Schools: Learn. Serve. Lead. Succeed.
NORTH MIAMI, Fla. – In the car line at St. James Catholic School, nursing assistants, housekeepers and taxi drivers stop-and-go their compacts, sending a steady pulse of students in monogrammed navy sweaters and iconic plaid skirts toward the school’s courtyard. At 7:40 a.m. sharp, 400 strong stop to recite the Pledge of Allegiance over the roar on nearby I-95 and listen to their principal pray for peace.
If Catholic schools in America are supposed to be disappearing, somebody forgot to tell St. James.
The school has 468 students in PreK-8.
That’s a third more than five years ago. That’s triple what it had 20 years ago. This school year, St. James added four modular classrooms to accommodate growth.
What makes the rise even more noteworthy is St. James is awash in an ever-expanding sea of educational choice. In the choice-iest school district in arguably the choice-iest state, parents have the power to pick from a dizzying menu of district schools, charter schools and private schools, many of them high-quality and tuition free. Yet they flock to this throwback Catholic school with its name hand-painted on the administration building and a Black Madonna in the lobby.
“I love it, I love it, I love it!” said Fabiola Boutin, an admissions counselor at a small college who chose St. James for sons Kemar, 9, and Kris-Noah, 6. “When you see St. James students versus the other students, you can tell they’re different. It’s the way they talk. The way they act. The vocabulary. If I couldn’t put them (my sons) in St. James, I would go back to Haiti.”
In Florida, a bustling Catholic school like St. James isn’t unusual. For a decade, enrollment in Florida Catholic schools has held steady around 85,000, and, in seven of the last eight years, has actually risen slightly. The exception – a modest drop this year – is due mostly to an enrollment decline in the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship for lower-income students. That program (administered by nonprofits like Step Up For Students, which hosts this blog) serves nearly 100,000 students and has, for the first time, hit a wall in fundraising.
St. James has 410 students on scholarship, up from 302 five years ago. About 90 percent are of Haitian descent. The vast majority of their parents would not have been able to afford tuition without the scholarship. Most are paying $500 to $600 a year with it.
They had other options.
Miami-Dade is a poster child for the new normal in public education. Nearly 70,000 students attend charter schools. About 30,000 attend private schools using state-backed choice scholarships. At least 100,000 attend district magnet schools. By some estimates, nearly 70 percent of all PreK-12 students in Miami-Dade now attend something other than their zoned neighborhood school.
Within 4 miles of St. James there are at least seven magnet schools, specializing in everything from robotics and law studies to museums and expressive dance; at least six charter schools, including two that earned A grades from the state; and at least seven private schools that accept the tax credit scholarship, including a Montessori school, a Lutheran school with 300 scholarship students, and another Catholic school. Expand the radius a few more miles, and plenty of other choices surface on the grid. A new KIPP charter school, for example, is 15 minutes away.
The 66-year-old St. James is off-white with butterscotch trim, flanked by swaying palms. The neighborhood it helps anchor is Haitian and Dominican, Filipino and Nicaraguan, black and Puerto Rican. It’s hard to miss the occasional sagging fence amid banyan and bougainvillea. At the same time, it’s impossible to miss families in their Sunday best, emerging from homes of weathered stucco.
St. James doesn’t come with a lot of frills. Some Catholic schools in Florida are responding to the competition by adding on. Some do IB. Some bolstered their STEM programs. Some have partnered with the Alliance for Catholic Education at the University of Notre Dame. But even with its 1-to-1 iPad ratio in grades 5-8, St. James is old school.
So why do so many parents choose it?
Because it’s old school. Many parents still want a classic Catholic education for their kids, like millions have for generations. They like that faith, character and academics are aligned. They like that structure, discipline and high expectations are a given. (Were more scholarships available to middle-income families, demand would be even more obvious. But that’s a story for another day.)
“Good manners … good foundation,” said Lucdina Doriscar, the mother of two St. James students who does cleaning work at the airport.
She and other St. James parents repeatedly say the school is like family.
“People can feel that,” said Sister Stephanie Flynn, an educator for 40 years, the principal of St. James for 10. “When you’re part of a big county thing, it’s really hard for parents to know their school. In a Catholic school, you know you’re part of that community.”
According to Flynn, about 75 percent of St. James students will matriculate to Catholic high schools, most to Monsignor Edward Pace in Miami Gardens. The rest will go to public high schools, mostly magnets and charters. To those who still think choice pits public versus private, the reality on the ground in a choice-rich place like Miami-Dade suggests something more organic and complementary.
Parents can’t help but spread the word.
Last week, one St. James parent spoke about the school at an MLK Day event with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. Ghismide Saint Jean, whose 6-year-old Josiah is one of 13,000 students on a waiting list for the tax credit scholarship, said she’s working 10 to 14 hours a day as a waitress to keep him at St. James. She said she chose it over the neighborhood school because it’s smaller and more nurturing, which is important because Josiah’s lung problems require frequent hospitalizations. “I can’t imagine him being in another school,” she told the crowd. “And neither can he.”
Fabiola Boutin said she selected St. James because, “I’m picky.”
She researched several charter schools but deemed them too stressful. She considered another Catholic school but liked that St. James puts more emphasis on teaching English. She considered district schools but found St. James more welcoming.
“When you drop off your kids, they say, ‘Good morning.’ It’s not that way everywhere,” Boutin said. “I just feel more connected here. They (my kids) are home when they’re here.”
Martin Reid, right, was the 2016 Magnet Schools of America's principal of the year
Sitting in the back of the classroom, Hermes Velasquez was a quiet student.
He had stage fright and was embarrassed to stand up in front of other students at an award-winning magnet school for the performing arts south of Miami.
But slowly, with the help of his teacher, Adalberto Acevedo, and the school’s family-like culture, Velasquez overcame his stage fright. To get over his fear, he familiarized himself with the stage by helping to put props out. Then he started acting in supporting roles.
Indeed, he competed in the 2018 Florida State Thespians Festival — a theater competition with 6,000 students across the state — earning excellent marks for his sketch of a comic play, the Complete Works of William Shakespeare Abridged.
Arthur & Polly Mays Conservatory of the Arts, a visual arts magnet program, focuses on reaching students like Velasquez and helping them grow academically and in the world of the arts. Martin Reid, the school’s principal, has transformed it from a low-performing small magnet program with a sour reputation and student disciplinary problems to a school with large parental involvement and a high graduation rate surpassing the state average. School officials say they expect in the least the school's grade will rise from a C to a B this year.
Its improvement tracks a broader trend in Miami-Dade County Public Schools, which has eliminated F-rated schools and expanded district-run school choice programs.
Reid said the school’s mission is to prepare students for college and for work in the arts industry or a hybrid of both.
“They are goal-driven and they are motivated in their careers,” he said of the students. “We are able to give a lot of attention and support to the kids. We are able to drill down to their strengths and weaknesses to motivate them.” (more…)
We've written before about the improving results in Miami-Dade County Public Schools, and the potential for improvement in Duval County.
The latest results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress show those positive trends continue. But they also show there's still work to do.
Urban school districts may have shown slightly more improvement than the nation as a whole, where results were largely stagnant.
The three Florida districts included in the Trial Urban District Assessment results provided their share of bright spots. In fourth-grade math, for example, Miami-Dade and Duval were two of just four districts that posted statistically significant score increases.
In both places, disadvantaged students helped drive increases.
Experts caution against using scores like the national assessment results released Tuesday to gauge things like the effects of specific policies or the performance of district leaders. However, the numbers paint a useful picture of how three Florida urban districts are doing.
Miami-Dade feels the love (more…)
A new "school of hope" could soon be coming to the cradle of Florida's charter school movement.
On Oct. 11, the Miami-Dade County School Board approved an item laying the groundwork for a collaboration with KIPP Miami.
The plans would bring the nation’s largest nonprofit charter school network to Liberty City. It would be KIPP’s second Florida location. The first operates in Jacksonville.
The school board documents consummate a grant program the state Department of Education launched three years ago. The Miami-Dade school board agreed to recruit a nationally recognized charter school operator. It would receive a state grant, backed by national philanthropists. And the district and the charter would work together to help disadvantaged students.
Plans call for the district to help the charter school with a facility. It would have access to unused space at Poinciana Park Elementary School. The district would get access to KIPP training programs for select teachers and administrators.
"This Partnership would be the first of its kind in the State of Florida and can serve as a model for such collaboration nationally," the school board documents say.
The school board plans to approve a charter contract at its November meeting, the documents say. The new KIPP school is slated to open its doors to as many as 400 students in 2018.
Six Florida charter schools could face closure under state letter grades released today.
State law requires charter schools to shut down if they receive consecutive F's. It creates several safe harbors for charters that target disadvantaged students. They can apply for an extra year to raise their grades if they predominantly serve children assigned to low-performing district schools, or out-perform nearby alternatives.
The six "double F" charter schools are:
Meanwhile, some charters were among the state's best performers.
The Sharing and Caring Learning School in Gainesville rose to an A. It serves low-income children of color almost exclusively, state records show.
The rural McIntosh Area School also rose to an A. It remains among the best high-poverty charters in the state.
Another top rural charter, Franklin County's ABC School, regained its A rating after slipping to C last year.
RCMA Wimauma Academy, a Hillsborough charter school that caters to children of migrant workers, raised its grade to a B and received high marks for math achievement.
This year's school grades may be watched even more closely than usual. Gov. Rick Scott signed sweeping education legislation that raises the stakes. Public schools that languish for three or more years with D or F grades will have to either close, convert to charters or become district-managed charters with independent oversight boards. (more…)
A recent federal audit raised concerns about cozy relationships between charter school boards, charter school management companies, and other vendors they do business with.
The report, released late last month by the U.S. Department of Education, has gotten a good deal of attention for concluding those ties could pose a "risk" to federal programs that support charters.
Here's a guide to what the audit found, what it might mean, and what could happen next.
What's the Florida connection?
The report examined 33 charter schools in six states. It covered five Florida schools, all of them in Miami-Dade County.
The schools were not chosen at random, so it would be a mistake to say they reflect what's going on with charter schools generally — in Florida or elsewhere. Auditors chose the schools based on news reports, tax filings and other public information.
Education Department records show the business dealings of charter management organizations, aka CMOs, have been on the inspector general's audit agenda since the fall of 2011.
"Neighborhood schools could soon be a thing of the past," the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reported this weekend.
As our annual "changing landscape" analyses reveal, choice is becoming the norm in Florida's public education system. More than four in 10 students choose some option other than their assigned public school; in Miami-Dade County, these choosers now constitute a majority of all public-school students.
The Sun-Sentinel reveals districts are playing a crucial role in driving this trend, and that they're creating magnet programs and other new options in part to compete with charter schools proliferating in their backyards. (more…)
