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parental choice

Florida Legislature approves $42 million funding boost for Gardiner Scholarships

Lisa Buie March 19, 2020

Lisa Buie

Efforts advanced by parents, educators and students at a rally at the Capitol in January bore fruit today with lawmakers’ decision to provide additional funding for the Gardiner Scholarship program. Photo: COLIN HACKLEY

Florida House and Senate members today unanimously approved a $93.2 billion state budget that includes an additional $42 million for the Gardiner Scholarship program, an education savings account for students with unique abilities.

The approval brings the total amount allocated to the program to $189,901,004 and opens the program to more families.

“I am thankful the Florida state lawmakers, even during this time of great uncertainty, are putting the needs of Florida’s exceptional and most vulnerable kids at the forefront of their agenda,” said Katie Swingle of Winter Haven after learning of the vote. Swingle, whose 12-year-old son, Gregory, receives a Gardiner Scholarship, was among hundreds of parents, teachers and students who attended a January rally at the Capitol to encourage lawmakers to support a funding increase.

Created in 2014, the scholarship currently serves more than 13,000 students. It differs from other state scholarship programs in that it provides an education savings account that parents can use to direct money toward a combination of programs and approved providers. Approved expenses include tuition, therapy, curriculum, technology and a college savings account.

Lawmakers also allocated $7.6 million for the Reading Scholarship Account program, open to public school students in grades 3-5 who experience reading difficulty.

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle praised the budget as responsible and realistic.

“This is a bipartisan effort,” said Rep. Wengay Newton, D-St. Petersburg. “We’ve got to be looking at ways to survive and work together. I think we’re in a great place.”

March 19, 2020 0 comment

Catholic Schools Education Choice Education Equity Featured Florida Tax Credit Scholarship Gardiner Scholarship McKay Scholarship News Parental Choice Private School Scholarships Private Schools School Choice

How school choice puts all hands on deck

Ron Matus March 18, 2020

Ron Matus

Academy Prep Center of Tampa is a rigorous private middle school for students who qualify for need-based scholarships. Modeled after Nativity Mission Center in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, students attend school 11 hours a day, six days a week, 11 months a year.

Seventeen years ago, a group of business and community leaders in Tampa Bay decided to renovate rather than raze an old, abandoned public school. The spooky building with stately red brick once served generations of Cuban and Italian kids in Tampa’s historic Ybor City neighborhood. The group wanted to restore its former glory by transforming it into a premier private middle school for black and Hispanic students. With help from a then-fledgling school choice program, that’s what happened.

Today, Academy Prep graduates routinely matriculate to top high schools and colleges. And as a new paper published by the R Street Institute spotlights, it’s but one example of the kind of civil society engagement unleashed by the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship, the nation’s largest private school choice program. (The scholarship is administered by nonprofits like Step Up For Students, which hosts this blog.)

Written by Victoria Bell (she authored it while associate policy director for educational opportunity at the Foundation for Excellence in Education; she’s now assistant director of K-12 education relationships at The Philanthropy Roundtable), the case study explores an underappreciated dynamic core to private school choice. Creation of the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship in 2001 energized parents, educators and an incredibly diverse mix of non-governmental entities to expand educational opportunities for Florida’s most disadvantaged students.

The scholarship allowed existing private schools to be a bigger part of the solution. It spawned creation of new private schools. It empowered educators to create new models. It empowered parents to choose them, or not. Bell offers examples of all that. Community groups, like the one behind Academy Prep, where nearly every student uses a tax credit scholarship, got involved. So did hundreds of churches and faith leaders. So did hundreds of corporations, thanks to a funding mechanism that allowed them to donate towards scholarships in return for tax credits. All of this happened voluntarily, with government offering incentives but an otherwise light touch.

The result: Better outcomes at less cost. The program now serves more than 100,000 low-income students, with an average annual family income of $25,743. And the academic outcomes are encouraging. A study released last year by the Urban Institute found scholarship students are 20 percent more likely to earn bachelor’s degrees than like students in public schools. This, even though other rigorous research shows scholarship students were, on average, the lowest performers in their prior public schools. And that the scholarship is worth 59 percent of total per-pupil funding for students in public schools.

The scholarship is a “successful example of public policy and civil society combining to solve a problem,” Bell concludes. “More Florida students than ever before have access to educational environments that are equipping them with the skills they need to pursue the American dream.”

I’m especially grateful Bell included the scholarship program’s impact on Catholic schools. As she notes, the scholarship is a key reason Catholic schools in Florida, unlike Catholic schools in virtually every other state in America, are not continuing to disappear. Enrollment has remained steady in recent years, and even ticked up slightly. Knowing how much Catholic schools have delivered high-quality education to low-income families for generations, this trend line has yet to get the recognition it deserves, either in Florida or beyond.

Bell focused on the tax credit scholarship, but there’s no doubt Florida’s ever-expanding menu of choice programs is stoking similar reactions. More than 130,000 students are enrolled in private pre-schools with help from Florida’s Voluntary Pre-Kindergarten program. More than 30,000 students with disabilities use the McKay Scholarship to attend private schools. Another 13,000 use the Gardiner Scholarship (also administered by Step Up), an education savings account for students with special needs.

The Gardiner Scholarship is still shy of its sixth birthday, but there are already 10,000 vendors in its orbit, from tutors to therapists to private schools. As this new wave of choice expands, look for an even more amplified response from civil society – and even more hands on deck.

March 18, 2020 0 comment

Education and Public Policy Education Choice Education Legislation Family Empowerment Scholarship Featured Florida Tax Credit Scholarship School Choice

Florida Senate moves closer to expanding scholarship programs for low-income families

Lisa Buie March 12, 2020

Lisa Buie

family empowerment scholarship

The Florida Senate agreed today to vote on a House bill that expands and aligns two K-12 scholarship programs for economically disadvantaged students. The action sets up a floor vote for Friday on HB 7067, which, if approved, will be sent to Gov. Ron DeSantis for his signature.

The bill is aimed at aligning policies between the new Family Empowerment Scholarship, adopted last year and serving 18,000 students, and the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship, created in 2001 and serving 108,000 students.

Both scholarship programs serve students from lower-income and working-class families. The primary difference is that the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship is funded by corporations that receive a 100 percent tax credit, and the Family Empowerment Scholarship is funded directly from the state education budget.

The House bill and Senate version, SB 1220, were nearly identical. So with the House already having approved HB 7067 on Monday by a bipartisan 81 to 39 vote, the Senate switched to the House bill and rejected an amendment that would have changed it.

The bill would increase the allowed enrollment growth in the Family Empowerment Scholarship. Under current law, the program can grow by up to 0.25 of total public school enrollment each year, which is roughly 7,000 students. The bill would increase that growth to 1 percent, or roughly 28,000.

The bill gives clear priority to renewal students in both programs and provides for a gradual increase in household income eligibility over time. That provision allows the eligible income level in the Family Empowerment Scholarship, currently 300 percent of federal poverty, to increase by 25 percentage points in the next year if more than 5 percent of the available scholarships remain unawarded.

The income limit for Tax Credit Scholarships would remain at 260 percent of poverty.

The bill also allows students who receive scholarships to remain in the program until they graduate or turn 21.

March 12, 2020 0 comment

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Fight over education choice pits family against family in Tennessee

Patrick R. Gibbons March 12, 2020

Patrick R. Gibbons

Institute of Justice client Builguissa Diallo plans to use education savings account funds to send her kindergartener to Pleasant View School in Memphis, saying her zoned public school doesn’t meet her daughter’s needs.

Editor’s note: Some of the parties mentioned in this post, such as the Southern Poverty Law Center, have expressed interest in suing to stop the Family Empowerment Scholarship, a program administered by Step Up For Students, which hosts this blog.

The legal battle over Tennessee’s new education savings account (ESA) program is causing families and educators alike to choose sides.

On one side are nine parents, a legal guardian and a retired public school principal represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, Southern Poverty Law Center and Education Law Center, who argue the new program is unconstitutional on a plethora of grounds. On the other side, two parents represented by the Institute for Justice are arguing the program is constitutional and beneficial to their children.

The cities of Memphis and Nashville filed similar suits earlier in February.

The program in question, the Tennessee Education Savings Accounts Pilot Program, offers scholarships to low-income and working-class students to attend private schools. Qualified students must live in households not earning more than two times the threshold for the free or reduced-priced lunch program ($66,950 for a family of four) and be assigned to low-performing public schools in districts with at least 10 such struggling schools. Scholarships are worth up to $7,300 and can be spent on tuition, fees, textbooks, tutoring and more.

“Public schools are open to all children, while private schools receiving voucher funds are not held to the same standards,” Nashville mother Terry Jo Bichell said in a press release. Bichell, whose son is non-verbal and has special needs but is ineligible for the scholarship, is suing the state to stop the program.

Natu Bah, who has two sons who are eligible for the program, said in the Institute of Justice’s press release: “I’m defending the ESA program because it will help me provide a better education for my sons.” Bah plans to use the scholarship to send the boys to Christian Brothers High School in Memphis.

The case is another in a long line of voucher lawsuits that focus on state constitution matters to avoid entanglement with the U.S. Constitution in situations where voucher opponents have been thwarted. Though the “Blaine Amendment” issue currently is being debated before the U.S. Supreme Court, Tennessee does not have a prohibition on funding private religious schools. Opponents must argue other state-specific reasons in their efforts to show the scholarship is unconstitutional.

State centric strategies attacking various school choice programs have reaped mixed success. Florida’s first such program was overturned in a controversial and widely panned decision that found the program unconstitutional due to a state amendment intended to increase public school spending. Nevada’s Supreme Court found the ESA program constitutional, but then declared the funding mechanism to be unconstitutional. Washington’s Supreme Court ruled charter schools unconstitutional after digging up a century-old case on “common schools,” an archaic term referring to elementary schools in the 19^th century.

In each case, school choice opponents tossed the proverbial kitchen sink at the program hoping at least one argument would stick with court justices. Tennessee’s case appears no different, with opponents highlighting five different reasons the ESA might be unconstitutional.

The ACLU argues the ESA program:

· Violates the state’s “home rule” provision in the state constitution by targeting Shelby and Davidson counties without local approval

· Violates the “appropriation of public money” provision since the Legislature did not appropriate money to the program when it passed in 2019 (the program won’t enroll students until the 2020-21 school year)

· Violates “equal protection clauses” of the state constitution by diverting funds from public to private schools

· Violates the Basic Education Program (BEP) statute by diverting dollars intended only for public school districts

· Diverts money to private schools that are not required to adhere to the same standards as public schools

But the kitchen sink approach may not stick in Tennessee.

A 1957 case, Fountain City Sanitary District v. Knox County Election Commission, spells out that the state’s “home rule” provision protects “cities and counties,” and that the rule excludes public school districts. BEP is Tennessee’s funding formula for K-12 education, but nothing within the law appears to restrict expenditures to solely public-school districts. In fact, charter schools are funded through this same formula.

Tennessee’s former Attorney General (and Democrat) Robert Cooper even argued that voucher programs pass constitutional muster in part because of the “Supreme Court’s recognition of the General Assembly’s constitutional flexibility in the field of education.”

There is no telling how long Tennessee’s school choice civil war will last in court, but the first hearing is scheduled for later this month.

March 12, 2020 0 comment

Blog Guest Commentary and Opinion Education Choice Education Equity Featured Jack Coons Parent Empowerment Parental Choice School Choice

Trusting John Dewey?

John E. Coons March 11, 2020

John E. Coons

The curriculum and the teaching method that are ideal for children have long been in dispute and remain so. Favorite methods range from Montessori to Steiner to traditional classroom lecture, recital and ABCs; the same diversity holds for the perfect content – factual, moral and political.

Many, also, are the professional luminaries who enlighten us on these questions, each confident of this or that solution.

Up to a point, this variety seems quite understandable and even healthy. Long observation of schools of education at various universities convinces me that method and content in pedagogies for children are as little matters of science as are law and the visual arts. We can sometimes (to a degree) recognize the rare classroom teaching genius, but such heroes tend to be inconspicuous in education school.

Nor is their gift always obvious even when they have made it to the classroom. Happily, the great run of teachers are at least competent – and bless them.

The great diversity of teaching style and substance is plainly cordial to the issue of parental choice. Even John Dewey appears to have thought so, and almost said it. That great guru of schooling would be an interested observer of our current debate over the empowerment of low-income parents to choose for their own child.

In his definitive “My Pedagogic Creed,” written in pre-voucher days, Dewey offered these foundational pearls:

“ … the school life should grow gradually out of the home life; … it should take up and continue the activities with which the child is already familiar in the home.”

“ … it is the business of the school to deepen and extend his sense of the values bound up in this home life.”

Today’s public school professional might snicker. Dewey could have foreseen very little of life as it would come to be lived in the “inner city” of today where home is too often a place and environment to be escaped. Yet, is it absurd to wonder that one detriment of that very urban crisis may be the conscriptive style of those city schools whose leaders have, in the last hundred years, seemed more in tune with Plato, who despised the contribution of the home and parent, than with Dewey?

What would be the level of responsibility and authority among low-income parents of the city today if, during the 20^th century they had, like the rest of us, experienced the dignity and responsibility of the choice of school for their own children?

But, conceding the civil calamity wrought by the urban school of the 20^th century and today, might our trusting of today’s parents merely risk compounding the consequences? If we try to fix it all by trusting the poor, will the newly empowered parent prove already hopelessly corrupted, making the urban scene even worse with his new options? No doubt there would be plenty of parental mistakes; these could be expected as the fruit of our long disabling of the poor.

Worse, several generations of mistrust might prove to have been dehumanizing beyond repair. Can we be certain of the effect of the sudden experience of authority? Still, choice would at least allow the parent to learn by mistake and experience. Mothers and fathers have done well so far with the opportunities already given them in various states to decide for their own child.

I see no alternative but the adoption of systems of subsidized choice that are designed, step by step, year by year, to reach at last a universal empowerment of the poor. America cannot afford another century of the present regime of abduction by the state. The social structure of our public schools is poisonous, but it can be fixed. It will take time and patience, but there is no alternative.

March 11, 2020 0 comment

Commentary and Opinion Education Choice Education Equity Education Politics Education Savings Accounts Featured Florida Tax Credit Scholarship McKay Scholarship Parent Empowerment Private School Scholarships School Choice Special Needs Education

Proposed funding cap in Arizona would deprive thousands

Matthew Ladner March 9, 2020

Matthew Ladner

Katie Swingle, mother of a child with autism, spoke before the Florida Senate Education Appropriations Committee in March 2015, imploring lawmakers to expand education choice options for children with special needs.

If you need to make a choice between reading this post or watching the video featuring the mom pictured above, please watch the video. Katie Swingle explains why families with children with special needs require and deserve access to education choice. Her story demonstrates why depriving them of choice is a terrible thing.

Sadly, there is an effort underway in Arizona to do exactly that.

Arizona’s Save Our Schools group has proposed a statewide ballot initiative that would create an overall participation cap on Arizona’s Empowerment Scholarship Program of 1 percent of the total student enrollment of the public school system. Once that cap is reached, students other than those with disabilities, including Native American children, those who have been in the foster care system, are zoned for D- or F-rated public schools, orphans and dependents of active duty military service members among others, would be purged from participating.

Upon completion of this purge, the program would lack the ability to serve additional special needs students. Last week, I noted that 1.7 percent of the total public school enrollment in Florida makes use of private choice programs for children with disabilities. I should further have noted that Florida has a waitlist of students with disabilities for the ESA program.

Historical program data allows us to assess the length of time it would take for the proposed cap to deny access to disadvantaged students if something like it were to be applied in Florida. As a thought experiment, imagine Florida’s multiple-choice programs debuting as a state-funded program in the same year that the McKay Scholarship program debuted.

This next part will require you to suspend your disbelief. Imagine a group of advantaged urban Floridians who exercise choice in their own families managing, from the outset of choice, to implement a cap in Florida for disadvantaged students. Floridians, of course, would find it nearly impossible to live with such a level of moral hypocrisy.

In Florida’s actual experience, lawmakers created a voucher program for students with disabilities and one for children in failing schools, followed by a tax-credit scholarship program for low-income students. Our thought experiment involves envisioning Florida following closer to the Arizona ESA experience: a single program starting with students with disabilities. A few years into the program, the Florida lawmakers of our thought experiment add low-income students into the eligibility pool for the state-funded program. Okay. So, how long would it have taken for the SOS cap to have purged disadvantaged students in Florida?

Let’s look first at the McKay Scholarship program for students with disabilities.

If the McKay Scholarship program had been the only choice program created, it would have exceeded the 1 percent cap by itself in 2013. After 2013, additional special needs children would have been denied access. Of course, it wasn’t the only program; Florida lawmakers also made low-income students eligible to participate in choice.

The combination of McKay and the tax credit program would have exceeded the SOS cap around 2004. “Let them eat cake,” the cap supporters would tell the tens of thousands of low-income families piling onto waitlists.

This isn’t the end of the story, however. Florida also created a special needs ESA program in 2015. This is the program used by the all-too-real mom in the video.

Every single one of these families, including the Swingle family, would have been denied choice under an SOS cap. Arizona’s ESA program is only a few years of growth away from reaching the proposed cap.

Supporters claim the cap will not impact current beneficiaries, but it clearly will. Moreover, there are thousands of Arizona students with disabilities today, and many more yet unborn, who would be denied access through the proposed cap.

March 9, 2020 0 comment

2020 Presidential Election Blog Guest Charter Schools Chris Stewart Commentary and Opinion Education and Public Policy Education Choice Education Equity Featured Funding Opinion School Choice

Presidential candidates do not think all children are created equal

Chris Stewart February 28, 2020

Chris Stewart

Editor’s note: This column from redefinED guest blogger Chris Stewart first appeared Feb. 25 on Education Post.

I’m starting to notice a trend among the presidential candidates. I don’t think they’re vying to be a president who represents all Americans, just some. It sounds crazy but hear me out.

When Democratic frontrunners lavish attention on traditional public schools to the exclusion of charters, privates, and homeschoolers, it’s as if the worth of a child instantly plummets the moment they are enrolled in a disfavored school. As if their families don’t pay taxes and aren’t worthy as voters. Never mind the fact that many of the candidates have taken advantage of these same options.

Not to be outdone, President Trump got in on the action when he released a budget that cut funding for charter schools but increased funding for privates. Some of his supporters have told me not to worry because one, a president’s budget is a fictional thing, and two, the funding for charter schools is just being bundled together with other programs. It’s called “block granting” and that’s a good thing because it can give states the flexibility to use the money in a way that makes sense for their local context.

That sounds great in theory until you consider the fact that flexibility in a state like California, the largest charter system in America, could easily fall victim to union politics. Handing over charter school money would be a financial love letter to a fickle governor, one that would give him Thanos-like powers to snap his fingers and freeze charters startups.

But maybe I’m making too much of this.

The candidates would respond to me by saying they aren’t proposing the elimination of charter schools. They just want to slow their growth. And, the block-granting of federal funds isn’t the end-all of charter funding. And, after all, maybe there is more to life than charters. Most of the candidates are proposing enormous new investments that will grow school staff and provide more services to kids.

Who can complain about that? I can.

Yes, research shows that money matters in public education, but some of the nation’s biggest spenders are still hot zones of poor achievement and unacceptable results. Teachers unions and their allies have cleverly called for things like “community schools” as a main investment. It sounds good until you consider the fact that many of the existing community schools need help. Lots of it.

And no matter how much you wrap kids in services, it will still be a problem that our nation’s teachers aren’t recruited from the top of the class, their preparation is trash, and the support of many of those who teach in the toughest schools is nonexistent. To cover this with “I-stand-with-teachers” happy talk is to prove oneself incapable of true leadership.

We need a leader who will stand up for all families. We need someone who will fight for every American child equally. Today, parents from around the country are headed to South Carolina in hopes of meeting with presidential candidates to urge them to bring about “big, bold changes.” Because the fact is, every child deserves a better education, and our current system isn’t offering that.

We need people who can bring us together rather than continuing the bad practice of pitting parents against each other, then siding with the groups that want one form of schooling to be the only form of schooling.

Which leader is that?

I’m looking.

February 28, 2020 0 comment

Commentary and Opinion Education and Public Policy Education Choice Education Equity Featured School Choice

redefinEd executive editor talks education choice on Arizona public radio

Lisa Buie February 27, 2020

Lisa Buie

For as long as there have been public schools, there has been school choice. That was the message Matt Ladner delivered to education choice critics in an interview on KJZZ, a Phoenix-based public radio station.

The station aired interviews this week reflecting both sides of the education choice issue, which has been hotly debated in Ladner’s home state of Arizona. The first featured Diane Ravitch, an education professor, author and former assistant U.S. secretary of education during the George H.W. Bush administration. Ravitch argued that public schools are being hurt by billionaires who champion school choice.

Ladner, former vice president of research at the Goldwater Institute who is presently serving as director of the Center for Student Opportunity at the Arizona Charter Schools Association, responded in a follow-up interview today that education choice is not the result of a sinister plot but rather an attempt to democratize educational opportunities. School choice has always existed, he said, for those who are able to buy homes in well-to-do neighborhoods or afford tuition at pricey private schools.

“As long as school choice was tied to granite countertops, everything was fine,” Ladner said. “What we’re trying to do is extend that same opportunity to all students.”

Click here to listen to a snippet of the interview with Ravitch followed by Ladner’s interview.

February 27, 2020 0 comment