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private schools and accountability

Commentary and OpinionEducation and Public PolicyEducation ChoiceFeaturedFlorida Tax Credit ScholarshipParental ChoicePrivate SchoolsSchool Choice

Parents with power hold schools accountable, too

Special to redefinED January 11, 2021
Special to redefinED

Tamara Arrington’s son, Parker, attends a Florida private school with assistance from a Hope Scholarship, an education choice scholarship Florida lawmakers created in 2018 for bullied students.

Editor’s note: This commentary from Step Up For Students’ director of policy and public affairs Ron Matus first published on Florida Politics.

Tamara Arrington moved to the Suncoast after picking the perfect school for her son, Parker. But despite a stellar reputation and A grades from the state, it turned out to be a disaster.

One day when he was in first grade, Parker stood up to an older kid who called his friend a racial slur. For the rest of the year, the bullies pounced on him. Arrington said she sought help from school officials, but to no avail.

Parker spiraled down, hating school and getting headaches, until Arrington secured a Hope Scholarship, the state choice scholarship for victims of bullying. She used it to enroll Parker in a private school that she thought would be best for him — and now he’s safe and thriving.

“I have no doubt,” Arrington told me, “that every morning when I drop off my son at school, he’s going to come home a better human being.”

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January 11, 2021 0 comment
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Blog AdministrationFundingParental ChoicePolicy WonksPrivate SchoolsSchool ChoiceTax Credit ScholarshipsTesting and Accountability

StudentsFirst: voucher programs should prioritize students with greatest need

Special to redefinED February 12, 2013
Special to redefinED

Editor’s note: This guest post from StudentsFirst is authored by Vice President of Fiscal Strategy Rebecca Sibilia and fiscal policy analyst Sean Gill.

We appreciate Doug Tuthill’s recent redefinED post challenging StudentsFirst to consider supporting voucher or tax-credit scholarship programs that aren’t just limited to what he describes as the “failing schools” model. We agree with his assertion that school choice policies, including private school options, are about empowering parents to select the best school for their child.

It is true that we believe voucher programs should prioritize low-income students in low-performing schools. However, we want to make clear that this position is not based simply on a “politically safe compromise.” Indeed, our entire State Policy Report Card judges not what is politically popular, but rather the laws and policies we believe, through evidence, best practices, and common sense, will deliver the best results for kids.

We think it is important that states focus on more than policies that just provide access to schools; states must prioritize expanding access to high-quality choices for families that traditionally lack them. A Brookings study found that students from low-income households are much more likely to attend low-performing schools than middle or high-income students. This is important because the same study further confirms that low-income kids can actually achieve at high levels when they attend high-performing schools. Unfortunately, as Florida Education Commissioner Tony Bennett has mentioned, low-income families often lack the resources to enroll in potentially higher-performing private schools or to relocate to a school district that offers a better public education.

Policymakers must always consider tradeoffs and unintended consequences when considering how to budget limited resources. Consider if a state adopted a universal voucher program. This would provide the most theoretical choice, but it could also easily have the unintended effect of simply subsidizing the students already enrolled at private schools and those in families who may otherwise be able to afford private school tuition. This would result in few new students being able to attend a high quality school option, and wouldn’t expand access to those who need it the most.  Presumably, avoiding this problem is one of the reasons why the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship program is currently limited to low-income children.

Using this logic, we believe that when state resources are limited or the existing supply of desirable private schools is limited, it also makes sense to prioritize vouchers or scholarships for those low-income children attending a low-performing school or living in low-performing school districts. There are practical, administrative considerations that also make targeted programs more effective. For instance, when looking at the state of Tennessee, where Gov. Haslam has proposed a voucher program, we’ve determined that the four districts with the lowest performing schools also have both higher concentrations of low-income families and private schools in their communities.

We find that most voucher and scholarships programs are capped by enrollment or appropriation levels. Given that low-income students can be found in most counties throughout a state, these caps then create an unintended consequence of spreading out scholarship recipients among multiple communities, which would not provide enough demand to create new private school options.

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February 12, 2013 0 comment
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Blog AdministrationCatholic SchoolsEducation ResearchParental ChoicePrivate SchoolsSchool ChoiceTax Credit ScholarshipsTesting and Accountability

Most “voucher” schools not afraid of testing, report suggests

Jon East January 29, 2013
Jon East

red tape or red herringThe Fordham Institute may be the closest thing to an honest academic broker in the contentious private school choice arena these days, and its latest report will no doubt enhance that reputation. “Red Tape or Red Herring?”, released today, provides strong evidence that private schools are not averse to academic or financial oversight – a finding that runs counter to a longstanding libertarian narrative.

As Fordham president Chester Finn Jr. acknowledged in the forward: “Many proponents of private school choice — both the voucher and tax credit scholarship versions — take for granted that schools won’t participate (or shouldn’t participate) if government asks too much of them, regulates their practices, requires them to reveal closely held information and — above all — demands that they be publicly accountable for student achievement.”

The report looks 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 it finds 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. Among the schools not participating in voucher or scholarship programs, testing was the fifth most-cited concern – behind such issues as protection of religious activities and admission processes and government paperwork.

This is not to suggest that private schools are eager to embrace more government regulation. The report did find a modest negative correlation between the degree of regulation in a state and the rate of schools participating. But the survey is a reality check on private schools and the educators who run them. Catholic schools remain a major player in the voucher-scholarship market, in part because their mission is to serve poor children, and they also demonstrate remarkable leadership on the issue of testing and academic accountability.

The report echoes similar on-the-ground work in Florida.

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January 29, 2013 0 comment
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Education ResearchFundingParental ChoicePrivate SchoolsSchool ChoiceTax Credit Scholarships

New guide to private school choice

Ron Matus January 24, 2013
Ron Matus

friedman guideThe Friedman Foundation’s latest “ABCs of School Choice” guide is out, and the numbers go like this: 21 states, 39 programs, 255,000 kids.

The guide offers a state-by-state rundown of the publicly funded, school choice options that are a vital piece of the overall school choice picture. It includes profiles of the students, parents and teachers who benefit from them. And it presents some thought-provoking stats, like how the value of each choice option compares to per-pupil funding in traditional public schools.

In Florida, a tax credit scholarship for low-income students is 34 percent of what’s spent on a traditional public school student, according to the Friedman analysis. Our own back-of-the-envelope calculations would put the percentage slightly higher, but the point is spot on: “voucher” students receive far less for their education than their public school peers. It’s a relevant detail that deserves more attention as the debate unfolds over testing for scholarship students and regulatory accountability measures for the private schools that enroll them.

The Florida section of the guide also includes a mini-profile of Davion Manuel-McKenney, a former tax-credit scholarship student who is now a freshman at Florida State College at Jacksonville. (Full disclosure: the tax-credit program is administered by Step Up For Students, which co-hosts this blog.) The story of Davion and his mother is a moving one. Click here to read more about it.

January 24, 2013 0 comment
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Blog AdministrationParental ChoicePrivate SchoolsSchool ChoiceTax Credit ScholarshipsTeacher QualityTesting and Accountability

Grades for Florida voucher schools?

Ron Matus January 23, 2013
Ron Matus

New Florida Education Commissioner Tony Bennett offered more hints Wednesday that he is not satisfied with the current accountability framework for Florida private schools that accept students with vouchers and tax credit scholarships.

Making his first appearance before the Senate Education Committee, Bennett was asked by Sen. Bill Montford, D-Tallahassee, for his thoughts on “holding everybody accountable that receives tax dollars.” His response:

“I would suggest to you that this is a place where with all candor, sir, that even some of my supporters have been uncomfortable in the past. Because I do believe that schools that receive state funds should be held accountable and I believe that accountability should be just as transparent as what we expect from our traditional public schools.

“So I would share with you that in Indiana, every school that received state funds got a letter grade that was all calculated the same way. A public charter school got its letter grade calculated the same way as the traditional publics. Schools that received vouchers – and we did have the nation’s most expansive voucher program, pure voucher program – they got a letter grade, based on the same measurements as our traditional publics. And that way the public could make an informed choice  around school quality.

“Now I know that constitutionally, the voucher situation here isn’t the same was Indiana. And I know there’s that discussion about state funds. So I want to lay that out there. But again, these were all schools that received money from the state budget.  And I believe as a steward of the state tax dollars, we have to think about making sure that our citizens know the performance of schools that receive state tax dollars. And our job is to set the expectations for those schools and drive to those expectations.”

Senators also asked Bennett about a wide range of other issues. His biggest priorities, he said: implementing Common Core standards and reviewing SB 736, the far-reaching 2011 law that changes how district teachers are evaluated and paid.

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January 23, 2013 0 comment
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Education ReportingParental ChoicePrivate SchoolsSchool ChoiceTesting and Accountability

Letter to editor: “Voucher” (tax credit scholarship) students are tested in Florida

redefinED staff December 19, 2012
redefinED staff

Editor’s note: Step Up For Students president Doug Tuthill wrote the following letter, which was published this morning in the Tampa Bay Times. It’s in response to this Times editorial about testing for students in Florida’s tax credit scholarship program and recent comments from Gov. Rick Scott. Some recent news stories have also suggested that testing for scholarship students is limited or nonexistent.

testingFlorida’s public education system is so rich with learning options that last year 1.3 million students chose something other than their assigned neighborhood school. So the debate about how best to hold these diverse programs accountable for student progress is important.

Unfortunately, the manner in which the Times questioned testing for one of those programs — a Tax Credit Scholarship for low-income students — was incomplete and misleading. While it is true scholarship students are not required to take the FCAT, that doesn’t mean the test most of them take annually, the Stanford Achievement, is irrelevant. This test is considered the gold standard in national exams, and has now been administered for six years with two consistent findings: 1) The students choosing the scholarship were the lowest performers in their district schools; and 2) They are achieving the same test gains in reading and math as students of all incomes nationally.

The expansion of options such as magnet programs, charter schools, virtual schools and scholarships for low-income children strengthens public education. These options all undergo rigorous academic evaluation, and the new national Common Core standards will hopefully make comparative evaluations even easier for parents and the public.

December 19, 2012 0 comment
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Blog AdministrationEducation PoliticsEducation ReportingParental ChoicePrivate SchoolsSchool ChoiceTeacher QualityTesting and Accountability

Florida roundup: More PIRLS, more Tony Bennett, more testing and vouchers

Ron Matus December 13, 2012
Ron Matus

Basking in the glow. Interim education commissioner Pam Stewart touts the PIRLS results on CNN. U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan offers praise, notes Orlando Sentinel. More from Fort Myers News Press.

More Tony Bennett. Tampa Bay Times columnist John Romano sees the same old agenda. The Tampa Bay Times editorial board says the BOE pick shows it “values conservative ideology over proven performance.” More from Tampa Bay Times, Florida Times-Union, Palm Beach Post, News Service of Florida, Sunshine State News,

More on testing and voucher kids. According to this Tampa Bay Times story, Gov. Rick Scott will propose that tax-credit scholarship students take the Common Core tests when they replace the FCAT.

DOE errors. Board of Education members criticize mistakes in teacher evaluation data. Gradebook. School Zone. Sun-Sentinel columnist Michael Mayo isn’t a fan.

December 13, 2012 0 comment
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