Editor’s note: Our friend, John E.Coons, has been a regular contributor over the years to Step Up For Students policy blogs. Shortly after the 2021 release of his latest book, “School Choice and Human Good,” he was featured in a podcastED interview hosted by Doug Tuthill, chief vision officer and past president of Step Up For Students.

Today is Jack Coons’ 95^th birthday. Jack is a legend in the modern education choice movement. Along with former student and longtime colleague at the University of California Berkley Law School, the late Steve Sugarman, Jack wrote two books, "Private Wealth and Public Education" (1970) and "Education by Choice: The Case for Family Control" (1978). These works inform and inspire our efforts to improve public education by empowering families to access the best learning options for their children.

Jack is a devoted Catholic, a passionate advocate for underprivileged families and their children, and a strong believer in the Catholic concept of subsidiarity, which means decisions should be made at the most local level. Hence, his decades-long advocacy for parental empowerment and education choice, especially for lower-income and minority families.

While I have been honored to do education choice work with Jack for the past 15 years, it is our friendship and his amazing humanity that I value the most. He is the ultimate Renaissance man and speaks intelligently about a wide range of topics.

My favorite Jack Coons story occurred one night while we were having dinner in Berkley with several colleagues. The restaurant was full, and the conversation at our table had wandered onto the theater and various show tunes. Suddenly, Jack burst into song and captivated the entire restaurant for about a minute with his excellent baritone singing voice. The restaurant burst into applause when he finished, and Jack calmly continued with our conversation as if nothing had happened.

He was just living his life. Happy birthday, Jack.

Editor’s note: As we reported last night, Florida Education Commissioner Tony Bennett made newsworthy comments yesterday when he spoke at an all-boys magnet school in Tampa. He suggested school choice wasn't a matter of public vs. private, and credited Florida school districts – Hillsborough’s in particular - for expanding magnets, career academies and other quality choice options. Here are his full remarks, edited slightly for length and clarity.

The overview I want to give you about Florida’s choice framework is one that is, in my opinion, a true blueprint for our country. And I want to take you on this little journey. So just bear with me for a moment.

For many years, we said choice was about competition in education. And competition will raise all tides, right? The rising tide of competition will raise all the boats. And I can tell you, Florida has kind of changed that discussion. Again, being from Indiana, being from a state that tried and worked very hard to champion very similar policies, while competition in the educational system is good, the issue of choice here in Florida personifies the importance you put on what I believe to be the most important social justice issue in education. And by that, I want to do a little scenario.

If my wife and I didn’t have grown children, and in December when I was appointed, we would have gotten in our car, we would have driven to Tallahassee, and we would have driven around the community of Tallahassee, and we would have found the school that works best for the Bennett children. And the reason we could do that is frankly we could afford to. We could afford to live anywhere we wanted, send our kids to the school that we thought best fit their needs ...

And my point in this is, Florida is leading the discussion that all parents, regardless of the color of their skin or regardless of how much money they have, should have the same choice as Tony Bennett or MaryEllen (Elia, the Hillsborough superintendent). And that is a very different discussion in choice. And it is a discussion that I see is transcending what I believe can be really the first round of choice. And the first round of choice was frankly privates and charters against the public schools. Virtual schools against the traditional bricks-and-mortar buildings.

And I think MaryEllen in Hillsborough is an example of how we have taken that discussion in a completely different direction. Because this school (Franklin Middle Magnet and its Boys Preparatory Academy) provides a choice for children. This district provides a culture and a climate where choice is accepted and encouraged, and the opportunity that all children should have the same choices that Tony or MaryEllen have. They live that way.

So we’re now talking about choice – not just private schools and charter schools and virtual schools – we’re talking about public school choice. We’re talking about creative leaders like MaryEllen, like the team here, creating educational opportunities for children within the district. And really going to what we all heard was the purpose of choice to begin with, to provide incubation for innovation for our public schools. So I am very encouraged. (more…)

Florida’s new education commissioner is known for his zealous support of charter schools and vouchers and other learning options that some critics see as anti-public school.

But on Tuesday afternoon, Tony Bennett sat next to Hillsborough County Public Schools Superintendent MaryEllen Elia inside a Tampa magnet school for boys, and praised the growth of choice in district schools across the state.

Florida is transcending the first round of conversations on choice that pit private and charter schools against public schools and virtual schools against “brick and mortar’’ ones, Bennett said during an event marking National School Choice Week. The new conversation, he suggested, isn’t either-or; it’s whatever works to ensure all kids have access to quality choices.

“So we’re now talking about choice – not just private schools and charter schools and virtual schools – we’re talking about public school choice,” he told an audience of about 100 people gathered at the Boys Preparatory Academy. “We’re talking about creative leaders like MaryEllen, like the team here, creating educational opportunities for children within the district - and really going to what we all heard was the purpose of choice to begin with, to provide incubation for innovation for our public schools.”

Tuesday’s event was sponsored by the Florida Alliance for Choices in Education, a coalition that includes a wide swath of school choice groups. Bennett and Elia sat on a panel with representatives from home-schooling, virtual education, magnet schools, career academies, Florida tax credit scholarships and McKay scholarships.

Most were parents who had lived and breathed school choice, starting with their own children. As they shared stories of searching for schools that practiced their faith or fit their child’s academic needs, they offered numbers that shed light on the choice movement’s impact. (more…)

Florida: Tony Bennett is selected the state's new education commissioner (redefinED). He tells reporters afterwards that he champions school choice first and foremost because of the social justice component (redefinED). A new group headed by T. Willard Fair,  co-founder of the state's first charter school, aims to create a pipeline of black executives and entrepreneurs to help lead private and charter schools (redefinED). The Miami-Dade school district ranks No. 10 in the country for school choice, according to a new report from Brookings (redefinED). A Catholic school in Tampa is at the heart of a University of Notre Dame project to revitalize Catholic schools, particularly for Hispanic students. (redefinED).

Louisiana: Voucher parents are worried in the wake of the legal ruling that puts the program in limbo (advertiser.com). Gov. Bobby Jindal makes a pitch for vouchers at a Brookings Institution event in Washington D.C. (Huffington Post).

Washington: More than 150 teachers, parents and administrators attend a charter school conference in the wake of the successful passage of a charter school ballot initiative (Tacoma News Tribune). (Full disclosure: The conference was sponsored by the Washington Charter School Research Center, which was founded by Jim and Fawn Spady. Fawn Spady chairs the board of directors at the American Center for School Choice, which co-hosts this blog.)

Michigan: The education adviser to Gov. Rick Snyder presents the governor's sweeping public school choice proposal to business and education leaders (Grand Rapids Business Journal). (more…)

Editor's note: The debate over school choice might be less tense if we heard more from the parents, teachers and principals who have decided an alternative setting is best. Nadia Hionides, who recently penned a heartfelt letter to The Beaches Leader newspaper in Jacksonville Beach, Fla., offers a good example. Hionides runs The Foundation Academy private school in Jacksonville, where about 90 of 280 students benefit from tax credit scholarships for low-income students. As her letter shows, her goals aren't privatization and profits; they're justice, equity and diversity. She credits Florida's two K-12 private-option programs - tax credit scholarships (administered by Step Up For Students) and McKay scholarships for disabled students - with helping her school reach those schools. Below is her letter. Hat tip to Elizabeth Watson, Step Up's director of operations support services, for sending the letter our way.

I am an educator for 35 years, a school owner and principal for 25 years.

I came into the profession to help promote equity and justice in America.

We are all unique and creative beings. There is no one size fits all way of learning and growing into  successful, compassionate, well-adjusted people.

I cannot think of a better way to promote equity and justice in education than through the Step Up/McKay scholarships.

These scholarships not only equalize the playing field economically but allows those in poverty to enhance the lives of the economically privileged by being in the same private schools.

We all gain in a diverse environment. We all lose in segregated settings.

Myself, my students, my  teachers and my community are all blessed through this amazing scholarship.

No child left behind can be accomplished if all private schools participate.

Only in the diversity of private school choices, along with public school, can we meet the diversity in children and achieve successful, well-educated, globally competitive students.

I am privileged to be part of something that changes lives.

Editor's note: After redefinED posted Howard Fuller's comments about universal school choice, we asked the Cato Institute's Andrew J. Coulson for a response, which we published last week. To keep the debate going, we asked Matthew Ladner, senior advisor of policy and research at the Foundation for Excellence in Education, for his take. He generously offered the following.

My friends Howard Fuller and Andrew Coulson started a needed discussion regarding the direction of the parental choice movement. Dr. Fuller has been quite outspoken in his opposition to universal choice programs in recent years, and Coulson raised a number of interesting and valid points in his redefinED piece. The parental choice movement has suffered from a nagging need to address third-party payer issues squarely. It’s a discussion that we should no longer put off. The example of American colleges and universities continues to scream a warning into our deaf ear regarding the danger of run-away cost inflation associated with education and third-party payers.

Howard Fuller and Andrew Coulson also indirectly raise a more fundamental question: where are we ultimately going with this whole private school choice movement? Dr. Fuller supports private choice for the poor and opposes it for others. He has concerns that the interests of the poor will be lost in a universal system. I’m sympathetic to Howard’s point of view. I view the public school system as profoundly tilted towards the interests of the wealthy and extraordinarily indifferent to those of the poor. We should have no desire to recreate such inequities in a choice system.

Andrew makes the case that third-party payer problems are of such severity that we should attempt to provide public assistance to the poor through a system of tax credits, and have other families handle the education of their children privately. Andrew’s proposed solution to the very real third-party payment issues is in effect to minimize third-party payment as much as possible, and to do it as indirectly as possible through a system of tax credits.

Despite the fact that Howard comes from the social justice wing of the parental choice movement and Andrew from the libertarian right, they agree that private choice should be more or less limited to the poor.

My own view is different from both Howard and Andrew’s. I believe the collective funding of education will be a permanent feature of American society and that it should remain universally accessible to all. I believe Howard’s real concerns over equity and Andrew’s real concerns over third-party payment can be mitigated through techniques other than means-testing. (more…)