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StudentsFirst

Achievement GapBipartisanshipParent EmpowermentParental ChoicePodcastSchool Choice

The state of education advocacy: Jim Blew, podcastED

Travis Pillow May 11, 2016
Travis Pillow
Blew

Blew

All over the country, new private school choice programs are being created, more of the last remaining holdout states are beginning to allow charter schools, and a growing number of students are enrolling in educational options chosen by their parents.

But, on our latest podcast, Jim Blew, who served as the national president of StudentsFirst and will be focusing on California after a merger with the 50-state Campaign for Achievement Now (aka 50CAN), says it’s hardly time to declare victory.

“Creating high-quality alternatives to the traditional system is a very fragile effort that continues to be under attack every day,” he says. “… The reality of running a charter school is that you still feel, every day, that somebody is trying to snuff out your school, and anybody who’s been involved in the [private-school] scholarship programs will tell you the same thing.”

Look no further than current events in Florida.

Blew says that when 50CAN and StudentsFirst join forces, the broad pillars of their agendas – expanding quality school choices and creating accountability policies for teachers and schools – will remain largely the same. But they’ll also vary state-by-state.

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May 11, 2016 2 comments
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Florida Schools Roundup

Florida roundup: Advanced placement, advocacy, acceleration and more

Travis Pillow July 15, 2014
Travis Pillow

Advanced Placement. More Pasco students are taking AP classes, and their performance is improving. Gradebook.

florida-roundup-logoAdvocacy. StudentsFirst is winding down in a total of five states. Education Week.

Acceleration. State Sen. John Legg talks up the benefits of collegiate high schools in the Lakeland Ledger.

Testing. A Collier County teacher is fired, accused of helping students cheat. Naples Daily News. An Orange County elementary school student strings together a series of perfect FCATs. Orlando Sentinel.

Tax credit scholarships. The St. Augustine Record corrects falsehoods printed in a recent guest column.

Safety. A private school teacher is arrested for child pornography. Daytona Beach News-Journal. The Okaloosa school board votes to put resource deputies in all schools. Northwest Florida Daily News.

Administration. A Lee County principal resigns amid turmoil. Fort Myers News-Press. The principal at a struggling Collier County school is moving on. Naples Daily News. Manatee schools train administrators in data-driven decision making. Bradenton Herald.

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July 15, 2014 0 comment
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Education LegislationEducation PoliticsParent Trigger

StudentsFirst winding down FL operation

Travis Pillow July 7, 2014
Travis Pillow
Rhee

Rhee

Michelle Rhee’s education reform group is scaling back its Florida operations, saying it wants to focus on policy battles elsewhere.

StudentsFirst will maintain a nominal presence in the state, but it’s pulling out most of its policy and outreach resources. Some of its leadership positions in the state, including state director, had already been vacant.

Lane Wright, the group’s regional spokesman, said StudentsFirst will keep operating in neighboring states. The group has been active in Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina.

“We will still weigh in publicly on some education reform issues in (Florida),” Wright said late last week. “We will not be as heavily involved as we have been with our outreach and our policy.”

Wright said the decision was shaped in part by the fact that Florida has already adopted more of its policy agenda than any state besides Louisiana.

StudentsFirst’s state report card gives Florida especially high marks for teacher effectiveness, but its efforts to win changes in other areas met resistance. It was among the groups that pushed for the “parent trigger” legislation that died on tie Senate votes in 2012 and 2013. This year, it shifted focus to spending and governance, but a bill that would have required the state to measure schools’ return on investment did not make it out of the Legislature.

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July 7, 2014 4 comments
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Achievement GapBlog AdministrationCharter SchoolsCommon CoreCommon GroundEducation LegislationEducation PoliticsFundingGrassrootsParent EmpowermentParental ChoicePrivate SchoolsReligious EducationSchool ChoiceTax Credit Scholarships

Urban Leagues explore school choice

Sherri Ackerman August 8, 2013
Sherri Ackerman

Florida’s Urban Leagues and education advocates are teaming up for a series of town halls later this month that will include discussions on the growing number of learning options available to minorities.

The attention to education is nothing new and has always been a cornerstone of the Urban League’s mission to help minorities achieve social and economic equality. But the turn toward school choice is.

Allie Braswell

Allie Braswell

“We’re just looking at other ways, new options and new solutions for students to be successful in school,’’ said Allie Braswell, president of the Central Florida Urban League that serves a seven-county region. “And as you look at school choice, it’s just become an option to explore.’’

The Florida Consortium of Urban Leagues Affiliates is hosting the town hall meetings in partnership with Black Floridians C.A.R.E., Democrats for Education Reform, Derrick Brooks Charities, StudentsFirst and Step Up For Students, the nonprofit that administers the Florida Tax Credit Scholarships. (And co-hosts this blog.)

One key part of the effort will be looking at charter schools and tax credit scholarships for low-income students to attend private schools. Florida Department of Education figures show that about 43 percent of the state’s 3.4 million students in PreK-12 attend a school of their choosing. And that is what’s driving this conversation.

“It’s the simple market, the proliferation of charter schools and private schools,’’ said Germaine Smith-Baugh, president and chief executive officer of the Urban League of Broward County. “Choice has become a market-driven issue.’’

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August 8, 2013 0 comment
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Blog AdministrationCharter SchoolsEducation PoliticsMagnet SchoolsParent EmpowermentParent TriggerParental ChoicePrivate SchoolsSchool Choice

Why is a parenting organization working against so many parents?

Catherine Durkin Robinson March 18, 2013
Catherine Durkin Robinson

From the beginning, when my children were barely out of pull-ups, I was a school-choice mom. Living in a rural area, surrounded by cows and NASCAR flags, I insisted on driving 45 minutes one way, every day, so my kids could attend a Jewish preschool. Despite massive headaches caused by northern drivers on vacation, I knew the learning environment provided by the JCC was best for my kids, building a strong foundation to support lifelong learning.

PTSAAs preschool graduation neared, my husband and I chose an excellent, traditional public school for them to attend for their elementary years. This school was not located in our neighborhood and we couldn’t afford to move. But, because I was a teacher in that same district, I applied for the choice program and my children were accepted. It meant I had to transfer closer to home and still drive a half-hour out of my way, but I felt fortunate to place my children in a school that would meet their needs.

After leaving the teaching profession, I once again exercised my right to choose. We moved the kids into a private Jewish school for the rest of their elementary education. My husband and I had to live in a simpler neighborhood and forgo little luxuries, like fashionable shoes and date nights, to make it work, but our boys excelled in their new learning environment.

For middle school, our family moved yet again, prompting jokes that compared us to nomadic ancestors, and we applied for a magnet program. Once more, we were lucky. Our sons won the lottery and were accepted into a dynamic, academically rigorous program.

Who knows where we’ll end up for high school?

During these public school years, I’ve been a consistent PTSA member. Joining this organization seemed the best way to be involved in my children’s school. PTSA volunteers are dedicated parents, teachers, and students committed to helping schools raise needed funds that enhance learning opportunities. I joined to show my support for those who were educating my children, and to act as an important presence among teachers and administrators.

Over the years, though, I sadly watched the PTSA take positions that alienated moms like me, moms who choose. Sure, the organization is a presence at my sons’ middle school – they sell magnets for cars and snacks at sporting events. The PTSA agrees that magnets are a valid choice, but parents who choose other options are not represented by the PTSA and, worse yet, are regularly dismissed in alerts and agendas. I would often read PTSA literature and wonder out loud:

“Why is a parenting organization working against so many parents?”

But I’m not one to give up easily.

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March 18, 2013 9 comments
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Blog AdministrationCharter SchoolsEducation and Public PolicyMagnet SchoolsParental ChoicePrivate SchoolsProgressives and ed reformSchool ChoiceTax Credit Scholarships

Increasing school choice demand will increase pressure for change

Doug Tuthill February 20, 2013
Doug Tuthill

I am grateful to Rebecca Sibilia and Sean Gill for their thoughtful response to my blog post encouraging Michelle Rhee to replace her failing schools model of school choice with an approach based on equal opportunity.

Rebecca and Sean defended StudentsFirst’s support of the failing schools model on pragmatic grounds. They wrote: “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.”

Every community suffers from an insufficient supply of effective schools for low-income students. But in Florida we’ve learned that increasing demand – not limiting demand – is the best way to increase supply.

Access to Florida’s tax credit scholarship program for low-income students, which I help administer, is limited by a state-imposed cap. But our demand is not limited, so it often exceeds supply. This excess demand has not had a negative effect on students or the program. Instead, it has generated political pressure on the state Legislature to allow our cap to rise to meet this additional demand.

In 2010, as a result of excessive demand, the Florida Legislature voted to allow our program to grow 25 percent every year the demand hits or exceeds 90 percent of supply. The result has been extraordinary growth of supply and demand. While we have been awarding scholarships since 2002, 34 percent of our growth has occurred in just the last two years. This school year we added 10,000 more students to the program and had more than 12,000 students add their names to our waiting list after we hit our cap.

We’ve also been adding about 100 new private schools per year to the program, and some have started to expand their physical capacity to serve more students. Had we adopted the StudentsFirst approach of limiting demand when faced with limited supply, this extraordinary growth would not have occurred.

Today, more than 43 percent of Florida’s preK-12 students attend a school other than their assigned district school. Charter schools, magnet schools, virtual schools, career academies, dual enrollment and homeschooling are all growing dramatically. Private schools are already struggling to maintain their market share given all these choices. If we were to limit our scholarships to low-income students in state-designated failing schools, then many private schools serving low-income students might be forced to close – to everyone’s detriment.

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February 20, 2013 1 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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Achievement GapBlog AdministrationCustomizationParental ChoicePolicy WonksSchool ChoiceTesting and Accountability

Private school choice options shouldn’t be limited to students in “failing schools”

Doug Tuthill February 5, 2013
Doug Tuthill
Rhee’s failing schools model for vouchers and tax credit scholarships misinterprets the relationship between students and schools. With rare exceptions, schools are not good or bad independent of the students they serve. Some schools are good for some students and bad for others. A state-designated “A” school can be a terrible match for a particular student, which means for that student the school is a failure.

Rhee’s failing schools model for vouchers and tax credit scholarships misinterprets the relationship between students and schools. With rare exceptions, schools are not good or bad independent of the students they serve. Some schools are good for some students and bad for others. A state-designated “A” school can be a terrible match for a particular student, which means for that student the school is a failure.

In recent weeks, Tony Bennett, Florida’s new education commissioner, and Michelle Rhee, the CEO of StudentsFirst, offered conflicting rationales for supporting school choice. Bennett told participants at a National School Choice Week event in Tampa, Fla., that school choice is a necessary condition for equal opportunity and social justice. Low-income children should have access to the same options as the affluent, Bennett said, and this is why he supports providing low-income families with publicly-funded vouchers and scholarships to attend private schools.

StudentsFirst, on the other hand, released a state policy report card that docked Florida a few points for extending school choice to all low-income children. The group favors policies that restrict vouchers and tax credit scholarships to low-income students in state-designated “failing” schools. Within the choice movement, Rhee’s position is called the failing schools model.

Ten years ago, the failing schools model was the most favored, and it’s still popular with state legislators who see it as a politically safe compromise that allows parents to use vouchers only when their assigned district school is “failing.” But school choice, at its core, is about empowering parents to match their children to the schools that best meet their needs. Those judgments don’t necessarily align with school-wide standardized test scores.

Rhee’s failing schools model misinterprets the relationship between students and schools. With rare exceptions, schools are not good or bad independent of the students they serve. Some schools are good for some students and bad for others. A state-designated “A” school can be a terrible match for a particular student, which means for that student the school is a failure. Bennett’s approach assumes the relationship between a student and a school is what succeeds or fails, which is why he thinks all parents should be empowered to access the schools that work best for their children.

The failing schools model also tends to inappropriately pit public versus private schools by implying private schools are better, which is not true.

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February 5, 2013 4 comments
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