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'Alternative theories': A bill is filed that would allow Florida school districts to teach students alternative theories to what it calls "controversial theories" such as evolution and human-created climate change in a “factual, objective and balanced manner.” The bill is sponsored by State Sen. Dennis Baxley, R-Ocala, who says schools need to teach "different worldviews" on those subjects because textbooks present a “uniformity” of thought. Keith Flaugh, the managing director of the Florida Citizens Alliance, which wrote the bill, says says the curriculum taught in Florida schools equates to “political and religious indoctrination.” Tampa Bay Times.

Biblical courses: Florida is one of at least six states considering allowing Bible literacy classes in public schools. Supporters include President Trump, who tweeted: "Numerous states introducing Bible Literacy classes, giving students the option of studying the Bible. Starting to make a turn back? Great!" Florida's proposed bill would require public high schools to offer an elective course providing an "objective study of religion." Washington Post. (more…)

It’s an increasingly common refrain: school choice is an extension of the civil rights movement. But two of the choice movement’s elder statesmen took exception to that description at a National School Choice Week event Thursday night.

The civil rights movement was broader than the battle for school choice, and every generation ought to define its own movements, said Howard Fuller, a legend in the choice movement and chair of the Black Alliance for Educational Options. Also, attempting to link the two can create friction and arouse suspicions when it’s used by choice supporters who may not see eye-to-eye on other issues important to civil rights veterans and their supporters.

“Just even using that terminology gets us into arguments that we don’t need to be in,” Fuller said.

T. Willard Fair, a former chairman of the Florida Board of Education, raised another objection: When it comes to school choice, too many black leaders are not on the same page.

“During the civil rights movement, no black elected official dared to stand up and be against this,” said Fair, who co-founded Florida’s first charter school. “If he or she did, we would get them.”

The spirited comments from Fuller and Fair, and polite comebacks from other school choice leaders, came during Florida’s “spotlight” National School Choice Week event. About 200 people attended the event, held at Coral Springs Charter School near Fort Lauderdale. It was organized by the Florida Alliance for Choices in Education, an umbrella group for a wide range of pro-school-choice organizations, including Step Up for Students, which administers the state’s tax credit scholarship program and co-hosts this blog.

The back-and-forth over civil rights and school choice was spurred by the event’s theme. This year is the 60^th anniversary of the historic Brown v. Board of Education decision, which declared separate schools for black and white students unconstitutional. Many school choice supporters see a connection between the barriers knocked down then and those falling now. (more…)

Brown v. Board of Education opened many doors of opportunity, but too many remain closed. School choice can open some more.

Longtime school choice advocate Howard Fuller and a high-profile panel will reflect on that theme tonight at a National School Choice Week event in South Florida. To watch it live, just come back and view it here at 6:15 p.m.

You can also keep tabs via Twitter @redefinedonline. Search for #SCW and #FLschoolchoice.

In the meantime, here are some more thoughts on the links between Brown v. Board and school choice from some of the panelists you'll be hearing from.

T. Willard Fair, former chairman, Florida Board of Education; president, Urban League of Greater Miami:

While we were victorious in fighting for school choice nearly 60 years ago, the struggle continues. Choice is still an issue for many low-income children who come from the wrong side of the tracks. The Urban League of Greater Miami has made education and school choice the focal point of its work for over 50 years because access to quality education is still one of the most pressing civil rights issues of our times. This is not to sound somber or overly critical of the great strides we have made with Brown vs. Board of Education. However, we cannot be ignorant to believe that the victory of 60 years ago assuaged all of our “Black or Brown” educational issues. The need to access quality education is still alive and evident in Florida with more than 60 percent of Black children reading below grade level. (more…)

In the 60 years since the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision, the mission to offer every student equal access to a free and quality public education has made great strides. But there’s more work to do, say education advocates gathering this week for National School Choice Week.

More than a dozen groups representing everything choice - from charters to religious schools to district virtual schools – will meet Jan. 30 in Coral Springs, Fla., for a panel discussion reflecting on the historic Supreme Court ruling and whether its vision is being fulfilled.

Brown was an important part of the struggle to end legal discrimination but today "we have a different problem," longtime school choice supporter Howard Fuller said in an email to redefinED. "Children of low income and working class Black families are trapped in schools that are not providing them with a quality education. Integration is not the lever of power that is needed at this point in history."

The Florida event is one of 5,500 taking place during the fourth annual celebration of educational opportunity.

Speakers include Fuller, a distinguished professor and board chairman of the Black Alliance for Educational Options; Georgia Rep. Alisha Morgan, a Democrat and school choice supporter; T. Willard Fair, a civil rights activist and the youngest chapter president in the history of the Urban League; Julio Fuentes, president of the Hispanic Council for Reform and Educational Options; Rabbi Moshe Matz, director of Agudath Israel of Florida; Vincent Boccard, mayor of the city of Coral Springs; and Jonathan Hage, founder, president, chairman and chief executive officer of Charter Schools USA.

The event is hosted by Florida Alliance for Choices in Education (FACE), a roundtable of school choice and parental empowerment organizations that work to expand and strengthen educational options. Partners include Step Up For Students, the nonprofit that administers the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship (and co-hosts this blog); Florida Charter School Alliance; PublicSchoolOptions.org;  Charter Schools USA; Coral Springs Charter School; Florida Virtual School; McKay Coalition; HCREO; Agudath Israel of Florida: StudentsFirst; Pasco eSchool; National Institute for Educational Options; and K12 Inc.

The event will be held at the Coral Springs Charter School, 3205 N. University Drive, Coral Springs, 33065. The reception starts at 5:30 p.m. with the discussion at 6:15 p.m. For more information, email FACE director Wendy Howard, wendy@flace.org

You’ll be able to watch a live webcast of the event here on the blog. You can also follow via Twitter @redefinedonline. Search for #SCW and #FLchoice.

"Where are the parents who support school choice?"

"Where are the parents who support parental empowerment?"

"Where are the parents whose children benefit from education reform?"

These are typical questions from traditional parenting groups, groups that sometimes say they represent Florida parents in all educational matters. They have to ask the whereabouts of moms and dads of more than 1.5 million schoolchildren of choice, because such parents don’t tend to be in their membership files.

To the extent these choice parents are low-income and single moms who choose options such as the tax credit scholarship, they do indeed tend to be less visible in the political sphere.

Get ready, because that’s changing.

Early Wednesday morning, families from all over Florida, from Miami’s inner city neighborhoods to rural Pasco County, will board buses with their children and teachers and travel five to 10 hours to get to Tallahassee for School Choice Day. Organizers expect more than a thousand participants to gather and show lawmakers, traditional parenting groups, and everyone else the real face of parental school choice.

They won’t look like right-wing corporations. There’s a good bet they will be racially and economically diverse. In other words, they will probably look like you and me. (more…)

Elected black Democrats who support vouchers and charter schools are slowly but surely finding themselves less isolated. And for that, they can thank relentless parents, said Kenneth Campbell, president of the Black Alliance for Educational Options.

The tide is changing because of “this constant drumbeat that they’re hearing from parents about how much their kids are struggling,” Campbell told redefinED in the podcast interview attached below. “More and more people are just coming to this realization that even if I don’t necessarily like the people that are proposing this, we don’t have any other options. And we’ve heard that time and time again, as we’ve gone out and worked with elected officials - that we can’t ignore the pleas of our parents anymore.”

Campbell offered his comments on the eve of BAEO’s annual symposium, which is being held today through Saturday in Orlando. The largest gathering of black school choice supporters in the country will draw 650 people this year, including 50 current and former elected officials. It comes amidst head-spinning ferment on the choice front, with states as disparate as Louisiana, Washington and New Hampshire passing historic measures in the past year alone.

“There are a lot of people in our community who are rightfully concerned and skeptical about motives, and about is this the right thing to do,” Campbell said. “But I think increasingly, we have reached the point where there’s no excuse for not acting with urgency in giving kids and parents options.”

BAEO has been a leading voice for parental school choice since it formed in 2000. Its ranks include a number of leading reformers, including Howard Fuller, Kevin Chavous and T. Willard Fair, who co-founded the first charter school in Florida and served as chair of the state Board of Education.

Florida is an apt place for the group to meet. (more…)

Florida business leaders put a spotlight Wednesday on the promise and potential pitfalls of Common Core - the tough, new academic standards that are rolling into Florida schools and will help re-shape teaching, learning and testing.

At a wide-ranging, day-long education summit in Orlando, several participants suggested a public awareness campaign to inform parents about the changes – which may be initially painful when they're implemented in the 2014-15 school year - and to rally broad support in a way that has eluded many of the state’s other, recent education reforms.

“These tend to be Tallahassee conversations. But if we don’t do this right, it becomes a Miami conversation or a Jacksonville conversation” and not in a positive way, Marshall Criser III, president of AT&T Florida and chairman of the Florida Council of 100, told redefinED during a break. “We have an opportunity and responsibility to take this back to our communities ... Because if not us, then who?”

“The state should own this initiative,” Education Commissioner Tony Bennett told attendees, reminding them of the marketing effort a decade ago for Just Read, Florida. “It shouldn’t be teachers against people. It shouldn’t be the state against schools, state against districts. This should be a statewide rollout that says this is important to our children and this is important to the future of our state.”

The Council of 100 sponsored the summit with the Florida Chamber Foundation, the National Chamber Foundation and the Institute for a Competitive Workforce. About 100 people attended, including three lawmakers, two superintendents, Board of Education Chairman Gary Chartrand and Florida Education Association President Andy Ford.

Spurred by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers, the Common Core standards in math and language arts have been adopted by 44 states. They’re well-thought-out and well-vetted. They’re benchmarked against international standards. They’re designed to instill a deeper knowledge than state standards do now. In the long term, supporters say, the higher bar will better prepare students for college and careers and an ever-more-competitive world. In the short term, though, ouch: They’re expected to result in a steep drop in test scores – and all the angst that comes with it.

“That’s a pain point,” Criser said. “But people have to understand that’s good,” he continued, because it’s the first step on a better path.

The discussion around Common Core has centered almost exclusively on public schools. But its gravitational pull is expected to be so strong that the impact will be felt at the private schools, too, to varying degrees. (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…)

In an effort aimed at boosting black student achievement, a new group is forming in Florida to develop a cadre of black entrepreneurs and executives to lead high-quality schools, including charter and private schools.

Black Floridians C.A.R.E. – which stands for Choice Advocates Reforming Education - is chaired by T. Willard Fair, a former chair of the state Board of Education and longtime leader of the Urban League of Greater Miami.

“It’s important because we believe that the rest of the battle for effectiveness and equality (in education) rests with us,” Fair told redefinED. “Why should I expect whites and Cubans to care about black children in Liberty City? It’s not their children.”

Fair said more black leaders in education - principals, owners, board members, chief executives - would galvanize support in the black community generally. But it’s especially critical for establishing deeper roots for school choice, he said.

“When you have a movement that comes out of the adults in the community, then it does not die,” said Fair, who co-founded Florida's first charter school in 1996 with former Gov. Jeb Bush. “Then the community says, ‘We have ownership of this.’ “

The group’s executive director is Isha James. She too has strong ties to school choice efforts, including stints at the Black Alliance for Educational Options, the National Association of Charter School Authorizers and Partners for Developing Futures, a social investment fund for people of color who want to open charter schools.

“Students who see people in power that look like them, they have higher aspirations,” James said. “I can’t continue to tell a child that he can be the principal of a school if the only thing he sees that’s ever looked like him is a janitor.”

Black Floridians C.A.R.E. will develop a leadership pipeline through training academies and mentoring programs, then serve as a conduit between black professionals and private, charter and district schools. James said primary recruitment efforts will be aimed not at educators, but at people with backgrounds in finance, law and business. (more…)