redefinED
  • Home
  • ABOUT US
  • Content
    • Analysis
    • Commentary and Opinion
    • News
    • News Features
    • Voices for Education Choice
    • factcheckED
  • Topics
    • Achievement Gap
    • Charter Schools
    • Customization
    • Education Equity
    • Education Politics
    • Education Research
    • Education Savings Accounts
    • Education Spending
    • Faith-based Education
    • Florida Schools Roundup
    • Homeschooling
    • Microschools
    • Parent Empowerment
    • Private Schools
    • Special Education
    • Testing and Accountability
    • Virtual Education
    • Vouchers
  • Multimedia
    • Video
    • Podcasts
  • Guest Bloggers
    • Ashley Berner
    • Jonathan Butcher
    • Jack Coons
    • Dan Lips
    • Chris Stewart
    • Patrick J. Wolf
  • Education Facts
    • Research and Reports
    • Gardiner Scholarship Basic Program Facts
    • Hope Scholarship Program Facts
    • Reading Scholarship Program Facts
    • FES Basic Facts
  • Search
redefinED
 
  • Home
  • ABOUT US
  • Content
    • Analysis
    • Commentary and Opinion
    • News
    • News Features
    • Voices for Education Choice
    • factcheckED
  • Topics
    • Achievement Gap
    • Charter Schools
    • Customization
    • Education Equity
    • Education Politics
    • Education Research
    • Education Savings Accounts
    • Education Spending
    • Faith-based Education
    • Florida Schools Roundup
    • Homeschooling
    • Microschools
    • Parent Empowerment
    • Private Schools
    • Special Education
    • Testing and Accountability
    • Virtual Education
    • Vouchers
  • Multimedia
    • Video
    • Podcasts
  • Guest Bloggers
    • Ashley Berner
    • Jonathan Butcher
    • Jack Coons
    • Dan Lips
    • Chris Stewart
    • Patrick J. Wolf
  • Education Facts
    • Research and Reports
    • Gardiner Scholarship Basic Program Facts
    • Hope Scholarship Program Facts
    • Reading Scholarship Program Facts
    • FES Basic Facts
  • Search
Tag:

tax credit scholarships

Education and Public PolicyEducation ChoiceEducation LegislationEducation Savings AccountsFeaturedNewsParental ChoicePrivate School ScholarshipsSchool ChoiceTax Credit Scholarships

School choice gaining momentum in legislative chambers

Patrick R. Gibbons March 31, 2021
Patrick R. Gibbons

Kentucky became the 28th state to create a private school choice scholarship program despite protests mounted by teacher unions, whose members rallied Monday at the state Capitol.

The 2021 legislative session began with dozens of school choice bills filed nationwide amidst a global pandemic and recalcitrant teacher unions that continue to fight school openings.

Twenty-six states, plus Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico, boasted private school choice scholarship programs at the start of the year. Now there are 28.

West Virginia became the 27thth state with a private school choice program when Gov. Jim Justice signed the bill into law Monday. Just hours later, Kentucky became the 28th after its General Assembly overrode a veto by Gov. Andy Beshear.

West Virginia’s program creates an education savings account program for students wishing to attend private schools or participate in home education. The program has no cap and offers scholarships worth $4,600.

Students can use the funds to pay for private school tuition, private tutoring, after school programs and more.

Unlike other education savings account programs which are limited to low-income students or students with special needs, West Virginia’s program is more universal.

“Arguably, you could say, even at launch, it’s the most expansive,” University of Arkansas professor Patrick Wolf said in an interview with the Charleston Gazette-Mail.

Kentucky’s program creates a $25 million tax credit scholarship program to pay for private school tuition for low-income students living in one of the state’s three largest school districts. Low-income students in all other counties with 90,000 or more residents would be eligible to receive funds to pay for private tutoring or other educational expenses.

House Bill 563, the bill creating the program, also allows students to switch to public schools in other school districts.

Beshear vetoed the bill last week, claiming the program “will harm public schools,” while blaming the Republican controlled legislature for “fail[ing] to invest in Kentucky’s public schools.”

Kentucky’s House of Representatives on Monday voted 51-42, and the Senate voted 23-14, to override the governor’s veto.

John Schilling, president of the American Federation for Children, hailed Kentucky lawmakers for the override.

 “Today lawmakers in Kentucky did the right thing by rejecting a veto by their governor that would have denied thousands of children in the Bluegrass State access to an educational environment that best serves their needs,” Schilling said. “We applaud members of the Kentucky Legislature who stood up and fought on behalf of children and families.”

 Kentucky spends $11,404 per pupil according to U.S. Department of Education data. In total, the $25 million scholarship program is a rounding error compared to the state’s $8 billion K-12 education budget.  

The governor also claimed the scholarship program violates the state’s “Blaine amendment” prohibiting instruction at sectarian schools, despite a 2020 U.S. Supreme Court ruling to the contrary.

March 31, 2021 0 comment
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestLinkedinEmail
Commentary and OpinionEducation and Public PolicyEducation ChoiceFeaturedFlorida Tax Credit ScholarshipParental ChoicePrivate School ScholarshipsSchool Choice

Opponents’ fibs falter in view of school choice facts

Special to redefinED March 9, 2021
Special to redefinED

Editor’s note: This commentary, which compares Kentucky’s scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress to Florida’s, appeared earlier today in the Paducah Sun and was circulated nationally by the American Federation for Children.

Does offering parents the option of sending their children to public charter schools or providing them with scholarships to assist with private school tuition harm public education?

No, solidly no.

But the correct answer is solidly “no” if you’re interested in the facts offered by credible sources like the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), known as “the nation’s report card.”

Just for fun, let’s try doing something far-left opponents of educational liberty rarely do: Consider unvarnished history and accurate comparisons of Kentucky, which offers no parent-controlled school choice, with other states that have such alternatives.

Consider, for example, the difference in educational trajectories between Florida and Kentucky since the early 1990s when neither state had school choice offerings and now, when nearly half a million students in the Sunshine State are being educated in public charter and private schools — including more than 100,000 via scholarship tax-credit policies — chosen by their parents rather than assigned by bureaucrats.

If school choice opponents’ theory that offering parent-controlled options on where to educate their children decimates public education holds up, shouldn’t Florida’s public system be devastated by now?

Yet, the NAEP indicates the opposite has occurred, sometimes even in dramatic fashion.

In 1992 — four years before Florida passed its first school choice law, which was a charter school bill — 26 other states outscored the Sunshine State’s fourth graders in reading while only four states and Washington, D.C., performed more poorly.

Flash forward to 2019, where only one state scored higher than Florida while 32 others and D.C. finished lower.

Similar shifts occurred in fourth-grade math and eighth-grade results in these same subjects.

While Florida was implementing a multitude of school choice policies while also improving its educational outcomes, Kentucky’s academic trajectory remained stagnant and — relative to other states — even declined in some academic areas.

To continue reading, click here.

March 9, 2021 0 comment
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestLinkedinEmail
CustomizationEducation ChoiceFeaturedFlorida Tax Credit ScholarshipNewsPrivate SchoolsSchool Choice

New private school will focus on helping students fighting addictions

Lisa Buie March 9, 2021
Lisa Buie

River Oak Center in Jacksonville, established as an independent, non-profit in 2014 by concerned parents and addictions experts in the community, served as a model for Victory High.

To Tina Levene, a pickle represents more than just garnish on a sandwich plate.

Pickles remind her of the day 23 years ago when she drove from her college town to her parents’ home and begged her father for help with what she recognized as a problem with alcohol.

“I told my dad, ‘I used to be a cucumber, but I’d had too much juice, and so now I’m a pickle,’” said Levene, who proudly wears a pickle pin her father gave her to commemorate the day she said farewell to alcohol and drugs.

Tina Levene

Levene has come a long way since her college days when life was an endless party. She and her roommates kept a full beer keg on their front porch. She could chug wine for hours and not feel drunk and smoke marijuana laced with other drugs that to this day she can’t identify.

When the pain of it all brought her to her knees, she felt there was only one way to stop it.

“I thought, ‘I’m done, I might as well just kill myself and get it over with,’” she recalls.

Thanks to her subsequent recovery from alcohol and drugs and her training as a social worker, Levene now realizes that her addiction, which she says started with smoking cigarette butts she plucked from the floor at age 9, resulted from a combination of genetics and trauma.

Now, she wants to help teenagers who are dealing with traumas of their own by opening a school just for them inside a church located in a northern suburb of Tampa, Florida.

A customized education for recovering high schoolers

The private, nonprofit school, to be called Victory High, aims to provide an education tailored to young people who are leaving treatment programs and re-entering school. It is modeled on the state’s first such school, River Oak Center, which opened in Jacksonville in 2014.

The nation’s first recovery high school, Sobriety High, opened in Minnesota in 1987, according to a 2008 study by the National Institutes of Health. Sobriety High announced its intention to close at the end of the 2012-13 academic year, due in part to dwindling enrollment due to on-campus drug use, despite the school’s no tolerance policy.

The Association of Recovery High Schools directory shows 43 schools operating in 21 states. Levene hopes to be the 44th. 

She held a ribbon-cutting in January and has completed the process required to accept state scholarships, including the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship administered by Step Up For Students, which hosts this blog. With 16 students are on a wait list, she expects to open later this year. Enrollment will be capped at 50 students to ensure small class sizes.

According to Levene, who first conceived the idea for a Tampa Bay area recovery high school in 2017 while working for the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice, relapse rates are significantly lower in a recovery school.

“In traditional school, there is a 70% chance in six months but a 30% relapse rate in recovery school, so it goes down quite a bit,” she said. The typical student attends for about 150 days before returning to a more traditional educational environment.

A fusion of academics and recovery care

The new school couldn’t open at a better time. Teenage substance use, which declined in the two years leading up to the pandemic, began rising again in 2020 with the onset of the novel coronavirus pandemic.

Before COVID, 28.6% of more than 1,000 Canadian teens surveyed by National Center for Biotechnology Information reported that they had used alcohol. During the pandemic, that number rose to 30.4%. Before COVID, the teens reported using alcohol about twice per month. That nearly tripled since March 2020, while the number of days of marijuana use increased from 3.28 every three weeks an average of 3.76 days during the pandemic.

Levene’s program will fuse regular academics with recovery care for students in grades 9 through 12. Each day will begin with students choosing one of three color-coded bracelets based on their mood: red to signify high anxiety, green to signify a more relaxed state. Students can change their bracelets can as their moods shift, with therapies available to soothe those who are feeling stressed.

Counseling and other mental health services also will be provided throughout the day as needed. The school will offer art therapy and other ways to control anxiety. Levene also plans to start a young person’s Twelve Step group.

Levene’s goal is to offer the same hope that saved her from her dark place more than two decades ago. On her knees, face to the ceiling and praying for a way out, she recalls how her CD player came on “from out of nowhere.”  A reggae song, “Upful and Right” blared through the speakers.

“Don’t worry, don’t worry, God’s on your side. You are healthy and wise.”

She wants to make sure her prospective students know that, too.

 

March 9, 2021 0 comment
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestLinkedinEmail
Education and Public PolicyEducation ChoiceFeaturedNewsParental ChoicePrivate School ScholarshipsPublic School ChoiceSchool Choice

Auditor General releases annual review of Florida scholarship programs

Lisa Buie March 8, 2021
Lisa Buie

Launched in 2013, Piney Grove Boys Academy in Fort Lauderdale is one of more than 2,000 private schools that participate in Florida’s array of choice scholarship programs, including the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship.

In its sixth annual audit of Step Up For Students, the state’s largest nonprofit scholarship funding organization, the Florida Auditor General has issued what amounts to a clean bill of health.

The report included only one finding on data procedures, which have been or are currently being addressed by the organization, while more broadly concluding: “Our Reading Scholarship Accounts  audit procedures and tests of selected Step Up records and accounts found that Step Up generally complied with the applicable provisions of State law.”

The audit covered Step Up’s administration of four state-authorized scholarships in 2019-2020: the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship for K-12 students from low-income and working-class households; the Gardiner Scholarship for students with special needs; the Hope Scholarship for students who have been bullied in public schools; and Reading Scholarship Accounts that provide help for elementary public school students who are struggling in reading.

Collectively, the programs awarded scholarships to 143,320 students that year.

The report found that all reimbursements for student expenses in the Gardiner Scholarship program, which operates as an education savings account program, were in full compliance with the law.

“Our tests of Step Up records found that the Gardiner scholarship payments selected for audit were eligible program disbursements,” the report said. The report also found no compliance issues with the other four scholarship programs.

The only finding, auditors noted, related to Social Security numbers and whether Step Up was sufficiently restricting internal computer access to such numbers. It recommended that Step Up evaluate staff members’ access privileges to the database to ensure such access was necessary to perform their job duties and to document periodic evaluations of the necessity for access.

It also recommended that a system be established to remove access for staff members whose jobs no longer required it and grant temporary access to those who needed access only occasionally.

March 8, 2021 0 comment
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestLinkedinEmail
Education and Public PolicyEducation ChoiceFeaturedFlorida Tax Credit ScholarshipNewsParental Choice

How a great-grandmother and a school choice scholarship changed the lives of two young girls

Roger Mooney February 25, 2021
Roger Mooney

Sharon Strickland’s great-granddaughters, Savannah and Karlee, gather shells on Daytona Beach.

Editor’s note: This story about how one family is participating in the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship program first appeared on Step Up For Students’ sister blog.

On a Friday morning in March 2020, a judge granted Sharon Strickland temporary custody of her great-granddaughter, Savannah.

The little girl, 8 at the time, had been living in unsanitary conditions, Strickland said, with an elderly relative who was in failing health. Savannah often went hungry.

According to Sharon, the family dynamic has been complicated and the children’s mother lost parental rights to all four of her daughters.

The youngest great-grandchild, Karlee, was already living with Strickland, having been placed there by the state four months earlier. Karlee arrived at Strickland’s doorstep at 10 p.m. on a Tuesday in early November 2019, carrying all her possessions in a backpack and a trash bag. She was 3.

Savannah came with even less. Just the clothes she wore that day to school – a shirt that was missing a few buttons and tattered pants. No socks.

To continue reading, click here.

February 25, 2021 0 comment
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestLinkedinEmail
AnalysisEducation and Public PolicyEducation ChoiceEducation ResearchfactcheckEDFeaturedFlorida Tax Credit ScholarshipSchool Choice

Dispelling the ‘damaged goods’ myth about school choice scholarships

Ron Matus February 25, 2021
Ron Matus

Students at all three locations of Academy Prep — Tampa, St. Petersburg and Lakeland — routinely matriculate to top high schools and go on to attend top colleges. All Academy Prep students attend on state scholarships.

There is no evidence that students who use Florida school choice scholarships return to public schools worse off academically.

But that doesn’t stop critics of education choice from repeating variations on that claim.

The Florida League of Women Voters is the latest to air this “damaged goods” myth. In a Feb. 21 newspaper op-ed criticizing Senate Bill 48, which would convert Florida’s school choice scholarships into education savings accounts, two of its officials wrote:

“Stories abound of children who return to their neighborhood public school after a private school closes, only to find they are far behind academically.”

But for the qualifier “after a private school closes,” the Florida League of Women Voters op-ed echoes a charge that choice opponents have been levelling for years (for example, here and here.)

We can’t say with certainty whether “stories abound.” But data to support such claims certainly does not.

The authoritative take on this issue comes from respected education researcher David Figlio, dean of the School of Education and Social Policy at Northwestern. For years, Figlio was tasked by the state of Florida with annually analyzing the standardized test scores of students using the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship, the biggest choice scholarship program in the nation. (The scholarship is administered by nonprofits such as Step Up For Students, which hosts this blog.)

In his 2011-12 report, Figlio addressed the academic performance of scholarship students who return to public schools. He wrote:

FTC participants who return to the public sector performed, after their first year back in the public schools, in the same ballpark but perhaps slightly better on the FCAT than they had before they left the Florida public schools. The most careful reading of this evidence indicates that participation in the FTC program appears to have neither advantaged nor disadvantaged the program participants who ultimately return to the public sector.

Figlio also wrote:

These pieces of evidence strongly point to an explanation that the poor apparent FCAT performance of FTC program returnees is actually a result of the fact that the returning students are generally particularly struggling students.

Subsequent analyses led to the same conclusion.

The best available evidence doesn’t point to shortcomings with choice scholarships. If anything, it underscores the need for even more options for the most fragile students.

Other evidence also turns the League of Women Voters claim on its head.

Thirteen years’ worth of test score analyses offer remarkably consistent findings about Florida Tax Credit Scholarship students. No. 1, they were typically the lowest-performing students in their prior public schools. And No. 2, they’re now, as a whole, making a year’s worth of progress in a year’s worth of time.

A 2019 Urban Institute study found even more encouraging results: The same students are up to 43 percent more likely than their public school peers to enroll in four-year colleges, and up to 20 percent more likely to earn bachelor’s degrees.

These outcomes don’t suggest damaged goods.

They suggest more students living up to their potential.

February 25, 2021 0 comment
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestLinkedinEmail
Education and Public PolicyEducation ChoiceEducation EquityEducation LegislationEducation Savings AccountsFeaturedNewsParental ChoicePrivate School ScholarshipsSchool Choice

Education choice bill to streamline and add flexibility advances

Lisa Buie February 17, 2021
Lisa Buie

Natalie Wiley of Jacksonville was among parents and education choice advocates who spoke in favor of SB48, which would streamline state scholarship programs and provide additional flexibility for families. Three of Wiley’s children participate in scholarship programs, which she says have made a huge difference in their lives.

A bill that would simplify Florida’s education choice programs by merging five scholarships into two and add a flexible spending option advanced one more step toward passage today after clearing the Florida Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Education.

By a vote of 6 to 3 along party lines, members approved SB48, which would transfer students receiving the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship Program (FTC) to the Family Empowerment Scholarship (FES), which was signed into law in 2019, and sunset the 20-year-old FTC.

“I am glad to see the bill will give myself, a single mother of four, and other families the opportunity to have flexibility in utilizing the scholarship,” said Natalie Wiley of Jacksonville, whose children are on FTC and FES scholarships. “This will improve programs that have made a huge impact in my family.”

The bill, sponsored by Sen. Manny Diaz Jr., R-Hialeah, was approved Feb. 3 by the Senate Education Committee.  (For more information about what the bill includes, go here.) A companion bill is expected in the House.

“This bill is not an expansion but really a streamlining,” Diaz said during the subcommittee meeting. He said the pandemic amplified the need for increased innovation and flexibility, with many parents working with their kids at kitchen tables. “I still believe the parent is the best decisionmaker for the child.”

Under the bill, donors would still be allowed to contribute to the tax-credit program through a newly created state trust fund. However, donations would go to serve K-12 education generally in the state, rather than pay for scholarships. Both the FTC and the FES are income based and serve students whose families meet financial eligibility rules.

The bill does not materially change the eligibility criteria for any of the scholarship programs, and actually reduces the currently allowable statutory growth in some of the programs.

The bill also would merge the McKay Scholarship Program for Students with Disabilities and the Gardiner Scholarship Program, creating a new program for students with unique abilities called the McKay-Gardiner Scholarship Program.

That program would allow families in all state scholarship programs to have flexible spending accounts, also known as education savings accounts, or ESAs. Currently, only students enrolled in the Gardiner program have such flexibility.

The accounts allow families to spend their money on pre-approved services and equipment in addition to private school tuition. Approved expenditures include electronic devices, curriculum, part-time tutoring programs, educational supplies, equipment, and therapies that insurance programs do not cover. The bill would expand eligible services for McKay-Gardiner students to include music, art, and theater programs, as well as summer education programs.

The scholarship programs are also available to homeschool students and those enrolled in eligible private schools.

In addition, victims of bullying at district schools who transfer to private schools as part of the Hope Scholarship Program would also be served by the Family Empowerment Scholarship Program and receive the same spending flexibility.

Several families spoke in support of the bill. Natalie Wallace of Tampa told senators how programs allowed her son, daughter and nephew to attend Hillel School of Tampa after they were not academically challenged enough, and her youngest child was bullied.

“Hillel gives my kids smaller classes, more learning support, a safe environment, and it reinforces our family’s beliefs and values,” she said. “The scholarship has lessened the financial burden on my family and given us the same opportunities at a good education as those who are more privileged. And now, thanks to Sen. Diaz, this bill can make it even better by giving scholarship families more spending flexibility to further meet their children’s needs.”

In addition to scholarship families, the bill received support from the Libre Initiative – Florida and Americans For Prosperity, which have announced a joint campaign  to promote the bill.

The bill’s next stop is the Senate Appropriations Committee.

February 17, 2021 0 comment
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestLinkedinEmail
Commentary and OpinionEducation and Public PolicyEducation ChoiceFeaturedParent EmpowermentParental ChoicePrivate School ScholarshipsSchool ChoiceUnionism

Randi Weingarten, welcome to the education choice movement

Ron Matus February 9, 2021
Ron Matus

The rainbow coalition that is the education choice movement would like to welcome its newest member: Randi Weingarten!

Yes, that Randi Weingarten. President of the American Federation for Teachers.

In a fresh interview with The New York Times, Weingarten sounded like Betsy DeVos. She noted she has friends and family who have, according to the Times’s paraphrasing, “pulled their own children out of public schools because remote learning was not working for them.”

“They have a right,” she said in a direct quote, “to look out for their individual children.”

Yes, they do!

And don’t they all?

Choice enthusiasts of all stripes have been saying that for a half century. They’ve also been working to ensure all parents, particularly those whose children are disadvantaged by poverty or disability, have the power to do what Ms. Weingarten’s friends and family just did. That is, to choose the learning options they know are best for their children, instead of being stuck with what the state assigns. Like Ms. Weingarten’s friends and family, they need those options now more than ever.

Teachers unions, of course, have been the big roadblock on the drive to equity. But in her moment of candor, Ms. Weingarten got sucked into the zeitgeist. Poll after poll shows the pandemic has boosted school choice support to new heights, in part because of teachers union resistance to re-opening schools. That growing support includes white, left-leaning, suburban parents who, in terms of choice opposition, are one of the few dominos left to fall.

I appreciate Ms. Weingarten’s timing. Lawmakers in at least 14 states are considering bills to start or expand vouchers, tax credit scholarships and/or education savings accounts. Florida is among them.

SB 48 would simplify the Sunshine State’s patchwork of choice scholarships, merging five into two, and converting four into education savings accounts. (The fifth, the Gardiner Scholarship for students with special needs, is already an ESA. And full disclosure: four of those programs are administered by Step Up For Students, the nonprofit that hosts this blog.) The bottom line is even more parents would have the flexibility they need “to look out for their individual children.”

I never thought I’d see the day when Randi Weingarten would be on the same page, even rhetorically, with choice folks. But truth be told, the choice movement has always had a big tent. I suspect that politically, she’d feel at home with many of the hundreds of thousands of parents, most of them black and Hispanic, whose children use the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship. Or the 1,400+ among them who are school district employees, including teachers like this one.

For what it’s worth, Ms. Weingarten wouldn’t be the first labor leader to embrace choice, either. Cesar Chavez, the legendary founder of the American Farm Workers, was a strong supporter of a Chicano freedom school that bloomed in the California desert in the 1970s – and, more broadly, for alternatives to district schools. Dozens of local union leaders in New York backed a school choice scholarship proposal in that state just a few years ago.

Closer to home, our president here at Step Up, Doug Tuthill, is a liberal Democrat and former president of two local teachers unions. Ms. Weingarten, if you’d ever like to chat about choice and equity and the future of teachers unions, I’m sure Doug would be game. 😊

In the meantime, thanks for what you told The New York Times. It’s spot on.

February 9, 2021 0 comment
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestLinkedinEmail
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • …
  • 74
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • RSS

© 2021 redefinED. All Rights Reserved.


Back To Top