The school choice movement is growing because of real parents with real children, with real needs, who are seeing real benefits. In this video from Louisiana BAEO, parent LeAnn Mason talks about the upside of the voucher program in Louisiana, which is facing a constitutional challenge from the state teachers unions.

Mason said one of her children was in a public school where she endured a string of substitute teachers for two months. To get her to a better school, Mason sent her to live with relatives.

To help another child, Mason used a private school voucher. Now "my baby's reading ... she's blossoming," she said. "And this means a lot to me because this is going to help my children come out of poverty. This is going to help my children do things that I was not able to do."

Mason makes her case far better than I can. Please watch the video.

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…)

Now this is a story. The piece about Louisiana's voucher program in today's New Orleans Times-Picayune is paced with real parents, talking about the real needs of their kids - and how the voucher program, under legal assault, has helped them meet those needs. The lead alone should be enough to move even the most detached reader into understanding why there is real fear and rising anger about what the future may bring.

The story also contains moving words from Eric Lewis, director of Louisiana BAEO: "No one is talking about how I drive by boys every day who are headed to jail because they've given up on getting an education," Lewis tells the parents, "but there are people who wake up every morning with the intent of killing this program."

"How mad are you?" he asks at one point. "You're going to have to get even madder."

Two more months. As expected, the Florida Board of Education decided this morning to extend the search for a new education commissioner. The board discussed the issue for about three minutes before voting unanimously in favor of a new timeline.

The original deadline for applications, Sept. 27, had drawn 16 candidates through last Friday, but no big names in ed reform and school choice circles. The new deadline is Nov. 30.

Several board members made brief reference this morning to candidate quality.

If the candidates are not "up to the level we have set - which is a very high level - I would like to have the flexibility to, if needed, to extend the deadline (again) or take other appropriate action," said board member Roberto Martinez of Miami. "I assume that would be implicit in all this."

Yes, said board chair Gary Chartrand: "We're not going to lower our standards here. And Bob, if we're not satisfied with the results, at that point in time, I think we certainly have the right to push that date out further."

The new timeline: (more…)

The Florida Board of Education is expected this week to extend its search for a new education commissioner, marking the second time in as many years it has done so amidst mutterings that the initial pool is mediocre.

Through Friday, the board had received 16 applications to replace former Commissioner Gerard Robinson, a former head of the Black Alliance for Educational Options who left at the end of August. The deadline for applications is Thursday, but the board has scheduled an emergency conference call Tuesday to consider a new deadline.

The applications to date do not include any big names in ed reform circles, echoing what happened last year during the initial search for the previous commissioner. At that time, the board was seeking to replace highly regarded former Commissioner Eric J. Smith, who was pushed out by newly elected Gov. Rick Scott.

Robinson, then the ed commissioner in Virginia, applied after the deadline was extended. His brief tenure in Florida was dogged by problems with the state’s testing and school grading system, and by the biggest blowback to the state accountability regimen since the tenure of Gov. Jeb Bush.

Robinson’s replacement will be Florida’s fifth commissioner in eight years. Voters approved a constitutional amendment in 1998 to better insulate the position from shifting political winds, but it hasn’t worked out that way. Smith was hired in 2007 after newly elected Gov. Charlie Crist nudged out former Commissioner John Winn, a Bush ally. Scott is up for re-election in 2014.

Two of the 16 candidates have strong, obvious ties to school choice. (more…)

Sad but true: The other day, one of Louisiana’s statewide teachers unions tweeted that the Black Alliance for Educational Options, the stand-up school choice group, supports “KKK vouchers.” It subsequently tweeted, “Tell everyone you know.” (Details here.)

Even sadder but true: This wasn’t an isolated event. In recent months, critics of school choice and education reform have time and again made similar statements and claims – trying to tie Florida’s school accountability system to young black men who murder in Miami, for instance, and in Alabama, trying to link charter schools to gays and Muslims.

But this is also sad but true: Reform supporters sometimes go way too far, too.

Late last week, the Sunshine State News published a story about two Haitian-American Democratic lawmakers in South Florida, both strong backers of school choice, who narrowly lost primary races to anti-choice Democrats. The story quoted, at length, an unnamed political consultant who sounded sympathetic to the arguments raised by school choice supporters. He made fair points about the influence of the teachers union in the Democratic Party; about racial tensions that rise with Democrats and school choice; about a double standard with party leaders when Dems accuse other Dems of voter fraud. But then he said this:

“It’s a kind of ethnic cleansing of the Democratic Party,” he said, according to the report, “centered on the interests of the teachers’ unions.”

School choice critics may often be wrong;  their arguments may at times be distorted and inconsistent. But to brand their motivations with a term that evokes Rwanda and Bosnia is more than off-key. It’s repulsive. It’s also a distraction and counterproductive.

I’m floored by extreme statements from ed reform critics. In the past couple of months alone, a leading Florida parents group accused state education officials of using the school accountability system to purposely “hurt children”; a left-wing blogger described John E. Coons, a Berkeley law professor and redefinED co-host, as a “John Birch Society type” because of his support for parental school choice; and other critics used fringe blogs and mainstream newspapers alike to shamelessly tar Northwestern University economist David Figlio, a meticulous education researcher who is not only widely respected by fellow researchers on all sides of the school choice debate but is so highly regarded beyond the world of wonkery that he was cited as a prime example of this state’s “brain drain” when he left the University of Florida. I’m further stumped by how such statements are rarely challenged by mainstream media, and by how more thoughtful critics simply shrug and look the other way.

Attacks like these make me want to say, “At long last, have you left no sense of decency?” But then, at less regular intervals, statements like the ethnic cleansing quote come up and knock reformers off the high road. I’m left with a less satisfying response: “Can’t we all just get along?”

Florida: State education commissioner Gerard Robinson, a former president of the Black Alliance for Educational Options, resigns amidst tumult over the state's accountability system (Tampa Bay Times). Robinson says the move was for family reasons (Tampa Bay Times). Critics of Florida's education reforms see an opportunity to change direction (News Service of Florida).

Louisiana: There are far more applicants than seats available in Louisiana's new voucher program, leaving thousands of parents and students out of luck. (New Orleans Times-Picayune)

Wisconsin: Private school vouchers are a central issue in a Democratic primary for a state assembly seat in Milwaukee. (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)

Maine: On the birthday of school choice champion Milton Friedman, choice proponents in Maine promise another legislative push for an expansion of learning options. (Bangor Daily News)

Mississippi: Gov. Phil Bryant pushes for charter schools as part of his education reform package (Jackson Clarion Ledger). Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves also says he'll continue pushing for legislation to boost charter schools despite the failure of a charter school proposal during the last session (Memphis Commercial Appeal).

North Carolina: The state board of education is set to consider allowing 25 new charter schools across 13 counties next year. (Associated Press)

South Carolina: Parents and teachers talk up the positives of a new charter school in the Myrtle Beach area. (Myrtle Beach Online)

Nevada: A state lawmaker proposes a voucher bill that would give parents half of the state's per-student funding to send their children to private schools. (Las Vegas Review Journal)

The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools said today that its president, Peter C. Groff, is leaving to join the national staff of the Black Alliance for Educational Options. Groff, who was the first African American to serve as Colorado's senate president, will direct BAEO's legislative outreach efforts. Specifically, BAEO leaders say, Groff will focus on leadership development with black elected officials and form stronger coalitions with traditional civil rights organizations and other groups on issues relevant to education reform. While they didn't specifically name groups like the NAACP or the Urban League, these organizations are generally averse to the public and means-tested private educational options embraced by BAEO.

Kevin P. Chavous, a former Washington, D.C., councilman and board chairman of the Black Alliance for Educational Options, reflects on the NAACP's fight against school closures and charter school expansions in New York City, in light of a Harlem rally of parents urging the civil rights group to drop its opposition. Writing in The Washington Post, Chavous asks how we got to the point "that the country's foremost civil rights organization is the target of a protest by the people it was created to serve?"

Elegantly, Chavous adds:

As an African American growing up in the ’60s, I revered the NAACP. I will never forget when my mother took me to a NAACP-League of Women Voters rally at Butler University in Indianapolis, my hometown. My mother was active in both groups, which, at that time, were protesting the presence of Alabama Gov. George Wallace on Butler’s campus. Wallace was an avowed segregationist who famously stood in the doorway of the University of Alabama to block the entrance of its first black students, Vivian Malone and James Hood. Only 7 at the time, I distinctly remember carrying a sign that I pointed in Wallace’s face. I don’t recall what the sign said, but I knew he didn’t want boys like me to get an education. As the police pushed me aside, my mother and her fellow protesters praised me for marching like a man for equal rights. Later, when my parents sat me down to give me my own NAACP membership card, I was proud beyond words.

I reflected on that time when I saw a photo of young black students at the Harlem march against the NAACP. I could see myself in one of those photos — a boy standing with his mom, holding a sign and making a statement in support of his future. I couldn’t help but see the irony: me marching with the NAACP against Wallace, and today’s children marching against the NAACP. It just shows that black parents will fight for the progress and quality education that their kids deserve — no matter who is standing in the way.