Lisa Falkenberg, columnist for the Houston Chronicle Lisa Falkenberg’s latest column in the Houston Chronicle contains many of the familiar arguments against school choice: it doesn’t benefit students (yes it does), public schools must educate everyone (no they don’t, no they don’t, no they don’t), poor kids won’t get into elite private schools (yes they can, yes they can, yes they can). So maybe its headline, “Can Dan Patrick champion the poor and vouchers in the same breath?” should come as no surprise.
I understand newspaper reporters and columnists don’t always write the titles of their pieces, but that is kind of like asking if you can hold your breath while swimming under water.
Lisa Falkenberg
Sure, Patrick, a Republican candidate for lieutenant governor of Texas, isn’t your quintessential social justice warrior, but he wasn’t wrong when he argued minority students would benefit from school choice. In fact, the “voucher” model he’s looking to bring to Texas is similar to Florida’s tax credit scholarship program (which is administered by nonprofits like Step Up For Students, which co-hosts this blog.)
More than two thirds of the students in the Florida program are black or Hispanic, half come from single-family homes and their average household income is 5 percent above the poverty level. And as we’ve noted many times before, the evidence shows these students are now making solid academic progress.
Jeremy Klaszus
According to Jeremy Klaszus, school choice in Calgary, Canada is ruining his local neighborhood. He writes,
“In our neighbourhood, kids who have grown up playing together from infancy onward are now scattered every which way, attending different schools.
As a result, the kids don’t see each other as much and neither do the parents. The social fabric of our neighbourhood is weaker.”
Klaszus’s annual bus pass also went up $35 and that is too great a cost for him, but I digress.
Klaszus is nostalgic for a past where people never traveled more than a few miles from their home (if at all), and he’s worried about kids not playing together if they don’t go to school together. But let’s be clear: If parents are willing to drive their kids across town to school (or spend an extra $35 on a bus pass), they probably don’t hesitate to walk their kids across the street to play with the neighbor’s kids.
Even if they don’t, what is wrong with kids playing with kids from other neighborhoods?
Arizona: A bill to allow children of military service members killed in action to become eligible for Empowerment Scholarship Accounts passes into law (Watchdog). Gov. Jan Brewer vetoes a bill to allow owners of S-Corps to receive individual tax credits for donations to scholarship funding organizations, but signs two bills related to Empowerment Scholarship Accounts (Arizona Republic, Associated Press).
California: Two Democrats battle for leadership of California's K-12 system: one backed by the establishment and the other backed by education reformers (Reuters).
Colorado: The school choice oriented school board in Jefferson County looks to provide more equity for charter school funding (Denver Post). Fewer students get their first choice in Denver's public school choice program (Chalkbeat).
D.C.: The D.C.Public Charter School Board hears proposals for eight new charter schools (Washington Post).
Delaware: A charter school principal says charter schools were meant to help improve the quality of public education but not intended to simply duplicate public schools (The News Journal).
Florida: The senate revives a plan to expand the tax-credit scholarship program, but the senate's version is less ambitious than the House version (Education Week, Tampa Bay Times, Florida Current, The Ledger, WFSU, Palm Beach Post, Naples News, Highlands Today, GTN News, St. Augustine Record, redefinED). William Mattox, an education researcher at the James Madison Institute, argues that private schools already face greater accountability because parents, and donors, can leave at any time (Daytona Beach News-Journal). A local public school PTA president favors school choice and says the legislature should expand options, not deny them (Tampa Tribune). The Palm Beach Post editorial board opposes expanding tax-credit scholarship eligibility from 230 percent of poverty to 260 percent because that now represents the middle class. The Orlando Sentinel editorial board opposes expanding the tax-credit scholarships without more accountability, which the editorial board defines as taking the exact same test as public school students. The Tampa Bay Times editorial board believes it is hypocritical to require the FCAT of public schools and students but not of private school students on scholarship. A private school principal says she supports school choice in all its forms because schools that work for one child may not work well for another (Context Florida). A tax-credit scholarship mom says she is thankful for a program that helps build a future for her children and others (Daytona Beach News-Journal). (more…)
