Editor’s note: Doug Tuthill responds today to a post I wrote yesterday about the failure of school districts and teachers unions to enact meaningful differential pay plans for teachers – and how that’s indicative of a bigger failure to help low-income students.

Ron, you raised some excellent points in your blog post about the unwillingness of the Pinellas County, Fla. school district to provide each student with equal access to a quality education. For nine years, I received supplemental pay to work in a magnet program that served the district’s academic elite, and for 11 years I was a leader in the local teachers union, which was complicit in the district’s refusal to provide equal opportunity. So your criticisms stung, but they were accurate.

This may be self-serving, but I’m convinced the cause of this leadership failure is not bad people, but an organizational structure and culture that favors the politically strong over the politically weak.

Growing up in Pinellas, I attended segregated public schools. When the federal courts finally forced the school district to desegregate, the focus was on ratios and not learning. The district closed most of the black neighborhood schools and bused those children to schools in the white neighborhoods because busing white students into black neighborhoods was too politically difficult. But white flight meant some forced busing of white students was necessary, so the district created a rotation system that bused low-income/working class white students every two years to schools where the black population approached 30 percent.  (The court order said no Pinellas school could be more than 30 percent black.)

While working-class white neighborhoods lacked the political clout to prevent their children from being bused every two years, their protests were loud enough to force the school board to look for alternatives. In the early 1980s, the district started creating magnet programs to entice white families to voluntarily attend schools that were in danger of exceeding the 30 percent threshold.

These magnet programs were designed to provide white students with a superior education. Class sizes were small, textbook and materials budgets seemed unlimited, professional development opportunities were extraordinary and special pay supplements to attract the best teachers were impressive. In my case, when I quit my job as a college professor to teach in the International Baccalaureate (IB) at St. Petersburg High School (SPHS), my annual salary increased 28 percent.

The magnet strategy worked - especially the IB program. Affluent white families began voluntarily busing their children to attend our program, and in many cases students got on buses at 5 a.m. and rode over 50 miles per day to attend.

Unfortunately, desegregation via magnet schools increased the resource inequities that desegregation was suppose to reduce. (more…)

by Lynn Norman-Teck

Many factors have helped nourish and grow the charter school movement. There are forward-thinking legislators, both Democrats and Republicans, who worked together to approve legislation that supported parental choice. There are governors who made quality education a priority of their administrations. There are thousands of teachers and principals who used tried and tested curriculum, and also developed innovative educational programs to meet the specific needs of their students. There are charter school founders who collaborated with mayors, teachers, parents and community leaders to implement educational programs to reach communities and students most in need. And of course, there are school district leaders and board members who provided the necessary feedback and support to create quality choice programs.

However, when you put all these components together, and look at the trajectory of growth and incredible successes charter schools have experienced, there is no denying that parents are the movement’s most powerful, driving force.

Absolutely nothing has impacted charter schools more than parents. Without their buy-in and continued support, charter schools simply would not exist. The early charter school adopters were living in suburban areas where districts hadn’t built schools to meet residential sprawl. These parents sought schools close to home and helped forge the way for some of the state’s first and most accomplished charter schools. Urban families unable to afford private schools, yet searching for quality options, also jumped on board. Soon, charter schools were the hot topic of conversation at playgrounds and on the sidelines of little league games. This quiet, thoughtful revolution happened in every corner of the state. Parents shared information about their experiences, and their testaments fueled others to give charter schools a try.

Ileana Melian helped start Doral Academy, a charter elementary school in Miami, in 1998. She recalls with great affection the overwhelming support parents gave her school.  “Our opening was a collaborative effort,” she said.  “Parents rallied behind us at community meetings and were there the first day we opened to help in the cafeteria, direct traffic and support staff in a thousand ways. They were very much a part of our birth and our continued success.” Those parents later demanded, and got, a charter middle and high school.

Empowered by choice and the desire to find the best education option for their child, in little over a decade parental support grew charter schools from five in 1997 to more than 500 today. In 2010, parents took a bold step forward in their support of charter schools. (more…)

Editor’s note: The McKay Scholarship Program for students with disabilities has on occasion been criticized because it does not require that student progress be measured with a standardized test. Robyn Rennick with the Coalition of McKay Scholarship Schools argues that such a policy would be ineffective and counterproductive.

The McKay Scholarship is quite different from tax credit scholarships in Florida or other programs that are working with the general student population. All recipients of McKay Scholarships have diagnosed disabilities and had either an Individual Education Plan or 504 Plan in the public school. Therefore, by definition, they are a unique group of students with all types of disabilities from low cognitive functioning, to autism, to learning disabilities.

The issue of requiring standardized testing was thoroughly investigated and discussed prior to crafting the initial legislation to create the McKay Scholarship. Legislators determined it was an inappropriate measure of accountability. The testing issue was brought up again between 2004 and 2006 when the accountability bill for scholarship programs was being crafted. Legislators again saw the inappropriateness of this type of testing and did not place it the legislation. They recognized that the “one size fits all” approach to testing is wrong for this population of students.

How do you test such a diverse  population? What standardized test measures the growth of a severely non-verbal autistic child whose progress may be measured in gaining 40 words in a year and in being able to sit appropriately for five minutes? What standardized test measures the progress of a developmentally disabled child who is learning proper hygiene? Placing these children in a standardized test format would never show the immense progress they may have made that year, compared to where they were. It would also be a cruel exercise to make the children follow.

What of the learning disabled students? Shouldn’t standardized testing be used to show their progress?  When the Coalition of McKay Scholarship Schools surveyed its members, we found more than 50 percent of the schools did use a standardized test, especially those serving the learning disabled population. However, what is also typical is these students often enter the private schools three or four years behind their peers on standardized test scores. If a student only “gains” a year on the standardized test, they are still behind. Has the school failed?

We have seen the controversy in our public system as to whether “experts” agree that standardized tests really show whether a school is working. From a research basis, for scores to be compared, the population has to be similar. As we have already noted, the McKay population is extremely diverse. Also, the population has to be large enough to develop an aggregate score. Forty-five percent of schools with McKay students have 10 or fewer students. No researcher would validate aggregate scores from such a small group of subjects. Even in a school with 100 students, the diversity of the groups would not allow for a true picture. So to require standardized testing which is reported to DOE, and then to craft a “research report” from that, would be the most flawed research and a tremendous waste of everyone’s effort, time and money.

This is a parent choice program. Parents are the consumers. They can leave if their children’s needs are not being met. (more…)

Beginning Monday, we have a special treat for you at redefinED - commentary about how far we've come with school choice in Florida, and where we may be headed.

The prompt for this came at an April meeting of the Florida Alliance for Choices in Education, which includes many of the state’s choice groups. An alliance member noted the national spotlight had shifted in recent years to states like Indiana and Louisiana. Had Florida, so long on the cutting edge of the choice movement, lost some of its mojo?

Clearly, Florida remains a national leader and a national model. But the comment made us wonder. What will school choice in Florida look like in five or 10 years? How do we best continue expanding options so students benefit?

We turned to former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Education Commissioner Gerard Robinson and other leading voices for choice and asked. Graciously, they offered their thoughts and visions, which we’ll be running all next week.

Individually, the contributions are thoughtful and thought provoking. Collectively, they offer the outlines of a bigger picture – not just of the future of school choice in Florida, but of the future of public education.

First up on Monday: Commissioner Robinson.

Editor's note: Behind all the blog posts about school choice policies and politics, there are real kids and families who benefit from vouchers, tax credit scholarships, charter schools and other expanded learning options. This morning we highlight a student profiled by the talented folks in the Step Up For Students marketing department. This blog is proudly affiliated with Step Up, the non-profit that administers tax credit scholarships to 39,000 low-income students in Florida.

When Luis Aponte Jr. was profiled as an eighth grader for Step Up For Students in 2007, he dreamt of becoming a pursuing a college education.  Now in 2012, there’s no denying that he has achieved his dream and more.

Luis’ graduation from Liberty Christian Academy in 2011 marked the culmination of years of academic diligence, hard work and perseverance: he was the valedictorian of his senior class.

Throughout his school career – first at a neighborhood school and later in private school – Luis made it a priority to study hard and earn top grades. While other students may have been satisfied with earning A’s and B’s, Luis was determined to never see anything lower than an A on his report card.

True to his goal, Luis left Liberty as one of its few students to earn straight A’s, said Lynda Fleming, his former guidance counselor. “He was hardest on himself,” she said. “He’s definitely a peer model for several students, still.”

Luis’ father knew from his own experiences in life that not all schools can fulfill the needs of each child, and he was eager to give his son the opportunity to achieve his dreams. Luis, Sr., grew up attending neighborhood schools. His parents dreamed of sending him to private school, but couldn’t afford the tuition. After years of longing, though, his parents finally were able to send him to private school during his senior year of high school. That one year was a life-changing experience for Luis Sr. that he knew he wanted someday for his children.

Unfortunately it seemed that Luis, Jr. and his brother Jonach would never get the chance to attend a private school and fulfill their father’s dream. But in 2002, Luis, Sr. and his wife Carmen learned that the family met the program’s qualifications and the boys were enrolled in a private school as Step Up scholars. Luis’ parents saw this as an opportunity to put him in a private school that would provide a challenging learning environment – something they did not feel he was receiving in the public school system.  (more…)

John Kirtley, chairman of Step Up for Students and one of the hosts here at redefinED, offered some thoughts on parental choice and parental empowerment over at Fordham's Board's Eye View blog today. Here's a taste:

Parents must be truly empowered, however. They can’t just be empowered to choose charters, as some reformers believe. In most states, there is a surprisingly large inventory of private schools that are already serving low-income children. In some of these places there are few charters—sometimes (but not always) because the district is slow to authorize them. In Duval County, Florida, for instance, the district has only thirteen charters despite its large size (over 150,000 students). And not all of them serve low-income children. By contrast, there are over 100 private schools in the county that serve low-income children under the state’s tax credit scholarship program.