News about Catholic schools in the U.S. usually isn't good. Rarely a week goes by without a headline about another one closing and, with it, a neighborhood institution that for generations brought high-quality education to often low-income families. So what a nice change to see another local story about a Catholic school in Tampa, for years on the brink of closing, making a comeback.

Thanks to hard work and grit and a growth in tax-credit scholarships. St. Peter Claver recruited 163 students this year, up from 102 las year, according to today's Bay News 9 (which also took this photo). Ninety percent received tax credit scholarships, which are only available to families who qualify for free- or reduced-price lunch.

Increasingly, St. Peter Claver isn't an anomaly. The Wall Street Journal reported in June that, "Fo the first time in decades, Catholic education is showing signs of life." It continued: "Driven by expanding voucher programs, outreach to Hispanic Catholics and donations by business leaders, Catholic schools in several major cities are swinging back from closures and declining enrollment."

On a related note, another Tampa Bay area Catholic school, Sacred Heart in Pinellas Park, is holding a celebration this weekend to highlight its new partnership with the Notre Dame ACE Academies. As we've written before, the Notre Dame group is moving to take Catholic schools to a higher level, and it is using a couple of Tampa Bay schools as a model. Tax credit scholarships are key to its efforts to boost enrollment, particularly among Hispanics.

On an education landscape with more private options, these are signs of healthy ferment.

There’s a ton of coverage of the teachers strike in Chicago today, but as we scan the headlines, it’s clear some education observers see plenty of upside for school choice.

More than 350,000 Chicago public school students were left without teachers, but not the 52,000 enrolled in the city’s charter schools.

Here’s the lead to a piece about that in yesterday’s Chicago Tribune:

Leslie Daniels enrolled her son in a Chicago charter school three years ago because she didn't like the education he was getting in his local neighborhood school.

In the back of her mind, she also knew the school was less likely to be affected by labor problems because its teachers are not members of the Chicago Teachers Union. That's an added benefit now that the union has called for its first walkout in 25 years. All of the city's charter schools will remain open Monday.

"I'm glad I made the switch," said Daniels, 55. "I feel for the other parents because a lot of them are working. What are their children going to be doing?"

Bloomberg editorial writer Tobin Harshaw picked up on that theme:

The charter schools are at the heart of the Chicago strike. For the union, a big sticking point has been the school board's insistence that teacher assessments be used for merit pay and to make it easier to fire bad teachers. (This summer the city had to return a $35 million federal teacher-incentive grant because union officials wouldn't agree on an evaluation system.)

Rewarding good teachers with financial bonuses and increased freedom in the classroom is a central tenet of the charter movement. It's a concept that will likely have new appeal to Chicago parents missing work today and sitting at home with idle children.

The Chicago Tribune editorial board, meanwhile, juxtaposed striking teachers with the new Brookings Institution study that found higher graduation rates among black students who received vouchers. Here's the full editorial. Here's the kicker: (more…)

Editor's note: This op-ed was published today by Sunshine State News.

Teacher tenure, performance pay and standardized tests often drive the Florida public education debate, but the quietest revolution may well be the growing legion of parents who now choose their children’s schools.

The learning menu in Florida keeps expanding, and nowhere is that trend more compelling than in Miami-Dade, the nation’s fourth-largest school district. For superintendent Alberto Carvalho, parental choice has become an operational credo.

“We are now working in an educational environment that is driven by choice,” Carvalho recently told a television reporter. “I believe that is a good thing. We need to actually be engaged in that choice movement. So if you do not ride that wave, you will succumb to it. I choose not to.”

Dade is setting a blistering pace. The number of students it accepted into magnet and choice programs last year – 39,369 – was larger than the total enrollment in each of 46 other school districts. But that only scratches the surface. An even larger number – 42,367 students – attended charter schools that were approved by the district, and another 22,000 were allowed to choose other public schools through “open enrollment” options. Nearly 15,000 students with meager incomes or learning disabilities chose scholarships to private schools. Continue reading here.

In this recent Los Angeles Times piece, education historian Jonathan Zimmerman (pictured here) credits Mitt Romney for offering a more ambitious education agenda than President Obama. The Republican's voucher plan, which would let students use government funding to attend  either private schools or public schools in other districts, "would take on the true sacred cow in American education: local control," Zimmerman writes.

But here's the part that really caught our eye: Zimmerman's reference to the progressive roots of school choice. We can't trumpet this theme enough, so here's the relevant excerpt:

Yet the plan does remind us of the radical potential of school vouchers, which are today blithely dismissed by liberals as a right-wing plot to gut public education. But vouchers once drew significant support from the left too, including from such luminaries as Harvard sociologist Christopher Jencks and urban muckraker Jonathan Kozol.

To Jencks, who crafted a 1970 report on the subject for Richard Nixon's White House, vouchers could help equalize American education if public as well as private schools were required to admit a certain fraction of low-income students. And the vouchers would have to be distributed progressively, with the poorest kids getting the biggest tuition assistance.

The Jencks report represented a high-water mark of bipartisanship for vouchers, which have sparked nasty political divisions ever since. Despite court rulings to the contrary, many Democrats insist that public vouchers used in parochial schools violate the separate of church and state. They also claim that vouchers hurt public schools by skimming off the best students, although a long-term voucher experiment in Milwaukee shows little evidence of that.

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?”

DNC: President Obama suggests Mitt Romney would gut education spending, but avoids mention of Race to the Top (redefinEd). (Image from Minnesota.publicradio.org) Panel discussions sponsored by Democrats for Education Reform highlight the battle within the party over education policy (redefinED). Teachers union leaders promise to campaign hard for Obama, despite difference over teacher evaluations, charter schools and other policies. (Education Week)

Florida: The new chair of the state Board of Education helped bring the KIPP charter school network to Florida (redefinED).

North Carolina: The state board of education authorizes the opening of 25 more charter schools next year. (Associated Press)

California: The Los Angeles school district, which has more charter schools than any district in the country, is scheduled to discuss a moratorium on new ones. (Los Angeles Times)

Indiana: Republican gubernatorial candidate Mike Pence unveils an education agenda that includes expanding vouchers, but it's light on details. (Associated Press)

Pennsylvania: Cyber charter school are growing rapidly in the state, creating tensions with traditional school districts. (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)

Tennessee: The state education commissioner blasts a privately-owned online school for its test results, calling them "demonstrably poor." (TheLeafChronicle.com)

New Mexico: The state's first virtual charter school begins classes. (Santa Fe New Mexican)

Should Florida’s next education commissioner be committed to the success of all students, no matter what type of educational setting they’re in? Or to public school students first and foremost?

State Rep. Reggie Fullwood, D-Jacksonville, believes it should be the latter. He issued a statement to that effect Friday, following the state Board of Education’s official launch of a search to replace Gerard Robinson, who left at the end of August.

“It is gratifying that the State Board of Education appears to be making it a priority to hire a commissioner who is committed to obtaining the input of parents and education stakeholders as future education reforms are contemplated,” Fullwood’s statement said “However, it is disappointing that the Board, by its actions today, remains anxious to hire yet another advocate for private-schools vouchers or a proponent of private virtual school operators. I believe Floridians expect our next state education commissioner to be committed – first and foremost — to Florida’s public schools and public school students.”

It's not clear what board actions prompted Fullwood's conclusion about voucher advocacy. But Fullwood, who sits on two education committees in the House, recently penned his criticism for school choice in a letter to the Jacksonville newspaper. “In Florida,” he wrote, “we have bet the house on vouchers and charter schools.”

As we noted Friday, the state board elected a new chair Friday – Gary Chartrand, a Jacksonville businessman who was instrumental in bringing the first (and so far only) KIPP charter school to Florida. As we have noted before, the Duval County School District, which encompasses the city of Jacksonville, has had less success with low-income students than any other urban district in Florida.

Editor's note: The debate over school choice might be less tense if we heard more from the parents, teachers and principals who have decided an alternative setting is best. Nadia Hionides, who recently penned a heartfelt letter to The Beaches Leader newspaper in Jacksonville Beach, Fla., offers a good example. Hionides runs The Foundation Academy private school in Jacksonville, where about 90 of 280 students benefit from tax credit scholarships for low-income students. As her letter shows, her goals aren't privatization and profits; they're justice, equity and diversity. She credits Florida's two K-12 private-option programs - tax credit scholarships (administered by Step Up For Students) and McKay scholarships for disabled students - with helping her school reach those schools. Below is her letter. Hat tip to Elizabeth Watson, Step Up's director of operations support services, for sending the letter our way.

I am an educator for 35 years, a school owner and principal for 25 years.

I came into the profession to help promote equity and justice in America.

We are all unique and creative beings. There is no one size fits all way of learning and growing into  successful, compassionate, well-adjusted people.

I cannot think of a better way to promote equity and justice in education than through the Step Up/McKay scholarships.

These scholarships not only equalize the playing field economically but allows those in poverty to enhance the lives of the economically privileged by being in the same private schools.

We all gain in a diverse environment. We all lose in segregated settings.

Myself, my students, my  teachers and my community are all blessed through this amazing scholarship.

No child left behind can be accomplished if all private schools participate.

Only in the diversity of private school choices, along with public school, can we meet the diversity in children and achieve successful, well-educated, globally competitive students.

I am privileged to be part of something that changes lives.

Fresh from Sean Cavanagh at Education Week, after interviewing Michelle Rhee at the DNC:

Rhee was skeptical of Republican challenger Mitt Romney's proposal to allow parents to use federal Title I and special-education money for private school vouchers.

While Rhee backs vouchers for impoverished students in academically struggling schools, she said there were far better strategies for large-scale school improvement than Romney's plan.

Universal voucher plans are not financially feasible, Rhee argued, especially given the state of the economy.

And a large-scale voucher plan like Romney is "only a sliver of what should be happen to fix the system," she said. "Unless you have a comprehensive set of policies, then that in and of itself is not going to have much of any impact.

Doug Tuthill's take on Michelle Rhee and her school choice evolution here. Researcher Matthew Ladner's take here.

Newark Mayor Cory Booker, a star in the Democratic Party, is already considered a future presidential candidate. But he is also an unflinching supporter of private school vouchers. In a rousing speech at the DNC tonight, he moved delegates with his lines on education: "You should be able to afford health care for your family. You should be able to retire with dignity and respect. And you should be able to give your children the kind of education that allows them to dream even bigger, go even farther and accomplish even more than you could ever imagine."

Booker didn't even hint at vouchers or private schools. The Democrats aren't ready. How long before they are?