F.A.C.E. to FACE   F.A.C.E. BULLETIN     October 3, 2008 Dear Friends, It was great to see so many of you at the school meetings. I have had great feedback on the legislative updates and issues that will be discussed at the trainings in the beginning of the year. Please continue to do your part to encouraged parents to fill out and return the student spotlights/success stories and recruit parents to get engaged. Please remember to fill one out also… The editor of Florida Trend, who publishes an editorial every month on the back page of the magazine and is widely read by influential people, wrote a great article, which references our program. This is a colossal development! Here's a provocative essay submitted by Braulio Colón, assistant director of ENLACE Florida. ENLACE (ENgaging Latino, African-American, and other Communities for Education) builds partnerships among universities, community colleges, K-12 schools, community-based organizations, students, and parents. ENLACE's mission is to promote college readiness, access and success for Latinos, African-Americans, and other under-represented students in Florida through research, communication, advocacy, and support. Thank you for Stepping Up For Students, Michael A. Benjamin Executive Director, F.A.C.E. Florida Alliance for Choices in Education The Power of School Choice By Mark R. Howard - 10/1/2008 The Florida Supreme Court may have removed two amendments relating to the use of vouchers in the public school system from the November ballot, but the issue of introducing more choice into the schools won’t go away, nor should it. I began wrestling with the idea of school choice 25 years ago in Tennessee, where I worked briefly for that state’s Department of Education. In a mostly rural county in east Tennessee, there were two school districts — one operated by a city, one by the county. The city district’s schools were superior — significantly so. Some provision allowed parents in the county to send their children to the city schools as long as they provided their own transportation. Several hundred families, a considerable number in that neck of the woods, made that choice. The district-switching families included many lower-income people who were more than willing to endure the expense and hardship of driving their children to a city school in exchange for a better education for their children. The governor of Tennessee back then, Lamar Alexander, talked of expanding parents’ ability to choose their children’s schools but didn’t get far — his political opponents conjured visions of choice leading down a slippery slope toward educational chaos and breaching the church-state wall. Many education officials who eagerly implemented other reforms Alexander pushed also were uncomfortable with expanding choice. So was I. It struck me, however, that several educators I respected said privately that choice was the most powerful force that could be brought to bear in pushing schools to innovate. Indeed, the county district began taking steps to improve so that fewer children would leave. The superiority of the city schools, it was clear, wasn’t a matter of funding, but rather one of higher standards and better management. Much of what I observed and learned about schools since then, including my two children’s experiences in public school, has pushed me steadily, if reluctantly, toward the choice camp. It’s simply not true, as teachers unions and school boards like to claim, that there’s not enough money. Nor is it true that innovations like charter schools or the use of vouchers represent a “diversion of resources” from public schools. A 2007 Collins Center report found that the Corporate Income Tax Credit Scholarship voucher program didn’t divert money from public schools and in fact produced some $140 million in savings — in effect, that program subsidized the education of the students who remained in the public system. The program allows companies to donate to a fund that qualified low-income children can use to attend private schools. Nor is it true that more widespread use of vouchers disadvantages low-income and/or minority children. Indeed, they are exactly those most likely to benefit from choice and those who are among the most hungry for it, as shown by Florida’s Corporate Income Tax Credit Scholarship and Opportunity Scholarship programs and others elsewhere. In Washington, D.C., an opportunity scholarship program for children from low-income families has drawn about four applications for each available scholarship since 2004. Those scholarships can be used to attend a private school in the district, which spends more than $14,000 per pupil (Florida spends about $8,000), but lags behind every other state on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, according to the Heritage Foundation. I am still troubled by church-state issues that choice creates — why should I as a taxpayer fund a religious education that orients the student toward showing up at my doorstep on Saturday morning to try to convert me? But the church-state wall is already Swiss-cheesy: Pre-kindergarten programs, Bright Futures and the McKay scholarships for students with disabilities all send taxpayer funds to private schools and institutions with religious affiliations. Nearly two-thirds of the money paid to participating private schools under the McKay program goes to religious schools, according to the Florida Department of Education. Groups like the ACLU that fight Opportunity Scholarships tooth and nail but look the other way on McKay and Bright Futures are either hypocritical or at best highly selective in their outrage. Perhaps the strongest argument for more choice in public education is the degree to which the public schools already have introduced elements of choice — International Baccalaureate programs, magnet schools, “fundamental” schools, alternative schools and charter schools. My daughter has thrived in an International Baccalaureate program that I would choose over any private education I could purchase in Pinellas County. To a large degree, market pressure — the threat that large numbers of middle-class and other parents would abandon the system — led to those innovations. The success of those approaches ought to make the public schools confident rather than fearful about their ability to compete in an environment with more choice. Educators do not get up in the morning and set their jaws with determination to go out and produce a 50% dropout rate or big percentages of students who can’t read at grade level. They don’t change because the system creates no incentive to change — innovation isn’t rewarded, and failure isn’t punished. And so if a privately operated public charter school wastes money or is ineffective, it has to do better or it closes. The same, however, is never true of the publicly operated school around the corner. And so blindingly incompetent teachers at my son’s middle school can teach pretty much what they choose, once tenured, with impunity. And so the school considers it more important to count and store textbooks at the end of the year than for students to have textbooks through the close of school. The school collects the students’ books with about two weeks of school left, and those last weeks tend to be filled with lots of video watching, class parties and farewells rather than instruction. It’s just one of a host of lessons that communicate to both students and teachers a lack of urgency or seriousness about learning. Meanwhile, barely more than half of the school’s eighth-graders meet state FCAT standards in reading; less than 40% meet the science standards. This is what critics of the public school system mean when they refer to school systems operating in the interests of buildings and employees rather than the children they are supposed to teach. Any monopoly — whether it’s a phone company, utility, newspaper or school system — can change and can improve the service or good it provides. But no monopoly tends to change much until its customers have choices and can take their business elsewhere. September 05, 2008 In search of stability they ask, "Where did our principal go?" As a youngster I always looked forward to the first day of school. I couldn't wait to see my friends again, stop by to say hello to my old teachers, meet my new teacher, and even stop by the office of the big chief on campus—my principal. To me, the first day of school was an exciting time, and I finally understand one of the reasons why. As someone who grew up poor in a single-parent household, I know what instability feels like to a child. It's something I tried to escape. The sense of not knowing what to expect next was a feeling I ran from, and the only place I could find refuge was at school. School was a place that made sense to me, a place that provided a system of normalcy, a system I could figure out and understand. Back then I didn't know why I liked it so much. Today I completely understand why many times I earned perfect attendance. I had to be there. School was the place I could thrive. It was a place where children from unstable backgrounds could form long-term and stable relationships with adults. These adults would actually be there again tomorrow and could actually articulate how proud they were of me when I achieved. It was a world where the adults poured all their attention on me and were not allowed to express their worries of unpaid bills, relationship problems, and neighborhood crime. I was their kid. Their focus was on my growth and on my academic achievement. I soaked it up. I loved the environment so much that as summer break approached, I found myself not as excited as some of the other kids because I knew that summer meant I must say good-bye to stability. Today, I believe that same stability I found within public schools is now much harder to find. Not only are poor children walking to school every morning escaping an unstable environment at home, but too many arrive at their school for the first day after a long summer asking, "Where did our school principal go?" and "Where's Mrs. Williams, my teacher from last year?" The fact is principals are being snatched up and placed at other schools after just one or two years while many of the best teachers also leave their old classroom to follow that same principal into a new one. I found this to be the case during a recent analysis of some of Florida's most critically low-performing schools. Most of these schools serve students from communities similar to the one where I grew up—communities where stability is nonexistent and is sought after by children as if it were ice cream. Unfortunately these same schools, all of them high-minority and poor, have revolving doors attached to their classrooms and front offices. They are all well above the state average in principal and teacher turnover. It seems like once a principal shows success at one high-minority school, she is yanked out, placed at another school, and asked to accomplish the same. It seems our school district administrators have forgotten how valuable a familiar face is to a child and how valuable long-term relationships and developed trust can be for our students. And we wonder why our dropout rate is so high? I now know that the reason I wanted to go school everyday as a child had everything to do with the familiar faces of school staff and my relationships with them—not just my classmates. Unfortunately today children in our poor communities are losing their teachers, their principals, and ultimately their only hope for stability. We need to do better. We must stop shuffling principals and teachers from one high-minority school to another as if they were "floating checks" used to improve a school's letter grade at the expense of the school they just left behind. Instead, let's train more school principals and teachers to fill the void within these schools and provide them with valuable incentives designed to keep them there long term. This is how we do better. This is how we encourage more students from poor communities to thrive and earn perfect attendance. Let's give them stability in every way possible. September 05, 2008 in Florida Education Policy The Step Up For Students (Corporate Income Tax Credit) scholarship program provides K-12 scholarships that currently allow almost 17,000 low-income Florida students to attend an eligible private school or out-of-district public school. One hundred percent of corporate contributions go directly to funding scholarships - not a single penny can be used for administrative costs.   School Year 08 - 09 Income Eligibility Guidelines Persons in Household New & Add-Ons (185%) Renewals (200%) 2 $25,900 $28,000 3 $32,560 $35,200 4 $39,220 $42,400 5 $45,880 $49,600 6 $52,540 $56,800 7 $59,200 $64,000 8 $65,860 $71,200 9 $72,520 $78,400 10 $79,180 $85,600 11 $85,840 $92,800 12 $92,500 $100,000 13 $99,160 $107,200       For each additional person, add $6,660 $7,200       Effective from June 1, 2008 to June 30, 2009

 

Florida Alliance for Choices in Education (F.A.C.E)

If you no longer want to receive this mailing or you wish to unsubscribe from
F.A.C.E mailings, please send an e-mail with "Unsubscribe" in the subject line to mbenjamin@flace.org.