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Letters to the Editor, Chicago Tribune

Anti-charter proposals

This is in response to “Charter envy; As N.Y. boosts school choice for students and parents, Illinois ponders a ‘death knell'” (Editorial, April 7). I regret to inform the Tribune Editorial Board that its painstaking admission wasn’t necessary because, with respect to charter schools, there’s not a lot in the state budget agreement of which to be envious.

Contrary to media reports and notes of congratulations directed at New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, New York’s budget is not “charter-friendly.” Instead, the budget looks out for a select few charters in New York City, as other charter schools across the state remain subject to a continued spending freeze and funding inequity.

New York’s charter school law, however, should cause envy as Illinois’ charter school law pales in comparison. The absence of multiple, independent charter authorizers that have a proven track record of producing quality is a major impediment to a thriving Illinois charter sector, which relies a great deal on local control.

The onslaught of anti-charter-school proposals under consideration in Springfield is troubling and should be cause for concern among parents currently seeking out better educational options for their children. Lawmakers should be focused on enacting lasting and structural changes so charters and the students they serve are protected from unfavorable budgets and rogue legislation.

— Kara Kerwin, president, Center for Education Reform, Washington

Lorean Heal, The Heartland Institute

Every year, parents across the country camp out and line up to get their kids into good schools. Some have even risked jail terms.

This year, Plano Texas parents pitched tents in freezing temperatures to be among the first to list their kids to transfer out of their school district. Parents in Chandler, Arizona camped out for a full weekend to get their kids into a magnet school. Berkley, California, like many other districts, hires home inspectors to check that kids flagged as potential line-hoppers actually live in the district’s attendance zone.

In 2013-14, 308,650 students were enrolled in private choice programs across the country, according to the Alliance for School Choice. That’s approximately 0.6 percent of K-12 students.

“There is a history in U.S. education of parents trying to get the best education for their children,” said Center for Education Reform President Kara Kerwin. “My parents worked around the clock to put me and my three older sisters through Catholic education in Buffalo, New York, when our traditional public schools were not doing well.“

Kerwin mentioned Kelley Williams Bolar, an Ohio mother who in 2011 faced jail time for falsifying her address to enroll her kids in a better school district.

Pent-Up Public Demand
Approximately 1 million kids are on charter school waitlists nationwide, according to the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.

“The policy environment does not meet that demand,” Kerwin said. “As it stands, only about 5 percent of all schoolchildren have access or are enrolled in schools of choice.”

Some programs labeled choice actually limit it, Kerwin said, such as “universal lotteries” for public schools. In these, districts ultimately decide where a child will attend, “and that goes against the premise that parents should be able to choose.”

One of the nation’s largest choice programs, Florida’s tax-credit scholarships for low-income children, stopped keeping tabs on how many more kids wanted the scholarships than got them because it was disheartening. This year, some 114,000 kids have applied for approximately half that many spots.

“Almost all of the parents of scholarship children make a sacrifice to get their kids into the right school,” said Patrick Gibbons, spokesman Step Up for Students, which runs the scholarships.  “Since the scholarship is worth up to $4,880, most parents must pay a little out of pocket….We hear stories from parents about turning down raises in order to remain eligible for the scholarship.”

Homeschoolers Threatened
When homeschooling resurrected in the 1970s and 80s, many parents were jailed or threatened with jail for choosing that form of education.

“I became an attorney because my parents were jailed for home schooling me,” Rick Brueggemann, a candidate for circuit judge, told the audience at a FreePAC Kentucky event April 5. “Mostly what I see is if parents can’t arrange to have their children in a really good parochial school, they’re home schooling.”

Brueggerman says public education should give families freedom through school vouchers or education savings accounts.

Getting into Pre-K
“My wife went through some crazy antics to get our then-toddler into a pre-K daycare,” said Paul Croteau, a Texas dad. “We’re talking getting up at 4 a.m., waiting in line at 5 a.m., just to get a spot…We’re not talking about getting a spot in school, but to get your name on the signup list.

Croteau’s daughter is in eighth grade now, and he and his wife are trying to decide where she’ll attend high school.

“We actually started to social network, finding parents who are in the schools already and then milking them for as much information as we can,” he said. “’What did you do to get into that school? Who do I need to know to help move my application in? Who should I contact when? What activities are they looking for?’”

For some private schools, getting in is like applying to college, he noted.

“They want to see grades. They want to see activities. They want to see your fundraising efforts in the past. They want to see not only what the student has done, but also what have you as the parent done for your school?…It’s very, very difficult these days.”

Elizabeth Harrington, The Washington Free Beacon

A federal court has rejected attempts by the Justice Department to scrap Louisiana’s school choice program, ending a months-long battle between the state and the Obama administration.

U.S. District Court Judge Ivan Lemelle ruled Tuesday evening that the Louisiana Scholarship Program can go on as planned, as long as the state provides information to the DOJ on vouchers 10 days prior to their award.

The judge did not grant the DOJ’s request to be able to deny vouchers on an individual basis. The vouchers are used by the families of students who attend failing public schools to pay for tuition at private institutions.

Gov. Bobby Jindal (R.) called the ruling a “win for children and their parents.”

“Today is a great day for school choice and access to an opportunity for a better education for all Louisianians,” he said. “I am pleased that the court rejected President Obama’s Justice Department’s attempt to establish a review period where bureaucrats in Washington would be able to reject scholarship awards solely because the child is not the ‘right’ skin color.”

The ruling rejected the DOJ’s request for a 45-day review period for all vouchers and will not disrupt the program, simply shortening the second round of scholarship awards by 10 days. The first round of vouchers for the 2014-2015 school year are scheduled for distribution April 21.

Attorney General Eric Holder also praised the ruling, and reiterated his claim that the DOJ was only “seeking information” on the voucher program.

“We welcome the court’s order as it rejects the state’s bid to resist providing even the most basic information about how Louisiana’s voucher program will affect school desegregation efforts,” Holder said. “This ruling ought to resolve, once and for all, the unnecessary dispute initiated by the state’s refusal to provide data.”

The DOJ had requested a permanent injunction against the program last August, which would have required all vouchers to be pre-approved by a federal judge.

Louisiana will have to provide the federal government with data on applicants, including name, race, student I.D. number, address, and the public school district the student would be fleeing. The DOJ can challenge whether a school is “impeding desegregation” under the 1975 court ruling Brumfield v. Dodd, an authority the agency has always held.

Additionally, on Thursday the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned an earlier ruling by Judge Lemelle that blocked parents of voucher students from intervening in the case. Lemelle had sided with the DOJ, which filed a motion last fall arguing that parents whose kids have benefited from the program had no legal standing to become defendants in the case. The government said the parents’ interest in the lawsuit was “remote.”

The appeals court ruled that parents do have an interest in any lawsuit that “threatens a ‘prospective interference with’ educational opportunities.” While the five families who sued to intervene in the case will not be heard due to the case’s conclusion this week, the Fifth Circuit ruling will allow parents to become defendants in the future should the DOJ challenge the program again.

“The purported aim of the United States is to enforce the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment,” the Fifth Circuit Court said. “If any group can be described as within the zone of interest protected by that clause, surely it is these mostly minority parents who believe that the best way to ensure equal protection of the laws is to give them the opportunity—along with other parents who live in poverty and whose children are in failing schools—to send their children to better schools.”

Jindal said Louisiana would resist further attacks on the program, which primarily serves minority students who attend C, D, or F rated schools. Nearly 7,000 students received vouchers this school year.

“We have learned from this lawsuit the potential dangers of federal government overreach in K-12 education,” he said. “We will remain vigilant that the Department of Justice will not take advantage of the information sharing process and use it as means to further obstruct school choice.  We will continue to oppose any attempts to impede children and their parents from being able to escape failing schools and have access to better educational opportunities.”

School choice organizations also praised the ruling, and vowed to continue to fight for the program.

“This decision takes a lot of the teeth out of the Department of Justice’s original efforts to block the Louisiana Scholarship Program, and puts in place safeguards to both the success of scholarship students and students as a whole in Louisiana,” said Kara Kerwin, president of The Center for Education Reform.

“Students should not be trapped in a failing or underperforming school simply because of the color of their skin or the neighborhood they live in,” said Ann Duplessis, president of the Louisiana Federation for Children. “We remain vigilant and will continue to fight to ensure Louisiana’s low-income parents do not become the victims of purely political moves.”

The Chattanoogan.com

The Tennessee Senate on Thursday passed school choice legislation that would allow low-income students in failing schools to use vouchers.

If enacted, the bill in its first year would issue vouchers to as many as 5,000 income-eligible students in the bottom five percent of schools in Tennessee.

Kara Kerwin, president of The Center for Education Reform, said, “Efforts to create a voucher program are part of a broader trend going on right now in Tennessee to introduce educational options through multiple avenues of innovation.

“Whether it’s instituting a program to give low-income students a better chance at success, facilitating the state charter school sector or allowing parents to petition for change in schools, Tennessee lawmakers are well on their way towards allowing for better educational options to flourish.”

Danielle Dreilinger, The Times-Picayune

Louisiana voucher assignments were scheduled to be mailed to parents and schools this week. But they will be delayed until April 21, as a result of the latest court order in a politically charged lawsuit pitting the U.S. Justice Department against the state Department of Education.

U.S. District Judge Ivan Lemelle on Tuesday issued the order outlining information that the state must provide for the Justice Department to monitor the program, which the federal government contends might have worsened public school segregation. The Education Department must disclose data on voucher applicants and the private schools they are assigned to attend 10 days before alerting families and schools.

State Education Superintendent John White announced the delay to April 21 in a Wednesday letter to voucher schools. He painted it as a minor annoyance. “This will not significantly impede the program,” he wrote.

New Orleans voucher enrollment is handled through the OneApp process that manages signup for most of the city’s public schools. Those public school match announcements will still be sent out this week.

The new reporting requirements for the voucher program also push back and shorten the second round of voucher enrollment by one week. Applications now will be available April 21, not April 14, with a May 9 deadline.

“We do not anticipate any further delays or negative consequences for schools and parents,” White wrote.

Jan Lancaster, superintendent of metro New Orleans Roman Catholic schools, was not concerned. “We understand with the growing program that there can be administrative challenges,” she said.

The voucher program, officially the Louisiana Scholarship Program, lets low-income students attend participating private schools at public expense. They must be entering kindergarten or now attending C-, D- or F-rated public schools.

About 6,750 students participated this year. Education Department spokesman Barry Landry said Wednesday that application numbers are up for 2014-15.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder originally sought to block voucher assignments altogether in 33 parishes that remain under long-standing school desegregation orders, unless a federal judge first cleared the assignments. By the time of the November court hearing, however, Holder had downgraded the request and asked only that the state provide information about the program.

Lemelle agreed to that in November. Since then, the parties have been hammering out the specifics, arguing over such things as the exact timelines and the definition of “African American.”

In the end, Lemelle came down on the state’s side. For each round of voucher awards, Louisiana must submit a list of participants with demographic information at least 10 days before sending voucher matches to families. The Justice Department had requested 45 days’ notice.

Lemelle also decided, contrary to the Justice Department’s request, that the state need not submit analyses of how the voucher program affects segregation in public schools. And he exempted the state from naming the public schools to which students would have been assigned in their home school system. There is a generous amount of time granted to report actual voucher enrollees each fall: six weeks after the state finalizes student counts.

In addition, the state must submit an annual list of all its public schools and their performance scores, as well as documentation showing voucher schools do not discriminate by race.

Gov. Bobby Jindal, a would-be candidate for president in 2016, has made political hay of the Justice Department’s suit from the start. He will not appeal Lemelle’s latest decision, considering it a victory.

He said he was “pleased that the court did not issue a ruling that would obstruct the state’s established process of awarding school choice scholarships.” Voucher advocates feared the monitoring requirements would be so onerous and time-consuming they would essentially end the program.

White also characterized Lemelle’s order as a victory, writing, “We are grateful and proud to have overcome another hurdle in our continued mission to provide every Louisiana family the ability to choose the schools that will best prepare their children for lifetimes of success.”

Other voucher proponents praised the developments. They expressed relief the delay wasn’t longer.

“Though we would have preferred to see minimal federal oversight on this program, a 10-day deadline for review of applicants is not overwhelmingly onerous,” said Eric Lewis, Louisiana director of the Black Alliance for Educational Options. The group had sought to intervene on the state’s side on behalf of voucher parents. “Our main concern was that the program not be burdened with unnecessary red tape, and we believe this ruling is a strong deterrent to that threat.”

Lewis said he hadn’t heard much concern from families in the program. The voucher law survived a 2013 state Supreme Court constitutionality challenge; Lewis was in Baton Rouge Wednesday preparing to testify against bills that would limit voucher eligibility. “There’s always threats to the program,” he said. “I think people have come to expect it.”

Kara Kerwin, president of the Center for Education Reform, said Lemelle’s order “takes a lot of the teeth out of the Department of Justice’s original efforts to block the Louisiana Scholarship Program.”

But Sen. David Vitter, R-La., who is running for governor, said the decision was still too intrusive. It “only brings federal bureaucrats into Louisiana children’s personal lives,” he said.

Holder, however, also painted the decision as a win. “We welcome the court’s order as it rejects the state’s bid to resist providing even the most basic information about how Louisiana’s voucher program will affect school desegregation efforts,” the attorney general said.