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New Gallup Poll Reinforces Need for School Choice

August 22, 2017 By

August 21, 2017

Statement by Jeanne Allen, Founder and CEO

Gallup International released its education poll on Monday, August 21, which found overwhelming support for private schools over traditional public schools, 71-44 percent respectively.

Jeanne Allen, CEO and founder of the Center for Education Reform commented on these results, pointing out that the latest Gallup results demonstrate a need to have a broader discussion about how to best serve individuals students:

Monday’s results are startling and demonstrate the need to ensure more students have access to additional education options. Once again, Americans are not satisfied with a one-size-fits all, 19th century approach to educating our children.

They know all children are wired uniquely, and they want opportunities to determine how best to serve their children.  Data from NAEP and PISA continue to validate shortcomings of our traditional education system and the latest Gallup adds to a long series of indications that the public knows we can do better as a nation, and that the best education for each child often varies dramatically from what is provided in the mandated school zone.

With the annual back to school ritual upon us, it’s time for a much broader national discussion, away from the teachers’ unions us-vs-them mentality. In a day and age when we have unprecedented access to knowledge and innovative solutions across the globe, it’s sad that each year our nation harbors a uniform school system that relegates most students to a school in their neighborhood, regardless of whether it works for the child.

The American appetite for innovation and opportunity exists in education as it does for every other sector.

It’s time to demand that we provide our school leaders the flexibility from contracts and labor demands to deliver the best, and to permit a wide variety of new learning opportunities – whether private, charter or other – to work to meet the needs of all kids. Not only does the public want it, but it’s the right thing to do.

The Gallup survey found overwhelming support for private schools over traditional public schools; with 71 percent of respondents saying private schools provide an excellent/good education while only 44 percent said the same of public schools.

Further, the Gallup poll found support for private schools and dissatisfaction with traditional public schools was bipartisan, illustrating the serious and all-encompassing concern with the nation’s traditional public school system.

Positive Rating of U.S. School Types by Party ID

                                                                Republican         Democrat

Independent private schools:                    76%                           68%

Parochial/religious schools:                       71%                           56%

Charter schools:                                        62%                          48%

Public schools:                                          39%                          48%

Filed Under: Press Releases, News & Analysis, Uncategorized

Newswire August 15th, 2017

August 17, 2017 By

In a statement released earlier today, a comparison was made between Education Next polling data from 2015 and 2016, which showed public support for charter schools remaining consistent from one year to the next, and questioned news reports to the contrary. The data covered in media reports, however, compared 2016 polling information to 2017data and were correct.  We apologize for the misinterpretation and any confusion that it caused.  We’ll be back to you with more on this later.  We now return you to our regular programming.

ILLI-NOISE. In case you haven’t been following the up-and-down, give-and-take, who-hit-John-back-and-forth that is the debate over school funding in the Land of Lincoln, suffice it to say that the Governor and legislature have been at loggerheads over the issue for quite some time. (The State Senate just overrode the Gov’s veto.) Here’s a thought that would make a positive change: a tax-credit scholarship program that would provide a state tax credit to individuals or businesses for donations made to authorized organizations. Those organizations then would use the money to fund tuition scholarships for eligible students to attend a school of their choice.

OLD-FANGLED. We tend to think of a lot of opportunities for alternatives to traditional schooling to be forever “new,” and it tends to be a surprise when something like a virtual school celebrates a milestone for longevity. So join us in congratulating Florida Virtual School (FLVS) on its 20th anniversary (the appropriate gift is china). Launched in 1997, the school has 1,400 certified instructors and offers a catalog of 150 courses to students from high school down through elementary. Congratulate, too, one of the school’s original instructors, Jennifer Whiting, who started as a chemistry teacher and now serves as FLVS’ chief technology innovation officer.

NEW-FANGLED. But lest we become blasé about all the cool stuff that keeps popping up in the ed-tech world, we give you “Freshman Year for Free,” an online offering of 40 courses from New York City’s Modern States Education Alliance. The program is designed as an alternative approach for students to earn traditional academic credits through the Advanced Placement or College Level Examination Program exams, administered by the College Board. But, in a nicely egalitarian touch, anyone who wants to use the courses can. “If you have a mobile phone, you can get a full year of credit,” says Steven B. Klinsky, who calls the effort “a private-sector approach to solving a social problem.”

Filed Under: News & Analysis, Newswire Weekly, Newswire

Randi Weingarten’s Racial Demagoguery

August 17, 2017 By

The op-ed below by Jeanne Allen appeared in the Wall Street Journal print edition on August 17th, 2017.

Randi Weingarten, the leader of the American Federation of Teachers, has insulted millions of students and families. In a speech at a union conference last month, Ms. Weingarten claimed that the school-choice movement has its roots in 1960s-era racism. Charter schools and vouchers, she asserted, “are only slightly more polite cousins of segregation.”

This is a blatant attempt to rewrite history. The modern education-reform movement was originally propelled by African-Americans and progressives. Fannie Lewis, a Cleveland councilwoman and grandmother, fought for the Cleveland Scholarship Program that was enacted in 1995. Polly Williams, a Wisconsin state representative, helped push through Milwaukee’s early school-choice program in 1990.

Williams, a Democrat and former Black Panther, found few allies for school choice among her natural constituencies. But she firmly believed something had to be done to help children in failing schools. So she joined a diverse coalition, including conservative Gov. Tommy Thompson, to launch the Milwaukee program, which is still running strong more than 25 years later.

Ms. Weingarten must know these facts, because they have been exhaustively chronicled. Yet she actively hides and obfuscates this history. What’s really motivating her over-the-top rhetoric? The answer lies in the numbers. While thousands of children are on waiting lists for charter schools, the AFT’s membership is in decline. As the union’s head count drops, so does its political clout.

Figures compiled by union-watcher Mike Antonucci show the seriousness of the situation Ms. Weingarten faces. The AFT routinely claims it has 1.6 million members, but that number, Mr. Antonucci says, “is not strictly accurate.” Here’s his math: He cites U.S. Labor Department filings that show the AFT reported 1,544,143 members last year. More than 600,000 of them belonged to affiliates that are merged with the National Education Association, the other big American teachers union. Although both the AFT and NEA count these people as full members, the two unions must split their dues.

Mr. Antonucci further says that nearly 357,000 AFT members are retired, meaning they pay no dues. Another 330,000 members work only part time. “The bottom line: AFT’s 1.6 million members equate to a dues-paying equivalent of 854,000 full-time employed teachers,” he writes.

Ms. Weingarten likes to style herself as a defender of the urban poor, but her recommendations for education tell another story. Her primary concern seems to be self-preservation. But the biggest threat to her power and position won’t be from the Trump administration or school-choice advocates. It will be from AFT members who recognize that she’s undermining the union’s credibility for her own gain.

Ms. Allen is the founder and CEO of the Washington-based Center for Education Reform.

Filed Under: Opinions, News & Analysis, Unions & Establishment

National Review Randi Weingarten’s History Lesson: School Choice Helps the Poor

August 10, 2017 By
This op-ed by Jeanne Allen appeared in National Review on July 27, 2017.

Randi Weingarten wanted to teach me a lesson. I remember my mother wanting to teach me a lesson — or ten — over time, but they were usually grounded in experience and truth.

https://twitter.com/rweingarten/status/888507577171976192

Weingarten, the infamous head of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), went beyond the pale this week. She called modern-day education reformers racists for working to help parents whose children are often stuck in the worst of schools and thereby relegated to third-class status in a society that values an educated citizenry.

And she disgraced all American teachers with her declaration that advocates and families advocating for various forms of school choice are just like Jim Crow–era segregationists, that they are “only slightly more polite cousins of segregation,” and that we are “hiding a dangerous ideological agenda.” The “real pioneers of school choice,” she said, are “the white politicians who resisted school integration.” A few days later, after she was summarily chastised by people on the left, on the right, and in the center, she doubled down.

I called for her resignation. She challenged me on Twitter: “Are you really calling on me to resign because I pointed out the segregationist history of private school choice?”

I responded: “Are you really telling me you don’t know difference between choices made by millions of disadvantaged & minority families today, & segregation?”

Then she offered me a history lesson based on specious arguments made by the Center for American Progress (CAP). It goes something like this:

The deplorable segregation academies of the ’60s have created inequities in education that exist to this day. Any attempt to offset their effect by giving families most harmed by them and lacking power to rectify them financially or by moving into “better” attendance zones is a direct response to segregation.

Weignarten’s proffered history lesson is rooted in a bad chapter for America, one that people from all backgrounds, races, political parties, and nationalities have worked together to fight. But that has no bearing on present-day education reforms that wrest control of education from the very school districts that once led the charge to segregate schools. Educational choice puts power directly in the hands of the parents who have been relegated to segregationist housing patterns. Leaving students trapped in schools that were organized as a result of mandatory or de facto segregation — something that the unions and CAP endorse — is reprehensible and unjust.

Three modern-day civil-rights pioneers, Derrell Bradford, Howard Fuller, and Chris Stewart, make the case. “Our belief is that low-income and working-class families need . . . the power to choose the right school for their children.” Moreover, they continue,

our belief is grounded not just in our understanding that no one type of school is the right fit for every type of child, but in the frank, stark, brutal reality and history that colors the pursuit of education by Black people in this country. . . .

Some would have us stop advocating for all parent choice, including vouchers, and, instead, accept the limited options available to low-income and working-class Black families. We must reject those limits.

Writing here at National Review Online, Rick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute argues that at our nation’s founding, vouchers were designed to help the poor:

The long history of vouchers begins with Thomas Paine and John Stuart Mill seeking to help poor families to educate their children in the 18th and 19th centuries. The first major push to let American families send their children to schools of their choice using public funds was led by Catholics seeking to escape discriminatory public schools. . . .

Afterward, even the liberals in Lyndon Johnson’s Office of Economic Opportunity turned to vouchers as a way to help black children suffering in segregated public schools.

Vouchers have always had support from civil-rights supporters, Andy Rotherham, an assistant to the president for domestic policy in the Clinton administration, writes in U.S. News and World Report, And former Clinton policy director “Berkeley law professor Jack Coons saw vouchers as a way to equalize opportunity for the poor,” Rotherham notes. “So did Harvard sociologist Chris Jencks, whose ideas informed a now mostly forgotten Nixon-era federal school voucher pilot in Alum Rock, California. They, along with a host of other academics and advocates, saw choice as a tool of empowerment.”

Weingarten and the AFT deliberately ignore Milwaukee circa 1990, when Polly Williams, a state representative, led the fight to ensure that her “babies,” as she called her community’s kids, attending failing schools might have a leg up. A Democrat and a Black Panther, Williams found few allies among what she considered natural constituencies. But she teamed up with Fuller, the former Milwaukee public-school superintendent, and a diverse coalition including conservative Wisconsin governor Tommy Thompson, to launch the successful effort.

Soon afterward, Cleveland followed suit. Democratic city councilwoman Fannie Lewis saw the same inequities, social injustice, and failure in public schools. With Republican governor George Voinovich, she brought the Cleveland school-choice program to her entire state. The United States Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of that program in 2002.

These civil-rights pioneers would be joined by another odd couple, Jeb Bush and T. Willard Fair, who would bring school choice to Florida. The Pennsylvania charter-school effort would be nothing without Dwight Evans, a representative from Philadelphia, first in the state legislature and then the U.S. Congress. State by state, new opportunities for the underprivileged have been enacted with minority leaders at the helm who have been willing to forge once-unholy alliances with anyone who shares their passion for saving children from another generation of despair.

This is the history lesson of the day. It’s the triumph of good over evil, David versus Goliath. White and black together have fought the laws — and won. These facts are indisputable. Why would Randi Weingarten seek to offend entire communities of parents and race-bait on this issue?

The answer lies in the numbers.

The AFT has been steadily losing members to retirement, to charter schools, to changes in state union laws, and to the fact that today’s teaching force is not your mother’s teacher. This generation wants to be free to live as they please. They are also digital natives, born amid unprecedented access to information, bypassing what used to be the only source of information about education: your union steward.

This is the real reason Randi Weingarten has picked a reprehensible fight. Teachers have started marching to the tune of a different drummer, and she’s looking for any way to bring them back. But one thing is becoming clear: Her fight is not theirs.

Retired Philadelphia-area union leader Ed Moffit put it best: “Teachers just want to do their job. We join the union because we live in a litigious society and we want protection should something happen. But the politics of the union are too much.” Indeed, teachers are making their way to the Supreme Court once again to make the case that mandatory fees to unions they don’t agree with are unconstitutional. The backlash against comments from the AFT boss may just compel them forward faster.

 

Filed Under: Opinions, News & Analysis

Newswire August 8th, 2017

August 8, 2017 By

EVERYTHING YOU ALWAYS WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT OPPORTUNITY’S OPPONENT….but were afraid to ask. The NAACP’s report on charters has set off a firestorm of criticism from charter leaders across the country. CER directors Donald Hense and David Hardy released as statement decrying the association’s conclusions, saying it put the association “…sadly, and uncharacteristically, on the wrong side of history.” They weren’t alone in their criticism. See what others had to say here:

CHARTERS HELP DC STUDENTS SUCCEED. D.C. Association of Chartered Public Schools has added its voice to the choir of organizations speaking out against the NAACP’s recent report painting charter schools as inappropriate academic options for minority students. As they point out, prior to the establishment of the charter school movement in the 1990’s, only 50% of African American students graduated from high school on schedule. Today, 73% of African American students attending charter schools graduate on time versus 62% in traditional public schools.

OPPONENTS OF OPPORTUNITY TARGET ARIZONA. Save Our Schools Arizona now has 100,000 signatures of registered voters exceeding the 75,321 needed to stop the expansion of the state’s Empowerment Scholarship Program. The expansion which would enable 30,000 of Arizona’s 1.1 million public school students to join the program by 2022 is scheduled to take effect on Wednesday August 9. Save Our Schools may be saving “schools”, but in doing so, they are limiting Arizona children’s opportunities to attend the schools which best meet their individual needs.

SAY CHEESE! School Choice Wisconsin (SCW) and Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty have released a new study which shows that schools participating in Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP) have improved their accountability as it relates to academic performance, fiscal management and school safety. Consequently, more parents are gravitating to the schools with most solid and most transparent accountability measures.

AND, ON THE LEFT COAST, PERSONALIZED LEARNING IS THE NEW FEATURE IN TEACHER TRAINING Northern California based Summit Learning has launched the first teacher-in-residence program dedicated to personalized learning. The teaching residents will spend four days a week working alongside a teacher in Summit’s eight middle and high schools located in Sunnyvale, Redwood City, El Cerrito/Richmond, San Jose, and Daly City.

Filed Under: Newswire Weekly, Newswire

Occasional Letter to Friends – Summer 2017

August 4, 2017 By

Dear Friends:

Some of you may be old enough to recall that, once upon a time, the Center produced a good, old-fashioned newsletter—THE MONTHLY LETTER TO FRIENDS—written up, laid out, sent to a printer, stuffed, stamped, and delivered to homes and offices all across America via the U.S. Postal Service (a process nearly as archaic today as the notion of a school system that looks like it did more than 160 years ago).

The Letter was the first of its kind, providing updates on state and local efforts, presenting little exposés on the big education blob, looking at research, offering insights into what approaches we might take strategically, tactically and politically, and more. It was a mainstay of CER’s efforts to stay in touch with our many supporters, and for more than a dozen years it went out like clockwork, eight pages long, more than 100 issues in all.

The printed letter eventually gave way to a myriad of electronic communications, with occasional snail-mail deliveries to the Luddites. CER’s Weekly Newswire is now in its 19th year! And we also keep our constituencies informed via regular news alerts, releases, and advisories, as well as the web, Facebook, and Twitter.

But, occasionally, we still write letters, and because it’s been—and continues to be—a very busy year, and on the cusp of the back-to-school season, we decided to put a little ink to paper and fire-up the old postage meter. So without further ado, we present this aptly titled Occasional Letter to Friends reporting on some of our work so far this year, and delivering news and insight that, like over the previous 23 years, you won’t find in this particular way anywhere else!

 

THE AFT FIRESTORM OF 2017

In one of the more offensive rants you’ll ever hear directed at education reformers, American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten resorted to race-baiting in her attempt to discredit parents and other advocates of choice. Speaking before the AFT summer meeting Weingarten said that the word “choice” was used to cloak overt racism by segregationist politicians and that the “real pioneers” of private school choice were the white politicians who resisted school integration.

Given that many of this era’s most notable advocates for education opportunities and choice were, and still are, men and women of color, fighting for the rights of children and families of all colors, Weingarten’s warped view of history would be laughable… were it not such an offensive smear and such an obvious attempt to discredit the work of so many good people and to try to escape blame for the failure of so many urban schools.

All of this is more than a little troubling. We demanded Weingarten apologize and suggested she resign. She engaged with us directly on Twitter, not once but 3 times! Others have since jumped in, taking Weingarten to task, but so far her only response has been to promote the idea that choice equals segregation.

As we said in a follow-up to our original call for her resignation:

“Clearly, she believes staying on message—no matter how insulting that message is to African-Americans and people of color throughout the nation—is more important than honesty, fairness, respect and simple decency. Regardless of whether or not it was an act of insensitive ignorance, or ruthless political calculation, Weingarten should step down as head of the AFT.”

Stay tuned. More to come.

 

FIRESTORM #2: NAACP’S UNFORTUNATE POSITIONS

Hot on the heels of the AFT broadside, came the NAACP Task Force on Quality Education July 2017 Hearing Report which “found” that charter schools were detrimental to minority communities and called for a moratorium on the creation of new ones. This, as you can imagine, set off its own firestorm of controversy, prompting dozens of responses from leading African-Americans, including CER directors David Hardy, founder and Chair of Boys’ Latin Philadelphia Charter School and Donald Hense, founder and chairman of Washington D.C.’s Friendship Public Charter Schools, who argued that,

“The NAACP’s campaign against charter schools is detrimental and disrespectful to all parents who struggle to ensure a quality education for their children. Rather than embrace, and work to expand, the opportunities that charter schools represent to America’s disadvantaged, and to families of color across the nation, the NAACP has chosen to stand as an obstacle, and work to stifle, a movement that, for thousands of children, is the greatest—and only—hope for achieving a quality education.

“The association’s recently released report is intentionally skewed to further a union-driven, anti-charter school agenda, and its ‘model legislation’ effort is an outrageous political scheme to further support the union’s agenda by undermining the voice and will of parents who are fighting for options for their children’s education and for the right and freedom to choose.

“The NAACP has a long history of fighting for justice and for individual rights that further opportunities, hopes and human dignity. These efforts are the antithesis of that long fight, putting the association sadly, and uncharacteristically, on the wrong side of history.”

More to come on this, too.

 

BUREAUCRACY: EVERYTHING OLD IS NEW AGAIN

Bureaucracy. Remember when it was everywhere in education, pervading every level of educational instruction and delivery? Then came charter schools, contractual arrangements, which, as Ted Kolderie argued at their inception, would provide unique opportunities for educators to start schools, and parents to enjoin them on behalf of their children, unfettered by most traditional rules and regulations.

It went pretty well…for a while. Of the 13 strongest charter laws, 12 were passed between 1991 and 1999—and these 12 states alone account for over 56 percent of today’s charter schools. In short, there was more progress made in the first nine years of the charter movement than the next 15.

We have diagnosed why, and talked about it for the past few years. We warned this would occur if we started trusting government to do the work that charters intended for parents and teachers. And now we have our own charter blob.

Consider what Betsy DeVos recently said, invoking our work (and, actually, quoting our Manifesto):

“…somewhere along the way…we’ve taken the colorful collage of charters and drawn our own set of lines around it to box others out, to mitigate risk, to play it safe. This is not what we set out to do, and, more importantly, it doesn’t help kids.

“No one has a monopoly on innovation. No one has a monopoly on creativity. No one has a monopoly on knowing how every child learns.”

“I thought it was a tough but fair criticism when a friend recently wrote in an article that many who call themselves ‘reformers’ have instead become just another breed of bureaucrats—a new education establishment.”

We have hundreds of data points, anecdotes and stories we have shared with legislators and researchers, advocates and media. Some of it sticks; most of it seems to fall on deaf ears.

And so, following the release of our Manifesto—A Movement at Risk in June 2016, our convening of CER’s EdReform: Revived Conference in November 2016, and dozens of state meetings and studies, we have just published a thorough research review of why everything old is new again—what, and why, overregulation has now taken hold in the very environment where it was not intended to be.

It’s titled Charting a New Course, The Case for Freedom, Flexibility & Opportunity Through Charter Schools. It’s an important work, because the problems it addresses are hurting kids, and because it’s time for everyone to pay full attention to the fact that, for the most part, well-intentioned advocates have put government ahead of parents, again.

As we argue, thanks to co-editors Cara Candal of CER and Max Eden of the Manhattan Institute, we are at a critical inflection point:

“The charter school debate will look very different in the years to come. For the first quarter century, the question was simple: you’re either for charter schools or against them. But now that the sector has matured, taken root, and gained broader public acceptance, the debate is shifting from whether to expand charter schools to how.

“The way we see it, there are two camps within the school choice and charter school movements:

“System-centered reformers want to arrive at higher quality educational options by expertise-driven management. They believe that bureaucrats and politicians should have ample authority to decide what schools may open and what schools must close using standardized test-scores to make data-driven decisions.

“Parent-centered reformers trust parents more than bureaucrats when it comes to determining school quality. They want to see a more open and dynamic system, where educational entrepreneurs are freer to open new schools and parents decide which schools should close and which should expand based on whether they want to send their children there.

“Right now, the system-centered reformers have the upper hand when it comes to financial support and organizational infrastructure… System-centered reformers make the simpler argument, and it is predicated on the assumption that the goal of charter schools is to raise standardized test scores.

“But we believe that parent-centered reformers make a better case for quality schools. Parents and the public intuitively know that academic outcomes matter but there is more to academic outcomes and to education than test scores.

“We stand with parent-centered reformers more because of our optimism than our concerns. We believe that parents (who see their child come home from school every day) are better able than bureaucrats (who see mostly standardized tests scores) to judge the quality of the school they’ve chosen. We believe that if offered more freedom, educational entrepreneurs will embrace a variety of different approaches and offer parents a diverse range of options. We accept that more freedom might mean that more schools fail than would in a more regulated environment, but we believe that failure is necessary for success. We are optimistic that, over time, the net result of giving educators autonomy and empowering parents to judge schools will drive the creation of a higher quality sector.”

To receive a print copy of Charting a New Course, call us at (202) 750-0016, or download a PDF version: www.edreform.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/charting-a-new-course.pdf

 

THE NEW POWER IN WASHINGTON

We happen to think that the still-new ecosystem in Washington may just help us roll back the charter blob from whence it came. “How?” you ask? Well, there’s The Bully Pulpit, which always helps get (and keep) the ball rolling. And there’s the potential for the roll-back of regulatory and non-regulatory guidance that has evolved from Congressional action and administrative rulemaking, along with real aggressive action we are pushing Congress to take on everything from freeing states up to be truly innovative and enacting meaningful tax reform that includes the potential for tax credits.

We at CER are obsessed with regulatory creep in the charter sector. Americans know all too well the slippery slope of government action. So we’ve embarked on an effort to help the U.S. Department of Ed and Congressional leadership accomplish a bold but cost effective ways to free and enable America’s schools, educators and citizens to be innovative for our kids. There are four major themes in The First 100 Days: The path to going bold on education innovation and opportunity, including how to focus on:

  • Spending, so that innovation and flexibility can thrive in schools
  • Teaching, and what Washington can do to accelerate the creation of a new pipeline of qualified people joining the noble profession;
  • Higher education, and the unique opportunity to rethink how the federal government defines it and supports it; and last but not least,
  • Educational Choice, and the path that is possible when the federal government permits money to follow kids,stimulates new thinking around old programs, and ensures they follow state efforts, not mandate their conduct.

 

BEYOND THE FIRST 100 DAYS — LET FREEDOM RING!

Just in time to celebrate Independence Day, CER issued Beyond the First 100 Days: Transforming government’s role in education, which reviewed progress of our recommendations to date, and a reiteration of our January 2017 recommendations to the Trump Administration. As we say in the introduction, we prefer a model that achieves competency over just measuring time on task.

The agenda we laid out remains an important guide, offering ideas for action that will result in making personalized learning a reality for millions, ensuring quality teaching, access to innovative and relevant higher education opportunities, and new choices throughout the nation.

All of this made the pre-4th of July release date especially fitting, helping everyone remember that the freedoms our Founders fought for are just as critical in education as they are in our day-to-day lives. It’s our call to “Let Freedom Ring” for all learners, at all levels.

 

MEANWHILE ON CAPITOL HILL AND ELSEWHERE

As is always the case, Congress is abuzz with ideas, issues, hearings, proposals and counterproposals on bushels of issues. So, to ensure that key education issues don’t evaporate, or never materialize at all, we’ve been making regular sojourns to the Hill and, in our best school-teacher voice, delivering the message: LET’S FOCUS PEOPLE! Key issues to which we are continually drawing the attention of Congressional leaders: Personalized Learning, Higher Ed, Educational Choice, Innovation, Rural Education, and Tax Credit Scholarships.

And speaking of meetings…

In April, we were asked to organize, and proud to participate in, a White House event hosted by Vice President Pence, extolling the virtues of DC scholarships, specifically, and tax credits, generally. It was nice to have one of our long-time issues receive a boost from the VEEP (and from POTUS) and nicer still for all the kids who got to participate in a rather august gathering.

Which reminds us that…

In March, CER led a diverse bi-partisan delegation of charter leaders to the Department of Education to meet with Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos to share the challenges that all schools face with the imposition of more and more regulations, funding inequity and lack of air and ground cover.

 

NOTA EST

A grab bag of a few newsworthy, noteworthy and otherwise interesting items from the first half of the year:

  • CER released Just the Facts: Success, Innovation, and Opportunity in Charter Schools, debunking charter school misinformation with the most valid and reliable data to date.
  • We were thrilled to be published in The National Review about the AFT president’s reprehensible comments.
  • Education Week published our commentary, Regulations Are Strangling Charter Schools.
  • CER contributed to passage of the Kentucky charter school law, albeit far weaker than we would have liked, and to do so we even provided them with the most expert constitutional law expert and former Solicitor General of the United States Paul Clement, to validate the constitutionality of multiple charter authorizers.
  • In a big win for kids in DC, the city’s Opportunity Scholarship Program, which was threatened with elimination at the end of 2016, was re-authorized by Congress, and not just for a year, but through FY 2022!
  • CER released its 17th annual National Charter School Law Ranking & Scorecard, providing guidance and feedback to policymakers on the relative strengths and weakness of charter school policies and their effectiveness in fulfilling the true meaning of the words “charter school law.”
  • The 8th annual ASU + GSV Summit was held in Salt Lake City. CER was again a sponsor and hosted several key discussions with school leaders, policymakers and business leaders. This must-attend annual event led by Ed revolutionaries Michael Moe (CER’s Vice Chair) and Deborah Quazzo again drew thousands who gathered who opened up their minds and committed to expanding the breadth and depth of what we mean by “education.”
  • In an historic win for kids, Florida Gov. Rick Scott signed HB 7069, directing that more federal funds go to where students choose to attend school. Prior to this, the spending of federal funds was largely at the discretion of school districts, even if students were attending other charter schools.
  • The National Charter Schools Conference brought several thousand members of the charter school community to Washington, DC, with several hundred of them coming together at CER’s Salute to Charter Schools VIP reception which featured remarks by Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, Congressman Paul Mitchell (R-MI), and Jimmy Kemp, President of the Jack Kemp Foundation.

 

As I write, we’re gearing up for Congress’ return to Washington where a lot of work—and opportunities to foster reform—awaits. As always, we’re also gearing up to lend our expertise, resources and voice to those efforts, and to efforts to achieve substantive education reform throughout the country

Thank you for your support. If we can be of any help to you, let us know. And please consider contributing to our work by using the enclosed envelope. We can’t do it without you!

All the best,

Jeanne Allen, Founder & CEO

Filed Under: Commentary, Opinions, Uncategorized

Newswire August 1st, 2017

August 1, 2017 By

FIRESTORM. AFRICAN AMERICAN LEADERS SPEAK OUT AGAINST NAACP’S EDUCATION QUALITY HEARING REPORT. The NAACP’s recent report on education quality, which challenges the value of charter schools for minority families has African American ed reform leaders in an uproar. Two of the most prominent to speak out: CER directors David Hardy, founder and Chair of Boys’ Latin Philadelphia Charter School, and Donald Hense, founder and chairman of Washington D.C.’s Friendship Public Charter Schools. In a statement released through CER, these long-time advocates for options for disadvantaged youth describe the NAACP’s campaign against charter schools as an obstacle to opportunity that only serves to stifle a movement, that for thousands of children, is the greatest – and only – hope for achieving a quality education.  Read their full statement here: https://edreform.com/2017/07/african-american-education-leaders-speak-out-against-naacp-actions/

WHAT A GREAT QUESTION!  Would Martin Luther King Have Supported Charter Schools? That’s the question pondered by the man who served as the civil rights legend’s chief of staff in the 1960’s, Dr. Wyatt Tee Walker.  According to Dr. Walker, the question is easily answered with a resounding “yes!”  Check out “A Light Shines in Harlem”, an award winning, must-read about Dr. Walker’s founding of The Sisulu-Walker School, New York City’s first charter school.

AFT OFF BASE AND OUT OF TOUCH. In another firestorm that won’t go out, CER’s Jeanne Allen renewed the call for AFT president Randi Weingarten to step down. As you’ll recall, the union boss smeared choice advocates, ed reform pioneers, and basically all parents who embrace options for their children by likening them to racists and segregationists. Weingarten hasn’t backed away from her statement and is standing behind the “truth” of her assertion, prompting this from Allen: “Randi Weingarten’s smug obstinacy in refusing to accept responsibility for her slur against reformers is disturbing. Clearly, she believes staying on message—no matter how insulting that message is to African-Americans and people of color throughout the nation—is more important than honesty, fairness, respect and simple decency.”

A RISING TIDE LIFTS BOTH BOATS. Charter school opponents like to claim that the presence of a charter school in a community results in less funding being directed to neighboring traditional public schools (TPS). But a new study of NYC public schools now says otherwise. The Temple University study reveals that having a charter school in the neighborhood spurs competition and consequently generates more per-pupil funding for the traditional public school with an increase of 9% when the charter and TPS are in the same building and 2% when they are physically further apart. So there goes that argument.

SPACE, THE FINAL FRONTIER.  NASA is making efforts to encourage more girls and women to study STEM and prepare for careers in aerospace and other sciences. To give credit where credit is due, NASA’s move is in response to President Trump’s Inspire Women Act, which he signed into law back in February. NASA is also creating other programs to advance STEM studies, including NASA GIRLS & BOYS, a program that provides middle school students with a virtual mentorship with NASA employees.

WELL THAT’S INTERESTING: suburban kids pay tuition to attend DC public schools. While choice opponents like to argue that educational choice is all about taking money away from public schools so that students can attend private or parochial schools, public schools like the DC based Duke Ellington School of the Arts are turning that supposed paradigm on its head. 45 suburban families are currently plunking out $11,000 a year in tuition to send their children to the Northwest DC school. And if it were not for a 10% cap on out-of-district students, that enrollment statistic would be even higher.

Filed Under: Newswire Weekly, Newswire

National Review: A New Blue-State Experiment with School Reform

August 1, 2017 By

This op-ed written by CER Founder and CEO Jeanne Allen appeared in National Review on July 28th.

Education opportunity should be the price Illinois governor Bruce Rauner demands in return for Chicago getting its pension bailout.

Unless Governor Rauner and the Democratic leadership in control of Illinois’s house and senate agree to a new education-funding system soon, many schools won’t open their doors next month. That’s because the budget that passed last month calls for a new “evidence-based” funding formula to distribute state money to schools.

Fortunately, a bipartisan school-funding-reform commission has been working to come up with a replacement for the byzantine system that has controlled funding for state schools for years. While Democrats and Republicans agree on much of the bill, in its current form it amounts to a taxpayer bailout of the Chicago Public Schools system, which has skipped most payments into its teacher pension funds for more than a decade and failed to deliver even an adequate education to most of its students for decades.

However, Governor Rauner has an opportunity to craft a compromise solution that provides the key to better education for all kids and ensures that schools open on time. The grand bargain would be simple: He agrees to Democrats’ demands if they include a tax-credit scholarship program in the education-funding-formula legislation. It would not only unite parents and children who have been clamoring for better learning opportunities, but set the city on a course to economic solvency. And with a balanced economy, all have the opportunity to participate in the American dream.

A number of other states have already shown the way. Many, including Florida, Arizona, and Indiana, along with the District of Columbia, have created an educational and economic renaissance in communities where Opportunity Scholarship Programs are available. It’s a model that has endured for affluent Americans whose choice of schools invests them in their communities and improves the lot for all children. If Democrats in the state truly believe that the quality of a child’s education should not depend on his zip code — one of the key talking points used to promote education-funding reform — they should accept this compromise.

The concept is fairly simple: Individuals or businesses can claim a credit against their tax bill for donations made to authorized organizations that in turn use those donations to fund tuition scholarships for eligible students to attend a school of their choice. In other words, if an individual donates $1,000 to a nonprofit that provides scholarships, his or her tax bill is reduced by $1,000. The nonprofit then gives the money to families who use it to pay tuition at private schools.

These programs are hugely popular with parents and children. Florida’s Tax Credit Scholarship Program began in 2001 and has grown dramatically. In its first year, there were 12,500 applications for 750 scholarships. This year, 98,000 FTC students attend 1,712 private schools throughout Florida. The results were impressive: A study by Northwestern University’s Institute for Policy Research found that students who received scholarships scored higher than their similar demographic peers in both reading and math. Lawmakers in the Florida legislature have continued to build their program on a broadly bipartisan basis.

There is striking evidence that scholarship tax credits improve public-school performance. There is also striking evidence that scholarship tax credits improve public-school performance. The same Northwestern study found that Florida’s program has helped traditional schools improve because, for the first time, they faced competition from other schools, charter and private alike. Schools in the state felt the competitive pressure and saw modest improvements in student test scores. It’s a healthy dynamic that improves overall performance in each.

Educational choice makes other efforts to improve schools more powerful, too. Senate Bill 7 — a reform bill passed in 2011 aimed at stopping teachers from striking and at improving teacher performance — has lacked teeth precisely because Chicago’s lowest-income families have no recourse when their child is placed with a poor-quality teacher. That’s how principals can get away with ranking over three-quarters of teachers as good or excellent, and the unions can claim it is truly a reflection of their members’ quality, even when only a fraction of the city’s graduating seniors are college-ready.

Of course, just down the road from Illinois there are several very successful programs that can be used as models. Indiana’s Choice Scholarship Program was launched six years ago and is now one of the largest and fastest-growing programs in the nation, with more than 34,000 students at over 300 schools. And Wisconsin, which has been a pioneer in educational choice for a quarter century, has both a statewide parental-choice program, and local programs in Milwaukee and Racine.

The governor has a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to improve education for families in Illinois. He should take advantage of it and ensure that students across the state have access to the quality educational options they need and deserve. — Jeanne Allen is the founder and CEO of the Center for Education Reform in Washington, D.C., the nation’s leading advocate for innovation and opportunity in education.

Filed Under: Opinions, News & Analysis

Orange County Register: How a U.S. Supreme Court case may help turn the tide for educational choice

August 1, 2017 By

This op-ed written by Jeanne Allen, the founder and CEO of the Center for Education Reform appeared in the Orange County Register on July 28th.  

A Supreme Court decision that could change the balance of power in schools from system power to parent power is well-known in policy circles but not by the general public. Yet anyone with an interest in great education should be aware of its importance. The case is Trinity Lutheran Church v. Comer, decided on the last day of the court’s term in June. It’s the latest in a series of cases that have gradually pushed aside barriers to the broadest possible approach to school opportunity and innovation.

Officials in Missouri argued that the state’s Blaine Amendment, added to the state constitution in an 1870 ballot referendum, to suppress Catholic education and now applied to all religious entities, required them to turn down a request by Trinity Lutheran church for funds from a state program that provides new rubber surfaces for children’s playgrounds. But the nation’s high court unequivocally ruled otherwise: “The exclusion of Trinity Lutheran from a public benefit for which it is otherwise qualified, solely because it is a church, is odious to our Constitution.”

On the surface, it looked to observers like it was just about putting a new surface on a children’s playground. But what it really does is get us much closer to putting children at the center of our education priorities, and recognizing the fact that our 150-year-old approach to public schooling need not be, and should not be, our default option.

Blaine Amendments are the last line of defense for education choice opponents — the unions, the school districts and hundreds more who earn a living in the employ of traditional public schooling and thousands of related parties. They fight to block any proposal or program that permits parents the discretion to direct the dollars allocated for their children’s education. The Supreme Court decided 15 years ago that the U.S. Constitution allows a well-designed school choice program (Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, 2002). Only those discriminatory Blaine Amendments embedded in 38 state constitutions stand in the way of the public’s want and the needs of students to find the best fit for their education, and not have to settle for a school into which they are zoned by zip code for lack of money or options.

Missouri argued that an absolutist notion of separation of church and state takes priority over the best interests of the children when they attend a church-owned and operated school. That’s another way of saying that the well-being of the children comes last, not first. A remarkable seven-vote majority of the Supreme Court saw it differently.

In a very interesting twist, Justice Sotomayor went to great lengths to argue that the court majority has, in effect, concluded that “Article I, §7, [the Missouri Blaine amendment] cannot withstand strict scrutiny.”

The reasoning behind the Supreme Court’s ruling in Trinity Lutheran applies just as forcefully to school choice as it does to a rubberized playground. “The State in this case expressly requires Trinity Lutheran to renounce its religious character in order to participate in an otherwise generally available public benefit program for which it is fully qualified,” the court declared in striking it down. The same logic applies to a choice plan that excludes church-sponsored schools from a state school choice plan because of their religious character.

Today, 17 states allow an allocation of state funds or tax credits to be used to fund education choice scholarships for an estimated 400,000 students across the nation. Many of the scholarships help the most vulnerable among us. But tens of thousands more children remain stuck in failing schools that do not meet their most basic needs. Annual battles for parental choice in state capitals too often find lawmakers ignoring majority support and siding instead with intensely focused teacher unions. A popular scare tactic is to argue that educational choice violates a state’s Blaine amendment. Raising the specter of court challenges is often enough to discourage legislatures from acting.

This decision has the potential to change all that. Now all we need are lawmakers willing to put that premise to the test. With a nation where only 35 percent of all students are proficient in core subjects, we don’t have time to waste.

Filed Under: Opinions, News & Analysis

AFRICAN-AMERICAN EDUCATION LEADERS SPEAK OUT AGAINST NAACP ACTIONS

July 31, 2017 By

The following statement was issued today by CER directors David Hardy, founder and Chair of Boys’ Latin Philadelphia Charter School and Donald Hense, founder and chairman of Washington D.C.’s Friendship Public Charter Schools, in response to the NAACP Task Force on Education Quality July 2017 Hearing Report. 

The NAACP’s campaign against charter schools is detrimental and disrespectful to all parents who struggle to ensure a quality education for their children.

Rather than embrace, and work to expand, the opportunities that charter schools represent to America’s disadvantaged, and to families of color across the nation, the NAACP has chosen to stand as an obstacle, and work to stifle, a movement that, for thousands of children, is the greatest – and only – hope for achieving a quality education.

The association’s recently released report is intentionally skewed to further a union-driven, anti-charter school agenda, and its “model legislation” effort is an outrageous political scheme to further support the union’s agenda by undermining the voice and will of parents who are fighting for options for their children’s education and for the right and freedom to choose.

The NAACP has a long history of fighting for justice and for individual rights that further opportunities, hopes and human dignity.

These efforts are the antithesis of that long fight, putting the association sadly, and uncharacteristically, on the wrong side of history.

About the Center for Education Reform

Founded in 1993, the Center for Education Reform aims to expand educational opportunities that lead to improved economic outcomes for all Americans — particularly our youth — ensuring that the conditions are ripe for innovation, freedom and flexibility throughout U.S. education. As a non-partisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to great opportunities for all children, students and families, The Center for Education Reform does not endorse candidates or take political positions, but will always recognize and applaud those who advance sound education policies.

 

Filed Under: Press Releases, News & Analysis
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