Invisible no more: New book profiles school choice success stories

9781442226098_fcIn 2006, thousands of people jammed the courtyard next to the Florida Capitol not long after the Florida Supreme Court struck down the state’s first school voucher program. I was a reporter covering the state education beat, and in the second sentence of my story I noted the obvious: The majority of rally goers were black.

Somehow, almost every other print reporter missed that, leaving readers with an incomplete picture of an extraordinary event. The omission baffled me then, but I’ve since learned to expect it. It doesn’t take a sophisticated media analysis to see that the parents and children who are clamoring for and benefiting from expanded learning options are too often left out of the story.

Against that backdrop, a new book by former Wall Street Journal editor and writer Naomi Schaefer Riley fills in the gaps. To give visibility to those at the heart of the school choice debate, and to dispel the abstractions that cloud it, Riley follows a simple formula.

She tells us about the kids.

There’s a lot of pluck and love in the 10 profiles in “Opportunity and Hope.” And a lot of shattered stereotypes about low-income parents and faith-based schools. And a hammered-home fact that is again obvious but overlooked: a different school can put a child on a remarkably different trajectory in life.

Riley
Riley

Aleysha Taveras’s mother, a teacher’s aide at a public school in the Bronx, saw too much violence and too little learning. So she enrolled her daughter in a Catholic school with, as Aleysha puts it, “teachers who would always be on top of me.” Now Aleysha is on the verge of graduating from Manhattan College and embarking on a career as a teacher.

Carlos Battle was raised by a single mom in a tough Washington D.C. neighborhood. He had ADHD. But after a stint in a private school, Carlos got a full ride to Northeastern University in Boston, where he’s now majoring in psychology and social service. He envisions starting a nonprofit that will rescue kids from being stuck in neighborhoods like his. “I just want to break that cycle of stuckness,” he says.

Most of the black and Latino students profiled by Riley received scholarships through the Children’s Scholarship Fund, the pioneering, privately funded choice program started in 1998 by Ted Forstmann and John Walton. Danielle Stone is one of the exceptions, with her scholarship coming from Step Up For Students, which administers Florida’s tax credit scholarship program and co-hosts this blog.

Riley lets the students and parents do most of the talking. She asks the basics. Who are these kids? What were their lives like before the scholarship? What are they like now? What made the difference?

Even before securing a scholarship, Anthony Samuels’s mom, a clerical worker, enrolled him at a Quaker school in Philadelphia where the tuition was two-thirds of her annual salary. There, he says, he learned how to stay organized – a skill that allowed him not only to do well in high school but to thrive in college. “They just prepare you to meet your best potential,” he said.

Carlos, the young man who wants to crush stuckness, admits to a rough transition at his private high school. Expectations were high, and nobody lowered them. “They taught me steadfastness,” he said.

For all its heart tugs, Riley’s book stirs hard questions. What if more parents and more kids had more access to more options? What if voucher and tax credit programs still weren’t so small and limited?

Riley’s answer: “Stories like the ones in this book are not just tales of individual accomplishments. When they reach a critical mass, these success stories hold the keys to raising up a whole community, to breaking the cycle of poverty, to increasing social mobility … “

We shouldn’t need a book like this.

At Step Up For Students, we see success stories all the time. At redefinED, we frequently post them. Stories like Denisha’s, and Jorge’s, and Davion’s, and Jack’s. For reporters, turnaround stories are standard fare when they involve district schools (see here, here and here for fresh examples), and rightly so. But those amazing stories shouldn’t be off limits when the students are in alternative settings.

One day, headlines will celebrate student success no matter where it happens. In the meantime, “Opportunity and Hope” shows us that beyond today’s headlines, it is already happening.


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BY Ron Matus

Ron Matus is director for policy and public affairs at Step Up for Students and a former editor of redefinED. He joined Step Up in February 2012 after 20 years in journalism, including eight years as an education reporter with the Tampa Bay Times (formerly the St. Petersburg Times). Ron can be reached at rmatus@stepupforstudents.org or (727) 451-9830. Follow him on Twitter @RonMatus1 and on facebook at facebook.com/redefinedonline.

3 Comments

Chanae Jackson-Baker

I must order a copy…. Thanks for the read!

Anonymous

Thank you, Chanae! I hope everybody gets a chance to read it, particularly those who are skeptical or critical of parental choice.

Ron Matus

Hi Chanae, thank you! I hope everyone gets a chance to read it, particularly folks who are skeptical or critical of parental choice.

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