Parents need access to quality educational options. But, as several school choice advocates said during an education reform gathering in Orlando on Thursday, they will define quality based on their children’s needs.
Hergit Llenas is the director of local engagement for the Nevada School Choice Partnership. Her state is home to a new tax credit scholarship and education savings account programs. When parents come to her wanting to know about school options, she said, she usually asks: “Why do you want to leave the school you’re in?”
Some are looking for academic rigor. Others may be looking for faith-based education. Still others may be looking for safety, or to avoid bullying, or to find educators who can relate to their culture — a factor that resonated at the Hispanic Council for Reform and Educational Options’ gathering in Orlando.
States looking to set up school choice programs, and deciding how to regulate them, need to consider parents’ diverse needs, said Myles Mendoza, the executive director of One Chance Illinois.
“The goal of this is to open up high-quality schools,” he said, but excessive testing requirements can be counter-productive. “If you make it too bureaucratic, you’re going to lose some of the participation” from good schools wary of regulation, he said.
Abner Adorno, the founder of Living Word Academy, told the group that in Florida, where private school choice is more mature, tax credit scholarships helped his school weather the 2008 recession.
Economic turmoil hit the Orlando area hard, forcing some families to leave his school. Some quickly learned public schools weren’t the best fit for their child, he said, and the scholarships gave those families a way to return to his private school. Step Up For Students, which hosts this blog and employs the author of this post, helps administer the scholarship program.
Adorno said he’s also seen the importance of school choice as the parent of a daughter attending public high schools. When she tried to sign up for ninth grade, he said, her assigned public school couldn’t offer courses she needed.
It wasn’t until a few weeks before the school year that she learned her school was overcrowded and she could transfer elsewhere, but that created hardships of its own, like daily drives on Central Florida toll roads. She’s now a third-year senior preparing for college, thanks in part to classes from Florida Virtual School, but the experience convinced Adorno parents should have more options.
“School choice should be available,” he said. “It should be funded and we should have the option.”
