On this episode, reimaginED senior writer Lisa Buie talks with Juliette Harrell, an Orlando, Florida, mother of three children, two of whom attend private school thanks to the Family Empowerment Scholarship Economic Options program.

Lacking education in financial literacy, Harrell and her husband, Allen, experienced homelessness as teenage parents. Their bills piled up, and Harrell and Aiden, now 10, and Amar'e, now 6, had to relocate to a local shelter while her husband moved in with his mother until they could get back on their feet. They heard about Florida’s state scholarship programs for lower-income families and applied.

The couple was able to settle Aiden and Amar’e into a private school that also helped them learn how to manage their finances. They became fiscally stable and eventually bought their first home.

EPISODE DETAILS:

• How Harrell’s suspected dyslexia affected her education experience
• How a lack of financial literacy education affected the Harrells’ ability to manage money early in their marriage
• How the Harrells learned of the Family Empowerment Scholarship Program and found the right educational fit for their two school-age sons
• The importance of perseverance when life throws a curve ball

Editor’s note: This commentary from Aaron Smith, director of education policy at the Reason Foundation, characterizes Florida as “the nation’s school choice bellwether.” It appears today on the National Review.

As public-school battles over masks, vaccinations, and critical race theory continue, one thing is for certain this year: The demand for school choice will be stronger than ever.

Yet misconceptions about school-choice programs draining funding from public schools still abound. As students head back to the classroom and state legislators get back to session this fall, it’s critical we understand where education dollars are really going.

The reality is that spending on school-choice programs pales in comparison to recent increases in employee- and retiree-benefit costs for education systems across the country. Today, state spending on school-choice programs such as vouchers, education savings accounts, and tax-credit scholarships accounts for less than 0.4% of total U.S. K–12 public-education expenditures.

To put this in perspective, if school choice were defunded in, say, Maryland, Utah, and Mississippi, the states’ savings could boost public-school funding by less than $10 per student in each state — and that’s before accounting for the costs of absorbing private school students back into district schools.

Even Florida, the nation’s school-choice bellwether, could save only an extra $405 per student if choice programs were cut — a small fraction of what it spends on public schools each year.

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Tiana Kubik has a message for parents who are venturing into homeschool waters for the first time:

“Others’ judgment of how you educate your child is not your problem. Let the school, teachers, and other parents have their thoughts. The burden and the beauty of homeschool is that you are the principal, lead teacher, and guidance counselor. You get to decide.”

Kubik, who earned a bachelor’s degree in family community services from Michigan State University and a master's in early childhood education from the Erikson Institute in Chicago, worked for nearly a decade as a pre-kindergarten teacher. She now runs a Chicago-based photography company with her husband. Together, they have been homeschooling their children, ages 3 and 7, since 2018.

Kubik has more good news for homeschool families who are unsure if they’re getting it right: There are no deadlines or requirements that you have it figured out on Day 1. Operating under that assumption can be a disservice to the entire family, Kubik says.

Among the perks of homeschooling, Kubik notes that a family’s schedule can be completely up to its members, with vacations planned around work schedules. Field trips can be taken whenever the mood strikes. Children can work on their own schedules, sleeping in late if that suits them. Perhaps most important, they can learn at their own pace rather than being pigeon-holed into a grade level based on their age.

Kubik expresses all this and more in a recent article for Project Forever Free. To read her take on what she considers a parent’s ultimate adventure, click here.

The White House on Sept. 13 issued an executive order to advance educational equity, excellence and economic opportunity for Hispanics.

Included in the text of the order is the fact that Hispanic students continue to be underrepresented in advanced courses in math and science, and that they can face language challenges in the classroom. Only 40% of Hispanic children participate in preschool education programs compared to 53 percent of their white peers, so they’re already behind when they start kindergarten.

A lack of creativity in the K-12 traditional education system when it comes to students for whom English is a second language has contributed to poor learning outcomes. Only 19% of Hispanic adults have at least a bachelor's degree compared with 1 in 3 adults overall, and just 6% have completed graduate or professional degree programs compared with 13% of adults overall.

While the executive order is a step in the right direction, RealClear Opinion Research polling in fall 2019 showed that when asked if they could select any type of school for their child, 70% of families selected a school other than their zoned public school. Polling from Beck Research conducted in January 2021 showed that 71% of Hispanics either strongly favor or somewhat favor school choice.

Leaders in the education community need to pay attention to what families want, because as the executive order relates, the COVID-19 pandemic exposed many inequalities that already existed among Hispanic students and families. The pandemic opened parents’ eyes, and now. Now more than ever, families not only want school choice; they need it.

The order falls short in that it fails to address ways families can access a school that meets the individual needs of their children if the schools they currently attend fail to do so. If we already know that access to a high-quality education and a fair shot at the American dream is hampered by systematic inequity, I believe we should be looking at how traditional school systems promote these inequities.

We need to give families options and have zero-tolerance for failing district schools in areas with a high population of students of color that have been doing a poor job for generations and failing the same communities this executive order aims to reach.

Let me be clear. The Hispanic community is tired of waiting for the traditional education system to improve and work efficiently. We are tired of being used for anyone's political agenda. Indeed, we would like to see immediate solutions that won't take years to implement. A child gets only one shot at a proper, quality education.

Applications for two state scholarship programs – the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship and the Family Empowerment Scholarship for Educational Options – reached new milestones Friday, bringing the number of low- and middle-income students attending K-12 private schools on a state scholarship to 150,180.

That’s nearly double the number of students served since 2015, according to Step Up For Students, the nonprofit organization that administers the scholarships.

Another 23,018 students utilize the Family Empowerment Scholarship for Students with Unique Abilities, an education savings account program formerly known as the Gardiner Scholarship.

Both the Florida Tax Credit program, created in 2001, and the Family Empowerment Scholarship for Educational Options, created in 2019, serve students who live in households earning at or below 375% of the poverty line, or about $99,375 for a family of four.

The Family Empowerment Scholarship for Educational Options program also allows dependents of members of the military and siblings of students on the Family Empowerment Scholarship for Students with Unique Abilities scholarship to apply without income verification. Both FTC and FES-EO scholarship programs allow children in foster care, out-of-home care, or who are homeless to receive scholarships without income verification.

The Florida Tax Credit program is funded through corporate contributions. Florida corporations receive a dollar-for-dollar tax credit for contributions to scholarship funding organizations, which award scholarships to low-income students. The Family Empowerment Scholarship is funded by the state of Florida.

Scholarship values vary by grade level and county, but average about $7,300.

Income-based scholarships for the 2021-22 school year are still available. Parents and guardians can apply to Step Up For Students for a scholarship here.

 

*updated to reflect that students who are homeless can also qualify for scholarships without income verification.

It’s become increasingly clear that education choice is important. Research shows it improves academic outcomes. It increases a student’s chances of getting into college. It also plays a key role in addressing an increasingly distressing and problematic truth, one that isn’t talked about enough: Most kids don’t understand why they go to school, or why they should want to.

Parents, students, and education reformers assume that American education exists for some purpose. For decades, that purpose was to train young Americans in basic, universally understood concepts to support a literate and competent American workforce.

Yet with the rise of the tech age and America’s hyper-industrialized, service-based economy, the question for many has become: What is the purpose of education, now?

My younger brother recently asked me, “Why should I work hard in high school? Why would I want to work hard to get into a good college where I’ll put myself into debt studying subjects I could have learned online?”

While I don’t agree with his perception of the situation, I can’t blame him for having it. Every day, with our family’s encouragement, he works hard in pre-calculus, U.S. history, and Advanced Placement Psychology, because we keep telling him it’s important. But from his perspective, he doesn’t know why he’s working so hard.

There is an old saying that holds, “Sometimes it matters not to be strong, but to feel strong.” Similarly, even when a student doesn’t understand the full scope of how important education is for his or her life, it’s important that they feel that they’re doing something worthwhile.

Many in my generation fashion themselves as “entrepreneurs” who don’t need math or science or literature or history because they don’t see how that knowledge will be used in their lives. Many want to sell things online or make TikTok videos rather than go to school and learn.

Personally, I think all young people should take more of an interest in physics, but if alternative learning styles – like the innovative and flexible education methods that have risen out of the pandemic – is what it takes to motivate a student’s focus on mathematics, then why get in the way?

In the past few years alone, the innovation born from alternative school models and programs is astounding. Many private schools, including my brother’s, are integrating technology into the curriculum and training students to be good “digital citizens.” Other schools have adopted personal finance curriculum to prepare students for the “real world.” My old high school attracts families with its engineering program, which features computer-aided drafting certifications that students can make use of in college or trade school.

For adults, the benefits of education are obvious. For disillusioned students, education choice helps reveal those benefits and sparks the desire to learn. As exemplified by hundreds of Voices for Choice stories compiled by the American Federation for Children, when students understand the opportunity they’ve been given, and the novel programs that come with that opportunity, they quickly see the value of working hard in the classroom.

The recent transition of Step Up For Students’ policy and public affairs blog, redefinED, to reimaginED, celebrates the completion of a mission to “redefine” education, and a commitment to “reimagine’ it. As a younger adult whose life was changed for the better by education choice, I think education reformers, parents, and students alike should remember how education choice opens doors – not only to traditionally better academic outcomes, but also to a new scope of educational pathways that can recapture student interest.

Students always will learn best when they want to learn, and education choice has an important role to play in fostering that desire, perhaps even beyond what our empirical data suggest.

Like a school, but better.

That’s how Ali Kaufman, founder and CEO of Space of Mind, describes a revolutionary program that engages students, families, educators and the larger community in experiential learning.

Kaufman’s brainchild, launched in 2004, is not a traditional school. Nor is it a tutoring center. It’s not even a learning pod. The entrepreneur herself recently had this to say about it: “Everything is different about Space of Mind versus the public schools.”

In her interview with reimaginED, she said the best way to describe Space of Mind is to call it “a tutoring service for homeschool children.” But there’s so much more to it than that.

Searching for a learning solution that could provide parents more flexibility while still challenging students in the classroom, Kaufman combined elements of the most cutting-edge education delivery systems available to better meet students’ individual needs. Starting with just three students in her Delray Beach, Florida, living room, she grew the group to eight by 2011, when Space of Mind moved into a historic home in her city’s downtown area.

Some Florida children with special needs have the option of using education savings accounts to attend Space of Mind through the state’s Family Empowerment Scholarship program. Families can use these accounts to customize their child’s education through full- or part-time teaching and tutoring services during regular school hours. But parents of mainstream children also are taking advantage of Space of Mind, many citing the benefits from an individualized school day based around student needs.

Still others are drawn to the 3-to-1 student-teacher ratio and that Space of Mind uses the entire city of Delray Beach as an extended classroom beyond its 10,000-square-foot space, which can serve up to 80 students. Parents not using a Family Empowerment Scholarship or other private-school scholarship option pay tuition for their child to attend Space of Mind, just as though their child were attending a private school.

(You can watch first-hand accounts of Space of Mind’s success at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9L1jPmniB0M&t=5s.)

Families who have chosen learning options such as homeschooling and learning pods, which proved to be a lifeline for students during the pandemic, also enroll their children at Space of Mind. Homeschool and learning pod students are able to access subjects and receive tutoring that may not be available through their homeschool or pod curriculum. Scholarship students, private school families, homeschool children, students in learning pods—Space of Mind has something to offer a wide range of families.

“Everything is collaborative and creative, and very much personalized to the students,” Kaufman said.

***

Kaufman’s idea for Space of Mind evolved from 17 years of professional coaching experience for adults and children with special needs. Business leaders and CEOs who struggled with attention-deficit issues and other behavior needs also sought her out for professional coaching. Her services made such an impact that the CEOs asked her to work with their families in tandem with therapists to help adults and children who wrestled with anxiety.

She developed a passion for helping students with school-related stressors. After successfully helping students and parents create productive homework and time management strategies, Kaufman began working with teachers, guidance counselors and school teams to translate that success to the classroom.

In the process, she says, she met intelligent children who did not want to go to school because of bullying or test anxiety. Recently, students cited the distractions of safety drills at school in the wake of the school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, located just 20 minutes from Space of Mind.

Safety drills are nothing short of essential after violent incidents, but Kaufman says that some Stoneman Douglas students enrolled in Space of Mind because the constant reminder of the threat of violence made it hard for them to concentrate on their schoolwork.

Seventeen-year-old Tal Argov told the Sun-Sentinel last year that Space of Mind gives him the opportunity to work on projects instead of only memorizing material for tests. Argov attended Space of Mind on the Delray Beach campus from fifth through eighth grades, left for two years, and then came back.

He calls it “a different way of learning.”

“It’s family-oriented, more personal with the teachers,” Argov said. “It helps me enjoy learning. There’s a lot of leeway and flexibility compared to public school.”

***

Kaufman and her team designed their own curriculum, aligning it with Florida’s state standards and allowing students to earn a state of Florida high school diploma. But it goes further to include social, emotional, wellness and character-building standards that are integrated into every academic and extracurricular program.

Students have an array of benefits, from academic coaches, who provide one-on-one assistance for skill development and strategy building. They are eligible for honors, Advanced Placement and college dual enrollment, as well as the Florida Bright Futures Scholarship. Space of Mind reports a 100% acceptance rate for college-bound students.

It’s an understatement to say that Space of Mind is difficult to categorize. It doesn’t meet the definition of a homeschool co-op; parents are not part-time teachers during the school day. It doesn’t fit the description of a learning pod; with 60 students enrolled this fall in the “full-time schoolhouse,” it’s far larger than most learning pods.

Yet it appears to be a “just right” learning option as families grapple with how to best meet their children’s educational needs during the continued pandemic.

“The No. 1 problem when parents call is they say, ‘My kid doesn’t care about anything,’” Kaufman told the Sun-Sentinel. “We’re wildly well-positioned. We can give families a lot of safety and choice.”

And before, during, or after a pandemic, this should give parents peace of mind.

In any ample, subsidized program of parental choice, the student population of public schools in the inner-city will diminish. What, then, will be the effect upon the education in those schools for children whose parents, though now empowered, choose for them to stay put?

And second, what eventually will be the effect upon our society of subsidizing these adults to exercise their 14^th Amendment right like the rest of us?

Each of these questions deserves a book; the few paragraphs that follow are but an invitation to take both issues seriously. Be forewarned of my own preference and for subsidized choice, at least for our lower-income families. (And note that I will not dwell on test scores, which clearly suffer no harm from parental decision and, rather, appear to improve. In any case, a modest change, up or down, would be scant reason to reject choice.)

The effect upon the mind and spirit of the child

The child of the unmoneyed family who witnesses their deliberation, then selection, of preferred schools will grasp that being a parent is no trivial role among those of our human species. “Here is authority in the very person that I love and with whom I live. In this world about me, family matters at least as much as school; in any case, no school can tell them that I have to go there.”

The child begins to appreciate that grownups, like those in this very family, have a role in the entire adult order of things. “Parents watch the news and worry about their country; they can vote, and this matters for people I don’t even know. Being a parent is a big deal. Maybe I can be one someday.”

Such observations should be no less true of that child whose parents now freely choose to keep him or her in what had been that one specific and unavailable public school. “It’s been a good place for me so far. I’m learning, and I love it. If things go bad, they can always make a switch.”

The mind and spirit of the lower-income parent (LIP)

By LIP, I will here mean those (mostly inner-city) parents with assets and incomes insufficient to (1) move residence and thus qualify for their preferred public school; or (2) pay tuition at a private school of their choice. I’m guessing that these LIPs comprise half our families, though varying widely in degree of financial capacity and thus the need for dollar assistance to choose the child’s school.

Such struggling families were the target of our 19^th Century elite who managed to force most LIP children of the inner-city into “public schools,” where they would learn a good deal from selected teachers and the wisdom of the Bible. Horace Mann, that legendary designer and begetter of public school systems, supposed that he was doing a form of Christian ministry by making the King James version a part of the standard curriculum.

Mann’s report in his twelfth and final term as Secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education (1848) stressed his own religious convictions and the urgency of their presentation to all school children:

“In this age of the world … no student of history, or observer of mankind, can be hostile to the precepts and doctrines of the Christian religion … the use of the Bible in schools anywhere … [has] my full concurrence.”

For half a century, Mann’s ideal “non-sectarian” Christian curriculum was to spread and grow. Thereafter, the public school focus began inexorably to shift toward the purely secular. In due course, the Supreme Court was to eliminate prayer and claims of doctrinal reality entirely from the curriculum. At no point along the way did public education ask the opinion of the powerless LIP on matters celestial or even terrestrial.

Nor does it yet, and, in my opinion, with consequent inquiry to the personal and civic roles of those LIPs who conclude, quite reasonably, that the higher ranks of our society consider them incapable of responsible purpose and judgment.

Thus, the parent, like the child, comes to see the institution of family within their social class as feeble, even risky, in the eyes of higher society. “Parenthood for people like us is merely a production line. We make ’em; but it is P.S. 26 that will take ’em and, possibly, wake ’em, to an order of things higher than I could manage. In any case, what’s my choice? Responsibility is not a role for parents like us.”

This, in my view, is no way to build and maintain a democratic society. Even – or especially – assuming that our diverse levels of wealth persist, the poorest of citizens should experience the dignity of being responsible for their own kids, instead of surrendering their minds and spirits to utter strangers.

And with what effect? Horace Mann would, I hope, be profoundly embarrassed at the harvest wrought by our states’ educational culling of their ordinary families. It does assure jobs for their children’s’ mentors, but with what systemic lift for the child?

The effect upon the civic order

Our systemic defining of the LIP family as incompetent to choose embeds itself in the mind of society at all levels. The upper half tends to view the young urban adult as emerging from an inner-city miasma, after 12 years, with a probable deficit in learning, behavior and civic spirit; and I’m not clear that this state of mind is simple prejudice.

But is this the best our democracy can do for these children and for our own national identity?

Sadly, the spirit of Horace Mann yet presides over our children of the street. We want them to become like us but systematically deny them the chance to experience our own middle-class freedom and responsibility.

Editor’s note: This commentary from Derrell Bradford, president of 50CAN, a nonprofit education advocacy group, appears in the September 2021 issue of the National Association of State Boards of Education magazine.

One of the earliest conversations I can remember was my mother and grandmother discussing whose address we would use so I could attend a middle school I was not zoned for. That conversation happened at a kitchen table at the corner of Baker and Woodyear Streets in southwest Baltimore, a neighborhood that would become known to many Americans years later when its burning in the wake of the death of Freddie Gray was nation[1]ally televised.

Decades before I wrote an op-ed or analyzed the performance data of a school, my family was living in this neighborhood, trying to figure out how I could get the education that was right for me, just as many others do. And unknowingly, one of the most important lessons I learned there was about school choice in Baltimore—and in the country. As an education reform advocate, I work on school choice policies the most, and it is the issue about which I feel most strongly.

You might call it my first love, but it was not an amorous love. It was instead a love born of necessity.

The American public education system is already a school choice system, which is navigated in four ways. Families are lucky (as I ultimately was, having received a scholarship from grades 7-12 to an independent, all-boys school just outside the city, which we never could have afforded on our own). They are rich enough to pay private school tuition, or they are able to leverage the mortgage market to get a house near the right school. They are connected and thus know the right people.

Or they lie about where they live to gain entrance to a school for which they normally would not be eligible.

The revelation that we already live in a choice system, but one that does not distribute the power to choose equally or fairly, turns the usual conversation about school choice — who has it and how much they should have — on its head. It is essential context for members of state boards of education and other state leaders considering choice policies in any and all of their forms.

To continue reading, click here.

Editor’s note: This commentary from Bruno V. Manno, senior advisor to the Walton Family Foundation’s K-12 Program and a reimaginED contributor, appeared Monday on RealClear Education.

Back-to-school stories this year will focus, naturally, on the Covid-19 pandemic’s toll on students and families and on remedying these difficulties.

But another story is being shortchanged: It’s about how parents sought new options for their children like homeschooling, small learning pods, and micro-schools, with civic entrepreneurs and their partners creating new organizations or expanding existing ones to meet this demand.

This story suggests a promising path forward for K-12 education – parent-directed, student-centered, and pluralistic, offering more educational and support options to families.

The story begins with the pandemic shock to our way of schooling. The lockdowns unbundled the familiar division of responsibilities between home, school, and community organizations, with parents eventually rebundling school services to meet their family’s needs.

The result: nearly 18% of parents changed their child’s school, a figure 75% higher than historical averages. Thirteen percent also enrolled their child in small learning pods, supplementing regular school. Overall, 2.6 million students exited district and private schools, enrolling in charter schools, homeschooling, micro-schools, and other options.

This familiar American story of disruption spurring new capacity and innovation has three lessons for shaping the future educational landscape.

First, many parents don’t want “the old normal.” Two of three parents (66%) would rethink “how we educate students, coming up with new ways to teach.” Only one-third believe that schools “should get back to the way things were.” More than half (53%) support pods, with Black and Hispanic parents (60%) more supportive than white parents (53%). Overall, only 14% oppose them.

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