Pennsylvania state Rep. Andrew Lewis discusses his Excellence in Education for All Act that would expand school choice opportunities to a new level in his state at an August news conference.
Editor’s note: For related news, click here to listen to Step Up For Students president Doug Tuthill’s podcast with Pennsylvania state Sen. Scott Martin.
Lowman S. Henry, chairman and CEO of the Lincoln Institute, a nonprofit public affairs foundation based in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, has a message for the citizens of his state.
Public education at both the K-12 and university levels is badly broken, Henry wrote in an opinion piece for his local news outlet, The Mercury. It’s broken, he believes, because taxpayers “continue to pour ever-increasing amounts of money that gobble up funds, fail to yield improved outcomes, and then demand even more money.”
What’s worse, he says, is that at the very moment when racial equality couldn’t be more important, Pennsylvania’s K-12 education system is failing to provide the necessary resources for minority youth and relegating them to under-performing schools.
These challenges have given rise to what Henry describes as a unique coalition of school choice advocates, uniting Pennsylvania’s conservatives and Black leaders around the idea that a quality education is the main ingredient for leveling the playing field for all children.
The most direct path toward achieving a level playing field, Henry believes, is a proposal sponsored by Pennsylvania state Rep. Andrew Lewis that would create Excellence in Education for All Act. The legislation would allow families to use the roughly $6,000 per student the state sets aside for tuition at private schools. It also would smooth the way for charter school growth and bolster the state’s tax credit scholarship programs.
Lewis called the legislation a game changer for families across the state at an August news conference where he unveiled the bill’s provisions, saying it will ensure that every child, regardless of his or her ZIP code or personal learning needs, will be guaranteed access to an excellent education.
You can read Henry’s full commentary here.
About 40% of the students at Autism Inspire Academy in Clearwater, Florida, attend on Florida scholarships for students with special needs. The school’s popularity among families has spurred plans for the K-8 school to add a ninth-grade class in 2022-23, and to become a K-12 academy within seven years.
Editor’s note: This commentary from Gina Lynch, chief operating officer and executive vice president for information technology at Step Up For Students, appeared today on heraldtribune.com.
Bob Dylan wrote that you don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. In Florida, the winds of change in public education clearly are favoring parental choice – and it's not necessary to put a moist finger in the air to detect the trend.
Just look at the following numbers as of Sept. 18 via Step Up For Students, the nonprofit for which I work that manages Florida's four K-12 scholarship programs:
To continue reading, click here.
BASIS Flagstaff Charter School, which opened in 2011, consistently makes the list of Arizona’s top charter schools.
Preliminary data from a new state-level analysis from the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools indicates that public charter schools posted more enrollment growth in 2020-21 than they’ve seen in the past six years, even as traditional public school enrollment declined during the first full academic year of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Across 42 states included in the analysis, charter schools gained nearly 240,000 students – a 7% increase – from 2019-20 to 2020-21. Other public schools, including district-run schools, lost more than 1.4 million students, a 3% loss, during the same period.
Increases for charter schools ranged from 49 additional students in Virginia to 35,751 additional students in Oklahoma according to the report. In terms of percentages, the increase in charter enrollment ranged from 0.19% in Louisiana to nearly 78% in Oklahoma. Only three states – Illinois, Iowa and Wyoming – saw declines in charter school population.
Virtual charter school enrollments figured into the increases, the study found, particularly in Oklahoma, Pennsylvania and Utah.
In Florida, charter school enrollment increased 3.86% over the last year, a little more than 3 percentage points less than the national average, while the state’s district public schools experienced a 3.16% enrollment decrease, close to the national average.
The National Alliance consulted state educational agency websites to gather enrollment data for the study. Researchers also spoke with parents, teachers, students and school leaders to gather anecdotal data.
The report notes that a similar increase in charter school enrollment hasn’t been seen since the 2014-15 school year, when the number of charter schools grew by 4.6%, creating a 7.5% enrollment boost.
While the report doesn’t offer details on whether overall growth was due to students leaving district schools or new schools opening, the authors conclude that many families, dissatisfied with the quality of what was available to their children during the pandemic, turned to other educational options, including the “nimbleness and flexibility” of charter schools that made them “the right public school choice.”
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:
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.
To continue reading, click here.
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.
Founder Ali Kaufman describes Space of Mind in Delray Beach, Florida, as a “boutique educational experience,” designed for a modern, social world. Its creative, flexible and personalized educational environment fosters growth for all kinds of learners – children, parents, and educators alike.
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.
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Ali Kaufman
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.”
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Reducing stress is "mission critical" at Space of Mind, where students are encouraged to engage in creative projects that stretch their imaginations.
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.
