Editor’s note: This commentary from Amanda Kieffer, communications director for the Cardinal Institute for West Virginia Policy, appeared on projectforeverfree.org.

It’s been a tempestuous couple of years for education reform, but the clouds have broken over 2021, and the silver linings have rarely shown as bright.

Following two years of the Red for Ed movement and two years of COVID mandates and lockdowns that have hobbled the education of a generation of children, fed-up families are finally demanding better educational choices. And lawmakers are listening.

This year alone, 18 states have either expanded existing education choice programs or added new ones. We’re living in the “Year of Educational Choice.” But as the sun rises on a new world, the educational establishment is fighting to keep the old system alive.

In West Virginia, for example, Mountain State Justice (MSJ), a left-leaning public interest law firm, has filed an intent to sue against the state’s brand new Hope Scholarship — the nation’s broadest and most inclusive education savings account.

The program gives families 100% of the state-based portion of education tax dollars, estimated at $4,600 per child per year, to use on whatever kind of education they please.

Students who want to stay enrolled in their traditional public schools and students who wish to leave full-time enrollment in the traditional public school system can use the scholarship funds to pursue a more individualized education. Families can use the Hope Scholarship for tuition, curriculum, educational materials, special needs therapies, tutoring, and more.

In short, the scholarship gives families some choice as to what education they’d like to pursue and allows them to take their tax dollars where they will. The scholarship may not cover the entire cost of tuition, but it will lessen the financial burden for families.

That doesn’t sit well with MSJ. Their suit contests the scholarship on anti-discrimination grounds, stating that it “excludes anti-discrimination protections otherwise protected under state laws.” They also allege that the new program takes money from public schools without making up for the money in the school budget.

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Editor’s note: Emily Anne Gullickson, founder and CEO of A for Arizona, provided this commentary exclusively to reimaginED. You can hear reimaginED executive editor Matt Ladner conducting a podcast with Gullickson here.

Across the country, there have been countless stories this school year about school bus driver shortages and the impact that shortage is having on kids getting to school. While a new onslaught of abrupt cancellations and modified routes no doubt is an obstacle for parents, the reality is that transportation barriers for families have persisted for years.

The issue is exacerbated in Arizona due to robust district open enrollment and public charter school systems, making it even more difficult for families to find accessible and reliable K-12 transportation to deliver their children to the school that best meets their needs.

Public school transportation is expensive, bureaucratic, and cumbersome. We have a system that is completely antiquated, largely in the same form when it was established nearly 80 years ago. Nationwide funding formulas operate as if kids and families are all still attending their assigned school within neatly designed and restrictive attendance zones.

But in Arizona, where nearly one out of every two students attend a public school other than the neighborhood district school to which they were assigned, the system is broken.

Ridership has plummeted over the years and has continued to plummet with pandemic enrollment declines. Many public school leaders rightfully have been hesitant or restricted from trying something new or innovative due to fear of losing funding often coupled with lack of permission as a result of overregulation.

Needless to say, changes to our K-12 public transportation system are long overdue. But rather than put a Band-Aid on a failing system, Arizona chose to move forward in the 2021 legislative session with meaningful change prioritizing equity and opportunity.

In K-12 education, we are notorious for swinging the pendulum from one one-size-fits-all idea to another. Some experts believe it is time to get school districts entirely out of the business of transportation and let an organization or governmental body run point on all K-12 transit needs.

In a metro city with roughly 750,000 students, leveraging district, magnet and public charter choice as well as other educational options, this sounds like a bureaucratic nightmare.

On the flip side, other experts loudly say just give 100% of the funding to parents in the form of a debit card and call it a day. Part of Arizona’s new policy bundle empowers families to access direct in lieu of transportation grants from their public school to help cover driving costs, create carpools, leverage K-12 ridesharing opportunities, or access public transit options.

This is an important and critical option, but it is not a solution for every family.

Rather than force a single solution on the masses, Arizona is inviting and funding community solutions. The Arizona Transportation Modernization Grant Program, authorized by the state and administered by A for Arizona’s Expansion & Innovation Fund, gives schools, local governments, and organizations the opportunity to rethink public school transportation.

This year, $20 million of state appropriations and federal stimulus monies awarded by Gov. Doug Ducey will be granted as seed funding to the best submissions that meaningfully improve access to reliable and safe transportation for district students using open enrollment or who attend public charter schools as well as proposals that support efficiency solutions and broader K-12 transportation innovations.

With nearly $54 million in requests to date, the competition is real – and inspiring. In the first round of grant submissions, 74% of applications came from entrepreneurial leaders in rural and remote communities, identifying additional options to transport students not solely reliant on yellow school buses.

Local leaders have brilliant approaches to solving Arizona’s long-standing inadequacies in the K-12 transportation system. Our state is rich with transportation experts who never have been given the opportunity to innovate without facing funding penalties; nor have they been provided the runway to cross-collaborate with organizations, cities, tribal communities, and the many public schools at the table.

Meanwhile, Arizona has benefited from a steady influx of brilliant engineers, technology wizards and strategists from Silicon Valley as well as home-grown entrepreneurs ready to change the way we transport K-12 students, drive down costs, enhance safety and prioritize efficiency.

Non-profits are leaning in too, as many K-12 students engage and thrive with night classes, microschools and evening learning hubs. As more schools embrace new seat time flexibilities that will modernize when, where, and how learning can occur, operating a one-size transit solution around a single bell schedule per site is no longer reality.

These modernization grants are serving as a catalyst to tearing down long-standing access barriers so that every Arizona family has meaningful public school options to serve their child’s unique needs. The initial portfolio of finalists will be announced by A for Arizona in early November and will be models to watch.

We look forward to learning what is working, what parents do and do not want, and what must be protected at all costs in our next-gen bundle of transit options for K-12 students.

Editor’s note: This commentary from Lewis M. Andrews, chair of the Children’s Educational Opportunity Foundation of Connecticut, appeared Saturday on the New Haven Register.

A recently released school reform study in New York promises timely fiscal as well as educational benefits, and not just for the Empire State. Some quick background helps us appreciate the study’s important implications for Connecticut.

In 2011, Arizona became the first state to adopt what is called an education savings account, or ESA, policy. ESA plans provide parents who believe their child is not adequately served by the local public school with an annual budget which can be spent on a variety of accredited options — not just traditional private or parochial schools, but tutoring, online academies, special needs services, micro schools and so on.

In the years since, Florida, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Tennessee, and West Virginia have all followed Arizona’s lead with similar programs.

A legal challenge from the local teacher union has kept the Nevada plan in litigation limbo, but grateful parents in the other states have been using ESAs to school their children at home or in small groups during the COVID-19 pandemic.

ESAs were originally designed as an instructional reform, to give K-12 children more learning options. But because the amount of an education savings account can be far less than a school district’s per-pupil cost, ESAs have always had the potential to be a financial plus, as well.

Consider, for example, the situation in Hartford, where the public school per-pupil cost is almost seven times that of a typical K-8 parochial school tuition in the same area. The intriguing question in a fiscally troubled state like Connecticut is how much a statewide ESA policy might save all taxpayers.

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Editor’s note: You can read a reimaginED interview with Debbie Veney, senior vice president of communications for the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, here.

Absent some delightful surge in fertility and/or immigration, it seems very likely that peak enrollment for America’s school districts lies in the past.

Years from now, district advocates may regard the years before the pandemic with nostalgia. Hopefully, people may think it strange, even primitive, that we once assigned students to schools by ZIP code. A 14-year-old and counting baby bust would not be easy to overcome in the best of times, and these surely are not the best of times for American school districts.

“Voting with Their Feet,” a new report from the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, reinforces the impression the peak district enrollment has passed.

The Alliance tracked charter and district enrollment from 2019-20 to 2020-21. Nationwide charter schools gained 237,311 students while districts lost 1,452,584. All state charter sectors other than those of Illinois and Iowa gained students; all district systems lost students without exception.

District enrollment losses consistently outnumber charter gains, meaning that districts doubtlessly lost enrollment to kindergarten redshirting, private schools, home-schooling, dropouts and baby bust. Note, however, that all these things could have dragged down charter enrollment as well but didn’t manage it.

The real fun comes in examining the trends on a percentage basis:

With both the largest increase in charter school enrollment (77.7%!) and the largest decline in district enrollment (6.9%), Oklahoma parents win the prize for most restless parents.

Florida, meanwhile, saw a relatively modest increase in charter enrollment (3.9%) and modest decrease in district enrollment (3.2%). We are left to wonder what these numbers might look like if the Florida Education Association had prevailed in its effort to keep district schools from serving students in person.

Stay tuned and we’ll see what happens next.

Debbie Veney already had earned a journalism degree from Howard University when the nation’s first public charter school, City Academy Charter School in St. Paul, Minnesota, opened its doors nearly 30 years ago. She enjoyed the benefits of education choice by attending a Catholic school.

“It was small and very student focused,” recalled Veney, who grew up in Washington, D.C. “It was a predominantly Black school, and it was a really interesting experience for me to be in a private school setting that was culturally affirming and academically rigorous.”

Today, Veney is senior vice president of communications for the National Alliance of Public Charter Schools, the largest nonprofit advocacy group specifically dedicated to supporting charter schools, which are funded with public dollars but are privately managed. Unlike private schools, charter schools do not charge tuition.

Based in the nation’s capital, the alliance works to educate lawmakers and thought leaders about how charter schools can meet the needs of the communities they serve by providing families with public school options.

It also advocates for legislation that will advance the charter school movement. As host of the annual National Charter Schools Conference, the alliance brings together educators, leaders, lawyers, researchers and policy experts.

Veney was the mastermind behind the organization’s recent study that showed charter schools experienced their greatest enrollment boost in six years during the 2020-21 school year, even as traditional district schools saw declines.

She had seen local stories in January about the growth of charter schools and shrinkage in district schools in different parts of the country and “was curious about whether there was really a significant pattern here or whether these were one-offs.”

The study, which covered 42 states, showed 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.

“We became a very popular option for a lot of parents, and what was really interesting to me was that you could see this pattern of where there was any capacity at all, parents maximized that opportunity and grabbed as many seats as they could.”

As district campuses in many areas stayed shuttered, many charters remained open for in-person learning, prompting parents who may have been dissatisfied with their district’s remote learning program the prior spring to seek alternatives.

Though Florida kept its district campuses open, the trend of charter school growth over district schools still held.

Veney speculated that could have been because parents got “an up close and personal” look at what districts were teaching during the spring 2020 quarantine and wanted something different.

“Even with schools that didn’t close, it was as if there was this window of time where people rethought a lot of stuff,” she said. “I figured out some things that I would have never figured out if there hadn’t been a pandemic.

“I think there was a lot of word of mouth that went on. I saw parents who left ‘A’ rated schools because they wanted a different type of experience.”

Veney said the study turned up a few surprises, namely that several states reported decreases in charter school enrollment, albeit extremely modest, such 9 fewer children in Iowa and 22 fewer in Wyoming.

The largest decline was in Illinois, where charters lost 702 students, a decrease of 1.1 % over the previous year. But traditional district schools in that state lost 66,806 students, a decline of more than 3.5%.

“Some of it may have simply been a factor of students (who) graduated,” she said. “And a lot of parents didn’t enroll their children in kindergarten.”

She also pointed out that the Census reported an explosion in homeschooling, which parents who may have been unemployed or working from home decided to try.

Veney, who counts among the most significant trends she has witnessed the rise of national networks that are able deliver “amazing” results, said she foresees a new wave of parental involvement even as the pandemic panic fades into memory.

“Looking ahead, I see parents are really going to be more vocal about what they want for their kids,” she said. “I’m seeing more parents being more directive now, realizing they have the voice to do that.”

She also predicts more grassroots involvement in the charter movement as opposed to operators from distant places starting schools.

“I think we are going to see a lot more people who are from that community using their voices and becoming advocates,” she said. “I don’t think we can go back to pre-pandemic times.”

The best school choice option you’ve never heard of

Like many students in Florida, Desiree Schmidt had multiple options when it was time to decide on high school. She chose to stick with Dayspring Academy, the charter school she had attended since kindergarten, and to enroll in its “early college” program. Neither Desiree’s mom, a hairdresser, nor her dad, an electrician, had gone to college. So they loved a program where Desiree could earn a diploma and a two-year degree at the same time. It wasn’t easy. Desiree, now 16, said there were times early in high school that the intensity of college prep READ MORE

podcastED: reimaginED executive editor discusses modernizing public education transportation with A for Arizona’s Emily Anne Gullickson

On this episode, Matthew Ladner speaks with the president of the Arizona-based education nonprofit about the group’s work to create an innovation fund to seed new options for families that need more choices for getting their children to school. Both Ladner and Gullickson, staunch supporters of education choice, acknowledge that choice cannot be choice without workable transportation. The two discuss the history of public education transportation funding and the possibilities for communities to work with organizations such as Boys and Girls Clubs and YMCAs. READ MORE

Innovator, education choice advocate keeps one eye on Florida as South Carolina forges ahead with education savings accounts

Ellen Weaver epitomizes education choice. She attended a private Christian school from kindergarten to fifth grade, was homeschooled from sixth to tenth grade, and graduated from a district high school. Since 2013, she has worked as founding president of the nonprofit Palmetto Promise Institute to bring expanded choice to her native South Carolina. “I’m so grateful to my parents for the incredible sacrifices they made to get me the opportunities I needed,” said Weaver, who grew up in Iowa but came home to attend college at a Bob Jones University, READ MORE

 

Ellen Weaver epitomizes education choice. She attended a private Christian school from kindergarten to fifth grade, was homeschooled from sixth to tenth grade, and graduated from a district high school.

Since 2013, she has worked as founding president of the nonprofit Palmetto Promise Institute to bring expanded choice to her native South Carolina.

“I’m so grateful to my parents for the incredible sacrifices they made to get me the opportunities I needed,” said Weaver, who grew up in Iowa but came home to attend college at a Bob Jones University, where she majored in political science and government. “I needed different things at different points in my education journey.”

Weaver, who describes herself as a child as “a little bookworm,” got interested in politics while riding in the car with her father, who liked to listen to conservative talk radio. She admits with a laugh to being a “Rush Baby,” a nickname that Rush Limbaugh gave to those who listened to his show as kids.

She entered college planning to major in piano performance – she had played since she was 8 – but realized she didn’t want to make a lifetime commitment. So, she opted for her other passion: politics.

Weaver spent summers working to help pay her college expenses, so she couldn’t afford to intern in Washington, D.C. But  she got an opportunity to intern locally for then-U.S. Rep. Jim DeMint, a Republican who was ranked in 2011 as the 10^th most conservative U.S. senator by the National Journal. DeMint also was a staunch supporter of education choice.

Right before Weaver’s graduation in 2001, an executive assistant position opened in DeMint’s Washington office. Weaver got the job and served until 2005. When DeMint was elected to the Senate, she moved with him and served as his senior adviser until she returned to South Carolina to be his state director in 2009.

When DeMint announced his resignation from the Senate after eight years to become president of the Heritage Foundation in 2013, Weaver knew she soon could be out of a job. However, she wasn’t finished with policy. A review of the state’s political landscape showed a scarcity of think tanks in South Carolina – organizations that perform research and advocacy on certain topics.

She decided the state, known for its top-down culture and lack of results in the education arena despite above-average per-pupil spending, could benefit from such efforts. ,With inspiration and seed money from DeMint and other donors, Weaver founded the Palmetto Promise Institute in 2013 to open doors for expanded education choice in South Carolina.

Weaver has been watching Florida’s success with education choice legislation and wants to replicate that in her state. She is acutely aware that in 1998, South Carolina third graders outperformed their Florida counterparts on National Association of Education Progress reading tests but have since fallen behind.

“Thanks to reforms enacted by then-Gov. Jeb Bush, in the years since, they have totally leapfrogged us,” Weaver said.

She attributes South Carolina’s lack of success in passing reforms like Florida’s as a resistance to change.

“The people at the top of the pyramid, they get along just fine,” she said. “Their kids have a good school to go to, or they have the financial capacity to make a good decision for their child. So, it’s just not on their radar.”

Weaver says even Mississippi, the state that keeps South Carolina from finishing dead last in national rankings, has realized more gains in reading than the Palmetto State in recent years.

South Carolina does offer education choice in the form of a program called Exceptional SC, which helps students with exceptional needs attend credentialed private schools through scholarships for tuition or tax credits awarded to parents or guardians for tuition expenses. The state’s charter school movement, now 25 years old, also has become more robust.

Weaver says the pandemic and the close-up look it’s afforded parents into their children’s education has created a groundswell of support for education choice. She notes this especially has been the case since the South Carolina Supreme Court struck down Gov. Henry McMaster’s attempt to use $32 million in federal COVID-19 relief to create scholarships for lower-income families to keep their children in private schools during the pandemic.

That ruling has spurred a bill for the upcoming legislative session that would offer educational savings accounts to students in low-income families. Some families have appeared in videos like this one to show how the pandemic has disrupted their children’s education and to encourage support for the education choice bill.

If state legislators approve the bill, South Carolina will join 21 other states that adopted, expanded or improved education choice programs during the era of COVID-19.

Weaver said she is optimistic that the parents’ voices will inspire lawmakers to embrace change so that all families will have access to the educational opportunities that best fit their needs.

“I think we are at a tipping point,” she said.

Editor’s note: This commentary from writer, lawyer and legal historian Natalie Wexler appeared recently on forbes.com. You can listen to a podcast Step Up For Students president Doug Tuthill recorded with Wexler here.

Bowing to longstanding pressure, New York City’s outgoing mayor has announced that the city will eliminate its gifted-and-talented classes. But without fundamental changes to curriculum and instruction, that move is unlikely to achieve its goal of making the system more equitable.

For years, Mayor Bill de Blasio has faced calls to dismantle the city’s extensive programs for students who score high on tests intended to measure academic aptitude, beginning at the tender age of 4. Critics have charged that the programs, which enroll disproportionate numbers of white and Asian students, are racially discriminatory.

The criticism is part of a broader push to dismantle selective admissions tests in other parts of the country as well, extending beyond the K-12 system to higher education.

Now, with only months left in his tenure, de Blasio has taken what appears to be bold action: a plan to replace gifted classes with what the New York Times describes as “a program that offers accelerated learning to all students in the later years of elementary school.”

Details are scarce, but the new model, dubbed “Brilliant NYC,” would also provide training for all of the system’s roughly 4,000 kindergarten teachers to deliver accelerated instruction – either to all 65,000 kindergarteners, according to one account, or just to those who “need accelerated learning within their general education classrooms.”

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Editor’s note: This commentary from Cooper Conway, a contributor at Young Voices and a political science student at Boise State University, appeared Monday on the Washington Examiner.

Educational freedom was on a roll this past year.

Over 20 educational choice programs were either created or expanded in 18 states. This entails the creation of an estimated 1.5 million more education savings accounts, tax credit scholarships, and vouchers being made available. No group deserves more credit for these legislative victories than the students and families who advocated for them.

Still, many politicians continue to oppose similar programs. The reasons include pressure from teacher unions and a belief that opposing school choice will help reelection bids. However, politicians who oppose school choice are making a mistake on the political front. Denying families access to educational options is increasingly politically dangerous.

According to the latest polling from the American Federation of Children, political candidates who send their children to a private school but oppose school choice for other families face an electorate 62% less likely to vote for them. Moreover, the lower levels of support for candidates who exercise school choice for their own children but deny access for other children are bipartisan.

Fifty-six percent of Democratic voters are less likely to support candidates who practice "school choice for me but not for thee." Republican voters oppose these candidates at a higher rate of 66%.

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Editor’s note: reimaginED is pleased to present this commentary from Colleen Hroncich, a policy analyst at the Cato Institute, on the benefits of education savings accounts to students and families of West Virginia.

Katie Switzer, a West Virginia mother of four, knows firsthand that different children have different needs. That’s why she was thrilled when West Virginia enacted the Hope Scholarship program, the nation’s most expansive education savings account (ESA), earlier this year.

“My daughter has a speech delay, and the district was incredibly inflexible with how they managed that situation. I refused to enroll my daughter in early pre‐​K there even though I’m a public school graduate. A Hope Scholarship will enable us to choose the educational model that is best for her,” said Katie.

Like other ESAs, Hope Scholarships will allow families to use state education funding to choose the education that works best for their children. Eligible expenses include tuition and fees for private school, non‐​public online programs, or alternative education programs; services provided by a public school (extracurricular, individual courses); tutoring; educational services and therapies; and transportation fees.

Homeschooler Jamie Buckland, also a mother of four, is similarly excited about the new program. “For our family, it won’t be life changing — I’ve been homeschooling my children for 15 years. But it will allow me to provide more opportunities for my youngest, who will be entering kindergarten next year.

More importantly, Hope Scholarships will enable families throughout West Virginia to make the choices that are best for their children. Now they’ll be able to afford needed therapies or high school lab equipment or even private school tuition. Giving parents these options will make them more invested in their children’s education compared to when they’re just assigned to a school.”

ESAs are currently operating in Arizona, Florida, Mississippi, North Carolina, and Tennessee. Indiana and New Hampshire also passed new ESA programs this year. But each of these programs is limited to certain populations, like students with special needs or low‐​income students.

West Virginia’s only limitation is that students must be enrolled in a public school for at least 45 days prior to applying for a scholarship. This means an estimated 93% of students will be eligible.

The possibilities are almost limitless with ESAs. Newer options like microschools and hybrid homeschools will likely proliferate, giving students more educational options than ever before. Teachers who want more autonomy and flexibility will be able to start their own schools.

Private schools that currently must compete with “free” public schools will have a more level playing field. Perhaps most exciting, parents won’t be limited to any single option—they’ll be able to customize the educational plan that works for their children.

Americans are used to customizing nearly everything — cars, computers, dining options, and entertainment. Even post‐​secondary education can be customized, from the type of school to full‐ or part‐​time attendance to how it’s funded. Now, with Hope Scholarships, parents in West Virginia will be able to customize their children’s K-12 education.

It’ll be exciting to see the new educational opportunities that become available to children in the Mountain State in the next few years.