It’s here! CER’s flagship Parent Power! Index—the only national report card measuring opportunity and innovation in education—is out now, and Florida takes the top spotagain for putting parents in the driver’s seat of their kids’ education, with Arizona and Indiana right behind.
As you’ll see from the report, lots of states climbed, and others floundered.
As we ring our hands about the state of education in all too many places, the principle we’ve long espoused applies across the board. That is, OPPORTUNITY + INNOVATION = RESULTS. Not the kind of results a state or national government arbitrarily sets, but results that parents and communities know are important - demonstrating proficiency in the core subjects, ability to develop, create and manage their work and show learning in numerous ways; building character, having ambition, and eventually, being a productive member of society, or as the founders called it, the pursuit of happiness.
Dig in to the interactive parent power map and you’ll see how strong policies - flexible, open, putting parents and educators in the driver’s seat and not bureaucracies - result in a plethora of options that have not typically been available to people without money.
The Sunshine State Inspires
Education in Florida has become a marketplace, and it’s not only resulting in more innovative approaches to educating an increasingly diverse array of needs, but doing so competitively and well.
Step Up for Students’ most recent analysis shows that 51% of students are being educated somewhere else than their assigned schools. That includes a rise in Catholic school enrollment which is up in Florida but down nationally.
According to Step Up’s Ron Matus, “The most encouraging trend lines for Catholic schools in America continue to be in Florida, where enrollment grew another 2.3% this year…Over the past decade, Catholic school enrollment is down 13.2% nationally, but up 12.1% in Florida.”
Conversely, some states - and cities- are restricting parent and leader autonomy, instead adding in all manner of agendas into the mix to open schools.
DC Disappoints
The District of Columbia once made front page national news for literally overhauling education. Before the 1990s, it languished at the bottom of comparable cities, with inept bureaucracies that allegedly couldn’t afford textbooks and materials, only to be found and unpacked by the first Mayoral appointed superintendent Michelle Rhee. As she and the city’s business leaders worked to overturn union-dominated schools, the 1995 Congressional DC School Reform Act was kicking unprecedented excellence into gear.
“Twenty-five years ago, the city of the District of Columbia and the Nation’s Capital was in shambles. Congress had appointed a Controller to straighten out its finances and schools, which were considered failing and unsafe. Within a year of being able to do so, we opened the city’s first charter school and helped restore faith in the ability of local citizens to deliver quality education.
“For us, it was civil rights’ next frontier. As the late Dr. Ramona Edelin, former Executive Director of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation who helped catalyze the first charter schools, said, “By providing choice for those who previously had none, D.C.'s charter schools are delivering on the hope and promise of the civil rights movement…” And that’s precisely what happened. Today, charters educate nearly half of the city’s students. Measure by measure, charter school gains surpass traditional schools.
“Charters helped improve District graduation rates, strengthen neighborhoods, and improve the safety of its citizens and economy.
“But today, the city’s leadership is threatening that progress…”
Washington DC’s incredible turnaround efforts once scored high in the analysis and minds of America’s leaders. As long as the DC Public Charter School Board (PCSB) had autonomy from DC politicians, new and innovative school models were approved, excelled and expanded. Then apathy set in, “local” control returned in the form of a new state board of education, and the once-vibrant charter movement, now considered a sector, cannibalized itself.
The result? Regulatory creep increasing and once superior results decreasing among even top performers.
How? Take this example. The PCSB actually sets metrics that have nothing to do with great education, like requiring charters to register at least 20% of 18 year-olds to vote. The PCSB has tacitly colluded with the city to ensure that enrollment in charters never goes above 50%, where it currently teeters, turning away new proposals and denying critical expansions while lowering per pupil spending as failing system schools increase.
As the 2001 Congressional Conference report updating the DC law stated:
“The Congress is mindful of the need for the charter schools to be accountable to the public for academic achievement and the use of public money. However, such accountability must not be used to justify imposing on the charter schools the ‘expect and inspect’ variety of procedural accountability that has proven to be such a failure in traditional public school systems. Charter schools are to be held accountable for results–increased student achievement–only. How the charter schools achieve those results is left to the creative judgement of those who found and run the schools…Accountability is important, but must be limited to fiscal responsibility and student outcomes.”
In a week where the nation celebrates the historical Juneteenth marking the end of slavery, it would be particularly fitting for DC’s charter and education freedom advocates to revisit their own history of liberation from bad systems and recapture the momentum they have lost.
One Big Beautiful Bill
The Senate’s final committee-passed-version of the reconciliation package, aka The Big Beautiful Bill, codifies a scholarship tax credit program which advocates have worked for at least three years to enact. It’s a first for Congress and would greatly help parents in states without choice programs have access to education that works best for them. Catch up with Invest in Ed if you want to know more and reach out to your members of Congress to push for its enactment when both Houses move on final passage.
The bill also extends 529 benefits to industry-approved credentials. More on both next week!
Finally—
Under the heading of ‘you can’t make this up…’
I can’t leave you without ensuring that all of my subscribers who don’t typically follow social media know about this bombshell:
While many of us knew this, the fact that media neglected to mention the partisan nature of her work in their generous coverage all these years - or give the other side equal time resulting likely in a violation of FTC rules - is, well, not surprising.
But all’s well that ends well, and with continued and relentless support of transformational change in education by parents, educators and bold policymakers, the sun will come out tomorrow! Thanks for reading - Jeanne
