Heartland Institute's School Choice Weekly #29

Mothers Speak For Choice

Mothers in New York and Florida this week have sent several clear, compelling messages: Give my child a school choice. In New York City, they’re responding to a threat from Mayor Bill de Blasio against charter schools that work for their kids.

“When I found out the news that the mayor had closed my son’s school, I began to cry, because the local public school is not working,” Courtni Starnes told ReasonTV.   “What would you do if the school that worked for your child closed, and you had no other options?”

“We cannot send my son to a failing school,” Evelyn Adeveda told the outlet. “He’s been doing so well, and I can’t send him back.  “I can’t set him up for failure.”

In Florida, Chanae Jackson-Baker pushed lawmakers to expand the state’s popular tax-credit scholarship program.

I love teachers. I think it’s a thankless job. And I’m so sick of politicians getting in the way of them doing their job. But the problem is, they just can’t accommodate. Even when I email a teacher, where my kids, the girls, go to [private] school at, I get a response back by the end of the day. Some teachers where my son goes to [public] school, I can’t get an email back in two weeks, although the policy says I need to get it back in 48 hours. But I cannot be mad at them when they have 40 students times five. My son is in ninth grade. He’s one of 953. When he leaves there and goes to the [private] school he’s going to next year, he’ll be one of 25. “

So I’m willing to battle in order to give my kids an education. I’m here to let people know, we have to give our children choices. Even with me, it didn’t just inspire my children. When I saw that they could do anything, I saw that I can do anything. I graduated with my bachelor’s in psychology this year. That’s one thing I never thought I would be able to do. “

I’m so really disturbed that so many people are upset. We’re talking dollars and cents. If you don’t give them choices, it costs $17,338 a year to house a prisoner. If you don’t give them choices, they are the welfare recipients, the food stamp recipients and the Medicare recipients. You have to give them choices.

Most mothers may not be steeped in what income bracket is “appropriate” to extend vouchers to, but we know better than anyone in the universe what environment helps our kids thrive. Those little hearts that first began to beat inside our bodies must also have synced our own, so that a mother’s out of tune until her kid’s hearts sing. The intimate knowledge mothers and fathers have of their child is what makes them his best advocate. Education policy should foster, not frustrate, their expertise.

MORE INFORMATION: ReasonTV, RedefinED

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IN THIS ISSUE

School Choice Roundup

Common Core Watch

Education Today

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School Choice Roundup

FLORIDA: A bill to expand the state’s popular tax-credit scholarships has passed its House committee. It would let more students receive scholarships more quickly, increase the scholarship maximum amount, and offer small scholarships to families with incomes above 200 percent of the federal poverty line. Lawmakers also consider education savings accounts for disabled kids.

DC: Among the few cuts inside the latest budget proposal from the Obama administration is the DC voucher

program. Given President Barack Obama’s recent focus on helping needy young black men succeed, he should instead expand vouchers, if anything, says Patrick Wolf.

IDAHO: The House has passed tax-credit scholarship legislation. It would provide 50 percent tax credits for donations that provide scholarships worth up to $4,300.

NEW HAMPSHIRE: A new survey of parents whose kids got one of the state’s new tax-credit scholarships finds 97 percent are happy with the program.

TENNESSEE: A vouchers compromise narrowly advances in the House. It would give vouchers to low-income children attending the state’s worst 5 percent of schools.

NEW YORK: Eleven thousand people rally to support charter schools, which are now under fire from New York City’s new mayor.

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Common Core Watch

INDIANA: Dr. Terrence Moore takes the state’s Common Core rewrite to task.

FEDERAL: How states and school districts can opt out of Common Core without federal penalties. (Wait - isn’t Common Core voluntary?)

NEW YORK: The Assembly passes a Common Core delay but rejects a repeal. Grassroots opponents want more, but Gov. Andrew Cuomo, with an eye towards a presidential run, is being pressured by unions not to back down.

STATE-LED: The Obama administration has proved Common Core extends federal control over all schools, says Neal McCluskey, by once again proposing to tie education formula funds to Common Core adoption.

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Education Today

SAT TEST: College Board President David Coleman has released more details about how the SAT will change. It’s back to the 1600-point scale, more like Common Core, more performance and rhetoric, and recategorizing math concepts. See a side-by-side comparison of the new SAT and Common Core. Why the changes will destroy “our best chances to foster individual excellence for broadly-distributed access to mediocre education.”

FLORIDA: Online school lets this teen entrepreneur thrive. Willow Tufano buys and sells houses, at age 17.

KANSAS: The state supreme court elides a showdown with the legislature over who gets to decide how much money state taxpayers must send schools by issuing a mixed decision in a four-years-running case.

CALIFORNIA: The state’s unfunded debt to its teachers is growing by $22 million every day.

NEW JERSEY: In totally unrelated news, a school administrator has gotten $1.7 million in taxpayer-sponsored pension payments by gaming the system.

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Joy writes this e-newsletter, is managing editor of School Reform News, and is available for speaking engagements on Common Core and other education topics. For more information, contact Heartland Events Manager Nikki Comerford at 312/377-4000, email ncomerford@heartland.org.