Policymakers Should Listen to Voters on School Choice

Despite a lot of headwinds and massive spending by the teachers’ unions and other opponents of education reform, school-choice supporters did very well in the 2018 midterm elections. The American Federation for Children and our affiliates participated in 377 state races to support pro–school choice candidates in 12 states, winning 77 percent of them. Heading into the 2019 legislative sessions, there are now pro–school choice governors and state legislatures in most states in the country.

Voters have made it clear: They want their policymakers to support and expand K–12 educational choice. Polling has shown that the majority of Republican, Democratic, and independent voters support school choice. Support is particularly strong among Latinos (72 percent), African Americans (66 percent), and Millennials (64 percent), according to a 2018 poll by Beck Research and commissioned by the American Federation for Children. These results were reinforced by the annual Education Next poll, which show that 57 percent of Americans support tax-credit scholarships and 54 percent support universal vouchers. And despite the avalanche of negative press about school choice and its strongest national champion, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, support for private-school choice and charter schools increased from 2017 to 2018.

There are important takeaways from the elections for policymakers on both sides of the aisle. The Wall Street Journal and Tampa Bay Times have noted that support from communities of color played an important role in the Arizona and Florida gubernatorial elections. African-American and Latino voters whose children are enrolled in private-school-choice programs or in charter schools likely tipped the scales toward Republican Ron DeSantis in Florida and contributed to the big win by Arizona Republican governor Doug Ducey.

In Florida, exit polls showed that Republican Ron DeSantis received 14 percent of the African-American vote, a strong showing against Democrat Andrew Gillum, the Tallahassee mayor and an African American. That support was bolstered by DeSantis’s unwavering support for the Florida tax-credit scholarship program, which serves more than 100,000 children from low-income families, 70 percent of whom are minority. Gillum stated that he wanted to bring the program “to a conclusion.” In Arizona, Republican governor Doug Ducey, a vocal school-choice champion, captured 44 percent of the Latino vote in his reelection victory. As we’ve seen in other elections, educational choice can be a powerful political issue and voters with children benefiting from these programs will reward candidates who stand with them.

Legislative momentum to give families more educational options has been steady and strong for a decade. Today, 26 states plus Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C., offer private-school choice as an option. These programs are educating more than 500,000 children, most of whom are from lower-income and minority families.

What is the reason for this momentum, and why is giving families and children greater choice in K–12 education so important and so urgent? It’s because our K–12 system assigns children to schools according to their ZIP codes rather than their educational needs. According to the 2017 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), fewer than half of our fourth- and eighth-graders are proficient in reading and math; 27 percent are scoring at the “below basic” level. The numbers are even worse for minority children and those from lower-income families. On the Program for International Student Assessment, the United States ranks 35th in math and 23rd in reading out of 72 countries. In addition, despite a government-reported 84 percent graduation rate for public high schools, the nation spends nearly $7 billion annually on remediating high-school graduates.

The K–12 system is failing too many of our children, and families — and voters — know it. School-choice advocates believe that every family, regardless of its ZIP code, should be able to choose the best educational environment for its children — public, private, charter, magnet, virtual, home, or a blend of those options. We also believe that real competition for an antiquated government monopoly system is essential to improving educational outcomes across the board.

We have seen school choice work in states all across the country. Twenty years of research has shown that students participating in these programs are more likely to graduate from high school and enroll in college. Surrounding public schools are more likely to improve with the existence of other options for families. Private-school choice should be among the options for families in every state.

The politicians in Washington, D.C., should also take note of the strong support for school choice among voters, and of the results that have been generated in the states. They can start by insisting on a rewrite of a broadly worded proposed IRS rule for the 2017 tax bill. The proposed rule threatens corporate and individual tax-credit scholarship programs that currently serve nearly 300,000 students in 18 states. If implemented as written, many corporate and individual donors would no longer participate in these programs and those scholarships would end. This not only hurts families, children, and the private schools they attend but will also have a negative financial impact on public school districts. It was not the intent of Congress to use tax reform to harm tax-credit scholarship programs and the students they serve. The proposed IRS rule should be more narrowly written.

Instead of contracting school choice by IRS rule, Congress and the administration should facilitate an expansion of school choice for America’s families and children.

State and federal policymakers must no longer ignore the evidence that our K–12 system is not doing the job for America’s students. Tinkering around the edges of an antiquated $650 billion system will not bring the necessary change. Governors, state legislatures, Congress, and the administration need to think outside the establishment box and act boldly. Americans expect and enjoy choice in virtually every aspect of their lives, including higher education. Educational choice is a policy and political winner. The politicians should listen to the voters and enact policies to give every child access to a quality education, which would improve educational outcomes across the board. School choice is not a silver bullet or cure-all, but it is an essential component to transforming our nation’s antiquated K–12 system into a 21st-century model for giving every child the opportunity to achieve his or her full potential.

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Boston schools agree to change policies on suspensions

Bad for order.  More classroom chaos

The Boston school system has agreed to revamp its school suspension practices as part of a settlement of a case alleging that school employees illegally suspended students and in some cases threatened to notify police or child welfare investigators if parents could not immediately pick up misbehaving children.

Among the changes: The system will end the practice of suspending kindergartners, first-graders, and second-graders, and stop suspending older students for minor offenses.

The lawsuit, which was filed last year in Suffolk Superior Court, centered on three students of color who were allegedly involved in relatively minor discipline incidents that the schools nevertheless treated as urgent crises.

The settlement comes as education and social justice advocates in Massachusetts and across the nation have been raising concerns that over-reliance on suspensions is potentially putting too many students on a path to the criminal justice system.

Suspensions can cause students to fall behind academically. It also provides them with unsupervised time when they can get in trouble, fueling what advocates contend is a school-to-prison pipeline that disproportionately affects students of color and those with disabilities, who experience higher rates of suspensions than their peers.

“We need to solve this problem and not just remove kids from school,” said Elizabeth McIntyre, an attorney for Greater Boston Legal Services, which represented the parents as part of its School to Prison Pipeline Intervention Project.

According to the lawsuit, the Ellison/Parks Early Education Center in Mattapan demanded that one mother drop everything and pick up her 8-year-old daughter because the girl had wandered out of her classroom and into the guidance office four times that day. In another instance, the McKinley South End Academy canceled bus transportation for one boy without informing his parents that he had been suspended and then repeatedly refused to provide his mother with information about the discipline.

And TechBoston Academy in Dorchester insisted that a mother immediately take her 12-year-old son home without initially offering an explanation. It was later revealed that the boy had had an argument with another classmate during lunch.

In each case, the schools failed to follow state law and the school system’s own discipline policies, which require schools to notify parents and hold a hearing before suspending a student.

Greater Boston Legal Services said the incidents are endemic of a larger problem in which Boston schools ignore state law and school system policies, while often threatening families with retaliation if they cannot immediately come to school because they are at work, caring for other children, lack transportation, or attending school themselves.

“These threats have included: telling parents the school will file a report of alleged child neglect with the state Department of Children and Families, calling the police on their young children, unilaterally putting a child in an ambulance and sending them to a hospital emergency room — regardless of a parent’s ability to meet their child at the hospital — or requiring the child to stay out of the classroom all day,” the lawsuit said.

The lawsuit also contends schools frequently do not officially record suspensions.

The Boston school system admitted to no wrongdoing in the settlement but agreed to halt unlawful suspensions. The agreement restricts suspensions to cases involving physical assaults, sexual misconduct, repeated bullying, civil rights violations, and possession of dangerous weapons or controlled substances.

Other measures agreed to include streamlining the process by which schools record suspensions and training school staff on a variety of issues, including alternative approaches to school discipline and proper procedures for reporting incidents to child welfare investigators.

Laura Perille, interim superintendent, touted steps the school system has taken in recent years to reduce suspensions, while saying that some measures in the agreement will aid in that effort.

“With the finalization of this agreement, BPS will be providing support to school staff to ensure full implementation of disciplinary protocols that are consistent with established best practices, legal obligations, and the best interests of all BPS students,” Perille said in a statement.

According to data the school system released Friday, its overall suspension rate dropped from 4.8 percent during the 2014-15 school year to 2.1 percent last year. Suspension rates during that time declined for black students from 7.6 percent to 3.2 percent and for Latino students from 4.4 percent to 2 percent.

The data also indicated that 229 kindergartners, first-graders, and second-graders were suspended last school year.

School systems across Massachusetts have been under pressure from the state to reduce suspension rates, since the enactment of a state law in 2014 required schools to use suspensions as a last resort.

Although suspension rates have declined statewide, questions have persisted about whether some schools are suspending students off the books or recording suspensions as routine absences. For instance in 2015, a Globe reporter spotted a sign on the front door at Brighton High School warning tardy students they would not be allowed inside after 9 a.m. unless they had a note from a doctor or the court.

Parents who filed the lawsuit said Friday they hoped the agreement will result in students missing fewer days of classes and that procedures will be followed, including providing students and families their due-process rights for hearings when a suspension is recommended along with necessary information.

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College Cancels “The Vagina Monologues”: Fails To Give Voice To Transgender Women Without Vaginas

All-women’s Mount Holyoke College will no longer perform their annual production of Eve Ensler’s narcissistic celebration of female sexuality, The Vagina Monologues, on Valentine’s Day because it fails to give a voice to transgendered women who don’t have vaginas.

The play served as the feminist bible for a generation asking the deepest of questions involving womanhood,  such as “If your vagina got dressed, what would it wear?” The Vagina Monologues is a tour de force of sexual discovery, pedophilia, homosexuality and other topics explored ad nauseam in plays since the 195os, except without the subtleties. Instead, the play is more of a grotesque “up-in-your-grille” style of performance art aiming to offend non-feminists, which it often does.

The Daily News reported that Erin Murphy, a spokesperson for the school’s Project Theatre Board, wrote in a campus-wide email, that “At its core, the show offers an extremely narrow perspective on what it means to be a woman.” The Board also wrote in a Facebook post that Ensler’s play “fails the trans community in a lot of ways.”

Murphy elaborated: “Gender is a wide and varied experience, one that cannot simply be reduced to biological or anatomical distinctions, and many of us who have participated in the show have grown increasingly uncomfortable presenting material that is inherently reductionist and exclusive.”

Refusing to remain in the past, the students at the South Hadley, Mass liberal arts college decided that they would no longer ignore the vagina-less women on campus. Instead they are debuting an original play called The Student Body, (kind of a Vagina Monologues 2.0), which will also explore topical issues of sex and gender, but throw a bone to non-vagina equipped women (no pun intended).

Not every student took kindly to the change in the Valentine Day tradition of showing Ensler’s homage to vaginas. Appearing on an online anonymous message board, the Holyoke Confessional, one student messaged, “I love how people who have never been able to discuss or embrace their vaj-wahs aren’t going to find an avenue here, either, since female-validating talk about vaginas is now forbidden. That’s so misogynistic under the guise of ‘progress.’”

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