A Florida legislator has proposed letting any child transfer to any public school in the state, as long as there is space available and their parents transport them. This smacks of an ALEC-style attack on communities and local control. This is not about improving education but satisfying choice ideologues. ALEC values free-market fundamentalism over community and local control. Will it improve education? No, but who cares?
The article appeared in the Florida Sun-Sentinel. It is behind a pay wall.
It says:
School choices could expand
Under plan, parents have option to send children to schools all over state
By Scott Travis Staff writer
Parents unhappy with their child’s local school soon could have a much wider range of new choices under a proposal that drops district boundary requirements.
The state Legislature is considering a bill that would allow students to attend any public school in the state that has space, as long as families are willing to provide their own transportation.
That could mean parents could leave D-rated Deerfield Park in Broward County and head four miles north to A-rated Addison Mizner Elementary in Boca Raton, which is part of the Palm Beach County School District.
Miami-Dade parents could move their children from D-rated Barbara Hawkins Elementary in Miami Gardens to A-rated Dolphin Bay Elementary in Miramar.
Students even could attend a school several counties away, as long as their parents can get them there.
“The money would follow the child,” said bill sponsor Sen. Lizbeth Benacquisto, R-Fort Myers. “This could be for a parent who works in a different county from where they live and wants to have their child close to them. Or if a parent thinks another school district has the best learning environment for their child.”
The bill, which passed the Senate Education Committee Thursday, would apply to public schools below 95 percent capacity. That’s most traditional schools in Broward and Palm Beach counties, which have been losing students in recent years to charter schools. Parents also could choose charter schools in other counties if there is room.
About 23 states have similar policies, according to the Education Commission of the States, a Denver-based policy group. In some cases they are limited to students who are low-income or are attending failing schools.
For Broward County, this would be an expansion of an existing school-choice policy. The district allows parents to send their children to any underenrolled public school within the county. Students who are attending a school outside their boundary can get busing only if it’s one of the district’s designated magnet or choice programs, such as the Nova schools and Pompano Beach High.
Sharon Aron Baron takes advantage of that policy. She lives in Tamarac but drives 20 miles each way to Parkland to drop off and pick up her children at Park Trails Elementary and Stoneman Douglas High. While she probably wouldn’t consider a school in another county, she supports the proposal.
“The students get the money from the state, so the state’s covering their education. I don’t see anything wrong with it,” she said. “But I think the amount of people who would take advantage of it would be very slim.”
Palm Beach County School Board member Debra Robinson said she would be interested in the option as a parent and grandparent. But as a school official, she has concerns, including whether poor children would benefit without busing. “I wonder if we’re just adding more opportunity to a limited few, while pretending these are opportunities available for all,” she said.
Andrew Ladanowski, a Coral Springs parent who advocates for school choice, agrees that could create a dilemma. But he said providing transportation wouldn’t be a good option either.
“The more money we spend transporting students around town, the less money have that gets into the classroom,” he said.
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“This smacks of an ALEC-style attack on communities and local control.”
Actually, it smacks of an attack on racial and economic segregation, which are rampant in the current public school system based on district lines. Fortunately, some people still oppose segregation.
We have limited open enrollment in Ohio with no transportation. All it does is give the parents who don’t have to work and can afford to transport their kids a choice.
It’s more cherry-picking:designating certain schools as the “safety net” public system without admitting it.
Schools are systems. When you change a complex system it’s wise to consider the effects system-wide.
It could end up a net loss for most students, because the “sending schools” will end up with a more concentrated group of children who require more resources. The “money follows the child” ignores the risk and assumes win/win. It could just as easily go win/lose. Why no consideration for the potential losers in this scheme?
WT, allowing unlimited choice to those who can provide their own transportation will facilitate greater segregation, not less.
As usual WT that’s completey wrong. The current FL voucher system and charter network has resulted in increased segregation. To try to cloak this GOP monstrosity as a battle against segregation is about as low as you can go.
But then it is also the same legislature that wasted millions testing food stamp and welfare recipients for drugs and not finding any significant abuse. They try to limit minority voting at every step. They ignore constitutional class size laws despite minority parents helping to pass the referendum twice.
You truly live in up is down world. Pity you. Just like Diane reporting last week how Jeb Bush abandoned the poor, minority kids in his Miami charter after he achieved election and passed his evil reform laws. There is no way you will convince thinking people that the Florida GOP legisltaure cares one whit about desegregation.
Speaking of someone calling himself a smart aleck is acting like a jerk. Perhaps it’s time to make his own blog for edupologism, I guess.
Hey, what could go wrong?
And it will …
“Palm Beach County School Board member Debra Robinson said she would be interested in the option as a parent and grandparent. But as a school official, she has concerns, including whether poor children would benefit without busing. “I wonder if we’re just adding more opportunity to a limited few, while pretending these are opportunities available for all,” she said.”
If she could just take that thought out a few places and consider what happens to the schools when the “limited few” leave, we’d really be getting somewhere.
Why do they think the “sending schools” stay the same when they cherry-pick out students? That’s crazy. The receiving schools change and then SO DO the sending schools. Why is this never admitted in ed reform? One would think it would be obvious.
Escambia County, FL offers choice to parents without transportation, and a member of the Board of Education noticed that the practice is promoting segregation. Once again the poorest, neediest students remain in the home school while the more affluent students leave for a better school.http://www.weartv.com/news/features/top-stories/stories/board-member-claims-school-choice-segregating-schools-56051.shtml#.VQ8kGuFp304
One more time …
All citizens are equal stakeholders in our civic institutions, so all citizens should have an equal say in determining the character of those institutions.
If parents of school-age children are given the sole right to say what schools should be, at the expense of other people’s say in the matter, then only parents of school-age children should have to pay for the support of the schools.
If you really want a free market system, then that is what it would be.
As a parent of school-age children, I am rather annoyed to find that I was not aware that there was a serious proposal on the table to give me the sole right to say what schools should be.
That is the end-game of the free-market idiotology, is it not? The consumers determine what survives in the market and so everything must always get better for them all the time, tra-la-la-la-la …
What, are you saying you don’t buy that?
Free markets are great thought experiments, but too much of a religion with a bad Russian writer as the messiah. To function somewhat effectively, the markets must have transparency, reasonable parity, and a moral foundation. Adam Smith was very interested in mortality in markets. History also shows markets without adult supervision lead to inequality, degenerative societies, and instability. Think war lords, child labor (or worse), booms and busts.
Some citizens have more at stake than others. I can’t walk into the Pentagon and demand to see a general to give my advice on middle east strategy. Someone undergoing chemo under Medicare has much more at stake than a 20-something healthy and hearty. Parents should have much more say in how their children are educated than disinterested citizens with little interest in education or more concerned about their own narrow interests.
I’m just saying, the more you treat education as a private consumer good the less justification you have for asking others to buy it for you.
Jon Aubrey, to the extent that education is a consumer good, no one will want to pay for anyone else’s children, just their own. The bottom 25% will suffer most, which is why school choice hurts the poor. ANd why it is a fraud to say that choice is “the civil rights issue of our time.” Quite the opposite.
Interesting. Probably a good indication of the shift from public good to consumer good. I have no trouble collectively supporting those institutions that benefit society as a whole, education being one. We seem to be moving backward to little enclaves of individualism. “I’ve got mine!” Soon, the police will be sending out bills to citizens itemizing the degree of protection each person obtained and the metered cost. Sort of like the old fire insurance plaques.
The rationale behind considering education and healthcare as public goods– i.e., we pool everyone’s money lifelong and spend it as needed for each, contemporaneously– is that everyone needs this good, to a greater or lesser degree, at one time or another during their lifespan.
The moment you re-conceptualize these services as consumer goods, you undermine the rationale & eliminate the economies of pooling everyone’s money and distributing it to those who need it. Young adults will need $ for their children’s education [must buy it] when they can least afford it. Middle-aged at career-prime with grown children don’t need it [won’t buy it]. Young adults are at their most healthy so don’t need [won’t buy] health insurance, retirees least able to pay retail healthcare must have it.
What you do guarantee, in a free-market system of education & healthcare as consumer goods, is that those with the lowest incomes will be the least educated and the sickest.
In healthcare, the US has drawn the line at letting people die in the streets. If you are terribly ill and have insufficient/no health insurance, there are clinics and hospitals which will admit and treat you, which find ways to get at least partially reimbursed by the federal govt. Our long-term assay at healthcare = consumer good thus became too expensive for the fed, hence HMO’s, now Obamacare (future = ?)
But in education the American populace has as yet not drawn that bottom line. Tho pols talk up improving public ed, we here watch what’s done & the results; we understand that it’s a race to the bottom; the poorest & blackest among us will be carved out of their small share of a pie diminished by malingering economy & legislation guaranteeing the majority hunk to the wealthiest.
What is the educational equivalent of dying in the streets?
Sp & Fr,
The educational equivalent is illiteracy and innumeracy.
The “underenrolled” criterion makes me wonder how effective a policy like this could be, assuming the goal is to make better schools available to people who can’t afford to move to nicer neighborhoods. I tend to associate under-enrollment with low-income neighborhoods. (I may be wrong about that, but that’s my impression.) How many high-quality yet under-enrolled schools are there Florida? I would assume there is high demand for schools perceived as high quality in Florida, and that the real estate market has priced in a lot of that demand within the existing catchments.
They floated this idea in NC and this is exactly what they noted – there had to be room in the schools and of course the more desirable schools are already at capacity.
FLERP!
Many schools in low income neighborhoods are overcrowded.
That may be, but the question that seemed significant to me in this context was how many “high-quality” schools are under-enrolled.
I know this is a crazy idea, but Florida could look to Ohio because Ohio has been conducting this experiment for more than 20 years:
“Open enrollment, which allows children to transfer from one school district to another, leads to widespread racial segregation and concentrates poverty in many of Ohio’s urban school districts, including Cleveland and Akron.
That’s one finding of a Beacon Journal study of more than 8,000 Ohio students who left city schools last year for an education in wealthier suburban communities.
The majority of students who participated in Ohio’s oldest school choice program are disproportionately white and middle class. Students attending the schools they left, however, are nearly twice as likely to be minority and seven times more likely to be poor.”
Why do we have to conduct these experiments in every state? It’s ridiculous. For God’s sake, lawmakers, look at other states. It’s like it’s 1860 and we’re gathering information on horseback or something. Same mistakes, over and over and over.
http://www.ohio.com/news/local/open-enrollment-in-ohio-schools-leads-to-racial-economic-segregation-in-akron-and-elsewhere-1.470197
Chiara you make the mistake of attributing good motives to one of the most corrupt state legislatures in the country. They do not care at all if it “works” or helps anyone other than their own bank accounts and their donors’ bank accounts. Many of our legislators are invested in the charters and voucher schools tha they create these laws to benefit. It’s a feature to them that it furthers segregation, not a bug! The dogwhistle racism is so prevalent down here among the GOP that pakcs of hounds come running to Tallahassee from all over the South.
In Florida, counties function much like districts in other states. Counties are fairly large geographic areas. Some counties in Florida have always had a boost in school enrollments from winter tourism, and from migrant workers. The tourists return home around Spring break.
So, if the 95% below capacity on enrollment is a new rule, either that is determined in the standard way–shortly after the school year begins–or it becomes a floating metric, that can trigger mobility at any time during the year. This sounds like a version of the parent trigger law designed by legislators some of whom may have some real estate interests in the mixm, in addition to favoring schools segregated by wealth, ethnicity, race, religion and gender.
Chaos in budgeting is a certain consequence of this policy. Next stop, put all school boards out of business, have one central budget for the whole state. Do online education to “save” money, and all of the rest.
In my county (Monroe), the “state” funding per child is provided 10% from the state and 90% of “Local Required Effort”. So if a Monroe County child takes “his” money to another district, they are NOT taking state funding, they are taking Monroe County tax money with them.
Thank you, minimizetesting. This was my first question on reading the article: how can this possibly work? If someone from a poor district (who pays lower taxes municipally) sends his kid to a more expensive district– doesn’t he have to pony up the difference from his own pocketbook? If not, how could the higher-cost-per-pupil district afford to let him in?
So if I’m right, the district for a higher-priced area operates essentially like a private school. collecting out-of-district tuition which is made up of 10% state $, maybe another 60% from the poorer district, & presumably mom & pop pay the other 30%? If that’s correct, obviously those pulling out of the poorer district are going to be those w/not only transp. $ to spend, but additional dispensable income.
Not sure who wins in this picture, but obviously the poorer district loses.
Bethree5, this action will promote segregation, and will allow students to move from low-tax districts to high-tax districts, thus making the public in the latter less likely to support them. The goal is to undermine public education.
This is Elizabeth Warren’s signature education proposal. Has ALEC gotten to her, too?
Conservative troll fail again. Warren, a US senator in the minority party who does not serve on the education committees and is from a northern state is not equivalent to a state representative in the majority party of a GOP controlled stae who floats biolerplate legislation tha is simultaneously being floated in several other GOP legislatures at the same time. Is it? Warren can be educated. In Florida they must be bought. Like you, Tim.
Help. I don’t understand Tim’s post, nor yours. How does Elizabeth Warren fit– or not fit– into this?
Betree5, Tim likes to make snarky comments. He is a proponent of charters and privatization. Read what he writes in that light.
http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2012/01/26/elizabeth-warrens-quiet-support-for-public-school-vouchers
In the book that helped propel Elizabeth Warren into the political spotlight, “The Two-Income Trap,” she argued that the housing premium associated with good public school districts was an enormous, unnecessary drain both on family budgets and the economy as a whole, and that the quality of education available to the poor was undemocratic. Her solution to this economic and educational problem was public school vouchers for all students.
In her words: “At the core of the problem is the time-honored rule that where you live dictates where you go to school. Any policy that loosens the ironclad relationship between location-location-location and school-school-school would eliminate the need for parents to pay an inflated price for a home . . . A well-designed voucher program would fit the bill neatly.”
Chris is probably correct that Warren will have to be “educated”–i.e., threatened or bribed–if she wants to run for president as a Democrat. I brought her up just to point out that the idea of public school vouchers is neither new nor exclusively conservative.
Chris routinely employs a popular tactic to shut down or minimize dissent in an echo chamber: he accuses someone with differing views as being a paid “shill” or “troll.” Just so it’s clear: everything that I write represents my own views, and I write it for free. I have no financial interests whatsoever in any aspect of education, “reform,” etc. My children attend minority-majority, school-wide Title I-eligible traditional district schools operated by the New York City Department of Education.
It is not the job of public schools to change how and where people choose to live. New Jersey recognized there was a problem and passed an affordable housing law so that each affluent community had to build affordable housing in its community. It makes more sense than sending students all over the place without transportation. Open enrollment means that middle class students leave, and the poor stay in their home school creating segregated schools.
New Jersey’s affordable housing laws don’t go nearly far enough to address its racially and socioeconomically segregated schools. But you don’t have to take my word for it: Google “Paul Tractenberg segregation” to find many excellent (but sobering) pieces by one of the attorneys who led the push to have NJ’s poorest districts receive more funding than its wealthy ones.
What isn’t in dispute is the link between residential segregation and segregation in traditional zoned schools, or that residential segregation isn’t caused by nebulous market forces, but instead by state- and corporate-sponsored racism. Removing the link between street address and school is an approach that warrants further investigation, even if there exists the potential for unintended consequences. In the New York City area, the district system has so thoroughly segregated kids, it can’t get any worse.
Last week, I had discussions with seventh and eighth graders about segregation. They were in agreement that it no longer exists. When I asked them if this school is segregated, they looked at me in complete amazement. These kids are living in a fool’s paradise.
How to DESTROY neighborhood schools and COMMUNITY is AT WORK here. Scatter the people and pit them against each other for scraps and get them to think this is for their own good. OY!
Anyone with half a brain and/or a course in logistics would know that it’s vastly more efficient to bring the goods to the consumers than to have the consumers chasing about the globe for the goods.
But I guess now, instead of distributing pineapples to your neighborhood grocery store we’ll just let people who can afford it fly out to Hawaii.
Brilliant …
Can’t wait to tell my doctor that.
Glad you understand about reductio ad absurdum. Now all you have to remember is that the premiss we started with was the idea that education is a private commodity.
Indiana has had state wide school choice like that for a long time. Few take advantage except for some who put their kids in school near where they work instead of where they live. I’ve heard from a few who have tried it and given it up because of the inconvenience of keeping up with play dates and birthday parties with school friends who don’t live close.
When I describe what is happening at OEN, I give the detail of the 3 assaults. What you describe her is part of the third step. With 15,880 districts, the need is to make it easy for th legislature to contralto all.
1- was on the tenured teachers, so their benefits and pensions could be eliminated when the budgets were cut, the schools would fail without their professional expertise, AND their voices –the voices of the PROFESSIONAL PRACTITIONER- would be lost forever.
2- was the NCLB act, which would now demonize the schools as ‘failing’ matching them to a rubric which was essentially a con.
3- with the ‘failing schools’ identified, the LEGISLATURE can now take over what was local control. We sought in Colorado and Nevada,Louisiana, Alabama and the attempt to do it in Arkansas and Illinois.
In 50 years, as the media demonizes the professionals and sells the snake oil and pitches of the masters to the universe, our dumbed down citizenry will elect their anointed politicians, and everything that made us special, that lifted all Americans up, will be lost.
We have open-enrollment in our state, and as a whole, it is not a bad thing. I have witnessed several students that try to use the system to bounce to an “easier” school district and only end up coming back in three months further behind because, if you are not going to put the work in you are not going to improve.
The biggest benefit is that it allows for students that live on the edges of school districts to go to a school, sometimes, closer to their homes. It also allows for students in big school districts to enroll in a smaller district. Finally, it allows for a student that has made some bad choices in his or her life to try and get a clean start, and that has helped some.
I say all of this if one clear and important qualification. In South Dakota, there are very few “large” school districts and people are use to driving 20-30 minutes to get darn-near anywhere. While there was some talk about going to a “better” school, it has turned into parents looking for the best fit for the child (most of the time).
The school does have the right to reject an open-enrollment (usually based on capacity or ability to meet the needs of the student). I don’t know how often that is used. In general, it might not be a bad thing, as long as it doesn’t provide special treatment to a specific group.
I want to say that charters, in Newark, in poor areas, are almost 100% segregated. I don’t see any white families fighting to get their kids into North Star Academy, which exists across the street from empty dilapidated homes. It seems that this charter school was opened to close the community school, but the “make up” of students are segregated, albeit by lottery. Maybe Cami Anderson’s algorithm was supposed to change the make up of charters, but I don’t know, and I can’t stand what she’s doing to Newark.
Meanwhile, they are building TFA’s “Teacher’s Village” on Broad and Halsey Streets in Newark, and they are going to contain “state of the art charter schools” and housing and retail, and the propaganda is “teachers should live in the towns where they work” and this is their billionaire make-a-million-dollars in real estate sweet heart of a deal for all involved, except the residents who already reside in Newark, and it makes me wonder just exactly want will the racial/socio-economic make up of those 3 charter schools be? Will it be the kids of the executives who work in Newark? There aren’t many HOMES in downtown Newark. Who will be taking their kids to school in downtown Newark? Is Cami Anderson’s Newark One app going to ensure that these 3 schools get filled, and will her algorithm cherry pick?
Donna,
The Teacher’s Village is part of the gentrification project.
Dissolving district lines should be about schools choosing which district to affiliate with.
The districts that figure out how to move more funds into the classroom (reducing district overhead) and maintain or improve quality will attract more schools. A committee of parents and teachers could make the choice.