Last night, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser gave her third annual State of the District address and there was plenty in there for advocates of school choice to cheer.  In a strong direct refutation of a letter sent to Congress by 13 D.C. Council members, including David Grosso, the chairman of its education committee, that called for a phasing out of the Opportunity Scholarship Program that allows children living in poverty to attend private schools, the Mayor had this to say early in her remarks:

“We call on the President and Congress to uphold our 3-sector school funding approach that enhances PUBLIC EDUCATION funding in DC.” [Capitalization is in the original text.]

Of course, the 3-sector funds include equal dollars annually for the OSP, charters, and traditional schools.

Later on in her speech she returned to the subject of the District’s schools and commented on the charter sector:

“This year, I am also proud to further increase the public charter school facility allotment by 2.2 percent this year, and lock that increase in for the next four years. Adding millions more to the school facilities all across the District. As well as make available more public buildings for public charter school use.”

The raise in the per peril facility allotment does not reach the $3,250 floor that charter leaders had wanted, but at $3,193 it comes close.  Now Ms. Bowser just needs to add an automatic increase for inflation.  We are also going to hold her accountable for her promise to make additional surplus DCPS buildings available to those institutions that now educate 46 percent of all public school pupils in the nation’s capital.

While the D.C. Mayor hit the nail on the head regarding school choice, last Wednesday U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos missed it.  She was speaking at the Brookings Institution on the release of its 2016 Education Choice and Competition Index compiled by Senior Fellow Russ Whitehurst.  Denver, Colorado is the city at the top of the study’s rankings for having the greatest amount of school choice.  However, as the Washington Post’s Valerie Strauss reports, Ms. DeVos did not agree.  From the Education Secretary’s prepared statement as provided by the Post:

“I am hopeful this report helps light a fire under [low-scoring cities] to better serve students. And while we may be tempted to emulate cities with a higher grade, I would urge a careful look.

The two-highest scoring districts, Denver and New Orleans, both receive A’s, but they arrive there in very different ways.

New Orleans provides a large number of choices to parents: All of its public schools are charters, and there is a good supply of affordable private schools. The state also provides vouchers to low-income students to attend private schools if they choose. Combined with its easy-to-use common application, New Orleans’ sophisticated matching system maximizes parental preference and school assignment.

Meanwhile, Denver scored well because of the single application process for both charter and traditional public schools, as well as a website that allows parents to make side-by-side comparisons of schools. But the simple process masks the limited choices.”

As I’ve written about many times before, I had the great opportunity to spend some time in Denver last summer as part of the Amplify School Choice conference sponsored by the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity.  There I learned first hand about the strong growth of charters in this city, and the way that the traditional public schools are held to the same accountability standards that charters face.  Here is what I wrote last August:

“Since 2005, according to Mr. Dan Schaller, director of advocacy for the Colorado League of Charter Schools, ‘DPS has closed or replaced 48 schools and opened more than 70, the majority of them charters.’  Low performing charters have also been shuttered.  For example, during the 2010 to 2011 school year 25 percent of schools up for renewal were closed.  Today there are 55 charter schools in Denver out of a total of 223, teaching 18.3 percent of all public school students.

The results of these initiatives have been nothing short of amazing.  The Denver Public School system is now the fastest growing urban district in America.  The high school graduation rate has jumped to 65 percent in four years.  From 2004 to 2014, the proportion of students at or above grade level in reading, math, and writing has climbed from 33 percent to 48 percent.”

Also, as I’ve mentioned on numerous occasions, there is a District-Charter Collaboration Compact in this city that has many features that should be emulated here in D.C. and other places across the country.  I strongly recommend that Secretary DeVos make a visit to Denver and see the miracles taking place there such as the outstanding education being provided to low income children by schools such as DSST PCS.

Over the weekend the editors of the Washington Post came out once again in favor of re-authorization of the SOAR Act that provides private school vouchers for low-income children in the nation’s capital.  The editorial board has supported school choice plans across the country for decades.  Here’s the background.

In 1999, I decided that I was going to get a school voucher plan approved for Washington, D.C.  The reason for my decision back then originated with my and my wife’s love for this city.  We met here as college students, settled in D.C. when we were first married, and then moved to Reston, Virginia to raise our family.  We knew that Washington would not be a great town unless it had great schools.

But the education system was a complete mess.  Little teaching was actually going on in the classrooms.  The facilities were literally crumbling.  Drugs, weapons, and gang activity was prevalent in the hallways.  As a political libertarian, I understood that only the competition for students would solve the seemingly intractable problems in the schools.  But I also recognized that no one would listen to me.  I needed someone with local credibility to get behind this policy solution.  I settled on the Washington Post’s Colbert King as the person to advance my proposal.  The reason that I selected Mr. King was that I observed from his weekly column that he too was passionate about the success of his hometown, and he  wrote from the perspective that people living in Washington, D.C. should solve their own problems.

It took me months of persuasion but there I was one morning sitting in the editorial boardroom of the Washington Post with Mr. King.  I had brought along with me Darcy Olson, now the CEO of the Goldwater Institute, but at the time the director of family and education policy at the CATO Institute.  We talked about school vouchers for an hour.

At the end of our discussion, during which I found Mr. King to be extremely kind and attentive, the Washington Post columnist explained that he could not get behind the concept.  He stated that he was worried about what would happen to the quality of the education for those who were left behind when others received private school scholarships.  Extremely disappointed, but invigorated by the chance to sit with Mr. King, I left the meeting.

But then something magical happened.  Unsigned editorial after editorial began appearing in the Post arguing in favor of proposals for school choice in various localities.  This was a drastic reversal of the newspaper’s previous viewpoint.  The change was recognized by Clint Bolick in his book Voucher Wars (CATO Institute, 2003).  In writing about the introduction of the nation’s first private school voucher plan in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Mr. Bolick  states:

“Ultimately, the Post concluded that because it wouldn’t help many children and was of doubtful constitutional validity, ‘choice is not the answer to the gross inequities that prevail among America’s schools.’  But the editorial conferred a strong and unexpected establishment imprimatur on our effort.  And only a few years later, the Post abandoned its reticence and become one of the nation’s most consistent and influential backers of school choice experiments” (p. 58).

To my amazement I would learn later that Mr. King was writing these pieces.

The Post columnist does not pen these opinions anymore; this job has now been passed on to someone else.  But the tradition strongly continues.  From Saturday’s piece:

“The organization that administers the federal school voucher program in the District has received 1,825 applications this year. The largest share, 25.6 percent or 468 applications, comes from Ward 8, east of the Anacostia River. The smallest, 0.8 percent or 15 families, is from Ward 3 in Northwest. It makes sense that demand is greatest where public schools are worst and families can’t afford private school or are unable to move to where the public schools are better. What doesn’t make sense is the desire — particularly among some D.C. elected officials — to try to kill off this program, thus denying low-income parents a choice that is taken for granted by those who are more affluent.”

In the old days newspaper reporters used to at least try and be objective in their coverage.  Even if the editorial pages favored one ideological side or the other such as The Wall Street Journal,  The Washington Times, The New York Times, and the The Washington Post, the stories attempted to be impartial.  But today the political leanings of the press has spread seemingly by osmosis into articles which are purported to be stating facts.

Since I am a strong advocate of school choice allow me to bring up one example around this issue.  As the Washington Post has been covering efforts in Congress to reauthorize the SOAR Act, almost every story has contained a paragraph identical to the one in this piece by Jenna Portnoy:

“A Washington Post review found that most students enrolled in the voucher program attend Catholic schools but hundreds use their voucher dollars to attend schools that are in unconventional settings, such as a family-run K-12 school operating out of a storefront and a Nation of Islam school based in a converted Deanwood residence.”

At least in this instance a quote was included by Michael Musante, the government relations director for FOCUS, indicating that this school has exited the program.  But impossible to locate would be a mention of the high caliber institutions that accept students receiving Opportunity Scholarship Program scholarships such as Archbishop Carroll High School, Georgetown Day School, Georgetown Visitation Preparatory School, Gonzaga College High School, Jewish Primary Day School of the Nation’s Capital, National Cathedral School, National Presbyterian School, Sidwell Friends School, and St. Albans School.

A few years ago I had the pleasure of visiting a small Catholic school located on Capitol Hill.  St. Peters enrolls Pre-Kindergarten through eighth grade students and was awarded the National Blue Ribbon in 2013 by the U.S. Department of Education.  To qualify as a Blue Ribbon School, standardized test scores in reading and in math must be among the top 15 percent nationally.  St. Peters accepts about 10 OSP scholars a year.

Moreover, it appears that the Post’s Emma Brown has been on a mission to discredit any move by President Trump or U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos when it comes to education.  Here’s a portion of one of her news stories today that talks about the President’s budgetary proposal to end funding of the 21st Century Community Centers:

“The proposal is one cut among many in a budget that would slash federal education spending by $9 billion, or 13.5 percent, in 2018. Trump aims to eliminate billions for teacher training and scale back or end several programs that help low-income students prepare and pay for college.”

But not once, at anytime, will readers be told that there is nothing in the U.S. Constitution that permits Congress to allocate one dime toward public education.

Here’s more from the same article:

“Trump’s push for choice is also likely to face political headwinds: Democrats almost uniformly oppose vouchers. So do some Republicans. And the president’s proposal to allow $1 billion in federal funds to follow poor children to the public schools of their choice — while thin on details — sounds a lot like a proposal that failed to pass the GOP-led Senate in 2015.”

In the District of Columbia, over 41,000 children, 46 percent of all kids attending public schools, are exercising their privilege to utilize school choice by attending a charter school.  There are an estimated 22,000 more on wait lists to get in.  Ms. Brown may be philosophically opposed to a marketplace in education, or she may want to return to a simpler time when everyone just went to their neighborhood school.  However, school choice is here to stay.  Fortunately for America’s children, especially those that live in poverty, the rest of the country may finally get to experience what D.C. has enjoyed for over two decades.

Yesterday, the D.C. Public Charter School Board announced that it has accepted applications for eight new schools to open in the 2018-to-2019 term.  It has been many years since the board has received this many requests at one time.  For example,  during the last cycle one request was received.  As stated by the board’s press release, the applications include “two elementary schools, two middle schools, a high school, two adult schools and a hybrid high school and adult school.”  One interesting note is that the paperwork proposing the creation of the Adult Career Technical Education PCS lists former D.C. School Board Chairman Robert Bobb as a board member.

The PCSB is holding a public hearing for these applications on April 24th and will vote on them May 22^nd.  The board’s Parent and Alumni Leadership Council is hosting a Town Hall to review them on April 11^th at 6 p.m.

If the board follows the same pattern it has exhibited for the last two decades, approximately 40 percent of the new applicants will be granted charters.  This equates to three schools.  There are currently 90,454 individuals attending public school in the District of Columbia.  41,502 of these students, or 46 percent, are enrolled in charters, and 48,952, or 54 percent, go to DCPS.  The difference in enrollment between the two sectors is only 7,450 pupils.  The average size of a charter school is 400 kids.  Therefore, the approval of three new facilities will narrow this gap by 1,200 students.

But there are many other seats in the pipeline as the PCSB has been busy approving requests by existing schools to raise enrollment ceilings.  The day is fast approaching when an equal number of children sit in classrooms belonging to a charter compared to those that are in the DCPS system.  In addition, there is another significant change occurring regarding the education landscape in the nation’s capital.

The Opportunity Scholarship Program is about to grow significantly.  Serving Our Children, the new group administering this plan, has its sights set on racing to 3,000 participants, up from the approximately 1,100 scholars that currently receive vouchers.  Just last Friday, the U.S. House of Representative Oversight and Government Reform Committee approved re-authorization of the OSP for another five years, something the Senate and President will also certainly approve.  Eventually, the goal is to make this law permanent.

Charter schools in this city are erasing the achievement gap between rich and poor students; something many thought was an impossible feat.  Now that the OSP will be free from political interference and uncertainty we are on the road to bringing the same benefit to those receiving private school scholarships. 

Then we will finally be able to fulfill the final civil right of the most vulnerable members of our community:  providing a quality education to each and every child that needs one.  I hope that as a society we will have the foresight to record the names of all of the heroes that fought with every bit of their beings to help these young people, children that they may never even have had the chance to meet.

It took almost 250 years, but finally a President of the United States spoke passionately about the power of school choice before a joint session of Congress.  Here is what Mr. Trump said:

“In fact, our children will grow up in a Nation of miracles.

But to achieve this future, we must enrich the mind — and the souls — of every American child.

Education is the civil rights issue of our time.

I am calling upon Members of both parties to pass an education bill that funds school choice for disadvantaged youth, including millions of African-American and Latino children. These families should be free to choose the public, private, charter, magnet, religious or home school that is right for them.

Joining us tonight in the gallery is a remarkable woman, Denisha Merriweather. As a young girl, Denisha struggled in school and failed third grade twice. But then she was able to enroll in a private center for learning, with the help of a tax credit scholarship program.

Today, she is the first in her family to graduate, not just from high school, but from college. Later this year she will get her masters degree in social work.

We want all children to be able to break the cycle of poverty just like Denisha.”

Those of us advocating for a marketplace in public education desperately want all children to be able to break the cycle of poverty.  This is why since 1998 I have been fighting for private school vouchers in the nation’s capital.  It is the reason that my wife Michele and I for the last 11 years have been volunteering on Saturday mornings to tutor low income Hispanic scholars through the Latino Student Fund.  And it is how I met Joseph E. Robert, Jr. in my desire to do whatever I could to have his back in his battle to create, maintain, and expand the Opportunity Scholarship Program.

We all believe in public schools and would prefer that everyone could have access to a good one close to where they live.  But terribly unfortunately, any monopoly gets diverted from a sole focus on its primary mission which is serving its customers day-in and day-out.  That is why school choice is so crucial.  It creates a competition for students that drives educational excellence.

Let’s all commit to doing everything we can right here is Washington D.C. to provide all children, especially those living in poverty, a quality seat.  We can expand the number of well-regarded charter schools operating in our city.  We can shutter schools of all kinds that are simply not working.  Finally, we can increase substantially the number of pupils helped by the Opportunity Scholarship Program.

There is much that can be written about yesterday’s confirmation of Betsy DeVos as the U.S. Secretary of Education, but the individual who said it best is Jeanne Allen, the CEO of the Center For Education Reform.  Here are her comments a day before the final Senate vote with a few of mine to follow:

“The ongoing protests over Betsy DeVos demonstrate a decades-old controversy among education leaders – is it better to have someone who has been inside traditional public education, or someone has watched and participated from the outside?  Because CER has always sought to ensure the adoption of innovation and policy changes that deliberately upset the status quo, we believe Betsy DeVos will make a fine Education Secretary. She brings a new and valuable perspective that would benefit American families and children. We also understand the concerns that have been raised, but do not believe those should disqualify her from the important role of leading a national commitment to making all schools work for all children.

The real issue at hand is not about the Secretary of Education at all, but the clear and present crisis in education and the lack of opportunities that exist for so many families who struggle against the inertia of a stagnant and 20th century system. While the world is filled with 21st century technologies, most schools still deliver lessons as if they were using the McGuffey Reader.

American education is struggling. Recent NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress) scores show that considerably fewer than half (40%) of America’s fourth graders are proficient in math. Even fewer (36%) are proficient in reading. In fact, less than half of students at all grade levels are proficient in any of the nine curriculum areas studied.

We have a steep hill to climb, and it’s important that we put politics behind us and take the right road to get to the top.”

Here in the District of Columbia, after 20 years of tough thoroughly dedicated school reform, just around twenty five percent of our children are college and career ready.

As controversial as this candidate has been, it is time for doing something else.  Ms. DeVos has been fighting for greater educational opportunities for low-income students for more than two decades.  Now she can bring this struggle to the national stage.

Those of us who follow education reform have seen this scenario time and time again.  Someone comes along who supports making parents the customer when it comes to deciding where kids can attend school and the opposition rallies as if it is time to fight World War III.

Perhaps this analogy is only slightly too extreme.  The teachers’ unions will do or say just about anything to protect the power they have to maintain the status quo of an educational delivery system which treats every child the same no matter what their individual needs or desires.  They proclaim load and clear that it is the bureaucracy that knows best how to teach young people and if parents try to buck the system their offspring will be relegated to classrooms with the lowest performing instructors where the trouble making pupils have been assigned.

Our family faced this scenario when our kids were growing up in Reston, Virginia, and although they are now adults it comes back to me only too clearly.  We had an elementary school principal who went with fads.  Our first grade daughter had phonics removed from the classroom to be replaced with the whole language approach.  My wife had to teach her to read at home.  Simultaneously, with our older daughter in fourth grade the school turned to a math textbook bent on raising the self-esteem of girls and minorities.  When you looked inside there was almost no math present.  We taught her the multiplication tables using flashcards.

Fortunately, those days are gone and for millions of people across this country school choice has resulted in parents being able to vote with their feet as to which educational institutions are best for their children.  Here in the District of Columbia only 25 percent of scholars attend their neighborhood schools.  Charters now educate 41,677 individuals representing 46 percent of all public education students.  In addition, we are fortunate that there is another local option for our kids.

The Opportunity Scholarship Program provides private school scholarships for students living in poverty.  The plan was approved during the George W. Bush Administration and due to union pressure President Obama has tried to close it throughout his term.  It helps about 1,200 pupils a year but now with a new group, Serving our Children, running it the hope is to enroll thousands more.  When the battle was being fought to get this life preserver for poor kids passed by Congress the effort was funded by Betsy DeVos along side Joseph E. Robert, Jr.

Ms. DeVos must be confirmed as the next Education Secretary of the United States.

The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools has come up with a revised version of its 2009 model charter school law that covers a plethora of topics relevant to these innovative educational institutions.  The goal of the document is “to create a model charter public school law that is grounded in principle, flexible enough to serve in a wide variety of state policy environments, and well-supported by research.”  The authors point out that the blueprint is most applicable to the seven states that currently lack a charter school law.  It is not going to work.

My experience this summer in attending the Amplify School Choice conference sponsored by the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity taught me about some key components that must be included in such a framework.  The meeting, which included myself and 49 other bloggers, was meant to introduce us to the theory of school choice, but for someone like me who thinks about this subject on a daily basis, it really changed my approach to the subject.

The session was held in Denver and the location was no accident.  It turns out that this city has the academically fastest-growing public schools in the nation.  But it was not the test scores that captured my attention.

We heard from a wide variety of speakers.  No matter whether the individual at the front of the room was from the political right, left, or middle, or even if he or she had no specific ideological position, they shared one common attribute.   They were all committed to the fostering of an educational marketplace.

Uniformly they stated that they had come to this conclusion because in the recent past the schools had been doing such a poor job educating students.  But I came to understand that there was perhaps a more fundamental reason for their viewpoint.  The Denver school choice model is based upon an educational collaborative compact.

As I have written about before, the compact spells out specifically how the charter schools and Denver Public Schools will work together for the benefit of the students they serve.  It has requirements specifically for charters and also for the regular schools.  The document also spells out how the two sectors will work together, which includes promotion of each others’ work.

I have made the point that Washington D.C. desperately needs such an agreement.  Failure of the National Alliance of Public Charter Schools to include an outline of such a compact in its model school law will lead to the battles over charters that have been witnessed throughout the United States.  The paper should go back to the drawing board.