Good News Out of Florida: Parents Choose and More Kids Finish College

This post by Erika Sanzi originally posted on Good School Hunting. “Comparing FTC students with demographically and academically similar students who remained in public schools, we find a positive impact on college enrollment in every sector.” – Urban Institute They say that “If it bleeds, it leads” and perhaps that’s the explanation for such anemic […]

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Schools Are Not Churches and Corcoran Is Not The Devil

Richard Corcoran Swearing In Ceremony Florida Speaker of the House

Did you hear? Florida has just hired a fox to guard the public school henhouse and the newspapers are lamenting the impending death of “public education” in the Sunshine state. If you’re confused, or if you’re simply not so melodramatic, all they’re saying is that the former Speaker of the House, Richard Corcoran, just got […]

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Florida Needs Another Path For Charter Schools

Elementary school students writing in classroom

This post appeared originally on The Capitolist. Amendment 8 may not be on the ballot come November, but we can’t ignore the issue it was trying to address. Charter schools have a legitimate place in our state. They’re written into our laws because they give families a public-school option (and hope) when their zoned school […]

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Choice for All Must Include Special-Needs Students

Teacher helps student Melanie Stetson Freeman—The Christian Science Monitor/Getty Images

It seems like schools are always strapped for resources. They’re being asked to do more with less. The result: We get a one-size-fits-all approach to teaching that actually doesn’t fit most students at all, especially not the ones I work with. As a special education attorney, I help families, educators, and the students they represent […]

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Think Your School’s Preparing Your Child for College? Probably Not Like This

What’s your elementary or middle school doing to get your kid ready for college? If you said something like, “teaching them stuff,” or “I don’t know,” don’t feel bad, you’re in good company. If you said AP classes, IB programs, or dual enrollment, I’d just remind you I said, elementary and middle school, not high […]

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No Parents, No Progress

Just as parents should be involved in classrooms, so should we be involved when those doors have to close. In a recent panel discussion on school choice in D.C., Robin Lake describes leaving parents out of the conversation of school choice as an “huge unnecessary liability.”  I completely agree, but her comment still left me […]

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“Let’s Be Clear: ‘Brown v. Board’ Was About School Choice As A Civil Rights Issue”

Not being born in this country makes me even more curious about why things came to be the way they are. Lack of teachers of color in the classroom, higher suspension rates for brown students (even in preschool), and…why the NAACP’s call for a moratorium on charter schools smells reeeal fishy. Matt Halvorson and I are both […]

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