Education Week - August 5, 2015 - 23

School Choice, an Opportunity
For Students, Teachers, and Parents

A Small
Revolutionary Book

W
By Doug Tuthill

I have seen
firsthand how
all forms of
school choice
can offer
teachers more
opportunities
to innovate."

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 28

Getty

ith her recent passing,
Marva Collins is being remembered for her glorious
educational crusade to turn
around the lives of lowincome black children in
Chicago. It's also worth remembering how she chose
to do this. She cashed in her teacher-pension savings in
the 1970s to start her own private school. With it, she
combined a no-excuses attitude with high standards,
strict discipline, and love-and got amazing results
with limited resources.
In other words, Collins was empowered by school
choice.
Twenty-five years after Milwaukee put private school
vouchers on the map, a majority of states now have
some form of private school choice. Just this year, Arkansas created its first voucher program, and Indiana
expanded its voucher and tax-credit-scholarship programs. Five states either created or expanded education savings accounts, including Florida, which tripled
funding for its program; and Nevada, which spawned
the nation's most inclusive program, available to more
than 90 percent of its students.
These opportunities are created, first and foremost,
to give parents the power to choose the educational options that are best for their children. But teachers benefit as well, even if the story lines seldom mention them.
As choice expands, teachers will see more opportunities to create and/or work in
educational models that hew
to their vision and values,
maximize their expertise, and
result in better outcomes for
students. Increasingly, they'll
be able to bypass the red
tape and micromanagement
that plague too many district
schools and serve students
who are not finding success.
In short, they'll be able to
better shape their destinies,
and the destinies of their students.
I should know. I'm a lifelong
educator and former teachers' union president who now
heads a nonprofit that administers the nation's largest private school choice program.
I have seen firsthand how all forms of school choice can
offer teachers more opportunities to innovate.
My home state of Florida is brimming with examples.
In June, ABC's "World News Tonight" put a national spotlight on a particularly inspiring one: the Human Experience school in Orlando, Fla. Doing their best impression of Marva Collins, teachers Danita Jones and Nate
Smith started the one-class, one-grade, micro-school last
fall by pouring in their life savings and getting an assist
from tax-credit scholarships. Why the urgency? "If you
were standing on the side of the pool and saw someone
drowning, would you jump in to save them?" Jones told
ABC. "Lack of access to quality education-you might as
well be drowning in a pool."
Florida teachers now have more power than ever to
improve access to quality education by creating, leading,
and teaching in their own schools. And it's because no
state has done more to expand educational choice. Florida is among the top handful of states when it comes
to the number of charter schools and charter school
students. It is home to the nation's biggest tax-creditscholarship program and the second-largest program of
education savings accounts. It has the largest voucher
program for students with disabilities and the secondlargest pre-K voucher program. All told, these programs
of school choice serve about a half-million students.
Florida also now has more than 40,000 teachers who
do not work for school districts. Nearly 14,000 of them
work in charter schools, which surpasses the public

school teaching workforce in nine other states. At the
nonprofit I lead, we routinely hear stories of teachers
who migrate from district schools to private schools.
They're choosing these options for the same reason parents are-because they offer a better fit for their individual needs.
The world is full of square pegs. As long as public education remains highly centralized, it's inevitable that
somebody's vision for what is best will be imposed on
somebody who bitterly disagrees, and some students
who would benefit from one approach will be jammed
into another. Decentralization through expanded choice
is the best remedy, and not just for students. Some
teachers work well with large bureaucracies, some
don't. Choice gives them the opportunity to find or create schools that play to their strengths and interests.
In a growing number of states, pathways are increasing for teachers to do just that. Those who take them
are finding a rich landscape where technology and customization are driving diversity. New programs, such
as Course Access, give teachers innovative platforms
to think out of the box-and out of the schoolhouse.
Meanwhile, tools like education savings accounts, better known as ESAs, give parents direct access to all the
educational services their children may need, including
teacher-run schools. ESAs can benefit teachers and families the way Uber has helped drivers and passengers-
by kicking middlemen to the curb.
As this drive for teacher and parent empowerment accelerates, I have no doubt the opportunities for teacher
leadership will grow. For the time being, teachers'
unions will continue advocating centralized management systems that use collective bargaining to impose
one-size-fits-all solutions. But eventually the unions,
too, will evolve and find ways to serve teachers who
are thriving in other environments. Instead of uniform
salary schedules, for example, they'll help teachers be
free agents, similar to what professional-sports unions
have done for their members. Instead of only supporting district-run schools, they'll help teachers start and
manage their own schools.
Like Marva Collins, some passionate and enterprising educators will always find ways to create their own
models. But as more states crack open the doors to educational choice, it's easy to envision an army of Marva
Collinses charging through. ■

contemporary positive psychology, he states: "We are born with
faculties and powers capable of almost anything." At the same
time, he is a realist, even a bit of an evolutionary psychologist.
Sin and a Stone Age brain war with virtue and reason. We are
"vain and proud creatures" in love with power and dominion.
Children may be charming, but they can also be mischievous,
cruel, listless, and lazy. From the cradle, they are covetous.
Locke was particularly skeptical of the notion that peers teach
each other valuable lessons. Schoolboys do not learn "justice,
generosity, and sobriety" from one another, he advised. Instead,
they are instructed in "well-laid plots of robbing an orchard
together."
In a world amused by bear-baiting, Locke is a proponent
of humanitarianism. Surrounded by violence and cruelty, he
casts doubt on the upper-class preoccupation with hunting and
fencing. He urges kindness. Children should not be whipped.
At home, they should not be allowed to torment "young birds,
butterflies, and such other poor animals which fall into their
hands." In school, they should not be taught that conquerors
are heroes or that slaughter is laudable.
The book was also revolutionary in its pedagogical detail: Use
lettered blocks to teach reading, learn Latin through conversation, link history to geography, don't stuff young scholars with
too much at a time, proceed by slow and gentle steps. For young
aristocrats careless with money, he advises accounting. To balance out the long hours of grueling school classes, he advocates
equal amounts of recreation.
In a 17th-century tribute to environmentalism, Locke says,
"I think people should be accustomed from their cradles to be
tender to all sensible creatures, and to spoil or waste nothing
at all," a particularly impressive observation in a century decimated by scarcity, cruelty, and civil and religious wars.
In Locke's version of home schooling, mothers and fathers
are essential. "Make them in love with the company of their
parents," he says of children. Be kind. Praise freely. Take them
into your confidence, but don't tolerate whining, dishonesty,
selfishness, affectation. Mothers should not coddle. Fathers
should allow fear to ripen into friendship.
Equally important was the influence of tutors. In advice
relevant to current debates about teachers, he states that tutors should be smart and sophisticated, knowledgeable about
content and pedagogy. Tutors should know not only subjects
but also the outside world, combining tact and judgment with
character. If you want highly qualified teachers, Locke says,
select them carefully and pay them well.
In his book, Locke acknowledges that he does not have all the
answers, such as how to motivate the listless student or how
to extirpate "sauntering" (17th-century parlance for "hanging
out"). There is little mention of art and music. Living in a patriarchal, aristocratic society, he has little advice for women and
poor people. He could not envision the importance of a public
school in a democracy.
But Locke is important because he rebelled against an educational system he thought cruel and stupid. He offered practical, humane alternatives to parents who were at "a loss how
to breed their children." Without monographs or psychological
research he anticipates so much: multiple intelligences, emotional intelligence, behaviorism, and vocational education-
and long before the educational jeremiads of our time, such
as "A Nation at Risk," he connected a flourishing educational
system to a country's security and prosperity. ■

Doug Tuthill is the president of Step Up for Students, a nonprofit
organization that helps administer Florida's tax-credit-scholarship
program for low-income students.
Jared Boggess for Education Week

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