LITTLE ROCK — Former U.S. Secretary of Education Rod Paige and school-voucher activist Virginia Walden Ford, who helped spearhead a school voucher program in Washington, D.C., advocated Monday for expanding school options in Arkansas to include taxpayer-funded vouchers to private schools and tax credits for scholarship donors.
Paige, who served in President George W. Bush’s administration from 2001-2005, and Ford, a Little Rock native who has recently moved back to the city, were the featured panelists at a presentation at the Statehouse Convention Center hosted by The Heritage Foundation, a conservative research and policy organization based in Washington, D.C.
“I simply don’t believe that a system can work as a monopoly,” Paige said about traditional public schools. “In every other aspect of our lives we know this. So why do we make an exception for schools? We need choice in our schools.”
Arkansas law allows for public charter schools and some student transfers to neighboring school systems. But the law does not permit taxpayer money to be used as tuition at private schools. Nor does the law provide tax credits to individuals or organizations contributing to scholarship funds for private-school education.
Ford said about 200,000 students in 18 states and the District of Columbia have taken advantage of those types of school choice.
“I think it is a great time for Arkansas to join in,” Ford said. “It is absolutely the right time with school choice being so positive in so many states.”
Paige and Ford, along with Jennifer Marshall, director of domestic policy studies for The Heritage Foundation, spoke to an audience of about 50 that included private-school operators, legislators, university faculty, teacher-union leaders, civic leaders and business community representatives.
Paige said he has been an advocate for expanding parents’ choices for their children’s education since his service as a school board member and superintendent of the Houston public school system.
He said he saw “evidence of failure everywhere” and knew that he would not find solutions to those problems by relying on old remedies.
Instead, he turned to models used in corporate America to promote innovation and creativity. That freedom led to innovations such as the founding of the Knowledge Is Power Program, or KIPP, charter schools by Houston teachers. KIPP charter schools have since expanded across the nation.
In response to arguments that all taxpayer resources and attention should be invested in existing public schools, Paige said that the people who make those arguments do so to “protect” the traditional educational system. He said he wants to put the focus on the students.
He said he didn’t want to imply a lack of confidence in those who oppose vouchers, adding that they also are interested in helping students.
“I want to provide them with the kind of information that will help them to draw the proper conclusion,” he said. “Choice is proliferating. Everywhere you go and in every aspect of your life you have a choice on how you should conduct yourself, what product you should buy and what you should eat. Why should we not have these same kinds of opportunities when it comes to a child’s education?”
Ford, who is the daughter of former Little Rock educators William H. Fowler and Marion Fowler Armstrong, graduated from Little Rock Central High School in 1969.
Ford, who lived in Washington, D.C., said one of her sons became defiant and got in trouble at school. A neighbor offered to pay the son’s tuition to a private high school where, within weeks, he was happier and ultimately became both an athlete and valedictorian.
Ford said she wanted to “give back” to the community and began helping other parents find services for their children. Her organization, D.C. Parents for School Choice, was started in 1998 as an information clearinghouse on charter schools and after-school programs. It became a primary proponent of a taxpayer-funded school-voucher bill in Congress that beginning in 2004 enabled low-income parents to choose private schools.
In response to a question from Little Rock neighborhood organizer Annie Abrams, Ford said 40 percent of Washington D.C. students attend 53 charter schools on 99 campuses. There are 3,300 students who have received assistance from the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, she said. About 9,000 families have applied to participate since the program was started. Earlier this year, Congress expanded the program to provide payments of $8,000 per elementary- and middle school student and $12,000 per high-school student.
Reaction to a possible taxpayer-financed voucher system in Arkansas was mixed Monday.
Cheryl Washington, administrator of the Word of Outreach Christian Academy, a private school that serves kindergarten through 12th grades on Wright Avenue in south-central Little Rock, on Monday enthusiastically welcomed Ford and her advocacy for taxpayer-funded options for private schools.
“I’m ready to get started, I’m ready to get out there so we can bring what I call ‘full school choice’ to Arkansas,” Washington said. “It’s important to empower parents. If we empower parents, maybe parenting would improve.”
Word of Outreach has had an enrollment of as many as 500 students in its 23-year history but that number has dropped in recent years and the total will be in the 40s this year, Washington said.
“We ask parents why they aren’t coming back. They tell us they just can’t afford it,” Washington said of the school that charges annual tuition and fees of about $3,000.
The Arkansas Education Association, the state’s largest teachers union, on Monday called vouchers “a bad choice” for Arkansas, where, the association said, public-school students have showed steady improvement in achievement on most state and national tests.
“During our slow recovery from the recent economic recession, the last thing we need to do is spend our scarce taxpayer dollars on private-school vouchers,” said Brenda Robinson, vice president of the association.
“Being a classroom teacher, I am creative, I am innovative, I am a risk taker,” Robinson said. “If I go to school choice, would I have more flexibility? I don’t think that is correct.
“I know the system sometimes keeps us boxed in as far as the standards and what we teach, but I really feel that as long as teachers are coming out of college being well prepared and parents are involved and we are engaging students more in science and math, then the creativity, the innovation and the gains in student achievement will be accomplished.”
Arkansas, Pages 8 on 08/23/2011