Certainly Parent Power activists and other reformers outside of Florida were shocked earlier this week when the state senate failed to pass the latest (and weakest) version of a proposed Parent Trigger law by a tie vote. What was even more shocking to them was the news that Gov. Rick Scott, who had seemingly pushed hard for systemic reform during his first two years in office, was the man behind killing the bill. As Sunshine State News reported this week, Scott’s staff had worked the halls of the statehouse calling upon any senator they could find to vote against the bill, which had won strong passage out of the house just a month earlier. Why? Because Scott was more concerned with keeping traditionalists — especially National Education Association and American Federation of Teachers affiliates, as well as school districts — from strongly backing a Democratic challenger next year during his re-election campaign.

Yet Scott’s machinations were of no surprise to your editor or to anyone paying attention to all the discussions surrounding the proposed Parent Trigger law. For months, Scott, with the help of otherwise-sensible reform-minded Commissioner Tony Bennett, has worked hard to derail the legislation, arguing first that the legislation’s original proposal to make the state board of education the final appellate body for Parent Power takeovers was too burdensome on the body, then arguing that the plan may not stand constitutional scrutiny by state courts; the fact that Florida’s own constitution essentially puts the state in charge of structuring public education apparently didn’t figure into Scott’s thinking. Once the original legislation passed out of the Sunshine State’s lower house, Sen. David Simmons neutered the legislation on Scott’s behalf. This should have led Parent Power activists to abandon the bill. But they didn’t, likely to Scott’s dismay. Ultimately, Scott seems to have persuaded four senators — Jack Latvala, Greg Evers, Rene Garcia, and Miguel Diaz — to provide the votes needed to kill the bill at least for this year. And throughout this, Scott was so cowardly that he couldn’t stand up and say he opposed the bill as well as to giving families the ability to overhaul the failure mills in their own communities. Shameful.

Simply put, Scott and the four state senators who helped him defeat the proposed Parent Trigger law was far more concerned about keeping their political offices than helping families — especially those from poor and minority households — take their rightful places as lead decision-makers in education. Scott in particular behaved just as cravenly as his predecessor, Charlie Crist, whose political career went by the way side four years ago after vetoed tenure reform legislation. For that, along with a move last month to weaken Florida’s strong reform efforts, Scott and his colleagues deserve to lose their offices next year, as should every black and Latino legislator who also opposed it. Hopefully one of Scott’s predecessors in the state high office, Jeb Bush, will rally reformers and others around the state to find a more-suitable successor.

Yet Scott and his colleagues in Florida aren’t the only ones who fail to understand the need to expand opportunities for families to provide our children with high-quality teaching and comprehensive college-preparatory curricula.

Yesterday in Connecticut, the Connecticut Parents Union filed a lawsuit on behalf of families at Walsh Elementary School in Waterbury against the district, and Gov. Dan Malloy for attempting to circumvent that state’s Parent Trigger law through efforts to place the school under the oversight of the Commissioner’s Network school turnaround effort. As Dropout Nation readers remember, Walsh’s school governance council moved back in January to launch a takeover of the school from the district’s control amid concerns that the   As Connecticut Parents Union President Gwen Samuel (a DN Contributing Editor) and Alisha Love, a mother of a Walsh Elementary student alleges, the district, with the help of the American Federation of Teachers’ affiliate there, is trying to scotch the takeover attempt by putting the school’s leadership (which backed the effort) on administrative leave as well as bullying members of the school governance council, which is charged under state law with launching Parent Trigger efforts. Malloy, along with his education czar, Stefan Pryor, have aided and abetted the district’s efforts to scotch the Parent Power effort through the Commissioner’s Network, his signature reform effort. Under Public Law 116, the school reform law Malloy managed to get passed last year, a district can avoid a family-led takeover of its school by placing it under Commissioner’s Network control; once the state steps in, the school governance council is neutralized (and thus, the ability for families to utilize the Parent Trigger) and is effectively replaced by a turnaround committee controlled by an NEA or AFT local.

Meanwhile U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan declared in two venues this week that Parent Trigger laws weren’t exactly tops on his list of how he felt parents should have power in education. While somewhat supportive of Parent Trigger laws, Duncan thought there were better methods for families to be empowered in education such as demanding schools and districts to provide their kids with “world-class” education. Your editor wasn’t exactly expecting Duncan to offer a ringing endorsement of Parent Trigger laws. After all, it would be akin to the Obama Administration endorsing school vouchers — a bridge too far given its centrist tendencies and its desire to keep NEA and AFT affiliates at bay (even as other reforms it pursues antagonizes them). But one would expect Duncan to know quite well that such tactics never work for families — especially those from poor and minority households — who are often deemed nuisances and worse by far too many teachers and school leaders, most-notably those responsible for operating failing schools.

Certainly Scott, Malloy, and Duncan have otherwise been sensible in expanding the opportunities for families to choose high-quality education for their children, including the expansion of public charter schools. So why would they have so many misgivings — and in the case of Scott, outright oppose — providing families with the ability to overhaul schools right in their own neighborhoods? Chalk it up to their unwillingness (along with that of fellow political leaders) to stand up boldly to traditionalists (including teachers’ union affiliates and district bureaucracies), and their general belief that families lack the savvy and consensus-building skills needed to make smart decisions if given the tools.

As with so many aspects of reform, the unwillingness of politicians such as Scott and Malloy to embrace Parent Trigger laws have less to do with political ideology than with the power relationships (and often complementary views on the potential of poor and minority children) that often exist at the state and even school district levels. Especially in Florida (where districts are often county-based), school districts are often the biggest employers in their communities and the most-powerful political players in communities. In Hillsborough, Pinellas, Manatee and Sarasota counties alone, districts employ twice as many workers as the largest private-sector firms; the Pinellas district, for example, employs three times more workers than retail powerhouse Home Shopping Network. Districts often serve as the launching pads for the careers of legislators and executive branch politicians in both Democratic and Republican parties, (who are first backed by NEA and AFT locals), and those politicians tend to share in common with traditionalists running districts the same disregard for poor and minority families; this was clear in Simmons’ declaration, in spite of evidence to the contrary, that the failure mills targeted under the proposed Parent Trigger law got that way because those families “haven’t been involved in their own children’s lives so as to cause the school to improve”. As a result, these politicians are disinterested in any reform that may end up hurting their prospects for re-election.

This is particularly an issue for Scott, a neophyte politician who barely won his first term three years ago, now struggling in the polls. From his perspective, advancing reforms such as the overhaul of the Sunshine State’s teacher evaluation system he ushered in 2011 will do him more harm than good to his re-election chances. But Scott’s problems lie more with the perception that he hasn’t done all that well in moving Florida out of the economic doldrums — along with flip-flopping on such issues as the expansion of Medicaid — than with advancing systemic reform. As proven by predecessor Bush during his two terms in office — and by current colleagues such as Rick Snyder in Michigan and New Jersey’s Chris Christie (as well as predecessor Bush and former Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels), governors can win on advancing systemic reform if they use effectively use their political capital, leverage their bully pulpits effectively, willingly suffer temporary political setbacks,  successfully built coalitions for reform, and embrace an approach focused on result, not accommodation,  Scott can easily see this in his own state. After all, the key players who supported last year’s effort to pass a Parent Trigger law kept their seats. In fact, as seen this with this year’s effort to enact a Parent Trigger law — as well as in the case of successful efforts in seven states to enact Parent Power laws so far — there are plenty of politicians willing to stand up to traditionalists.

Duncan, on the other hand, can’t necessarily be accused of cowardice. This is also true of Malloy, who bucked his own party to push for a series of reforms last year. The problem for them (as well as with fellow-travelers among Beltway reformers and those in the school reform movement with a more institutionally-minded focus) is their view that families just are too incapable of making decisions. From where they sit, families shouldn’t bother with controlling school operations because they lack the savvy to deal with the complexities of overseeing such overhauls. They also believe that Parent Trigger takeovers will lead to discord between the majority of families leading the takeover and those in the minority who would prefer to keep the school in traditional district hands. In their view, it is simply better to expand other forms of school choice so that families can escape failing schools and choose schools fit for their kids

Yet such views fail to keep in mind that some of the most-successful school reform efforts have been — and continue to be — done by folks who didn’t know much about education until stumbled into reform. This includes mothers and fathers spurred to take action and become what former National Urban League president Hugh Price calls impromptu leaders by concerns for the futures of their children. From Virginia Walden Ford’s work in spurring reform in Washington, D.C., to Shree Medlock of Black Alliance for Educational Options, to Samuel, whose work led to the passage of the nation’s second Parent Trigger laws, families and other grassroots players have done the work of jump-starting and sustaining reform that Beltway and operator-oriented reformers, often more-concerned about policy and management than with rallying critical support from people on the ground, almost never do. Certainly school turnarounds aren’t ever easy. But it isn’t impossible for a group of dedicated parents to turn around schools, either in an operational or (in most cases) governance role. Considering that families find common ground with others every day in other aspects of life, the argument that moms and dads can’t work together after a takeover battle doesn’t hold water either. And given how poorly experienced operators within traditional districts and even some charters are doing in operating and overhauling schools, statements that only experts should be entrusted with running schools isn’t exactly so.

Duncan and others also fail to realize that school choice is about giving families the opportunity to move their kids out of failure mills and the ability to choose the very structure of education for the kids they love (as well as directly push for reforms) within in their communities. Even if choice fully flourishes, families are still going to want real choices in their neighborhoods. After all, the high cost of sending kids outside of communities, both in terms of transportation and time, remains a challenge even for the most well-off of families. The fact that these families have invested heavily in these schools (especially through their taxpayer dollars), along with their ties to the schools (which are often longstanding institutions in their communities, for better or worse) also makes their desire to overhaul them rather understandable. It just makes sense for families to take charge of neighborhood schools from central bureaucracies and teachers’ union affiliates distant from their concerns for their children, or at the very least, use Parent Trigger laws to become lead decision-makers in the school with the district paying heed.

What Scott, Duncan, and Malloy should understand is that Parent Trigger laws are critical to helping families build brighter futures for their children. It is both intellectually and morally unacceptable to oppose reforms that allow them to be real decision-makers in education. Reformers need to remind them, as well as other politicians, that nothing less than full parent power will do. And this starts at the ballot box, inside statehouse corridors, and over at Duncan’s office on Maryland Avenue.

Over the past few days, the school reform movement (especially school choice and Parent Power activists) have had plenty to say about the revelation that Diane Ravitch acolyte Leonie Haimson was exercising school choice privately even as she opposes choice publicly– especially for poor and minority families. Certainly Haimson deserves all the scorn she has garnered as do her fellow traditionalists for defending her. [They also found themselves apologizing for once for the racial slurs uttered by one of their own during a protest in front of the U.S. Department of Education's headquarters.]

But let’s remember this: Haimson has little in the way of influence outside of Ravitch and her fellow traditionalists; ultimately, challenging her intellectual dishonesty and her hypocrisy doesn’t do much to advance choice for our children. On the other hand, challenging politicians who cravenly bend to the will of traditionalists (especially affiliates of the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers, along with traditional districts) most certainly does. And the past few days have proven that the movement has a lot of challenging to do.

This past Thursday in Austin, Texas, legislators in the Lone Star State’s lower house passed an amendment to a budget bill attempting to end efforts by state Sen. Dan Patrick to launch a school voucher program. The amendment, which would not allow the state education department to fund either vouchers or tax credit programs, was passed overwhelmingly, with 103 legislators (including 43 of the Republicans who make up the majority in the state House of Representatives) essentially declaring that they had no interest in helping poor and minority kids escape failing schools. While the amendment may end up being scrapped in conference committee, the very fact that Republicans were as willing as Democrats to oppose choice should discomfort conservative reformers and the rest of the movement alike.

In Nashville, Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam’s proposed school voucher program may end up being scotched altogether after he asked for the proposal to be withdrawn. Why? One reason lies with Haslam’s own unwillingness to allow his fellow Republicans in the state senate to broadly expand the modest school choice bill (which in its current form, only allows for kids on free- and reduced-price lunch programs to leave the Volunteer State’s worst schools). But Haslam’s move is likely not just about being unwilling to go big or go home. Some Republicans (and likely, movement conservatives as well) fear the possibility of subsidizing Muslim parochial schools they oppose. One can imagine that Haslam, who faces a re-election bid next year, doesn’t want to face a primary challenge from those more-interested in indulging their religious bigotry than in helping all kids succeed.

Then there is news this week out of California that state education officials are dropping their defense against a lawsuit filed against it six years ago by NEA and AFT affiliates, along with the state school boards association, after the state allowed charter school outfit Aspire to open six schools throughout the state. The unions and the school boards didn’t oppose Aspire’s expansion because it was a low-quality operator; in fact, it is globally recognized as being better than most traditional districts in the nation as a whole. But the traditionalists, annoyed that Aspire bypassed traditional district oversight (which is essentially akin to letting McDonald’s decide whether a Wendy’s can open next door to one of its restaurants), fought furiously against allowing a high-quality operator provide schools fit for kids in communities such as the state capital of Sacramento where traditional districts are essentially condemning their futures. And they were aided by elected judges — and, at the end, by a state board chosen by Gov. Jerry Brown that should have fought a little harder in the courtroom.

Certainly this isn’t the only time this year when legislation geared toward helping kids and families gain access to high-quality education have been kiboshed by politicians, more-concerned with remaining servile to teachers’ unions and school districts in their back yards. There was the proposed Parent Trigger law in Georgia that was withdrawn late last month (after having passed the Peach State’s lower house with strong support) after two key legislators, Senate Education and Youth Committee Chairman Lindsey Tippins and powerful suburban Atlanta senator Fran Millar, voiced their opposition to the plan.  Meanwhile in Mississippi, a proposal to allow charter schools to opened in any part of the state without districts having veto power over them — and allowed kids anywhere in the state to attend charters anywhere regardless of district boundaries, was significantly weakened amid opposition from Republicans in the state’s lower house; if not for the efforts of Gov. Phil Bryant, Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves, and state Sen. Gray Tollison, no measure would have been enacted at all.

None of this should be surprising. School reformers have succeeded in expanding choice and Parent Power over the past four years — including the launch and expansion of voucher and voucher-like tax credit plans in more than 15 states, the opening of 1,089 new charter schools, and the passage of Parent Trigger laws in seven states. Yet even with that growth, four out of every five children and their families cannot avail themselves of any choice at all. Certainly traditionalist opposition to choice is part of the problem. But the fact that many legislators are unwilling to stand up to NEA and AFT affiliates, as well as to traditional districts  is the bigger problem. But it shouldn’t be shocking. After all, politicians understand votes and they understand money. The NEA and AFT bring both, pouring more than $369 million into state and local campaigns between 2000 and 2012, according to the National Institute on Money in State Politics. The fact that districts are are often the biggest employers in their communities in Southern and even Rust Belt States, as well as have been the place from which state legislators have gotten their start in politics, means that many politicians are far less interested in embracing any sort of systemic reform.

Yet reformers can overcome those challenges. This starts by becoming more politically-savvy, embracing the political game, warts and all. While It means embracing the tools of digital advocacy. It also means strong campaigning that continually hits those who oppose reform hard and deep. Certainly if they win, they may hold a grudge. But they will also learn to bend toward reform because smart politicians run scared. They know that the next time, they may actually lose office and they are as interested in placating those who can hurt them as much as they will bow to their allies. It means embracing the tools of digital advocacy. It also means strong campaigning that continually hits those who oppose reform hard and deep. Certainly if they win, they may hold a grudge. But they will also learn to bend toward reform because smart politicians run scared. They know that the next time, they may actually lose office and they are as interested in placating those who can hurt them as much as they will bow to their allies.

It also includes working the grassroots, especially the 51 million single parents, grandparents and immigrant families ready to embrace reform. As Future is Now Schools founder Steve Barr points out, these families also have reasons to distrust those coming in from the outside. Reformers must leave the Beltway and work on the ground in neighborhoods in order to advance reforms. This means listening and constantly engaging these families every day over time. It also means working with grassroots activists and churches, the touchstones for many of these families.

It also means embracing the school reform movement’s roots as a bipartisan movement. As seen in both Republican strongholds such as Texas as well as in Democrat-dominated states such as California, reformers on both sides of the aisle cannot count on their fellow travelers in both parties to support expanding choice. This means abandoning these party-only efforts and embracing the single-issue voter approach that was crafted by the legendary Wayne Wheeler, who understood that having allies was more important than backing particular parties. It also means being willing to primary those in your party if they refuse to back reforms – and be willing to back those in the opposing party if they are your allies when it comes to transforming American public education.

Finally, it means constantly articulating why expanding choice and Parent Power is so important: Because it is absolutely immoral and intolerable to keep families from exercising their God-given right and obligation to provide their kids with the high-quality education they need to succeed in adulthood. Because allowing families to choose to escape failure and transform failing schools in their communities is critical to transforming super-clusters of failures in urban, suburban, and rural communities for all children, no matter who they are or where they live. And because everyone benefits — including the nation as a whole — when high-quality opportunities are provided to every child.

It will take strong political and moral activism to provide all families with high-quality education. And that means focusing on the political leaders who stand in the way — and holding them accountable for their political, intellectual and moral failures.

One can say plenty about yesterday’s unanimous decision by the Indiana Supreme Court to affirm the legality of the Hoosier State’s voucher program. The first? That the ruling is a clear victory for the 9,400 children and their families who currently use the vouchers to escape dropout factories and failure mills throughout the state, as well as those families still stuck with sending their kids to failure schools who will benefit from expansion of the school choice program in future years. Particularly for the families of poor and minority children, especially those previously forced to attend Indianapolis Public Schools (the worst district in the Midwest outside of Detroit) and the nearly-as-abysmal district in Gary, Ind., the Indiana voucher program is helping them provide their kids with schools fit for their futures. No family should be forced to subject their kids to educational neglect and malpractice, and they should be the lead decision-makers in the education of their children.

It will also benefit the thousands of children — especially those condemned to special ed ghettos — who may benefit from the possible passage of H.B. 1003 — currently before a state senate committee – which would provide vouchers to help those children escape the pernicious effects of special education practices within traditional district schools; uncertainty over how the court would rule had cast doubt on its passage, an issue that is no longer in the way. As Dropout Nation noted in its commentary last week, for far too long, traditional districts have used special ed as way-stations for kids who they don’t want to teach, and those kids often suffer educational as well as physical abuse through such  barbaric discipline techniques such as placing kids into so-called seclusion rooms (or, as convicts would call them, solitary confinement). Moving kids out of traditional special ed ghettos may lead to those with actual cognitive issues getting the help they need, while allowing those wrongly put into such programs to ultimately cast off the special ed labeling and get high-quality education they deserve.

At the same time, the Indiana high court’s ruling is also a victory for the school reform movement as a whole. Why? Because the ruling by Chief Judge Brent Dickson offers a road map for school choice advocates, Parent Power activists, and others to spur the much-needed transformation of American public education, especially in states which, like Indiana, provide their state governments to structure public education as broadly as they want.

In the ruling, called Meredith et al. v Pence, the Indiana Supreme Court declared that arguments by traditionalists who filed the suit that the voucher program was unconstitutional because of another state constitutional provision banning the state from funding “any religious or theological institution didn’t wash because their interpretation would also have meant that the state couldn’t either provide basic services such as infrastructure improvements from which churches and other religious institutions indirectly benefit. More importantly, previous court rulings allow for the state to fund the work of religious institutions such as hospitals run by Catholic archdioceses so long as the primary beneficiaries were the public. So long as families were receiving the vouchers and the benefit of public education, the vouchers were legal. That ruling, in turn, acknowledges the fact that state and local governments, along with the federal government, have long allowed religious organizations to serve as contractors for all kinds of public activities; As the Thomas B. Fordham Institute pointed out in a 2008 report on reviving urban Catholic schools, the federal government already pours $3 billion annually into Catholic Charities alone.

The more-important aspect of the Indiana voucher ruling comes from Chief Judge Dickson’s ruling that the state government was perfectly within its rights to launch a voucher program because the state constitution allows it to do so. As Chief Judge Dickson points out, the constitution charges the Hoosier State government with “the duty” to “encourage, by all suitable means, moral, intellectual, scientific, and agricultural improvement” as well as to provide for public schools. Under the provision, which has been in place since Indiana enacted its first constitution in 1816, the state can take “all suitable means” to ensure that all kids are provided high-quality education, and that includes providing families with school vouchers (as well as funding public charter schools). As Dickson points out, the constitution gives “broad legislative discretion” to the state government when it comes to structuring public education.

This point is especially important for reformers throughout the nation because Indiana’s constitutional provision is mirrored in one form or another by 14 other states, according to a Dropout Nation analysis. This includes Arkansas, where  the state government is required to both provide “free public schools” and “adopt all suitable means to secure to the people the advantages and opportunities of education”. There’s also California and Iowa, whose respective state governments are also charged by its constitution to “encourage by all suitable means the promotion of intellectual, scientific, moral, and agricultural improvement”. Meanwhile the state government in Kansas is required under its constitution to “provide for intellectual, educational, vocational and scientific improvement by establishing and maintaining public schools, educational institutions and related activities which may be organized and changed in such manner as may be provided by law”; reformers in that state could easily argue that the constitution essentially allows for the state to launch its own voucher program or even voucherize school funding so that it can used to provide children any high-quality school opportunity available.

This is also true in Washington State, where the state is required to both provide public education and “make ample provision for education of all children residing its borders, without distinction or preference on account of race, color, caste, or sex”, as well as in Virginia, whose constitution requires state government to provide free public schools and “seek to ensure that an education program of high quality is established and continually maintained”. In the case of Virginia, the state can launch a voucher program if it so chooses so long as it makes sure that it is provides kids with the teaching and curricula that they deserve. For school choice activists, there is ample opportunity to use the courts to force states to expand school choice, a position articulated by Dropout Nation for the past two years, and advocated by some reformers such former Heartland Institute scholar Bruno Behrend.

Even in states with constitutions that don’t have such broad language, state governments are often charged with defining public education as they see fit. In Louisiana, where the move by Gov. Bobby Jindal to voucherize state funding there as part of the expansion of its voucher program is now under high court judicial review, Article I, Section VIII of the state constitution requires the state to “provide for the education of the people of the state and shall establish and maintain a public education system”. While traditional districts, along with affiliates of the National Education Association and American Federation of Teachers, argue that the constitution bars the Bayou State from allowing private and parochial schools to participate in the state funding formula (and convinced a state judge to rule their way), reformers can argue that provision itself supersedes all others in the constitution. Which means that Jindal and the state legislature can provide a voucher program either from its funding formula or by simply adding the program to the budget as a line item (as was previously done before the expansion last year).

Meanwhile in New York, the state could launch its own voucher program just by following the terms laid out in the state high court’s ruling in the Campaign for Fiscal Equity v. New York. Since the Empire State is charged with providing  a “sound basic education” fit for kids, something that can be easily identified as not happening in many districts, it could easily voucherize funding in those districts and allow families to send their kids to any high-quality educational opportunity. Considering that one reform outfit, New York’s Foundation for Educational Reform and Accountability, have made their own call for using the courts to expand choice, activists should take up that opportunity right now.

But the provisions in these states not only just allow for expanding choice. Parent Power activists can argue that the constitutional provisions charging states with providing public education — along with federal education policy through the No Child Left Behind Act and the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Hunter v. Pittsburgh– invalidate Zip Code Education policies such as school zones and school residency laws that have been used by districts such as Montgomery County in Pennsylvania to prosecute Philadelphia residents  Hamlet and Olesia Garcia (as well as other laughable stealing education cases such as those pursued against Kelley Williams-Bolar and Tanya McDowell). This is because under those provisions, districts are merely arms of state governments and must operate under the rules states set. Particularly in the case of the Garcias, their defense attorney could use argue that Montgomery County’s school residency restrictions violate’s Pennsylvania’s constitutional requirement that state government handles the “maintenance and support of a thorough and efficient system of public education”. This, by the way, also means that families can also file suits to take over failing schools in their communities, essentially launching their own Parent Trigger actions even if they aren’t in any of the seven states with such laws on the books.

For other reformers, the fact that these provisions put states in charge of education once again reveals that the myth of local control (in the form of traditional districts and their boards) is exactly that. This certainly isn’t comforting to traditionalists opposed to all efforts at systemic reform, or to the cadre of traditionalists, movement conservatives, and otherwise-sensible conservative reformers opposed to the implementation of Common Core reading and math standards. But for reformers, the provisions provide them ample opportunity to pursue legislative and even legal efforts to advance reform. The cadre of reformers in California suing the Golden State over its shoddy teacher evaluation system, for example, can use the constitutional provision to force Gov. Jerry Brown and Supt. Tom Torlakson to implement provisions requiring the use of objective student test score growth data in teacher evaluations; one can argue that the provision even invalidates another constitutional rule restricting the state from imposing “unfunded mandates” on districts and local governments because they are merely tools of the state itself.

The Indiana voucher ruling offers new opportunities for reformers in other states to help families take their rightful place as lead decision-makers in education, as well as spur the overhaul of American public education itself. It’s time to take the legislatures and the courts to make those reforms a reality for our kids.

There will be plenty of hand-wringing over a move this month by Mississippi’s state government to allow students to offer their own prayers at traditional district school events. Activists against school prayer such as Joe Conn of Americans United for Separation of Church and State proclaim the measure is just another in the wave of  ”corrosive religious legislation” that forces kids to be exposed to proselytizing that goes against their own religious views — even though the hoops involved in districts administering such activity would almost inevitably discourage anyone from doing so. Meanwhile social conservatives are already proclaiming that the Mississippi school prayer measure is a victory for restoring religious values in school at a time in which districts are in their views seemingly hostile to any religious worldview — without considering that the Mississippi measure is written in such a way that districts would have to allow prayers by kids of faiths many of them oppose, including Islam, Buddhism, Wicca, and Ethical Culture.

Yet in stirring up the latest of many episodes over the role of prayer in schools, the Mississippi law serves as another reminder of why it is time to redefine American public education: Traditional districts are just not equipped to provide both the academic and moral education that families seek and rightly believe isn’t separate from one another. Just as importantly, by moving away from the traditional district model to a system of financing high-quality school opportunities be they traditional, charter, private, or parochial, American public education can also play a more-powerful role in fostering the kind of tolerance and mutual respect for differences that is at the heart of American society itself.

Certainly one can easily understand the concerns over the Mississippi school prayer law and similar efforts in other states. During the early 19th century, children of Catholic, Jewish, and non-Calvinist Protestant backgrounds were forced to read verses from the King James Bible at the beginning of the school day. By the mid 1800s, that Calvinism was ditched for a Unitarian-tinged civic religion favored by Horace Mann and his acolytes that was geared in part toward squelching what they thought would be Papist-inspired rebellion by Irish emigres. By the mid-20th century, the battle by Jehovah’s Witnesses to stop their kids from being forced to recite a Pledge of Allegiance to the United States they considered to be idolatry, proved once again that only one religious viewpoint would be tolerated in traditional public schools, The legacy of this bigotry, including Blaine Amendments that banned the use of public school dollars for financing Catholic and other parochial schools that remain in place, is more than enough for one to be more than a bit wary of any state role in promoting school prayer.

From the perspective of those generally skeptical of any religious involvement in education, especially atheists and church-state separatists, keeping all forms of religion out of schools is the best solution. By doing so, in their views, it allows for kids to embrace diversity and pluralism while also building common bonds of citizenship that have nothing to do with religion. Yet in the process of advocating such moves — including bans on Nativity scenes and other religious symbolism — they have imposed their own agnostic form of religious worldview. By doing this, they fail to realize that for most families, especially those who are Baptist, Catholic, and Muslim, there is far less concern about the presence of religion in schools than with the exclusion of (and disrespect toward) their own. They don’t want the absence of any religion, just not one religion being more dominant than the other. Just as importantly, letting religion in is actually key to stemming bigotry against various faiths. It is important for kids to learn about the various faiths that are part of the fabric of this religiously pluralistic nation, as well as understand how to respect (and respectfully disagree with) worldviews different than their own.

Keeping religion out of traditional districts — even as a more – agnostic brand of civic religion becomes the de facto worldview of American public education — actually perpetuates even more religious bigotry because it treats faith as a poisonous to the instruction schools are supposed to do. This isn’t so. The development of morals and character is as much at the heart of education as algebra and reading comprehension, and this is something at which religion plays an important role. Certainly religion has at times been used irresponsibly by others to justify misbehavior. But to paraphrase Camille Paglia, the noted art critic and atheist, religion is the key civilizing force in world history. The very heart of civilization — from the Golden Rule to the very concept of forgiveness — is derived from religious precepts that folks such as I believe God laid down. At the same time, religion — especially Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Protestant forms of Christianity — have and continue to play important roles in shaping art and literature. From architectural gems such as the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, to such works of art as Michelangelo’s David, knowledge about religion is key to children fully understanding the world around them. Schools cannot leave out religion without leaving out critical knowledge needed for lifelong success.

Yet there is nothing surprising about the struggle traditional districts have with religion. For most of its history, American public education was always more about inculcating a civic religion that focused on citizen and common ties, than about accepting diversity and pluralism.  But these days, traditional districts are terrible at all four.  Traditional district schools remain bastions of forced segregation thanks to zoned school rules and other Zip Code Education policies that restrict choice; battles over school prayer and other issues have also made traditional schools less able to promote either diversity or citizenship. As with the other troubles of traditional districts, the very scale and need to be all things to everyone is a key reason why they do so poorly in fostering both common bonds and encouraging the embrace of pluralism. That four out of every five children are stuck attending traditional district schools that cannot cater to their academic and moral needs (as well as help them embrace diversity or common bonds) is also part of the problem

This is one more reason why expanding school choice and Parent Power matters. As it turns out, the schools that turn out to be the most-socially and economically diverse — and the ones most-likely to foster active and passive citizenship — are parochial and charter schools. As Jack Buckley (now commissioner of the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics) and State University of New York at Stony Brook professor Mark Schneider pointed out in a 2004 study, research has shown that Catholic schools are particularly successful at fostering citizenship, while charter school students are more-active in community activism (and are as tolerant of others) as traditional district counterparts. This was proven a few years later by Patrick Wolf of the University of Arkansas in his own meta-analysis of 21 studies several years later.

This should be no surprise. Although Catholic schools began to form in earnest during the 1850s in order to help Catholic children avoid religious bigotry in traditional public schools, they have also been the de facto alternative schools of choice for children of all backgrounds (including poor black children in the nation’s big cities) since 1829 when Mother Mary Lange cofounded the Oblate Sisters of Providence in Baltimore. Charter schools such as Cesar Chavez in Washington, D.C., and the Democracy Prep collection of schools, have also proven to be good at fostering strong racial and ethnic pride (by allowing black and Latino children to see successful peers and role models) as well as bolstering citizenship and democracy. What many parents have figured out a long time ago is that at its best, religious and character instruction not only provides students with the hope and the moral education they need to avoid falling into poverty and prison, it also helps them behave better toward their fellow people. The lessons of self-sacrifice, delayed gratification and the Golden Rule are almost as critical to surviving in life as Algebra and reading. Contrary to the arguments of traditionalists, school choice is far more critical to fostering diversity and citizenship — all key aspects of democratic republics — than traditional districts can ever be.

None of this should be a surprise. As seen in the Netherlands and Belgium, religious feuding ceased by World War I after governments in both countries decided to finance parochial school options. Based on the experiences in those countries, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that choice fosters both diversity and strong common bonds. When a system of education moves from being one of bureaucracies that restrict access to high-quality academics and eschews pluralism to a system of publicly financing high-quality learning and religious knowledge, children, families, communities, and the nation as a whole benefit. Simply put, it’s time to move past arguments over allowing school prayer — and time to embrace choice hat respects diversity and promotes citizenship instead.

High performing charter school have long been criticized for what some consider to be oppressive school discipline and cultures. I’ve noticed these arguments have cropped up again semi-recently, with a post by EduShyster, linked to by Diane Ravitch. Although I myself do not find the KIPP-style philosophy particularly problematic, I’m not going to offer a defense of it here. Rather the more significant point is that the ability of successful charters to implement particularized pedagogies is one of the important benefits of school choice for a simple reason: every student at such charters is there because of an affirmative choice made by his or her parents. There’s almost no doubt that parents know, by and large, what goes on in the school – it’s fair to assume that kids are eager to tell – and yet parents are nevertheless willing choose that sort of education for their children.

According to Diane Ravitch reformers “say that black children need a ‘different’ kind of education, an education where they are taught to obey, to conform, to listen in silence, and to do as they are told without question. [Reformers] think that days on end of test prep is the right kind of education for black children, but not for their own.” Actually, she’s got it backwards. Insofar as the issue applies to charter schools (or any school of choice), it’s not reformers who are determining the type of education “black children need” – it is those children’s parents. Indeed, traditionalists like Ravitch are the ones who are trying to override parents’ decisions and determine the type of education that other people’s children receive. And have been attempting to do so for quite some time.

Let me be clear: I’m not arguing that parental decisions are always good – that’s a separate point – but when traditionalists criticize certain charters’ education model, they’re also implicitly criticizing parents’ choices for what’s best for their kids. That’s fine, but such a view should be explicit. (For an example of this, see Alfie Kohn’s provocative Answer Sheet blog post, in which he argues that parental involvement is not always positive. Fair enough, though his view is really that parental involvement is only good if parents happen to hold the exact same views on education as him.)

Substantively, it’s hard for me to see how questioning parents’ choices makes much sense. Are parents not rationale in believing that a more structured – and perhaps more disciplined – environment is preferable for some children? Maybe some parents believe that such discipline is not ideal, but then what are the alternatives? Aren’t parents in the best position to weight school options for their own child?

Traditionalists, by and large, are not all that interested in offering alternatives to failing public schools (or, as Dropout Nation Editor RiShawn Biddle points out, even interested in giving families the power to transform the very failing schools in their own neighborhoods); instead, they’re more concerned with telling parents that, no, no, don’t worry, our schools aren’t that bad after all, that they can’t really be improved, or that poverty is the problem. To be fair, many traditionalists are genuinely committed to improving neighborhood public schools; others sincerely believe that schools cannot be fixed until poverty is ended; still others raise legitimate questions about the quality of charters as a group. Regardless, I can’t accept glibly dismissing a parent’s choice to send their child to a school that could significantly improve that child’s life trajectory.

I generally view schools choice as a means – a delivery method – to an end – improving educational quality. But there are reasons why choice is good in and of itself. Unlike traditional public schools, a choice system gives parents meaningful options regarding how their children are educated. If traditionalists or certain parents don’t like a “No Excuses”–style philosophy, that’s a powerful argument not for contracting school choice, but for expanding it.

An article of faith among many traditionalists that moving poor children and their families out of downtrodden neighborhoods into more-affluent ones will somehow improve their achievement. This version of socioeconomic integration is similar to that touted by ivory-tower types such as Richard Kahlenberg of the Century Foundation, and both are part of the Poverty Myth of Education, or as Boston College’s Curt Dudley-Marling calls it, the deficit model. This view assumes that there is no point to providing high quality education to our poorest children in the neighborhoods in which they live, fuels the idea that housing choice should be the way by which people should select schools (instead of robust school choice that allows any child to attend any school that fits them), and conflates the problems of neighborhoods with the systemic problems of American public education (which also plague affluent communities). More importantly, as studies such as one by Ingrid Gould Ellen of New York University and Keren Mertens Horn of University of Massachusetts Boston on the impact of federal housing vouchers have demonstrated, housing choice-as-school reform doesn’t work out in the real world.

So it isn’t shocking that the latest study on the educational impact of a randomized experiment in housing-as-school-reform (and social improvement), the U. S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Moving to Opportunity program, shows that it did little to improve student achievement. The latest data should force traditionalists to focus on ending Zip Code Education policies that restrict the ability of families to choose high-quality schools, expanding school choice by bringing high-quality schools into the poorest neighborhoods, and embracing Parent Trigger laws that allow families to transform failing schools in their own communities.

The report, the latest in a series of studies on the program conducted by a star-studded research team that features Lawrence Katz of Harvard University and Ronald Kessler of the college’s medical school, focused on the academic, health, and social progress of 5,101 children of the families in Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York City who participated in MTO and moved from poor neighborhoods to communities that were, in theory, more-affluent. This included kids whose families received housing vouchers that required them to live in neighborhoods were fewer than 10 percent of the population lived below the poverty line; Section 8 recipients who could live anywhere they choose; and a control group that neither received vouchers nor Section 8 funding. Besides using self-reporting surveys of generally low quality, and statistical data on the demographic populations of the schools the kids previously attended (and those of the schools they enrolled in after moving), they also used more-objective data, including having the children take a 45-minute exam that was similar to the assessment used by the U.S. Department of Education for one of its longitudinal sampling efforts.

Certainly MTO did lead to families moving to neighborhoods that, in the views of both parents and children receiving vouchers and Section 8, were “safer” than the ones from which they moved. But that, along with some self-reported improvements in mental health, was the only noticeable benefit. Reading scores for the kids were only six-tenths of one percent higher than for the average eighth-grader from poor households not receiving any assistance. Children who received vouchers and Section 8 did little better than those kids in the control group; 13-to-20 year olds whose families participated in Section 8, for example, saw their reading scores increase by just sixth-hundredths of a standard deviation, little better than the four-hundredths of a standard deviation increase for the control group, while young adults whose families used housing vouchers only scored three-thousands of a standard deviation higher than peers in the control group. For those kids who were just entering school when they entered MTO, the results were especially disappointing. Average reading scores for those kids whose families were on vouchers increased by only fifty-five hundredth of a standard deviation, little better than the twenty-sixth hundredth of a standard deviation for peers in the control group; kids whose families were engaged in Section 8 scored at one-tenth of a standard deviation, little better than the seventy-eight hundredth of a standard deviation for the control group.

Meanwhile the college-and-career prospects of the kids in MTO weren’t better. Just 20 percent of the 15-to-20 year-olds in MTO had attended college since 2007, according to data from the National Student Clearinghouse; just half of the 15-to-20 year-olds were employed according to state and federal employment records. Young men in MTO were 10 percent to 15 percent more-likely to be unemployed and not in higher ed than their female peers. Declared the researchers: “MTO’s effects on achievement and related schooling outcomes were disappointing, particularly among the youngest cohort of children, whom we hypothesized would benefit the most.” These results are certainly disappointing compared to other approaches to school choice and systemic reform such as charter schools, which, as the Rand Corp. determined in its 2009 study that shows that children attending charters in Chicago and Florida are 7–15 percent more likely to attend college than those attending traditional public schools, or as seen in the Center for Research on Education Outcomes’ recent research on charters in New Jersey and Indiana. Or even the results of school voucher programs such as that in Milwaukee, which has proven to improve student achievement for the poorest kids over time.

[By the way: This isn't to say that housing vouchers are not good for helping families escape violent neighborhoods unfit for kids. In fact, through for that reason, as well as to improve the mental health outcomes of families, housing vouchers are as important to improving those odds as school vouchers are to helping poor kids get high-quality education. Although, as in school reform, it is also important to empower communities to rebuild their neighborhoods and address the proverbial broken windows that lead to crime festering in the first place.]

As I made clear last month in a Dropout Nation Podcast on ending Zip Code Education policies, none of this should be shocking. As with the kids who participated in HUD’s larger housing-as-school reform effort, the vouchers and Section 8 subsidies were often not large enough to help them afford housing in neighborhoods zoned to top-performing traditional district schools. AS HUD noted in one report, poverty levels for voucher and Section 8 recipients were, respectively, a mere seven and nine percentage points lower than the 40 percent poverty rate for families in the control group. As a result, most families on vouchers and Section 8 found themselves in communities where the traditional district schools were little better than those their kids originally attended.

Another factor lies in the fact that in the 1990s when MTO started, as now, there is little information available to families to make smart school decisions. to go on when it comes to picking a top-performing school. State school data systems often provide data in less-than-easy-to-understand ways, or in ways that may matter particularly to poor and minority households. For example, a top-performing school that does well with students overall may not necessarily do well in improving student achievement for young black men. Districts also don’t make it easy for families to learn whether an area in which they are moving is zoned to a school with a culture of genius or a failure mills. It is often hard to even be able to tour a school just to see what is going on if your child isn’t already attending. So if middle-class households struggle in finding data on communities served by high-quality schools, then poor families will struggle even more mightily.

Meanwhile the MTO study points to this reality: That for poor and minority families, simply moving from one school to another within a failing district rarely makes a difference. This is because the failures of the district itself are the underlying cause of the failures of the schools it manages. As seen with most school turnaround efforts, the same culture of incompetence at the school is usually mirrored by central office bureaucrats above them. Unless families have the ability to choose high-quality alternatives to shoddy traditional district schools, moving from one neighborhood to another (or, as shown by Karyn Lacy in Blue-Chip Black, relocating from cities stuck with the monopoly of failing districts to suburbs stuck with mediocre traditional district monopolies of their own), doesn’t work, either as choice or as systemic reform.

Even if the MTO vouchers and Section 8 subsidies covered the full rental costs and data was easily available, there’s the reality that poor families, like middle-class counterparts, have strong ties to the communities in which they have long lived, and even to the failure mills in their neighborhoods. Who can blame them? Both the poorest families and those households who aren’t on any government support want and deserve high-quality school choices within their own neighborhoods. For the latter, they have invested heavily in their communities through their taxes to schools and in their own sweat equity, and want the best for their own children too. And considering that high-quality education is the key solution to stemming poverty and revitalizing neighborhoods – especially those hurt by the presence of failing schools in their midst – we can’t simply engage in policies and actions that leave these communities behind.

The results of the latest MTO study show is something that should be as clear as day to all of us: That we have to end Zip Code Education policies that restrict families from accessing high-quality education – especially in their own neighborhoods. This means expanding charter schools, vouchers, tax credits, and other forms of school choice; passing Parent Trigger and other Parent Power laws; ending zoned school policies that often restrict families from accessing high-quality schools in their cities or in surrounding areas; developing online and blended learning options that allow for families and communities to launch their own schools; and improving school data systems so that all families can make smart decisions.

While the school reform movement has made strides in expanding choice and Parent Power, this is still not a reality for many families — especially those from the poorest households who want better for their kids. Just seven states, including Indiana and Florida, scored 75 percent or higher on the Center for Education Reform’s recently-published Parent Power Index. Only a smattering of states have Parent Trigger laws on their books that allow for families to take control of the failing schools in their own communities — and redefine choice as being both about creating high-quality schools right within neighborhoods and fleeing failing schools.

If we are to continue bending the arc of history toward economic and social progress, especially for our poorest families, we have to do more than just hand them housing vouchers and Section 8 subsidies. We must overhaul American public education. And that includes expanding the array of high-quality school options all of our children deserve.