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School Choice Is Good for Teachers, Too
posted by: Alana | January 07, 2016, 03:56 PM   

By Doug Tuthill

 

“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.” With her recent passing, Marva Collins is being remem¬bered for her glorious educational crusade to turn around the lives of low-income 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 scholarships on the map, a majority of states now have some form of school choice. 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 desti¬nies of their students. I should know. I’m a lifelong edu¬cator 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 brim¬ming with examples. In June, ABC’s World News Tonight put a national spotlight on a particularly inspiring one: the Human Experience School in Orlando, Florida. Doing their best impression of Marva Collins, teachers Danita Jones and Nate Smith started the one-class, one-grade, microschool 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 asked ABC. “By lacking access to quality education—you might as well be drowning in a pool.”

 

And you’ll never believe what Florida is doing to give teachers more power than ever to improve access to quality education…

 

Find out in this month’s issue of Education Matters, and don’t forget to take our monthly teacher survey for your chance to win an AAE prize pack! This month’s question is: What are your professional goals for 2016?

 

How do you think choice benefits teachers?

Tell us in the comments below!

 

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