By Lawrence C. Patrick III, President and CEO, Black Alliance for Educational Options
Children from low-income families should have the same opportunities to attend those schools that can best meet their educational needs as children from wealthier families have.
It’s that simple.
Especially in Florida where, according to a study commissioned by the Black Alliance for Educational Options (BAEO), the state’s overall high school completion rate is a sad 59 percent. Even worse, that number for black children is at 51 percent, ranking Florida 49th in graduation rates. Our parents need a “plan B.”
In March, the BAEO co-sponsored a rally in Tallahassee, Florida, to express the importance of school choice to the Florida legislature and to show support for the state’s Step-Up for Students program—the largest corporate tax-credit scholarship program in the country. The nearly 3,000 attendees of the rally had one message to communicate to the legislature: the program works. Because of Step-Up for Students, more than 13,000 children from low-income families across Florida have received a better education by virtue of having a choice in schools.
Sabrina Green, who lives in Tallahassee, is among those parents whose children are being afforded the option of school choice. Two of Mrs. Green’s children have been corporate tax-credit scholarship recipients for the past two years.
Her 11-year-old daughter, Courtney, didn’t feel challenged in the public school she attended, and she was rarely encouraged to participate in class. As a result, she withdrew into a shell, so to speak. Since she’s been attending the Metropolitan Christian Academy of the Arts, she has blossomed and her love for school has been rejuvenated.
Sabrina’s son, Brandon, is currently in the second grade. Unlike his older sister, he never had a love for learning while attending public school. He needed to bring grades up, but that required one-on-one time with teachers, and individual teacher-student time was not possible in a large public school like his. The Metropolitan Christian Academy of the Arts has given him the attention he needed to improve his grades. His pre- and post-school tutoring has brought his reading skills up, and his test scores have skyrocketed.
BAEO is committed to making sure that every low-income and working-class black family has a choice like Sabrina Green’s.
Affluent families have educational choices because they can move to different neighborhoods or communities, send their children to private schools, or supplement schooling with tutors and enrichment programs. Meanwhile, lower-income and working-class families like the Greens are typically trapped with one option—a school in need of improvement.
So, until our children can attend schools of their choosing—in Denver, Philadelphia, Detroit, Los Angeles, Phoenix, New York City, and every large and small town in between—instead of waiting for the schools they were forced to attend to start meeting their educational needs, we’ll fight. We’ll fight with the commitment of families who know this is the right thing, and with the courage of dedicated lawmakers who are helping to ensure that the self-serving demands of interest groups take a backseat to our children’s future.
We can stand silent and do nothing, or we can help solve the problems in education now by supporting educational options and programs that will enable our children to receive the quality education they deserve and—frankly—are promised.
The Meantime Volume 4 Number 1