Let educational freedom ring: Voucher families are buying a la carte classes
- Joanne Jacobs
- Jul 3
- 2 min read
Incredibles mom Helen Parr's super power is flexibility. As Elastigirl, she can stretch her body to be very long or very thin or reshape it to be a parachute, a boat, a swing or a slingshot.
She's not the only parent who can get creative to save her children.
A majority of Florida's 3.5 million students are attending schools, including homeschools, other than their zoned neighborhood school, reports Lisa Buie for Next Steps. That includes 500,000 students receiving a parent-controlled education-choice scholarship and nearly 400,000 enrolled in charter schools.
That's led to the Florida flex: Parents can mix and match classes provided by public, private, charter, virtual, home and microschools.
Step Up For Students, a nonprofit scholarship funding organization, and Charter Schools USA, the second-largest charter network in the nation, have joined forces to help parents find the classes and services they want, she writes. District schools can participate too. "By the time school starts in August, one in three of the state’s 67 school districts and five charter school networks will offer flexible learning opportunities to scholarship students," she writes.
Charter school leaders in Texas, which just passed education savings accounts, are eager to provide "a la carte" classes for scholarship students, she learned at the annual conference of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.
“This is the future, and it’s great to see,” said Derrell Bradford, president of 50CAN. “These sorts of collaborations are what happen when families are in the driver’s seat, and they have real resources to direct the education of their children. I hope more states and providers follow them on the path to educational pluralism.”
While ESAs won't launch in Texas until 2026, "a coalition of charter school leaders has already started a pilot program for private-pay students at four schools," writes Buie. "They offer a la carte classes online and in person, including some after school."
Declining enrollment has left many districts -- and some charter schools -- with empty classrooms, science labs, theaters, athletic fields and other resources. Meanwhile, homeschooling and microschooling families are realizing they're good at teaching some subjects, not so good at others. Flexibility could be a financial boost for established schools.
Everyone should remember that Tracking got a bad name because the lesser performing children of white community leaders got up in the fast track while the higher performing children of middle class and blue collar blacks got put into slower tracks. Those children did not benefit from tracking (both the white and black).
Better than either the test score or the internally assessed marks Americans call "grades" are baccalaureate student examinations of the sort required in Europe for admission to state-subsidized universities: municipal regions and families will do well to invest in these, in order to start seeing better returns than the disasters subsidized by the Biden-Harris educationally maladministration.
Image trying to be a college admissions department with ala carte transcripts.