Guest Author
In 1976, the owner of a Nashville salvage yard assembled a crazy-quilt Cadillac inspired by Johnny Cash’s hit song, “One Piece at a Time.” This “hybrid” vehicle proved to be a clever promotional gimmick for Cash’s song about an autoworker who built a car at home using a hodgepodge of factory parts he collected over a two-decade span.
Now, obviously, a crazy-quilt Cadillac bears little resemblance to a Toyota Prius. And even though both can lay claim to being hybrid vehicles, they don’t exactly belong in the same category.
This brings us to a somewhat similar problem in the innovative world of hybrid education.
In recent years, a growing number of families have sought out hybrid learning plans in which students spend some learning time with a paid instructor and some learning time at home with a parent.
These hybrid education plans come in all shapes and sizes. And they each have much to commend. Still, they don’t all belong in the same category. Because some operate like traditional schools (in which teachers direct students’ education) and some more closely resemble home-schools (in which parents curate their child’s curriculum).
To illustrate this subtle-but-important difference, consider Robert and Freddi Wood’s family. When their eldest child started school two decades ago, the Woods enrolled him in Orlando’s International Community School, a hybrid program in which students learn three days a week at school and two days a week at home. Importantly, the lesson plans for all five days are put together by teachers — not parents.
This appealed to the Woods because they wanted to be significantly involved in their son’s education — but didn’t feel prepared to take responsibility for lesson planning. Plus, in exchange for playing the role of their child’s daytime personal tutors, the Woods saved on tuition — an important consideration since they were paying out of pocket for their child’s schooling.
As time went on, the Woods gained confidence in their roles as parent-educators. And they decided to switch to a different hybrid plan — one in which Freddi (who holds degrees from Emory and UCLA Law) would curate the curriculum while supplementing her at-home instruction with “a la carte” classes purchased from a nearby school.
Now, in a perfect world, it would make no difference whether families like the Woods did hybrid education this way or that. All that would matter is that they got the results they wanted.
But Florida’s K-12 scholarship programs currently cover only parent-curated forms of hybrid education. They don’t cover private schools that meet less than five days a week. As a result, families that want to use their Family Empowerment Scholarship (FES) at a hybrid school are not allowed to do so — even if the school grants diplomas and is fully accredited!
Not only is this bad for families, it’s bad for taxpayers.
You see, hybrid education programs tend to be very cost-effective. They typically deliver high quality at low prices (thanks, in large part, to the significant role that parents play in their child’s education). As such, hybrid arrangements strengthen the price-competitiveness of the K-12 marketplace — helping to deter constant increases in private school tuition and runaway spending in public education.
Given all this, the Florida Legislature ought to change existing policy to make it possible for families to use their FES scholarship at hybrid schools like International Community School.
This subtle but important change would help Florida remain a leader in delivering bang-for-buck in education. And it would acknowledge that every family that wants a hybrid education for their children ought to be able to get one — whether it looks more like the K-12 equivalent of a Toyota Prius or has the creative flair of Johnny Cash’s crazy-quilt Cadillac.
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William Mattox is the director of the Marshall Center for Educational Options at The James Madison Institute.
5 comments
ScienceBLVR
March 4, 2024 at 3:52 pm
Not only is this bad for families, it’s bad for taxpayers.
Huh? I’d debate that point with you, especially with nothing but your fantastical musings on curriculum development.
Results, data, you know, logical provable student success outcomes, just the facts, man.
Your plan to allow parents( or did you mean only parents with degrees from Emory) to educate kids, is bad for children. How about addressing what this does to kids who aren’t getting that great Emory U created curriculum
on the tax payers dime?
Authoritarian
March 5, 2024 at 7:32 am
ScienceBLVR thinks parents are too stupid to take care of their own children and wants to mandate only people like themselves can take care of them. They are obsessed with control. They believe in science, and also they believe they should be an authoritarian because they are smarter than you, you dumb parent. What a nightmare that people like this could possibly get near our children
Stacey Dinnie
March 11, 2024 at 2:46 pm
I have had two children go through international community school, and I cannot sing their praises high enough. They get a wonderful, classic education through a challenging curriculum. They still teach cursive which has been taken out of public school. the kids start learning Latin in fourth grade and continue through eighth grade and then after that may pick the foreign language of their choice it is a rigorous program that is a college model when they get to high school. Our kids come out of ICS knowing how to write at a college level and go on to be hugely successful in whatever they choose to do. one of the big advantages of this model is as a parent you are working side-by-side with your student and their teachers and you’re fully involved with their education. This was very important to us. ICS in particular is viewed as a private school for every other resource in the state except for the school choice scholarships. I moved my children from public school to international community school when my son was in seventh grade, because he was struggling terribly with common core math. ICS was an excellent choice for him with smaller classes and more individualized attention and I am happy to say he is graduating this May from Florida State University, another very rigorous school. Schools like ICS should definitely be considered for state scholarships.
Freddi Wood
March 7, 2024 at 11:44 am
ScienceBlvr if I might offer my opinion based on actual facts…
There is a reason homeschooled children are outperforming public school students in every educational barometer available. From standardized testing to college graduation. An education is simply not one size fits all. Parents have the primary responsibility for the education of their children. Why? Because we know them as individuals, not as a collective block in society. Because we have the best interests of our children at heart and see the whole child (mind, body and spirit). If you haven’t noticed, I am the Freddi Wood that Mr. Mattox referenced in the article. And I assure you that my degrees had zero to do with my ability to make the best educational choices for my children. In fact, it required me to “unlearn” what I had been taught about the definition of an education. My husband and I decided that our children would be taught the values that we desired for them to believe and taught by teachers (primarily us) who love them and have the goal of developing critical thinkers with strong Christian character. Governments don’t have children, parents do. We decide what is best for our children. Lastly, my husband and I are hardworking people who pay our taxes and contribute to society. We are not asking for anything that we have not earned. We simply want the choice to direct our money towards the education of our children as we see fit. I find it laughable that people such as yourself want to demand results from parents who choose to home educate their children. I wish you had the same fervor in demanding data and outcomes from the public school system.
Stacey Dinnie
March 14, 2024 at 1:38 pm
Very well said!
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