Navigating School-Choice Programs Is a Challenge, Parents Say
Navigating School-Choice Programs Is a Challenge, Parents Say
BU Wheelock’s CERES Institute today released “Choices and Challenges,” a new report that found that navigating Florida’s school choice for students with disabilities can be time-consuming and costly.
Florida parents of children with disabilities want statewide scholarship programs to continue but with modifications to reduce barriers to accessing the scholarships and more help in navigating a complex search for the most appropriate, beneficial educational experiences for their children, according to a new report.
A team of researchers spoke to nearly 100 parents and surveyed more than 4,000 additional parents to produce the report. Researchers from the CERES Institute for Children and Youth at Boston University Wheelock College of Education & Human Development worked in partnership with the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas.
The report sheds light on the perspectives of Florida parents eligible for two specific statewide scholarship programs that serve students with disabilities: the Gardiner and McKay scholarships.
Researchers found that nearly all parents of both Gardiner and McKay scholarship participants are somewhat or very satisfied with their child’s educational experience, citing transformative changes and benefits they perceive for themselves and their children.
This report is being released as the Florida legislature voted to expand the state’s school-choice programs. With the passage of HB7045, the McKay and Gardiner scholarships will be merged into the Family Empowerment Scholarship and the program will be significantly expanded.
Legislators tend to regard the school-choice system as straightforward. But the systematic analysis of parents’ journeys shared in the report paints a much more complex picture of the scholarship programs in Florida. Parents describe navigating the scholarship school and resource landscape as a full-time job without a roadmap. Parents felt the lack of a roadmap led to unnecessary stops along their journey at schools that were not consistently equipped to serve their children, or simply not a good fit. About two-thirds of parents who got scholarships still reported having to supplement them by paying out of pocket for their child’s education, according to the report.
This report demonstrates the urgent need to provide eligible families with easy-to-access, consistent, high-quality information and a supportive ecosystem of other parents, educators, school leaders, and scholarship-granting organizations to inform and guide them as they seek the best fit for their children.
The report centers parents’ voices and their perspectives in an effort to illuminate the benefits and the limitations of an ongoing statewide investment of hundreds of millions of dollars each year. The large, state-wide sample and the mixed-methods approach build on previous research about parents’ satisfaction by digging into the constraints they encounter when trying to realize the promise that school choice is supposed to offer to their children with disabilities.
“As Florida is poised to expand school choice, there is no better time to ensure that the scholarship programs parents are satisfied with are widely accessible and do not result in furthering educational and economic inequities,” said report author Shannon Varga. “Our report has shown that navigating school choice in Florida for families of students with disabilities is complex. It is a journey that often requires significant time, energy, and additional financial resources. This report highlights multiple suggestions directly from parents who use these scholarships that could help expand positive educational experiences for students with disabilities.”
“Parents are overwhelmingly satisfied with the opportunities that the McKay and Gardiner programs offer,” added co-author Albert Cheng, assistant professor at the Department of Education Reform in the College of Education and Health Professions at the University of Arkansas. “However, like all parents figuring out how to best meet the educational needs of their children, they face particular challenges with getting their needs met. The recent expansion of these programs is an opportunity for all Floridians to take the groundwork laid in the past and build something better for the future.”