Ladner Presentation

Editor's Notes

• #14: How many students are earning industry certifications in Florida? 803 in 07-08 to 63,328 in 2013-14, that is a 7,786% increase in 6 years. An additional, 5,050 certifications were earned outside CAPE academies and career-themed courses. (not reflected above). Note: If asked question on costs of Florida program, “These results were achieved with an initial cost of $550,000 in 08-09 and are now at $12.1 million in 12-13 in a state with 2.7 million students, which is ________ the size of your state.” BIG NOTE: 35,798 CAPE participants earned industry certifications that articulate into college credit, potentially saving Florida families almost $8 million in tuition costs ($7.84-$7.935 million per FL DOE based on $71.98 per credit hour).
• #15: Education Savings Accounts are the next wave in school choice. While tax-credit scholarships innovated on how choice was funded, ESAs truly innovate on how choice is delivered. Through these programs, a child’s education funding is deposited into an account that can be used by parents for a variety of educational uses, like private school tuition, curriculum, tutoring, therapeutic services for disabled students, even college savings. ESAs create a system of education that is truly customized for each child. This customization is why the Arizona Supreme Court upheld Arizona’s ESA program: “The ESA does not result in an appropriation of public money to encourage the preference of one religion over another, or religion per se over no religion. Any aid to religious schools would be a result of the genuine and independent private choices of the parents. The parents are given numerous ways in which they can educate their children suited to the needs of each child with no preference given to religious or nonreligious schools or programs. Finally, the ESA does not limit the choices extended to families but expands the options to meet the individual needs of children.”
• #16: Companies we have engaged: Noodle, Yelp, GreatSchools, Thumbtack, BenefitWallet, SchoolMint (application/registration management), FLVS, Drexel Fund, Cristo Rey, ACE Academies, Deloitte, Wells Fargo “Accountability” falls under three buckets: (1) academic – what have students learned? (2) financial – are funds only going to approved uses? (3) “next-generation accountability.” One of the longest running arguments for school choice is that it will create competition, which will require services to innovate or go out of business. But education isn’t a consumer good, it’s an industry that is really difficult for parents to judge value. To see the benefit of competition, we need to help parents navigate and make informed choices. Lessons from other sectors: Google, Yelp - rating service to find the best restaurant options. Less likely to go to the city DOH to see health ratings. That’s not to say you don’t care about the cleanliness of restaurants, you just intuitively assume that the highest rated restaurants are also relatively correlated with cleanliness. DOH in cities like NY and San Francisco started using Yelp to narrow the restaurants that they do surprise inspections in. Unsurprisingly, they found that low rated Yelp restaurants were disproportionately more likely to be in violation of health ordinances. This tool has become so powerful that Yelp is beginning to partner with DOH to list the restaurant health score when people search. Great Schools uses parent ratings and other metrics to help parents navigate the schools around them. Why not do a combination of both of these? Utilize the opinions of parents and bring in some objective quality ratings like test scores, graduation rates, college admission rates, to provide a robust look at school quality. Parents also need help narrowing the services available. Noodle allows parents to search for tutors, other educational options based on a wide selection of criteria, read parent reviews, see expert recommendations Light regulatory touch: require ESA parents to rate experiences. Uber is disrupting taxi industry by utilizing technology and back end accountability mechanisms to lower costs and replace up-front “accountability”, which often represent less accountability and more occupational licensing and barriers to entry that keep quality, innovative options out. Uber monitors driver quality by requiring riders to rate quality of their driver. If drivers fall below predetermined average rating, they are automatically kicked out. An idea like this would allow administrators to spend their time investigating providers who consistently earn bad ratings from users.