Virtual School Kids in the News! Central Ohio teens to see their film shown on big screen

While his movie is shown on a big screen at the Gateway Film Center, Meshach Malley might be peeking between his fingers.

“I’m scared,” Malley said. “I’ve been talking to the visual-effect guys, and I think I’m going to see all the flaws. I’m terrified but excited.”

His audience will undoubtedly be understanding — if they even notice anything amiss.

Malley, 16, and his cast of young filmmakers will watch their feature-length film, “The Red Crystal,” on Monday night during a public screening.

The home-schooled 11th-grader, who lives in Columbus and is taking classes at Columbus State Community College, began making films about seven years ago.

“We started out doing stop-motion animation stuff,” Malley said, “then we started doing live-action stuff, like ‘The Red Crystal.’”

He began developing the story for the film in 2013. The plot was based on a novel he had written about a boy on magical journey to save a fantasy land from destruction by an evil dictator.

Check out more of their story here. 

Wisconsin: School choice: Nearly $500 million in benefits

In 2014, facing high demand from parents, St. Marcus Lutheran School decided to expand by adding a second school. As a private K-8 school in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program, St. Marcus alumni graduate from high school at rates averaging around 90%, even though more than 90% of its students are from low-income families.

St. Marcus made an offer to the City of Milwaukee about purchasing former Lee Elementary, an empty Milwaukee Public Schools building, for $880,000. But the city said no unless St. Marcus paid an additional $1.3 million because, in the city’s opinion, Milwaukee taxpayers would be hurt by the expansion of St. Marcus and the voucher program. The exorbitant cost helped end the negotiations.

The city’s analysis and tactics are not new. The problem is that city officials do not take into account the enormous positive impact a high performing school can have on the city and state. If there are more children at St. Marcus, then there are more children who will graduate from high school. These graduates are more likely to be employed and stay out of prison, and less likely to depend on welfare and other government services.

Continue reading here. 

They Grew Up in a Poor Neighborhood. How School Choice Changed These Brothers’ Lives.

Carlos and Calvin Battle grew up in the poorest neighborhood of Washington, D.C., where nearly two-thirds of children are living in poverty. In 2016, only 42 percent of students attending the local public high school graduated. 

In an attempt to get her sons a better education, their mother, Pam Battle, enrolled Calvin and Carlos in the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program.

The program provides low-income families vouchers to send their children to private schools, and has shown a promising ability to increase graduation rates. However, many—including teachers unions, the Obama administration, and the education establishment—have worked to shut down the program.

Watch the video here.

EDITORIAL: Advancing parental choice

Teacher unions and school choice — like oil and water, ammonia and bleach or toothpaste and beer — don’t typically go well together. But that may soon change in Nevada.

Thanks to a confluence of pragmatism, self interest and popular opinion, the leader of the Clark County Education Association said last week he’s open to a compromise that would advance Gov. Brian Sandoval’s Education Savings Account program.

This is a step forward that bodes well for progress at the 2017 Legislature.

“We want a session of accomplishment,” said John Vellardita, the union’s executive director. In a meeting with the Review-Journal on Wednesday, he noted that his organization’s top priority is to implement a weighted funding formula for the 2017 school year under which campuses receive additional financial support for students who present various challenges. But to achieve that goal, he revealed that the union may be willing to bend on the governor’s school choice initiative.

Keep reading here.

A voice for school choice

Teachers unions and the education establishment reacted with predictable scorn to the nomination of Betsy DeVos as secretary of Education. 

But parents have reason to be optimistic, and for one simple reason: DeVos has been a champion for school choice across the country. 

Her support goes beyond mere lip service. She has worked to advance viable options for students and families, including charter schools, vouchers, tuition tax credit scholarships and education savings accounts. 

That support for education choice will be a welcome change of pace, particularly for poor children living in the nation's capital.

Read more here. 

Want Satisfied Parents? Empower Them to Choose

Parents are more satisfied with their child’s learning environment when they choose it. Indeed, as economist Tyler Cowen put it recently, “the single most overwhelming (yet neglected) empirical fact” about educational choice programs is that “they improve parent satisfaction.” A slew of new reports add a number of hefty boulders to the mountain of evidence.

Read more about it here. 

National School Choice Week to Host Record 20,000 Events From Jan. 22-28

Henry Eichner’s son may share his name and his disability, but Eichner was determined to not let him share his schooling experience. 

Eichner was bullied in his public schools for having muscular dystrophy. So Eichner enrolled Henry Jr. in a private school in Florida, a financial challenge for a single father.

Then one day he met Wendy Howard, a school choice advocate, at a networking event. Howard asked him if his son was attending his private school using the Florida state-funded Gardiner Scholarship Program, which provides funds for students with disabilities to use on private school tuition or therapy services. That was the first time Eichner had heard of the program.

Continue reading here. 

U.S. Education Abroad with International Connections Academy

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Though sixteen year-old American expatriate Christian Billman has lived in Recife, Brazil, for six years, in that time he has been able to fulfill all the educational requirements of a typical teenager in the U.S. and will soon graduate with a U.S. diploma, all from the comfort of his home in Brazil through International Connections Academy.

Of those who applied to college from the school’s 2016 graduates, 100 percent were accepted, photo courtesy of the International Connections Academy.

For the past several years, Christian has been enrolled in International Connections Academy, an accredited, online private school serving students in grades K-12 worldwide. The virtual school allows English-speaking students living abroad with expat parents to receive a high-quality education that meets U.S. standards, with only a computer and an internet connection.

Read more here. 

Cyber Charter Schools Grow In Popularity

President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for Education Secretary, Betsy DeVos, a prominent supporter of charter schools, said the time has come to “make education great again,” at a recent rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan. But it is not clear an approach as newfangled as it is controversial - cyber charter schools - will be part of her plan.

Cyber charter schools merge two types of reform - the charter school movement and online learning. Like traditional charter schools, cyber charters are considered public schools that deliver instructional material to students online and are paid for with state funds.

Keep reading here. 

Opinion: Reimagining School Choice Debates

Should our school systems be uniform or plural? This question lies at the heart of school-choice debates in the United States. Most democracies — including the Netherlands, England, Sweden and Canada — fund diverse schools as a matter of principle. Educational pluralism is embedded in nations as different as Australia, India and Singapore. These countries do not cast common purpose to the wind; they regulate their schools’ curricula, admissions processes and hiring protocols. Education is considered a public good that may be delivered by civic organizations and the state alike.

More here.