In a nation where far too many children cannot read, can’t write, and can’t perform basic math at grade level, Floridians should be proud to live in a state where leaders have taken seriously the need to reform education. It’s the type of courageous , reform-minded spirit here in Florida that we celebrate during National School Choice Week (January 22-28, 2012), and that we hope will catch fire in states across the country.

During the term of Governor Jeb Bush, Florida led the way in expanding access to these types of schools by empowering community leaders and educators to create high-performing charter schools, increasing access to private schools through a corporate scholarship tax credit program, and embarking on an ambitious effort to blend traditional learning with virtual options.

Now, these efforts are supported by a healthy mix of Democrats and Republicans—including a large contingent of courageous legislators here on the Panhandle. In Florida, school choice and education reform is no longer constrained by political or ideological lines; it’s about doing what’s best for kids, regardless of the obstacles.

And the results of school choice and education reform in Florida? Remarkable. Achievement for all of Florida’s students has skyrocketed, and the healthy competition generated by providing parents with a multitude of options – public schools, public charter schools, private schools, virtual education and blended learning, and homeschooling – has led to dramatic achievement gains for students.

Not surprisingly, the programs have led to important efficiencies in the delivery of education – saving taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars while increasing the quality of education that is delivered to children and families. And companies in the state, which will ultimately hire Florida’s high school graduates, have been incentivized to get involved in the business of fixing the state’s schools.

Florida’s successes have been so impactful that the nation now views the state as a model for the nation in how to take a severely challenged education system and jumpstart it – with students and parents, not bureaucrats, as the focus.

In 2012, more children are benefiting from school choice than ever before, with parents having true options in education, just as they enjoy in every other aspect of American life. Last year, legislators in nearly every US state introduced school choice legislation – 130 bills in all – and more than 500 charter schools opened their doors. It was, as The Wall Street Journal proclaimed, “The Year of School Choice.”

During National School Choice Week, we shine a bright spotlight on the successes here in Florida and across the nation, celebrating school choice where it exists and highlighting the need for it where it doesn’t. Our coalition is broad and diverse and includes everyone from educators to parents to children to policymakers to community leaders.

Will you join this coalition? Will you stand up and say that you agree: no American child should be denied access to a great school, to the American dream, to the opportunity to pursue their God-given destiny? If you’ll stand with us, you’ll find lots of friends here in the National School Choice Week coalition.

Andrew Campanella is a resident of Miramar Beach, Florida and is the vice president of public affairs for National School Choice Week and a nationally-recognized education reform author and advocate.

A year ago this week, more than a dozen students sat in Speaker John Boehner’s viewing box to watch President Obama’s third State of the Union address.

These children were just like every other student in Washington, D.C., except for one thing: they were about to be removed from the best schools they had ever known.

These were students in the District of Columbia’s school voucher program, and the leader they were watching deliver his State of the Union address had, for two years, not only ignored their impassioned pleas for help, but allowed his Department of Education to revoke scholarships from 216 children.

Speaker Boehner — who had long advocated for the program — thought that the sight of these children, sitting quietly in the chamber that night as the world’s most powerful leaders milled about, would inspire legislators, perhaps the president, to take up their cause.

He was on to something.

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/01/27/parents-nationwide-can-learn-from-d-c-success/#ixzz1ljp1uTrJ

For a moment, try to envision an America where, regardless of how much money you make or where you live, the government empowered you – even encouraged you – to send your children to better schools.

I’m talking about schools that inspire your children, challenge them to excel, and encourage them to dream big and plan for their futures, all while teaching them to love learning.

Sounds impossible. Sounds impractical. Sounds expensive.

But it isn’t.

It’s called school choice, and it’s the notion that across the country, families should be empowered to choose the best educational environments for their children – public schools, public charter schools, private schools, virtual schools and even home schooling.

Millions of Americans now agree that we must abandon archaic central planning that told us that if you live in one ZIP code, you can choose only one public school. Choice has become a centerpiece of American life, so why shouldn’t it extend to education?

Read more at CNN.com:
http://schoolsofthought.blogs.cnn.com/category/school-choice/

Andrew on WWL in New Orleans to preview National School Choice Week’s kickoff.

Andrew on KUSA in Denver, Colorado discussing bipartisan support for education reform.

Andrew on KOSA in Texas, via Skype discussing education reform and National School Choice Week.

Andrew on WMAR in Baltimore discussing the National School Choice Week kickoff.

Andrew on KTNV’s Morning Blend (Las Vegas) talking school choice.

Andrew on WVUU in Las Vegas discussing how parents can choose great schools for their kids.

Andrew on KTUL in Tulsa, Oklahoma discussing how school choice works.

Indeed, when parents are empowered to select the best educational environments for their children – public schools, private schools, public charter schools, magnet schools, homeschooling, and virtual education – student achievement rises, student attainment increases, parental satisfaction skyrockets, and communities are revitalized.

America needs school choice—and more of it.

But throughout this week, the question I am asked most often about education in America is “why?”

The question is not: “why do we need school choice?” For the most part, everyone I’ve talked to this week, from cab drivers to flight attendants to television producers to doctors and lawyers and reporters – see the need for educational options. Americans know that our education system is in dire straits, and they want their leaders to pass and implement the boldest of school choice options for families.

But instead, I’m asked: why did we—the greatest nation on earth—allow our K-12 education system to devolve so tragically, to the point where an American child drops out of school every 26 seconds? Why did we—the globe’s superpower—fall so far behind (35 other countries!) in key areas like K-12 math and literacy?

It’s not an easy answer. But in the answer is a lesson we must learn.

In the 1800s and early 1900s, the traditional concept of public education worked, for the most part, quite effectively for America’s children.

In a time before free trade, before the lack of foreign competition for jobs, and before modern technology, public schools adequately prepared children to pursue a variety of different career paths – everything from hard work in a factory, at a farm, or at the corner store…to jobs in law, journalism, and medicine.

As a result, educational standards were set for the workforce and the industries that our country anticipated sustaining. Colleges of education set their coursework and expectations for potential teachers accordingly. Students of all levels of knowledge and with a variety of abilities were able to pursue—and, for the most part, get—different types of jobs.  As such, our current education system is modeled on that economy of long ago– one that was diverse and experiencing an agricultural and industrial revolution.

But when it came to the other revolutions—the ones of the 20th century—our education system acted as if they’d never existed. And that’s how, and why, we got here.

Beginning in the late 1960s and early 1970s, America experienced unprecedented competition from abroad. Foreign cars, electronics, and thousands of other international products and services were introduced to the American marketplace.

In the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s, we experienced an unprecedented technological revolution in our country – with computers, machines and increased automation making work on farms, in factories, and in plants less expensive and less labor intensive than ever before.

These revolutions transformed the basic need for labor in America – with a significant need for a more skilled, highly-educated, professional workforce that could compete with people across the globe in a marathon race for jobs.

Our economy had been fundamentally transformed to be more competitive, more efficient, more choice-oriented for consumers and companies. But our education system remained exactly the same as it was more than 100 years ago, with no choice and competition, low standards, and a lack of financial efficiency.

Some organizations identified these disconnects early on, pushing for higher academic standards, fair and consistent testing to measure whether students were learning at high levels, more content-knowledge training for teachers, and for increased educational options for parents.

But these leaders and groups were few and far between, and progress on revolutionizing American education to match the trade and tech revolutions of the 20th century, was incremental at best.

Why? Because one labor force in America was undergoing its own transformation – just as America entered its new world of free trade and advanced technology.

When Wisconsin passed the first public employee collective bargaining law in the 1960s, teacher’s unions transformed from professional associations for educators to negotiators and lobbyists. The result was that unions advocated for the strictest of work rules (in some cases, even regulating how much time teachers were permitted to spend assisting struggling students after school, as an example) and insisting on uniform salaries for educators – regardless of their effectiveness.

The result was that while many teachers remained innovative and creative, they were treated as if they were factory workers making widgets, not as people whose work and individual effectiveness were so important to America’s future.  The impact on the profession was depressing. But the unions – essentially privately held corporations running pension funds, selling benefits packages, and managing a bottom line for a select few leaders – gained unprecedented political power. They wielded that power decisively, spending hundreds of millions of dollars to defeat any and all school reforms that threatened to endanger the “corporation”.

School district administrators didn’t want change, either, and they fought it, often using excuses – the need for “more money” and “more time” as justification for mediocrity and failure. After all, who wants to change how they’ve done their jobs for 25 or 50 years?

And so, instead of reforming our schools to meet the challenges of our new economic outlook, we simply poured more money into them—dramatically more money—without any concept of expecting results. That money never went to classrooms, to pay great teachers more money, or to improve outcomes; it was absorbed by a bureaucracy resistant to change and clinging romantically to the pre-20th century vision of public education.

That’s how we got here. That’s how a superpower like America can conquer any enemy, defeat any threat, feed the world, and lead the globe in almost any other aspect of life – but failed in one basic tenet of democracy: educating its citizenry.

The crisis remains very, very dire, but the solutions abundant, and they’re growing.

School choice has become the fastest growing sector of American education. Educators from New York to Minnesota to Florida to California and everywhere in between developed the concept of public charter schools, which now serve 2 million children after 20 years of hard work.

Parents and educators and public school officials developed innovative new magnet schools to cater to the learning styles and interests of students.

Private schools –and the teachers that fuel them – innovated and enhanced their already-stellar academic programs, while parents began demanding scholarships to send their children to these schools.  More than 200,000 children now benefit from some form of private school choice.

Virtual education, or digital learning, has recently become so effective and so popular that public schools and private schools are turning to the Internet for courses by master teachers—raising achievement for millions of children.

And, of course, 2 million dedicated parents have sacrificed so much to homeschool their children.

The tide is turning for bold reform in American education, but we need a tidal wave. We need a revolution. National School Choice Week is about celebrating the dynamic, effective choices that are taking root in so many states. But at the same time, this Week is also about demanding reforms where they do not exist.

At it’s core, National School Choice Week is about tapping into the uniquely American spirit of competition, innovation, and excellence – that American quality that nobody in the world possesses like we do—and harnessing it to right a 50-year-long injustice.  And I’m proud to be a part of a movement that is matching America’s economic revolutions with an educational revolution we so desperately need.

“Students, parents, and school choice advocates recently held a rally at the Pennsylvania State Capitol to urge the House to pass a sweeping bill that would grant scholarships to children in the state’s bottom schools.

The Senate has already approved the Opportunity Scholarship and Educational Improvement Tax Credit Act (S.B. 1), and Republican Governor Tom Corbett says he is ready to sign it. However, there is still some delay with it becoming law. So, National School Choice Week’s vice president, Andrew Campenella, tells OneNewsNow the rally was held to urge the House to act quickly on the measure before the end of the year.”

Read the rest here: http://www.onenewsnow.com/Education/Default.aspx?id=1482334

“During Wednesday’s Republican presidential debate, the candidates ought to make education a major point of discussion. Recent debates have been mundane and redundant, focusing on the same issues and allowing the candidates to regurgitate tired campaign talking points. School and broader education reform should be one focal point of the debate because it is an issue most Americans consider when voting and because a functional education system is inextricably connected to economic stability and job creation.

Simply overlooking education is a bad idea for Republicans, especially considering recent national polls that show voters consider it one of the most important issues. “According to Rasmussen’s Oct. 16-19, 2011, polls on key issues, education is the sixth most important issue to voters, beating out immigration, national security, the “war on terror,” the war in Afghanistan, and the war in Iraq,” says Andrew Campanella, vice president of the group National School Choice Week.”

Read the rest at:

http://www.ocregister.com/articles/education-326047-issue-voters.html

I am blessed to be the first son of Robert and Eileen Campanella (Bob and Lee)—two of the most loving, hardest working, encouraging, and funniest people in this world.

I’m 31 now, and I look back on my childhood with increasing gratitude. Every day, every week, the decisions I make can be linked to things I learned from my parents. And for that, I owe them a debt of gratitude that nothing can repay.

From the moment they had children, my parents dedicated everything—and I mean everything—to giving my brother and me the best opportunities to have fun, be ourselves, and to learn.

In our house, there wasn’t a single day that my parents weren’t always engaged, always active, always there, always pushing us to do better, always cheering us on when we succeeded. They didn’t take much time for themselves, because they were focused on one thing: our family.

Looking back, in our house—the four of us were always a team. We ate dinner together every night at 6 pm, we did chores together, we watched television together, we read together, we went to church together, we vacationed together.

It was as a part of this team that the seeds for my adult worldview were planted and nourished.

Take work, for example. I don’t think either of my parents have ever clocked less than a 60-hour workweek (and that includes the time when Mom was a full-time mother). My parents didn’t just “instill in me the value of hard work,” they taught me to enjoy work and the rewards it offers.

When I was very young, I loved going to work with my father at his real estate office in Philadelphia. I was fascinated by all of it—by the papers, the forms, and even by the many shades of White Out he had. He encouraged my interest, gave me his old briefcase and his gold, Century 21 blazer to wear as I “played office” at home. And then, one holiday season, he spent weeks (in secret, in the basement) building me a roll top desk as a Christmas gift. What little kid wants a roll top desk to “play work”? I did, and my father didn’t blink an eye.

When it came time to raise money for Boy Scouts or for school activities—selling flower bulbs and light bulbs and wreaths and pretzels—my parents encouraged me to not just put in the bare minimum effort at this work, but to try and be the best fundraiser there was. The fun was in the results: getting to go on amazing camping and sailing trips and knowing my hard work (and yes, money contributed from Mom and Dad, too) paid for it.

From my parents, I learned to compete, not for a participation medal, but for first prize.

I remember carving pumpkins with my mother for our elementary school’s pumpkin carving contests. I still think the pumpkins we created were better than any pumpkin I see today. I remember meticulously crafting Pinewood Derby cars with my father, painting them, testing them. I remember science fair projects (we made paper from grass, and we built a gigantic ant farm) and spelling bees and VFW speech contests. Competition was important, it was fun, it was encouraged.

My parents also told me to defy artificial odds that people placed before me.

When my social studies teacher in the 10th  grade refused to “nominate” me for 11th grade Advanced Placement History, my mother and I went to school, asked them to give me a chance. A year later, I defied that teacher’s expectations by getting a top grade on the AP US History test. When the chairman of the local school board threatened to sue me for speaking out against the passage of a school budget tax increase, my mother (who may have even supported the measure) didn’t tell me to keep quiet and fall in line—she told me to fight for my rights.

What’s more…my parents have always—always—accepted me for who I am.

As a kid, and still today, I have diverse interests (putting it mildly). They didn’t care. Whether that meant a fascination with collecting hubcaps from antique cars, coins, old keys, newspapers and movie posters, they were cool with it.

They also accepted me and understood that there were things I wasn’t good at. Like sports. The only time I scored a goal in soccer was against my own team—accidentally. Our team’s biggest loss was when the coach made me the goalie; I was hapless. In baseball, I spent my time in the outfield building little mounds of dirt and looking at birds—while balls flew by. It didn’t matter. My parents never missed a game.

And of the two things I love most about my work today—writing and public policy—I credit my enthusiasm to the encouragement of my parents.

I’m able to write this column because one day, in elementary school, my mother asked me why I wasn’t entering an essay contest sponsored by the local Suburban newspaper. I told her I didn’t want to write it and that I wouldn’t win the contest if I tried. My mother wasn’t buying these excuses. And so, at her prodding, I wrote. We edited. I realized, “I can do this!” And I won! I haven’t stopped writing since.

I love public policy and politics because my parents indulged my early fascination with American presidents and history. I came home from school one autumn day—after learning about currency and coins in second grade—and wanted to know everything possible about the people who appeared on our coins and paper money.

My parents took me to the library and we checked out as many books as possible on presidents, politics and history. My mother drove me around to visit each campaign office for every candidate running for office, and my father took me to candidate forums, where I got to quiz each candidate running for governor of New Jersey. The next year, in the third grade, I was handing out walk cards outside of polling places…and for the next dozen years, my parents carted me around to every political event imaginable—without ever complaining once. My mother even made me a Grover Cleveland halloween costume. Yes, I wanted to be Grover Cleveland for Halloween one year (and Lincoln, and Washington…)

Growing up, there were hard lessons too, things that really irritated me about my parents when I was a kid. I’m thankful for them, now.

Take the sandbox. If my parents told me not to destroy my sandbox by running the hose in it—and I did it anyway—I got punished–an early bedtime. I learned: at home, rules are made to be followed. When I got picked on by other kids, my parents didn’t rush and demand that an anti-bullying law be passed; they told me to stick up for myself. I learned: develop a thick skin and never depend on a path of least resistance. When I racked up credit card debt in college, my father wasn’t angry, but he told me that the best way to resolve the situation was by getting a job and paying off those debts. I learned: you aren’t entitled to a bailout for your bad decisions.

There are so many things that I remember with happiness about growing up with my parents that just don’t fit into the structure of this piece, but I’ll mention them anyway. Swimming in the ocean at Wildwood and Avalon with my father on vacations. My mom being a den mother in Cub Scouts and singing “Jingle Bell Rock.” Our trips to the Poconos to see my grandparents and play on the mountain of rocks they had. My mother taking us, every Christmastime, to see the Nutcracker show at Wanamaker’s in Philadelphia. My Dad taking us to go “crabbing” down the shore. My mother letting me emcee our elementary school talent show even though I had a bad fever. Our annual trips to pick out a Christmas tree, and the hilarity that always followed. Making stupid videos every Christmas. The amazing Easter Egg hunt challenges that my mother and father came up with. My parents letting me take over the entire basement to create a “news studio” with our video cameras, televisions, and VCRs. And so, so much more.

What I’ve described is, I think, what every child should have. A mother and a father…a happy family. A team that plays well together and teaches the value of work, competition, winning and fun. I know that so many people have wonderful childhoods and families that take on different forms, but I’m sure thankful for my team—my family—and all of those memories. It was nothing short of…well… magical, and I love my parents so much for everything they did, for all they sacrificed, for always—always—going the extra mile for my brother and me.

And now, I’m going to go and pack so I can visit them for Thanksgiving.

When did the repayment of those loans constitute an unfair burden on the individuals who readily accepted money to go to the colleges and universities of their choice?

If you listen to the Occupy Wall Street cabal, to the patron saint of Occupy—so-called “consumer advocate” Elizabeth Warren—and to a growing number of lawmakers at the state and federal levels, student loan providers are loan sharks who cruelly “profit” off of unwitting kids. These loans should be written off, forgiven, and ridiculously restructured, they argue.

They’re wrong. Student loans build character and they increase access to good schools.

The notion that the federal government would, as lawmakers have discussed, forgive or write down these loans is an outrage. What message does this send?

These leaders are simply amplifying the twisted complaints of this entitled Occupy generation, filled with students who would rather whine on the streets than suffer the indignity of putting their unnecessary Master’s degrees to use by being baristas at the nearby Starbucks. Or by tackling the jobs some elitists claim that “Americans simply won’t do.”

This entitlement mentality is prevalent, and it’s sad. Driving though D.C. two weeks ago, I saw a recent college graduate with a sign that made me laugh…and made me sick at the same time.

“Overeducated. Unemployed,” it read.

“So what?” I thought. Is that really a complaint worth airing, while blocking traffic on my route home from a real job?

These protestors easily forget: nobody forced them to get that extra master’s degree in art history or European literature. It isn’t society’s fault—or mine as a taxpayer—that these snooty college kids think too good, too smart, too talented to take a job that pays by the hour. If they took these jobs, they might learn a lot about discipline, authority, and…most importantly…hard work!

The student loan system isn’t keeping them down. Their own entitled arrogance, however, is.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan took this hyperbole to new levels today, bellyaching in The Wall Street Journal that a student who accesses a loan and takes 20 years to pay it back, “will have paid 20% more than their original loan.”

The horrors!

But that’s how student loans—and all loans—work. There is interest on any loan!

Student loans are fair, and they—along with Pell Grants for low-income students, academic and athletic scholarships, and school-based aid—make every college or university available to any student in our country.

Indeed, convenient access to excellent colleges and universities has made America’s higher education system the envy of the world. That’s why legions of foreign exchange students flock to the United States of America to learn. And it’s why education reformers seek to model this fantastic free market of education in the K-12 sector, where we are, unfortunately, the laughingstock of the developed world.

If we upend this system, a system that works, we’ll be making a colossal mistake.

Just think: what would forgiveness and restructuring say to someone like me, or my friends, in our early thirties? I have student loans. It’s been ten years since I graduated from college, and I’m still repaying them. But even in college, I mitigated those loans by getting academic scholarships, by working five jobs at one time, by receiving assistance from my parents, and by not following my classmates into post-graduate education when I couldn’t see the return on the investment—and when I frankly couldn’t afford it.

In short, I own up to my debts. I signed up for them. I pay them. I don’t particularly love writing the checks every month, but I don’t dispute that I owe the money and got something great—a solid education—in return. An education I’m proud to (continue to) pay for.

The Occupy generation, and their coddlers, thinks someone else should pay their debts. They blame someone else for the fact that their obscure, excessive degrees won’t get them a job where they can collect a six figure paycheck for sitting around and pondering the meaning of life.

The only time our society has given a free and clear college education to young people is to the brave warriors who fought to keep America safe and free, our veterans. With the GI Bill, we honored those who valiantly fought and won wars by paying for their schooling. Now, that isn’t too much to ask of a grateful and free nation.

But those in the Occupy movement? Maybe they’ve broken few records on the Nintendo Wii, but that ain’t a war. They can find the willpower—or the jobs—to pay their debts.