Symposium Prepares Leaders to Advocate for Equal Educational Options

From June 14 to19, ACE’s Program for Educational Access (PEA) hosted its fifth annual Parental Choice Symposium (PCS), a six-day series of workshops on the moral, legal, legislative, and policy aspects of voucher and scholarship tax credit programs. This conference brought together 26 participants from 15 states, including school presidents, teachers, executive directors of private scholarship funds, doctoral students, parent advocates, and other emerging education reform leaders.

Participants convened in Milwaukee, home of the nation’s first publicly funded private school choice program. Some of the preeminent advocates for parental choice—individuals who have dedicated much of their professional lives to improving educational opportunities for low income families—described the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP).

Two of the presenters were Dr. Howard Fuller, the architect of the MPCP, and Joe Williams, the executive director of Democrats for Education Reform (DFER), an organization that educates elected officials and supports reform-minded candidates for public office. Fuller, who previously served as the superintendent of Milwaukee Public Schools, is the chair and co-founder of the Black Alliance for Educational Options (BAEO), in addition to serving as director of the Institute for the Transformation of Learning (ITL) at Marquette University. Williams formerly served as a non-resident senior fellow at Education Sector, a Washington-based think tank, and worked as an education journalist for the New York Daily News and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. He is author of Cheating our Kids: How Politics and Greed Ruin Education.

Jason Crye, the executive director of Hispanics for School Choice and a member of this year’s PCS cohort, described the Milwaukee sessions this way:

“The Milwaukee portion of the ACE Parental Choice Symposium afforded me the opportunity to learn about the development of the nation's largest and oldest parental choice program from the people who have been involved from the very beginning. It was also beneficial to hear my fellow participants' reactions to the parental choice story in Wisconsin; their diverse backgrounds helped me to consider parental choice in new and interesting ways. The engaging presentations and deep conversations reinvigorated my desire to work for education reform, and I am confident that the relationships formed during the symposium will be a resource for years to come.”

On June 16, the group traveled to Tampa, Florida, where participants had the opportunity to engage an equally outstanding line-up of presenters, including Dr. Tony Bennett, Florida’s Commissioner of Education and a founding member and current chair of Chiefs for Change. He delivered a keynote address on designing, enacting, and implementing a school choice program. Prior to assuming his new role, Bennett served as Indiana’s Superintendent of Public Instruction and oversaw the Indiana Choice Scholarship Program, the nation's most expansive school voucher program.

The group also had the opportunity to work closely with the leadership team from Step Up For Students, the nation’s largest scholarship granting organization. Step Up chairman John Kirtley opened the Tampa sessions with a reflection on the questions and themes that have inspired the growth of Step Up since its inception. After establishing a foundation to give Florida families scholarships to private schools in 1998, Kirtley petitioned, and ultimately persuaded, the state legislature to create a statewide tax credit scholarship program three years later. Because of Kirtley’s foresight and dedication, Step Up For Students now provides tax credit scholarships to nearly 60,000 low-income students.

Elizabeth Toomey, director of communications at the Children’s Scholarship Fund, the only national K-8 scholarship organization in the country, spoke of the benefits of the Symposium and how informative the Step Up model is for her work. “Hearing from a top-notch group of leaders in the parental choice movement and getting to know the other PCS participants over six days and two cities was invaluable,” she said. “Working for a scholarship organization, I found the presentations by the Step Up for Students team in Tampa especially instructive, and it was impressive to learn about Step Up’s evolution from a small private program to a statewide tax credit scholarship program.”

The 2014 Parental Choice Symposium is tentatively scheduled for June 13-18. Applications will become available in October. For additional information, please contact Matt Gelchion (; 574-631-2549).