Florida's Doug Tuthill on School Choice

The Learning Curve Doug Tuthill

Albert Cheng: [00:00:00] Well, hello everybody, and welcome to a brand new episode of the Learning Curve podcast. I am one of your co-hosts, Albert Cheng, joined with my co-host, Alisha Searcy. Alisha, what’s going on?

Alisha Searcy: Good afternoon, Albert. How are you?

Albert Cheng: Oh, doing all right. Last we talked I’m fresh off a move and-

Alisha Searcy: Yes, are you settled in?

Albert Cheng: we’re still unpacking and stuff, so.

Alisha Searcy: Oh, still unpacking. Okay.

Albert Cheng: But hey, things are a little bit better.

Alisha Searcy: That’s good. Is it starting to feel like home yet?

Albert Cheng: It is. It is. I’m grateful for just the transition. You know, I’m still officially affiliated with the University of Arkansas, but man, I’m gonna- Miss all my colleagues and stuff, but looking forward to the [00:01:00] new ones as well.

So anyway, life is full of these kinds of bittersweet twists and turns.

Alisha Searcy: It is, and what I’ve noticed as I’ve talked to people about you when you’re not around, apparently your work lives well beyond wherever you are. So whether it’s Arkansas or Ohio, I’m sure you’ll continue to do great work that people love and appreciate.

Albert Cheng: Well, thank you for that. Now, speaking of work across states, we have a great show today. We’re gonna have Doug Tuthill of Florida that helps parents navigate the school choice environment there. So looking forward to having Doug on the show to talk about some of his work.

Alisha Searcy: That’s right. It’s gonna be a good show, and I’m, I’m excited to talk to him to hear about all the work over the years in Florida.

I’m from there originally, and a product of public school choice, so I’m excited about hearing what he has to say.

Albert Cheng: Great. Well, before we get to that, Alisha, let’s talk about some news. What caught your eye this week?

Alisha Searcy: Well, you know, we follow a lot of news happening in Massachusetts for a lot of reasons.

Folks, of course, who are connected [00:02:00] to Pioneer Institute, but also because Massachusetts just, you know, leading the way in many ways when it comes to student performance. And so I’m excited to see that a compromise has been reached around how Massachusetts will teach reading. The state will join over 40 other states to revamp how reading is taught.

We’ve talked a lot about, of course, literacy and science of reading and all of the things, and so in this particular bill that seems to be one of the hottest debated education pieces of legislation in a while in Massachusetts, they’ve done a lot of good things. The two points of contention, it looks like, were around whether or not they should ban three cueing, which is that process essentially where I think it sort of tricks us to think that kids can actually read when they can’t because they’re looking at pictures and other things, and that could be a little bit misleading.

So there was some fight around that, but they’ve decided to remove that, and I think that’s really important. [00:03:00] One thing that’s of concern, though, is that there was a $25 million allocation essentially for the Early Literacy Fund, but that did not get funded. The fund itself was created, but they didn’t put the money in, so I’m a little bit concerned about that.

And so, Albert, I just think this is important that it requires districts to screen all K through three students for reading ability at least twice a year using approved literacy assessments. The districts have to use approved curriculum for teaching reading. Also very important, parents have to be involved in this.

There are provisions for dyslexia screening, also important. The only opposition came from some of the teachers’ unions, and I think they probably were concerned about the three cueing piece. And Albert, it reminds me of a conversation that we had here in Georgia when we were banning three cueing, where the union president said that her kids, she’s a kindergarten teacher, she said that her kids can read, and she knows they can because they can [00:04:00] recognize the McDonald’s sign.

And so I’m not, you know, saying anything negative about unions as a whole. I’m just saying that I think that sort of made the point that if you can read a McDonald’s sign, that does not tell us that you can read. And so we’ve gotta make sure that we are using research-based practices to teach reading.

And I think with Massachusetts being the leader in this country, even with only forty-two percent of their kids reading proficiently, they’re saying to the country that even the state that has the highest level of student achievement when it comes to NAEP scores, that they too are not getting it fully right.

So I’m excited about this. I’m happy to see them move in this direction. Have to give a little shout-out to Mary Tamer, who’s also quoted in this article. She’s a friend of the show who’s been doing this work for a very long time. So kudos to all of the people who have worked hard to get the legislation where it is

Albert Cheng: Well, Alisha, thanks for sharing that.

You know, that’s kind of encouraging to see some efforts in Massachusetts. I know we talked in the recent [00:05:00] past about how Massachusetts seemed to be rolling back a lot of the reforms that it has tried for the past couple decades, but, uh, looks like they caught some wind here, and it’s good to see some debate, though I’m a little bit with, more with you.

You know, I do think there’s something to science of reading, and I’m kind of a fan of some of these policies that are trying to get schools to use that pedagogical method as opposed to some other ones.

Alisha Searcy: Yeah. And they recognize that they can’t rest on their laurels, that there are still groups of kids who are not performing at grade level, and we need them to, and so they’re doing something about it.

So kudos to them.

Albert Cheng: Yeah. Well, you know, one of the big challenges of passing literacy policy is implementation. I think that’s a nice segue to the story that I found. Now, it’s not about reading, but it’s about math. This is an op-ed in The 74 entitled Findings Offer a Math Playbook for California Schools.

This op-ed discusses a new study and evaluation of a [00:06:00] math program that was implemented in some schools in Los Angeles Unified. So this program, which I actually hadn’t heard before, is called Il- Illustrative Mathematics. The research provides some evidence that it seems to work. At least it found that schools that implemented this program found that, y- you know, at least the students that went to those schools experienced more growth in math achievement than schools that did not.

I’m not gonna quibble about research design, but I think it provides some evidence of this. But, think what I appreciated about this op-ed was at the end they talked about the importance of support and implementation, and we’ve seen often, you know, the best ideas and the best policies get enacted, and then things fall apart at the implementation stage.

And so for me, I think what resonated in this article is the call to really pay attention to what happens after a school adopts a new program or, you know, the legislature passes a new policy, that support and putting in the [00:07:00] effort to have some imple- implementation fidelity is, is a big part of making sure programs and policies deliver on their effects.

And so anyway, I wanna flag that article.

Alisha Searcy: Yeah, that’s really good, and I think it speaks to what we just talked about, right? Whether it’s math, whether it’s literacy, we gotta get the policy right.

Albert Cheng: Right. And so speaking of getting the policy right and implementation, I guess we’re full of nice segues today, you know?

Yeah. This is a nice segue to Doug Tuthill. He’s gonna tell us about his work in terms of supporting parents and then, you know, his work really supports the implementation of the school choice programs in Florida, so stick around.

Alisha Searcy: Doug Tuthill began teaching in 1977 and has been doing education reform work since 1978. He’s a former high school teacher, college professor, newspaper executive, teacher union [00:08:00] president, and president of Step Up for Students, the nation’s largest education choice organization. Tuthill is currently working for ExcelinEd, the education reform organization created by former Florida Governor Jeb Bush.

Doug, thanks for joining us. Welcome to the show.

Doug Tuthill: Thank you. Appreciate it.

Alisha Searcy: So would love to learn more about you. Talk to us about your origin story of you deciding to devote your entire career to education school choice work in Florida decades ago, and why it’s so vital for state and national leaders to deeply engage on K-12 education policy.

Doug Tuthill: Actually, it started when I was in high school. I was raised basically in segregated schools in Jim Crow, and my high school was integrated in my junior year. That was the first time Black kids were allowed to go to my school.

Albert Cheng: Wow.

Doug Tuthill: And frankly, it really caused me to think deeply about equal opportunity, caused me to think about the role of education in equality and inequality.

And I was just convinced that education [00:09:00] was the key to addressing a lot of the social ills I saw around me, particularly the inequalities related to the Jim Crow era in which I grew up in. So that’s really what motivated me was I was in the ’60s, growing up as a kid, wanted to change the world, and really felt education was the vehicle.

Fast-forward, I really got into choice movement in 1984 when I helped form one of the first magnet schools in Florida in St. Pete High School. And then for the next couple of decades, I was involved in different magnet schools. I was involved with the Florida Virtual School, which was formed in the mid-1990s.

A little bit later, I helped create a charter school here in St. Petersburg, Florida, where I live. And then in 2006, I started working with my friend John Curley, who was the founder of a nonprofit, which eventually became Step Up For Students. Worked with John for almost 20 years, and now I’m working with ExcelinEd, which is a, a nonprofit formed by former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, which is really focused on [00:10:00] ed reform issues.

So I’ve been doing this pretty consistently since the early ’80s. I actually was president of my first education nonprofit in 1978, so I’ve been around a while.

Alisha Searcy: Wow. What an incredible story. Thank you for sharing that. And I shared earlier that I’m from Florida originally, so I’m also a product of public school choice in Florida, so I appreciate all the work that you do, and John is also a great friend, so thanks again for being here.

So for many decades now, Florida has been a national policy leader in expanding school choice options for students, which is done pretty consistently and gradually as well. Did your strategy of incremental growth of choice programs and student enrollment in Florida serve positive purposes for you rather than pushing overnight with universal student eligibility back in, let’s say, 2005 or 2010 or 2015?

Doug Tuthill: Well, of course, back in 2005, 2006, 2006 when I started working with [00:11:00] John and his nonprofit, the idea of being universal really wasn’t on the agenda. That wasn’t possible. And so when I first started working with John, I th- actually I became president of the nonprofit in 2008. John had been doing the work for about 10 years.

He started with a private scholarship organization. The tax credit bill got passed in Florida in 2001, and when I joined in 2008, we were a tax credit scholarship organization, which meant we raised money privately from corporations and then gave scholarships to kids to go to private schools, and it was all means tested.

And that was probably as far as you could go politically. But after 10 years, John and his team were serving about 10,000 kids. And so the first meeting I had with the team in 2008, I said, “Look, we need to dramatically grow the number of kids we’re serving. In a state of 2.6 million kids at the time, 10,000 really isn’t gonna make a difference.”

And so I put out a challenge and said, “We’re gonna do [00:12:00] 100,000 kids.” And the team thought I was nuts ’cause it took about nine or 10 years to get 10,000, so they did the math and figured it’d be another 90 years before they got to 100,000. So it w- at the time it seemed like a, a pie in the sky kind of idea.

But it did allow us to gradually grow over the years and we would just chip away on policy I know the biggest policy challenge we had initially was there’s a, a law in Florida that required children be in public schools before they qualified for a scholarship. This is also during the two thousand and eight recession when a lot of families were getting unemployed, losing their homes.

It was a difficult time in two thousand and eight financially. And it was heartbreaking for me that a family would lose their jobs, oftentimes they lose their housing, and the only thing stable in that kid’s life at that point was the school, but they also had to leave their private school because I couldn’t fund them because they, they weren’t in a public school.

So that’s just one example of over a period of about fifteen years, every session we’d have a bill that [00:13:00] opened up the ability to serve more kids. And we just did gradually from two thousand and eight to two thousand and twenty-three, and then in two thousand and twenty-three, the state went universal, which was a huge shift.

Also, because in two thousand and fourteen, the state changed the scholarships to ESAs, educational… I call them educational spending accounts. And those are much more complex to manage than a voucher or a tax credit scholarship. And so the combination of going to ESAs, and then about a decade later, going to universal was pretty dramatic and, and really was the challenge of a generation of educators trying to transition from the system that we were in to one where families could actually spend public education dollars on a variety of, of options.

And I think, as you guys probably know, today, Step Up is serving over five hundred thousand students in Florida. Those families and their kids are spending– about five billion dollars will be spent this year. So it’s a massive endeavor. It’s a huge transformation in public education, but it really came about through [00:14:00] years and years of just chipping away at policy and gradually growing policy and gradually developing infrastructure that would allow us to support over five hundred thousand families and their kids spending over five billion dollars in Florida, providing each child with a customized education.

Alisha Searcy: Wow, that’s incredible. I wanna talk about what it took for a minute. Florida has by far the largest number of students, as you just talked about, served by parent-driven school choice programs in the country, which was built on twenty-five years of relentless work, almost always in the face of some heavy opposition.

Can you talk about the core principles or factors by which you and the team at Step Up were able to keep expanding and strengthening your programs over a quarter century?

Doug Tuthill: Well, the core messaging was always helping public education fulfill the promise of equal opportunity That was the first note I wrote to myself when I became president in 2008 and became the tagline on my email.

And the [00:15:00] idea of providing equal opportunity is something that has a lot of bipartisan support. And so it was important that we try to get out of the us versus them and lay out a vision for public education that would be as inclusive as possible. And so public education has always aspired to provide equal opportunity.

We failed in that endeavor, but it’s always been an aspiration. And so we really saw ourselves as building on that aspiration, on trying to help public education fulfill the promise of equal opportunity. I always choose the term public education because we always saw ourselves as part of public education.

Even though the kids were using scholarships to go to private schools, those private schools served Florida’s comprehensive attendance law, mandatory school attendance laws. Those laws are started to serve the public good. And so whether a child’s homeschooling or in a private school, micro school, et cetera, those programs are all state-approved to serve the public good.

That was really important for us that we get that message. It’s not us versus them. It’s about how do we strengthen [00:16:00] public education and how do we provide equal opportunity. The other thing we did over the years is we really put children and families as the face of the program. People always want to say, “These are evil people trying to privatize public education.

They’re trying to destroy public education. They’re trying to make profit over,” you know, blah, blah, blah, blah. But really, it was about helping children and helping families find the right match for each child. Every child’s unique. They’re not standardized. One size doesn’t fit all. And so the message really was equal opportunity, and then we would have families basically as part of the public relations campaign.

They would talk to legislators. They would talk to community organizations. We really built all of our public-facing messaging around the families ’cause that really ultimately was who it’s about. And so it was hard for people to look at a mom and, and a couple of kids saying, “Look, you know, my kid didn’t, didn’t work in, in its own neighborhood school.

My child was getting bullied, didn’t wanna go to school. I found another place for my child that works much better. Why is that not okay? Why is it not okay that my child has an equal [00:17:00] opportunity in the same way that more affluent families have?” So that really was the message, and I think that really resonated over time.

Equal opportunity, making sure everybody has an equal chance to succeed. Every child is unique, and you gotta match child with the environment that best meets their needs. That was really the cocktail of messaging that worked for us

Alisha Searcy: Thank you for that. Will recent universal ESA states like Arizona, Texas, and Iowa need to refight the same decades-long battle that you and the Step Up Team did to achieve Florida’s critical mass of choice families and political momentum?

Or do you think these newer universal ESA states take lessons from the Florida story to accelerate their growth and strength?

Doug Tuthill: I think it’s all of the above. I think in some instances, they have to continue to have their own political fights in their own states. On the other hand, clearly, what’s happened in Florida has had a huge impact on states around the country.

There are now 18 states that have active ESA programs. Almost all of them [00:18:00] refer to observing what happened in Florida and trying to learn what worked in Florida and what didn’t work, and have built on that to move in their own, their own direction in their own states with greater opportunities for, for families and kids.

At the same time, every state’s unique, and the politics are unique. So I think it’s both. I think it’s, they learn from us, we learn from them, by the way, continue to learn from them, that we all learn from each other, and each state is unique, and you have to negotiate the politics in every state. But I do think these common themes are, are ones that are universal also, which is equal opportunity and making sure that every child, regardless of their economic situation, regardless of their special needs, every child deserves an equal opportunity to have an education that, that meets his or her needs.

And I think that basic core messaging is, is successful across the country.

Albert Cheng: Well, Doug, I wanna ask you a couple more questions in that vein. I mean, you just mentioned state and national politics, but I, I wanna ask the broader question of what you think the biggest challenges that are standing in the [00:19:00] way of continued success in Florida K-12 education.

Is it politics? Is it private school supply? I mean, we’ve heard reports about the complexities of managing an ESA program that’s the size of the one you have there. What are the biggest challenges?

Doug Tuthill: Well, Albert, again, I would say all of the above. So early on I mentioned it was really growing the demand side of the market.

That was the big issue because, you know, markets require a robust demand side that’ll also drive quality on the supply side of the market. So it was always about how do we build and, and grow the market. And so we started to have a lot of success with growing the demand side of the market. Over a couple years, we went from about 300,000 kids to 500,000 kids, so that was pretty dramatic.

And of course, like I said earlier, there were ESAs, which are much more complex to manage. Just as an example for the listeners, I mentioned in Florida this year, this coming year, their families will spend about $5 billion on behalf of their children, [00:20:00] providing each child with a customized education. We have to approve every dollar of that $5 billion.

And so with 500,000 people spending money in all kinds of different ways, having to track every dollar to make sure that it’s acceptable, it’s being used appro- properly, ’cause obviously we wanna protect the taxpayer and the public good. You can imagine the complexity that that involves. We basically have broken the, the infrastructure in public education in Florida.

My analogy is that we basically have airplanes taking off and landing at train stations- … which is, which is somewhat awkward, I gotta tell you, and, and not really sustainable. The works going on– that’s going on now is basically how do we build an education version of an airport? That doesn’t happen fast.

And so for a while, we’re gonna have airplanes taking off and landing at train stations, and because of our size, it’s a lot. It’s a lot of planes. Like I said, it’s not sustainable. It’s not a wise way to do things, but it’s exactly sort of where we are, and it just takes a while to build all new infrastructure.

So what you’re gonna see for the next decade in Florida, and I think in other states, [00:21:00] because one of the things other states have learned is that you gotta build that infrastructure ASAP. They saw how messy it was in Florida when we were growing 100,000 kids a year for a couple years and didn’t have the infrastructure to support that kind of growth.

‘Cause it just takes a while to build that out. Again, building airports from scratch is a, is a big challenge, and also building out the infrastructure support $5 billion of spending and being able to pre-approve every dollar also requires a pretty robust and sophisticated infrastructure. So that’s what you’re seeing now.

And, and states around the country, we’re all gonna be sort of in this, this same endeavor, which is how do we build out infrastructure, simple, elegant, that allows us to scale in a way that makes sure that we don’t provide too much transactional friction in the system, that we don’t burden families with administrative hassles, we don’t burden providers, schools, tutors, et cetera, with administrative hassles, but at the same time protect the public good, making sure that every dollar is spent appropriately?

Albert, I like to tell people that, and I think this is true, we’re going through the biggest transformation right now in public education since [00:22:00] the mid-1800s. With the industrial era led to the industrialization of public education, and we started building these large institutions that educate kids which never existed before the mid to late 1800s.

That was a major transformation. We’re now going through another transformation. We’re going from one size fits all to customization. Fourteen years ago in Florida, parents did not spend a single public education dollar on anything other than s- schools, either public schools or private schools, and now suddenly there’s $5 billion being spent on all kinds of things.

So those transformations are unheard of. Never before in the history of the country has, have families had this much control over how they spend their public education dollars. When you go through a transformation this radical, and it is this transformational, building a whole new infrastructure for that is really the ultimate challenge.

Yeah. And so I’m proud of where the market is going in Florida, but I also know that for that market to continue to grow and be successful, we’ve got to have infrastructure in place that makes sure that the whole market works well.

Albert Cheng: That’s [00:23:00] well said, and I appreciate you bringing that up. I mean, earlier in the show, Alisha and I were just talking about the importance of implementation, you know, that enacting a policy is, is one thing, and actually making it run is, is another.

So appreciate that hard work that we all need to do. So let me return to something you said and, and ask about the question, uh, is it the A word, accountability? Uh, you mentioned that Step Up in some sense provides some kind of fiscal accountability. You’re there kind of checking on whether parents are using the, the funds appropriately.

And so in some sense there’s this accountability on the input side, what, what parents are purchasing with their dollars. I wanna ask how you think about accountability on the output side. So in other words, I mean, especially with opponents of parent-driven choice claiming that the private sector is unaccountable to student performance, how do you think about measuring and managing academic quality of the Florida programs?

Doug Tuthill: Well, as you know, in every industry, [00:24:00] accountability is a balance between regulation and consumer choice. When I was a kid growing up, we had no choice in, in the phone system. Ma Bell owned basically all the phones. We didn’t even own the phone in our own house. The price for local calls was standardized.

The price for long-distance calls was standardized. So it was heavily regulated because there was no choice Today you have a lot of choice in your phones, and it’s far less regulated. So that balance changes based on how much choice you have and how much regulation is required given how much choice is in the system.

And so what you’re seeing is a transition in, in public education in Florida from basically accountability being almost all regulatory to accountability being a combination of regulation and consumer choice. That’s, like I said, is normal in every industry. But, again, this goes back to the infrastructure issues.

What does accountability look like in a world in which kids are being educated with multiple providers? Which is what the ESA world allows. It’s very common, for example, for kids with [00:25:00] educational spending accounts maybe to be educated by a tutor, maybe they’re going to a charter school, maybe they’re in a virtual school, maybe they’re also in a dual enrollment program.

It’s common for kids to be getting instructions from three or four different instructional providers at the same time. Well, historically, we thought about accountability in terms of holding schools accountable. You know, in Florida, we grade schools based on their standardized test scores, but is it fair to grade a school when the children in that school might be getting educated from multiple different providers?

And so again, this is an example where the infrastructure is broken. The idea that we can have a, an, an accountability system statewide that’s built on schools assuming that children are educated all day by a single school, that assumption is no longer holding true. And so you’ve got to think about a different change in the infrastructure of accountability.

I think you’re gonna see us moving from school-centered accountability to what I call student-centered accountability, which ultimately is probably where we, we should’ve been the whole time, which is you look at the student level. Every student ought to have [00:26:00] a customized learning plan. We ought to be collecting data on how that child is progressing.

Standardized test scores is one source of data, but there’s lots of other data that parents care about in terms of child development, how my child is developing both academically but also socially, emotionally, et cetera. I see a whole new infrastructure of accountability. It still balances regulation and choice, but also moves it down to the student level, and also I think that’s gonna impact district schools.

Again, at least in Florida, choice is impacting everybody, not just kids with ESAs, but even kids in district schools. Over half the kids in the state of Florida are not attending their zone neighborhood school. So choice is everywhere, and I think the accountability system has to be rebuilt, but I think you’re gonna see a whole new model of accountability that, that builds from the student level in a much more comprehensive way, and it aggregates anonymous data up for systems improvement at the district or the state level.

Albert Cheng: Doug, I mean, let me give you an opportunity to speak more to that. I mean, I’m in agreement with you in principle about accountability needs to [00:27:00] be rethought here just because the infrastructure and the way we’re doing education is completely different. But let’s speak maybe a bit more practically. Like, so what are maybe some state policies that school choice leaders Should be advocating to help drive academic improvements.

I know we talk about NAEP a lot these days, but you also mentioned improvements in other outcomes. So what are some of the specific policies or, or ideas that you have in mind?

Doug Tuthill: Well, I mean, I, I just mentioned the accountability system I think needs to be rethought and moved down to the student level. You know, an A school in Florida could have children in that school that are failing miserably because it’s an aggregate of all the student data in that school, and it doesn’t go down to the individual student level.

So if we’re serious about equal opportunity, we really should be looking at, at every individual student. Now, this isn’t a new concept, Albert. I remember 30 years ago going around the state as part of a state commission making the same point, and teachers just rolled their eyes at me saying, “It’s not doable.

You can’t operationalize [00:28:00] that.” Well, the technology is much different now. You know, we can, we can now digitalize paper. We don’t… I mean, I, I remember a teacher saying, “I have to go around with a big grocery basket of paper if, if I was gonna have portfolio assessments,” for example, which is kind of what I’m talking about.

And so, you know, the technology allows us to digitalize all that data. You can collect data in all kinds of ways now with emerging technology. I envision a world where every child has a customized learning plan And every child has a portfolio of evidence of how, how that child is progressing on that plan.

That plan is academic, but also is beyond academic. It also has things like resiliency, self-awareness, self-management, empathy, how to get along with other people. If you ask parents what they care about in terms of their education, academics is important, but there’s lots of other things they care about as a parent in terms of what they wanna get out of their child’s schooling, including the kind of things that I mentioned.

So I’m talking about qualitative and quantitative data into a portfolio that’s constantly informing that child’s learning plan. [00:29:00] And then the parents who are spending ESA funds ought to be looking at that data in the child’s portfolio, looking at a student learning plan, and then making purchases in terms of additional support systems, educational support, instruction, et cetera, based on that plan and based on the data.

I also envision a world where everybody has an, an artificial intelligence, an AI advisor or support system to help them look at all the various choices out there. What are the parents saying about this particular tutor or this particular micro-school, et cetera? There’s a lot of basic information systems that have to be built.

Again, this is part of the infrastructure that I mentioned before. If you look at high-performing markets, information is really the lifeblood of those markets. But in education, we really haven’t done a very good job with information infrastructure because we really never had choice , so it didn’t really matter.

But now that we have all this choice, information is critical to help families get the information they need to make good decisions. And then, as you know, Albert, once the families are making good decisions, that signals the supply side of the market [00:30:00] about how they need to innovate in order to keep up with the needs of the families.

From my perspective, it’s all about markets. It’s all about building a high-performing market. And once we have a high-performing market with good market infrastructure in place, magic happens. And you’re kinda seeing that in Florida. What’s fascinating to me in Florida is what’s been happening on the supply side of the market.

With five hundred thousand families spending over five billion doll- about five billion dollars, you’re seeing an explosion of innovation on the supply side of the market. A lot of district teachers are leaving their jobs and creating their own schools, their own micro schools. A lot of learning by doing, a lot of experiential learning It’s just such a cool time to be a teacher right now in Florida.

It’s just amazing. I wish I wasn’t so old because I’m gonna miss out on this opportunity. But to be able to create your own school and to create a very innovative environment, a very lot of active learning, a lot of project learning, learning by doing. We have teachers and, and kids working on schools on farms, all kinds of innovative places that are creating [00:31:00] all kinds of innovative opportunities for kids to learn.

It’s just a renaissance in terms of instruction, of innovation and instruction. It’s all driven by the market in Florida that’s becoming much more robust and dynamic. But again, we gotta continue to build out that infrastructure so that market can continue to grow and provide good customer service for everybody in that market.

Albert Cheng: Yeah. Well, Doug, I know we all wanna be younger and stick around and do our part more and, but I certainly appreciate that you were around for the time you were. I don’t know that the world would look the same if you weren’t doing your work. So I’m grateful for that, and, and hopefully, uh, what you said there has inspired maybe some other emerging educational leaders to take the next step for us.

But let me wrap it up with one more question. Speaking about looking towards the future, perhaps the biggest new development in the educational choice world or movement is the new federal tax credit program. How does Step Up intend to use that program, and how do you see other educational providers in Florida using it?

Doug Tuthill: [00:32:00] Well, the jury’s still out on the federal program. As you probably know, Albert, that we still haven’t gotten the, the rules from the Federal Treasury office about how this is gonna operate. I think people are both hopeful and also concerned. Hopeful because it, uh, it may provide more choices for more families, particularly in states that don’t have state programs like we do in Florida or other states like Arizona.

But also this adds a lot of complexity. There’s all kinds of groups around the country that are creating what are called scholarship granting organizations that wanna participate and support the new federal program. But I think it’s gonna be messy for a while, to be honest with you. Mm-hmm. And it’s gonna take a while for things to settle out, and I think it’s kind of unknown h- how it’s gonna play out.

From my perspective, I’m really interested in seeing how it’s gonna impact the market. I’m concerned that it could create winners and losers in ways that might exacerbate inequalities. We had a program similar to this in, in Alabama several years ago, and when it got launched, a lot of the affluent schools got together and sucked [00:33:00] up all of the tax credit money from affluent donors, and the low-income schools that didn’t have a lot of wealthy people in their community didn’t get much of that money.

And so it’ll be interesting to see how the money flows- Hmm … once it’s made available because not everybody … I think it’s $1,700 that you can donate and then wait to get that money back when you do your taxes. Not a lot of people can put $1,700 out of pocket and wait, you know, six, eight months to get that money back.

So there’s a danger about inequalities being exacerbated by the program. So we’ll just have to see how it plays out and then see how it gets tweaked over the years, because I s- suspect version one won’t be the last version. I suspect it’ll- Hmm … it’ll go through several cycles of improvement.

Albert Cheng: Well, let’s wait and see and, and hope for the best.

And until then, let’s keep up our efforts and labor and, well, all for the sake of leaving future generations with a better system and infrastructure than we had. So Doug, thanks so much for your time.

Doug Tuthill: Yeah. I appreciate you both. Thank you.[00:34:00]

Albert Cheng: Well, Alisha, once again, nice interview and, and great to spend time with you hearing about the work of education, uh, that people are doing across the country

Alisha Searcy: Yes, and go Florida. Very happy about that. Yeah. I’m excited to hang out with you.

Albert Cheng: You know, you can cheer on Florida being in Georgia, right? Is that,

Alisha Searcy: uh- Yes, ’cause everyone knows I’m a Georgia Peach, but you can’t forget your roots, you know?

Albert Cheng: Florida- Okay, there you go.

Alisha Searcy: Yeah. Gotta give them a little bit of love.

Albert Cheng: Yeah. All right. Well, hey, before we close out, I do… we want to leave you with a tweet and also tease next week’s episode. This week’s tweet comes from Pioneer Institute. “The end of the MCAS graduation requirement leaves Massachusetts with an important task: ensuring that a diploma means the same thing across the Commonwealth.”

So check out that tweet. It’s an article arguing for a stronger accountability system. [00:35:00] And then for next week, you know, Alisha, we get people that come on the show two times, but we’re gonna have a special treat here where I think this is a three-peat here. We’re gonna have Dr. Larone Martin again, the Martin Luther King Jr.

Centennial Professor in Religious Studies and Director of the Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford. He’s got another new book called Young King: The Making of Martin Luther King Jr. Yes. So that should be a fascinating episode on the upbringing and up through the adolescence, I believe, of Martin Luther King.

So I’m looking forward to that.

Alisha Searcy: Me too. Can’t wait.

Albert Cheng: All right. And I hope those of you listening are also looking forward to that one. Until then, be well, and we’ll see you next [00:36:00] week.