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Home > Blogs > Get on the Bus > Archives > 2008 > April > 04 > Entry
10 years ago, PACE sparked change in Dayton
(The PACE staff in its downtown office)
Michael and Marsha Russell had two children at Holy Angels School and were stretched thin to make tuition payments in 1999 when they heard talk about a group called PACE.
“We were both working parents at the time just trying to make it,” Michael Russell said. “We were looking for ways to help out with tuition.”
Their timing could not have been better. Parents Advancing Choice in Education, a fledgling group with financial backing from school choice advocates, was just getting off the ground with a plan to offer partial scholarships for needy families that wanted their kids to go to private schools.
Today the Russell kids — Michael II and Miesha — still use PACE scholarships at Chaminade Julienne High School. Both hope to go to college. Michael II, a freshman, wants to study computer engineering and Miesha, a sophomore, is interested in law.
“Probably I don’t have the problems the parents of most 15 and 16 year olds are going through,” Michael Russell said. “I think that it’s the help from Holy Angeles and C-J and the Christian lifestyle we are raising them with.”
When it launched in 1998, privately-funded PACE was a rare example of a program designed to help parents overcome the cost obstacles to giving their kids the type of education the family desired. Pre-dating charter schools, PACE was also Dayton’s first foray into a school choice program.
A decade later, PACE has helped 6,000 kids attend private schools with about $9 million in scholarships. And the city’s now vast array of school choice options include more than 30 charter schools along with both publicly-funded vouchers and the PACE scholarships available for parents who want private schools.
The new options have completely re-made Dayton into nationally-recognized school choice Mecca. And PACE was an early catalyst for change.
Daria Dillard Stone, PACE’s program manager since 2000, said the group’s mission from the start was ambitious — to change the city’s culture and empower parents.
“Our goal has always been to educate parents so they can better educate kids,” she said. “We’ve got to stop blaming everyone for how the children are turning out.”
Bernadette O’Connor has five children and none of them has used a PACE scholarship to attend a private school.
But O’Connor credits PACE with helping her kids get quality school experiences, even if they took different paths.
“They have been a tremendous resource for me,” she said. “The biggest thing is to have somebody I can go to and get the support I need.”
PACE began as a political movement. It was the brainchild of Checker Finn, the Dayton native and national advocate for school choice with the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation.
Frustrated with the poor performance of Dayton Public Schools in the mid-1990s, Finn joined business and community leaders to press for new options to give parents choices, and privately-funded scholarships was their first effort.
Funders included Fordham, the Mathile Family Foundation, the Berry Foundation and the Louise Kramer Foundation. An infusion of $1.5 million from the Childrens’ Scholarship Fund, financed primarily from the Walton Family’s Wal-Mart fortune, helped the program grow from 542 scholarships in 1999 to a peak of 901 in 2002.
But PACE recognized a need for more than just scholarships.
“We realized we’ve got to help parents navigate school choice and understand their options,” said program manager Daria Dillard Stone.
Freshly recruited from the Urban League in 2000, Stone set out to build relationships and trust. PACE began the Parents’ Network, a program designed to offer parents services and guide their choices. Today all families with scholarships are required to attend network meetings, but they attract many more. And with an expanded staff of eight, PACE now works to connect families with services and even prepare kids for college.
Even-handed advice about all schools — public, private and charter — was a key to building credibility, both with families and with the schools themselves, Stone said.
“The public school system was not the best it could be,” she said. “They needed competition. We were never after public schools, but we did help make them better in the long run.”
For O’Connor, PACE’s advice helped her find the right schools for her kids. Early on, they attended Christian schools and for a time she home schooled before a stint in public schools that didn’t work out.
But it was PACE that counseled O’Connor to consider Stivers School for the Arts, a top rated district middle and high school.
“I didn’t realize what Stivers was all about,” she said. “That worked out real well for my kids.”
Her oldest, 21-year-old William, has just graduated Sinclair Community College. Rita, 19, is headed to Wright State. Jesse, 17, and Shannon, 13, still attend Stivers. But then there was Jubilee, 8, who may yet go to Stivers but found a good fit starting out at Pathway School of Discovery, a charter school.
“They’ve been a tremendous resource for me,” O’Connor said of PACE.
Families like O’Connors bolster PACE. The group has only just begun to try to track outcomes for the students it helps. In 2003, PACE began following up with former scholarship students who go on to college to see if they demonstrate with data that the program helps kids make it though school and graduate.
“If it weren’t working, we wouldn’t be in business,” said Bonnie Smith, PACE’s program director. “We don’t advertise. There are no billboards, no media, no radio. But people keep coming in the door every day.”
Permalink | Comments (5) | Post your comment | Categories: Charter Schools and School Choice
Comments
By cal
April 8, 2008 9:15 PM | Link to this
I’m not an expert but I think that there is school choice in Denmark, Sweden, Netherlands, UK,Germany, Australia, New Zealand and Hong Kong. Could be wrong though.By Cal
April 8, 2008 7:43 PM | Link to this
Interesting points. I would love to see what education funding was in the 1950s vs today. Can someone supply that?By Mary
April 8, 2008 11:53 AM | Link to this
old prof, I am not an expert on the educational systems of other countries, but I am not so sure you are either. However, it is my understanding that the Canadian government provides vouchers for students attending Catholic schools.By Oldprof
April 7, 2008 10:58 PM | Link to this
Utter rot, Mary. The cases cited here are concerned, intelligent parents whose children were likely to succeed if they’d been educated by a squirrel and a soda can. The typical student, whose parents are too busy trying to make ends meet and avoid foreclosure in this economic decline, are not able to devote endless hours to informing themselves about education “choices” and picking the “right” one for their kids. The alternative—which involves returning school funding to the levels it enjoyed back when people generally thought it worked (e.g., 1950s)—would serve almost ALL children, even some of those whose parents are anti-education. Y’know, the nations that are ahead of the USA do not have school choice like this—they don’t have local boards or charters or vouchers. They have ONE system of public education, and the officials in the central government determine curriculum and standards. The USA could have a similar system and would reap the rewards of greater economies of scale and systemic coordination—but we’re deaf from the endless din about “school choice”. Yes, PACE has a few success stories. And a broken watch is right twice a day.By Mary
April 5, 2008 10:29 AM | Link to this
This is the type of attitude public school officials should have and the type of informational services public education should provide instead of the “love us because we should be the only game in town approach.” I like the concept of empowering parents and educating them on their options. Public education is very biased toward their own concept of pubic education. I still think educational services are generally lacking in many areas across the board including grade, and class acceleration and gifted services. In suburban districts, the choices seem to be public or paraochial and very few private or charter. It is very difficult to find out about any choices or options.