Having written editorials for a metropolitan newspaper for more than 20 years, I’ve had more than my share of those who have adamantly disagreed. But I’m not sure I’ve ever had someone so willfully distort what I wrote as Valerie Strauss did on Saturday.
Whether you think the original post on Friday, “The genuine surge in scholarship applications,” was fact or fiction, the point was to demonstrate the clear uptick in enrollment demand for the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship over the past four years. In turn, the Washington Post blogger responded with a headline that read “Long ‘waiting list’ for Florida vouchers doesn’t actually exist” and a lead that said: “This belongs in the you-can’t-make-up-this-stuff category.” Her only seeming recognition that I made precisely the opposite point was a cryptic introductory phrase in the last sentence: “Whatever the demand …”
For the record, the scholarship processing team at Step Up For Students, which administers the scholarship and sponsors this blog, stopped keeping a waiting list not because the list had dwindled but because it had become unmanageably large. Being on a waiting list carries with it an expectation that you might still have a chance, and our applications experts felt it had come to the point where Step Up was peddling false hope.
That’s why applications in 2013 were cut off earlier than in 2012 even though the program expanded by 8,690 students. It’s why they are likely to be cut off in 2014 earlier than in both previous years, even though enrollment will increase again by another 8,000 students (more if legislation this year passes). Though students were not placed on a waiting list last year, the reality is that 94,104 of them had begun an application before Step Up stopped processing. As of Sunday, 80,354 had started applications for the fall.
The most befuddling part about the way scholarship opponents have seized on this scholarship demand question is that it doesn’t really matter under the law. The program will grow in size only if eligible students sign up for it. The tax-credited contributions made to scholarship organizations, under any-sized tax credit cap, must be used for scholarships or returned to the state treasury. That’s in the law. So the cap could be increased to $1 billion next year but if only 60,000 students showed up, the same as this year, roughly three-fourths of those dollars would end up back in the government’s bank.
As a conspiracy theory, this lacks even the conspiracy.
There is no conspiracy theory? No systematic campaign to discredit public schools? Heck vouchers were initially sold as scholarships to get students out of their failing schools. Florida’s teachers and public schools have gotten a bad rep mostly from those people that are selling vouchers and charter schools, and come on man your excuse for not keeping a waiting list is flimsy and self serving at best.
The real problem for you is people are waking up.
Good morning Chris!
There has been no campaign to discredit public schools. School choice has been promoted, from the beginning, to allow students to find the best school for them. Even the best public schools aren’t a perfect fit for all students.
I sense my next blog coming on, Step up for Students, Patrick Gibbons, break from reality.
I know you are well paid to support the voucher Vermont but in the immortal words of Deion Sanders, come on man!
[…] Protestations from SUFS focused on “twisted words” and “imagined conspiracy theories” filtered through lectures on “the law,” aren’t fooling many people. Which republican legislator steps up (pun) to advance the new talking points is anyone’s guess. Big money (pun) is on Fresen. But bad news about dicey education programs doesn’t play as well in the Senate. […]