Editor’s note: This post initially appeared as an op-ed over the weekend in the Pensacola News Journal. The tax credit scholarship program is administered by Step Up For Students, which co-hosts this blog.
Thanks to Florida’s tax credit scholarship program, nearly 60,000 low-income students in grades K-12 attend 1,425 participating private schools, including 19 in Escambia County. That’s 1,425 options those students would not have had otherwise. That’s 1,425 options that are embracing the students who struggle the most.
So how jarring, then, to read a Florida teachers union leader saying “vouchers do not give parents real educational choice.”
The piece by Joanne McCall, vice president of the Florida Education Association, (Viewpoint, “Vouchers don’t offer a real choice in a child’s education,” March 23) took plenty of liberties with facts about the program and a bill that would strengthen and expand it. But more concerning were the notions that anchored it:
• That expanding choice for low-income students comes at the expense of district schools.
• That low-income parents don’t know whether their schools are high quality.
Let’s start with the indisputable: taxpayers pay about half as much per tax credit scholarship ($4,880 this year) as they do per pupil for public schools. Five independent groups looked into concerns of scholarship money being “siphoned” from public schools and all reached the same conclusion: not true. Rather than hurting public schools, the program saves money that can be invested in them.
McCall would also have readers believe the program exists in a regulatory Wild West. This is also not true. Scholarship students are required, by law, to take state-approved tests. The results are analyzed by a researcher whose work is highly regarded by all sides in the choice debate. The average gains or losses for schools with more than 30 tested students are posted publicly.
The evidence shows scholarship students were the lowest-performing students in the public schools they left behind – a finding at odds with McCall’s suggestion that private schools are cherry picking.
They’re now making the same gains as students of all income levels nationally. Meanwhile, students in public schools most impacted by the scholarship are also making bigger gains.
The results should give critics pause. Nearly 70 percent of scholarship students are black or Hispanic. More than half live in single-parent households. Their average family income is nine percent above poverty. What’s important is not where they find success, but that they find it, period.
Nobody knows better than the parents. That’s why they started scholarship applications for 94,000 students last year, and for nearly 80,000 so far this year. Scores of parents drove to the Capitol in Tallahassee to testify on behalf of the bill.
It’s noteworthy McCall only mentions parents in passing. She dwells on whether the state knows if these schools are performing well, and how the state should hold them accountable. The truth is, parents hold these schools accountable. If the school is not doing right by their kids, they use the scholarship to find one that will. For too many worried parents in public schools, that’s not an option.
Fully 40 percent of Florida students are enrolled in something other than zoned schools. Options are exploding, from magnet and charter schools to online courses and career academies, because parents are demanding them. A small percentage of low-income parents are clamoring for scholarships because they want the opportunity to do what more affluent families do: find schools that work for their kids. Why would anybody want to stop them?
You get two basic choices with vouchers. Choice one, which unaccountable rat hole do you want to throw your money down. Meaning, your private and charter schools do not have anything like the same level of accountability and responsiveness to parents and students that are required of public schools.
You enroll your child in a private school. You give them a slice of the state’s public funding for public schools. If they go out of business, what recourse do you have to get your money back or to get an education for your child? None.
What if the voucher doesn’t cover the full costs of the private school? Too bad. Though you can find people who will make school loans to your for your child’s private school education. These businesses did not exist before states like Florida came up with ways to shovel public funds into private schools.
You speak of private schools as though they are a bad thing. I went to Florida public schools and I want to know if my parent’s can get their money back for the lack of education I receive, yet they paid for that crappy service in their taxes. Vouchers give parents a choice of where to send their kids and the schools they choose are just as responsible for giving the child a proper education or the parent will be looking elsewhere. Voucher naysayers are just fearmongers.
Hi all, I just had to do something I don’t like to do, which is delete a comment. Besides inappropriate language, we’re not going to tolerate character assassination based on completely bogus and fabricated charges. That may be acceptable on other blogs and in the online comments sections of newspapers, but it’s not here.
You keep saying that voucher kids take tests. Well, those tests do not come with the high stakes attached. It is time that kids going to private schools on my dime endure what my kids do.
Do these tests help determine property values, teacher pay, teacher retention, and student course selection? Highly doubt it. Do these tests require months of drill and kill? Doubt it.
Why on earth does SUFS refuse to support the suggestion that their voucher students take the new FCAT next year so we can have a true comparison of student test scores? I honestly believe they are frightened of the results. Afterall, 70% of New York students failed their new state test based on Common Core. S E V E N T Y! Florida’s test will be of similar difficulty so I can only imagine it will have similar results and that scares SUFS to death! Poor results would destroy the whole narrative that private schools are superior.
Hi Parent and Teacher, thanks so much for reading and taking time out to comment. I don’t know of anyone here who thinks private schools are necessarily better. There are issues and challenges and ranges in quality in all education sectors. A school that may be awesome for one kid may not be so good for another. But private schools (and other schools of choice) can be different. And that’s what’s important. The more options there are, the more opportunities there are for parents to find something that works for their kid.
You’re right about the stakes attached to the mandated testing and how they’re different in district schools vs. schools with scholarship students. But accountability is different when parental choice is involved. We’ve written about this a lot on the blog. Here’s one example from Step Up President Doug Tuthill: https://nextstepsblog.org/2013/07/lets-be-more-precise-about-accountability-with-school-choice/
For what it’s worth, Doug is also a fan of Common Core: https://nextstepsblog.org/2013/07/common-core-can-help-school-choice/
If Common Core and its associated tests are so important for children across the nation, then Common Core and the accompanying exams are good for students attending private schools on a state voucher. Simply claiming parental choice is your mechanism for accountability is not enough. You can’t have it both ways. You want the money in the form of expanded vouchers but you don’t want to administer the state exams.
Simple question. What percentage of children who attend a private school on a state voucher end up transfering or leaving that private school? I bet the number is low but you don’t keep track of that. In fact, SUFS has a hard enough time keeping track of the number of students waiting for a voucher so I’m sure you have no idea how to answer my question. Point being, once students are comfortable in a school, they are unlikely to leave.
Furthermore, public school parents have a ton of choice with magnets and other transfers. What they don’t have a choice in is the curriculum or end of course assessments so why should voucher kids have that luxury?
One simple question, Mr. Matus.
Do you see any circumstance where SUFS would ever support the suggestion that voucher students take the new state exams?