Editor’s note: This post originally ran as an op-ed today in Florida Today, in response to a column by former state Sen. Paula Dockery, R-Lakeland. It’s authored by former state Sen. Al Lawson, D-Tallahassee, who is a member of the Step Up For Students board of directors. The state’s tax credit scholarship program is administered by Step Up For Students, which co-hosts this blog.
The most significant expansion of Florida’s scholarships for low-income children came in 2010, and the bipartisan spirit was so strong I was allowed as Democratic leader to make the closing argument in a Senate controlled by Republicans.
We found common ground because the Tax Credit Scholarship Program is focused on economically disadvantaged students in a way that strengthens public education.
So it is with considerable disappointment to see the partisan fractures this year, as the Legislature considers more modest improvements. And it is hard to miss the extent to which the Florida Education Association is driving the wedge.
But it is wrong to cast a $4,880 scholarship for 60,000 underprivileged children as an attack on public education. It is, to quote public educator and former House Education Policy Council ranking Democrat Bill Heller, “in the greatest tradition of our collective commitment to equal educational opportunity.”
With 12 years under our belt, we know a great deal about how this scholarship works.
The program serves children whose household income is only 9 percent above poverty. More than two-thirds of them are black or Hispanic. These children struggled academically in the public schools they left. Most importantly, their annual standardized test scores have shown they are consistently achieving the same gains in reading and math as students of all income levels nationally.
Whether these students should take the state, rather than national, test is a fair question. But let’s not pretend as though we have no measure for how well they are performing. We know how scholarship kids are doing at individual private schools, as the schools must report their learning gains if they have a minimum number of scholarship recipients.
Let’s also call an end to the deceit that this program hurts public schools financially, and that “money used for vouchers is taken away from basic public school needs,” as syndicated columnist Paula Dockery stated in her recent column in FLORIDA TODAY.
Five independent groups, including the respected Office of Program Policy Analysis and Government Accountability, have examined the financial impact of the program over the years, and all of them have reached the same conclusion: The scholarship saves tax money that can be used to enhance funding for traditional schools. The most recent report, by the Consensus Revenue Estimating Conference, put the savings in 2012-13 at $57.9 million.
Why, then, would opponents continue to claim these children are stealing dollars from public schools?
Even as the current scholarship bill has been shed of any cap increase and a new sales tax credit, the legislative fight has taken a combative turn. There have been allegations that the scholarship nonprofit, Step Up For Students, made up numbers about student demand — even as enrollment has tripled in six years and student applications for the fall are running 19,000 ahead of last year.
There also has been an amusing attempt to discredit the nonprofit’s president because he dared say the obvious — that one way to combat FEA control over Democrats on this issue is to fight campaign money with campaign money. Anyone who doesn’t think the FEA uses its considerable clout and campaign money to influence Democrats is sadly out of touch.
My former Senate colleague in this fight, Republican Paula Dockery, said in her column she is worried the scholarships harm public education. However, I’ve never seen that. I see a program that gives learning options to some of our most desperate parents. These parents aren’t against public schools. Their children are struggling, and they’re just looking for a place where they might blossom, and are so grateful when that happens.
I have little tolerance for those who try to cast these parents as villains in public education. Education is a not a zero-sum game, and this scholarship is simply about giving poor families more options.
Lawson is a former state senator from Tallahassee, and was the leader of the Democratic caucus in that chamber. He is a member of the unpaid Board of Directors of Step Up For Students.
[…] executives who run it. To do so, he needed to misrepresent the words of a former senate colleague. Wrote Lawson of Paula Dockery’s recent opinion […]
Interesting that you didn’t link to Ms. Dockery’s op ed about this because then people would see she didn’t demonize parents ANYWHERE in her statement. I have little tolerance for fellow Democrats who are trying to privitize public education and enrich their buddies who will rake in millions off the tax payer public education funds. And I have little tolerance for the fact that the majority of students in Florida who attend public schools like mine are watching men like you take public tax dollars out of our schools to enrich a few parents who would rather choose a religious education that have NO oversight and accountability and have been shown time and again to provide a subpar education. Our state constitution guarantees every child in Florida and free and fully funded PUBLIC EDUCATION. No where does it state that we will fund religious education or private education. As a student in Florida schools and now a parent, I am appalled at what you and others like you in MY party are doing to our neighborhood public schools. I hope all those profits are helping you sleep at night because we all know it has nothing to do with providing a better education for students.
Hi all, I just deleted a comment that crossed the line. For those who are new to the blog, we welcome comments and dissenting views. But we’re not going to tolerate personal insults. We appreciate that a lot of folks have strong views on these subjects, but you can make more persuasive arguments when you keep it clean.
Rosemarie, the Sen.Lawson post does include a link to Sen. Dockery’s column. This year in Florida may prove to be a blip on the trend lines, but growing numbers of Democrats like Sen. Lawson are embracing school choice, including vouchers and tax credit scholarships. They’re motivated by the social justice and equal opportunity values that have long anchored the Democratic Party, and they’re motivated by the plight of low-income students who need help where ever they can get it. As but one example of this, check out the words of legendary Democratic consultant Joe Trippi: https://nextstepsblog.org/2014/02/joe-trippi-time-put-school-choice-options-table/
Hi all, I just deleted a comment that crossed the line. For those who are new to the blog, we welcome comments and dissenting views. But we’re not going to tolerate personal insults. We appreciate that a lot of folks have strong views on these subjects, but you can make more persuasive arguments when you keep it clean.
Rosemarie, the Sen.Lawson post does include a link to Sen. Dockery’s column. This year in Florida may prove to be a blip on the trend lines, but growing numbers of Democrats like Sen. Lawson are embracing school choice, including vouchers and tax credit scholarships. They’re motivated by the social justice and equal opportunity values that have long anchored the Democratic Party, and they’re motivated by the plight of low-income students who need help where ever they can get it. As but one example of this, check out the words of legendary Democratic consultant Joe Trippi: https://nextstepsblog.org/2014/02/joe-trippi-time-put-school-choice-options-table/
Social justice in the form of VOUCHERs where there is no accountability that you scream about in public schools? How about we fully fund our neighborhood public schools that are community centers and safe spaces for children instread of constantly defunding them so that there really isn’t a choice about staying or leaving? The game is rigged when every time we turn around there are cuts to guidance, social workers, nurses, reading specialists, the ARTS, extracurriculars, etc.Every child in Florida is guaranteed a FULLY FUNDED public school so work to strengthen them instead of working to privaize them. And if you truly beleive in social justice then you will require the same accountability measures at these religious schools so that tax payers know that the children are getting what they are supposed to be getting. Never mind it’s not separating church and state, never mind these schools choose dubious science curriculums, nevermind they don’t have to hire degreed teachers, nevermind they don’t have to provide services for ESE kids, all of it is actually completely robbing them of what they are entitled to..and DEmocrats need to change parties because we have always been about PUBLIC EDUCATION and strong schools.
[…] executives who run it. To do so, he needed to misrepresent the words of a former senate colleague. Wrote Lawson of Paula Dockery’s recent opinion […]
Hi Rosemarie. thanks for commenting again. I agree with you that public school funding is an issue in Florida. But tax credit scholarships are NOT to blame. I know we’ve said this before, so forgive me for sounding like a broken record, but taxpayers pay roughly half as much for each scholarship as they do to fund each student in public school. Over the years, seven studies from five different, independent and highly regarded groups all looked into this issue and concluded the same thing: The scholarship program does not hurt public school funding.
The accountability question is more complicated, and it’s a legitimate question that all of us should keep talking about. But accountability is different when more school choice is involved. There is a need to balance governmental accountability with the accountability that comes when parents have more power to choose the school that works best for their kids. Accountability doesn’t need to be the same to be effective.
Yes it hurts schools when students leave their neighborhood schools, money follows them. Just as in charters and when the charters counsel them
Out as they do before testing, the money stays with the charters! Nice gig. It would be nice if on that bio above the former senator lists his lobbying work for Charters USA and several of Jeb’s foundations, all pro privatization and anti
Public education.
As a parent that supports school choice, it is so frustrating to see the maliciousness of opponents. I keep hearing the same assertions that are actually untrue. “No accountability, subpar edcuation, no oversight… and on and on. Yet, when I searched for schools for my children, I toured and researched 7 of them. All of them had SACS accreditation and additional accreditations that were actually more rigorous than the SACS accreditation.
I find it ironic that parent accountability worked just fine in the private sector as long as parents were of higher socioeconomic status. When parent’s of lower socioeconomic status became apart of the equation, suddenly parent accountability was no longer good enough. The notion that students receive subpar education is private schools also gets thrown around. However, I am a mom of 4 children- One of them had an FCAT score that was so low it was unscorable, yet he was being passed along (against my protests because he had an IEP). He was reading at a third grade level in 6th grade, but that did not matter. My other three children scored 4s and 5s on the FCAT while in public school, but when tested utilizing a national norm referenced test to enter private school they all were deemed behind and had to work to catch up to the other students. Currently, I have a high school son that is an honors student has attended school everyday this week to watch movies like Star Wars because they do not have enough computer terminals for him to take the language arts FCAT with the other students. Next week he will be testing while all the other children are in class being educated and then forced to catch up; so yes, let’s talk about a subpar education…
Removing my children from public school was one of the hardest choices that I ever had to make as a parent. I once believed in public school and truly believed that as long as I was a supportive parent, my children’s teachers and I could work collaboratively to ensure their success. This notion sounds perfect in theory, but in actuality, it does not work like that at all… Try emailing or calling a teacher for weeks and not receiving a return phone call or email. Try pro actively requesting a conference that is supposed to be mandatory for ALL teachers,but the one teacher where your child is struggling is the one teacher that does not come to the conference or send feedback. Let’s be honest, many of the schools do not accept the tax-credit scholarship for students with disabilities because those students attend specialized schools under the McKay scholarship.
There was a bold statement made that a parent choosing to send their children to a religious school obliterates the line of church and state. Umm, unless I missed something, private schools are not under the guise of church and state, just as churches are not. I must also point out that freedom OF religion does not mean freedom FROM religion. Your inference is that a child attending a religious school is a disaster equivalent to the Black Plague. The great thing about religious schools is that they instill character and personal development in addition to core subjects…(that is not a bad thing).
The children that utilize these scholarships are not problem. They way the money is being allotted is the problem. I used to work for a school board in Florida. As an employee, I witnessed the Superintendent spend more than $100,000+ to remodel an executive wing, only to be forced to resign. The Superintendent that replaced him remodeled what he remodeled for an additional $100,00+ ($14,000 was spent on a desk). This Superintendent’s husband worked in food service making $90,000 a year. Yet, there were employees who had not had a raise in more than 10 years and books had not been purchased in more than 7 years. Most recently, we discovered $30,000 in unused curriculum outside a school in front of the dumpster… I can go on!!
I have stated and restated that money is allotted to each child. Instead of utilizing the roughly $7000 per child to have my children educated in public school, I choose to utilize $4880 to have my children educated in a private school. Therefore, the only subsidizing of my children’ s education is done by me to the tune of approx. $2500 per child per year. It is disheartening that there is such a heightened level of maliciousness and degradation toward us as parents that have chosen a different path to ensure that our children reach their highest potential. FL DOE website contains a myriad of statistics that substantiate that vouchers do work. For the parents that are unhappy with utilizing the vouchers, they have the choice to send their children to public school. It is truly just that simple.
I have come to realize that presenting facts and disproving inaccurate information is fruitless because it continues to be disregarded. Our choice is not an attack on public schools, it is just a different preference.
Hi Ms. Jackson-Baker, thanks for taking time out to comment. As always, you make lots of good points. Many of us are disheartened by this “debate” over school choice that too often is detached from reality, and as a former reporter I am especially frustrated by the disregard of basic facts and promotion of misleading information.
The blog was established to help fair-minded people get a better idea of what school choice, in all its forms, is really about – and among other things that means trying to dispel myths and set the record straight on what the evidence really shows. I’ve learned over the past two months that that is an even tougher task than I had envisioned, but we will continue to work hard at it, and I still have confidence that facts and evidence will win the day.
On an even more positive note, the real story line over the past two months has been the extent to which school choice parents, including yourself, have stood up and made your voices heard. That has been a beautiful thing to behold, and it will truly make all the difference.
Ron Matus,
In my opinion, the zeal that we exhibit to make our voices heard, is the same zeal that we exhibit as we take an active role in our childrens’ education. We are being accused of being on the wrong side of the argument. I want people to understand that I will always be on the right side because the only side I am on is the side of the four children that I am responsible for.