Sparking the evolution of education choice
It seems especially appropriate midway through National School Choice Week to ask: Can the use of state “Blaine Amendments” to prohibit publicly available funds from being used by parents at religiously affiliated educational options be considered discriminatory? And if so, does that discrimination violate a family’s right guaranteed by the[Read More…]
On June 7, 2005, opposing sides met for the final time to argue before the Florida Supreme Court over the constitutionality of the state’s first voucher program, the Opportunity Scholarship. Supporters of the program for low-income students had won several important victories, forcing opponents to abandon all but one remaining[Read More…]
Gov. Ron DeSantis, in an effort to address a backlog of more than 13,000 students awaiting a Florida Tax Credit Scholarship, pledged to create a new scholarship paid out of public dollars in the Florida Education Finance Program (FEFP). The new scholarship would generate 28,000 vouchers for low-income and working-class[Read More…]
Editor’s note: March 2 marked the 20th anniversary of the legislative session in which Florida Gov. Jeb Bush launched a series of K-12 reforms that transformed education throughout the state. (No, I can’t believe it’s been 20 years either.) Beginning today, as the 2019 Florida legislative session is set to[Read More…]
In 1999 Florida passed the Opportunity Scholarship Program (OSP), the nation’s first statewide school voucher program in nearly fifty years. Florida also became the first to have a statewide voucher program struck down in 2006 under Bush v. Holmes. More than a decade later, Gov. Ron DeSantis announced a new[Read More…]
The Florida Supreme Court overturned the state’s first K-12 voucher program in 2006, but that decision “does not and should not apply” to the state’s tax credit scholarship program, which is now under legal attack by the Florida teachers union and Florida School Boards Association, former Florida Supreme Court Justice[Read More…]
In the latest filing in a lawsuit challenging Florida’s tax credit scholarship program, lawyers for the statewide teachers union double down on their assertion that the scholarship is no different than a voucher program the Florida Supreme Court declared unconstitutional in 2006. The document, filed just before the Thanksgiving holiday,[Read More…]
The Florida Education Association (FEA), along with several allies, recently filed a lawsuit challenging the state’s 13-year-old tax-credit scholarship program. The teacher union’s complaint seeks to expand the 2006 Bush v. Holmes decision that struck down Florida’s Opportunity Scholarship program. But the nearly decade-old voucher case has also drawn the[Read More…]
