The former owner of a South Florida daycare recently was sentenced to prison for committing fraud against the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship.

Lissette Orta, the owner of Kids Palace Daycare in Hialeah, was sentenced Sept. 9 to 21 months behind bars after being found guilty of committing more than $100,000 worth of fraud during the 2016-17 school year. Orta was arrested in 2019 after an investigation by the Florida Department of Education and Florida Department of Law Enforcement revealed she had submitted applications on behalf of parents, claiming their children were attending the school full-time.

Orta was charged with stealing $130,249 in scholarship money intended for low-income students. State records show Kids Palace Day Care was voluntarily dissolved in October 2017.

According to the FLDOE annual accountability report, fraud against the scholarship program is exceedingly rare. Last year, more than 2,000 private schools participated in scholarship programs with only three cases of fraudulent activity detected in 2021.

Over the last decade, FLDOE revoked 43 schools from being able to accept scholarship funds due to fraudulent activities. Another 21 schools entered into settlement agreements with the state.

State rules require all new schools accepting scholarship programs to receive a site visit from FLDOE. Schools must have a surety bond and complete a financial report with a certified CPA if the school receives more than $250,000 a year in scholarships.

Financial reporting requirements were revised and strengthened in September 2018 and March 2020, making it easier for FLDOE to catch fraud and suspend or revoke schools.

Eleventh Circuit Court Judge Teresa Mary Pooler imposed a civil lien of $130,249 on Orta earlier this month. Orta is to repay Step Up For Students, which had raised the funds from private corporate contributions.

Step Up For Students (which hosts this blog) is one of two scholarship funding organizations in Florida. The nonprofit raised private corporate donations as part of the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship program for low-income and working-class students. Corporations receive a dollar-for-dollar tax credit for their contribution to the scholarship program.

So far, Step Up For Students has funded 85,539 students on the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship program for the 2022-23 school year. The average student lives in a household earning less than $41,000 a year. More than half of the students come from a single-parent household, and 67% are Black or Hispanic.

A new report from the Florida Policy Institute takes aim at the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship, which from its inception in 2001 has aimed to expand educational opportunities for children of families with limited financial resources to enable those children to achieve a greater level of excellence in their education.

The author of "Silent Spending, Florida’s Shadow Budget Needs Greater Scrutiny,” wants to improve tax equity and increase government revenue by eliminating up to $23 billion in “tax expenditures,” including the scholarship.

But “tax expenditures,” or what the report calls “silent spending,” isn’t government spending at all. It’s simply an accounting of revenue not collected by government through tax credits, tax deductions and tax exemptions.

Tax credits targeted by the Florida Policy Institute include the Florida Tax Credit, which last year provided scholarships to 86,726 low- and middle-income students, 73% of whom are non-white.

“The question remains as to whether revenue that would otherwise be used for general public purposes ought to finance private school education,” writes the author.

Set aside the fact that the question is largely settled: Scholarship opponents have been defeated in court three times in the last decade; the scholarship has been in law for 21 years; and the program has provided more than 1 million scholarships to low- and middle-income students, most of whom are children of color.

Contrary to Florida Policy Institute’s assertion, the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship does provide “a general public purpose,” that being the education of students. Whether that education occurs in a private school or a public one, the benefit to the general public (an educated populace) remains the same.

Furthermore, while the elimination of the FTC would increase government revenues, it would also cost the state double what it gained. This year, scholarships average between $7,250 and $7,850, depending on the student’s grade and county of residence. Florida’s local school districts spend more than double that per pupil from all revenue sources.

The institute makes the case that eliminating these tax expenditures would increase government revenue and allow government to spend the additional revenue improving the public good.

“It is uncertain if sacrificing $23.6 billion leads to more socially desirable outcomes than simply collecting the forgone amount and financing better-quality public schools, safe and affordable housing, reliable transportation infrastructure, clean water and energy and robust safety,” the report states.

However, it is equally uncertain that eliminating these “tax expenditures” would improve anything.

High tax equity appears to have no relation to educational outcomes as measured by the National Assessment of Education progress. Using the Urban Institute’s educational rankings, which adjust for race and income to provide an apples-to-apples comparison across states, we see that high equity states don’t necessarily come with strong education systems.

They do, however, tend to come with high tax burdens as measured by the Tax Foundation. Tax equity may lead to lower-income taxpayers paying less as a percentage of their total income relative to higher earners, but it doesn’t mean their total tax burden is less. In fact, it may be higher.

Worse still, you may end up paying higher taxes for lower quality services. See California, Vermont and New York in the chart above. In contrast, Florida ranks 48^th in Tax Equity but has a relatively low overall tax burden for taxpayers.

Meanwhile, Florida ranks first in fourth-grade math and seventh in eighth-grade math on the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Texas too, scores poorly on tax equity, but places sixth for lowest tax burden and second in fourth-grade math and fourth in eighth-grade math.

If you were a low-income parent of color, would you rather live in Florida, with lower tax equity but higher educational outcomes for your child, or California, with higher tax equity but lower educational outcomes and a potentially higher tax burden?

The scholarship program has a more than two-decade history of educating the least-privileged and most-struggling students in the state. More than a decade’s worth of research has shown that scholarship students, despite their challenges, keep pace with the educational attainment of all students nationwide.

Additional research by the Urban Institute shows that scholarship students were up to 99% more likely to attend college and up to 45% more likely to earn a bachelor’s degree than their public school counterparts.

While there are tax credits, deductions and exemptions that should get additional scrutiny as to whether they are unfair or fail to provide public benefits, the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship is not one of them.

Editor’s note: This commentary from Tim Benson, a policy analyst in the government relations department of the Heartland Institute, appeared recently on the institute’s website.

A January 2022 white paper from the Pioneer Institute illustrates how a tax-credit funded education savings account program might be the best way forward for pursuing educational reform in Massachusetts.

In Modeling an Education Savings Account for Massachusetts, Pioneer Institute senior fellow Cara Candal argues this type of ESA could possibly make its way around the commonwealth’s incredibly strict anti-Catholic Blaine amendment. The amendment currently bars public funding of faith-based schools, and which was not affected by the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2020 ruling in Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue overturning many of these relics of 19th century prejudice.

The Bay State’s Blaine amendment reads:

“No grant, appropriation or use of public money or property or loan of credit shall be made or authorized by the Commonwealth or any political subdivision thereof for the purpose of founding, maintaining or aiding any infirmary, hospital, institution, primary or secondary school, or charitable or religious undertaking which is not publicly owned and under the exclusive control, order and supervision of public officers or public agents authorized by the Commonwealth or federal authority or both.”

The workaround would be to fund the ESA as if it were a tax-credit scholarship program. Tax-credit scholarship programs allow individuals and businesses to contribute to a non-profit scholarship-granting organization which handles the funds. In return, individuals and businesses would receive a tax credit from the commonwealth that usually matches their contribution dollar-for-dollar.

These donations, not commonwealth funds, would then be used to provide ESA scholarships to families that meet the eligibility requirements and apply for them.

To continue reading, click here.

Editor’s note: This commentary from Nathan Benefield, senior vice president of the Commonwealth Foundation, appeared Sunday on pennlive.com.

Pennsylvania’s new state budget includes a historic $125 million expansion of two successful scholarship programs—the Educational Improvement Tax Credit (EITC) and the Opportunity Scholarship Tax Credit (OSTC). This expansion will provide 31,000 more students with scholarships to the academic environment that best fits their needs.

These vital programs are a drop in the overall $44 billion 2022–23 state budget—which included an additional $1.6 billion in public school funding.

Tax credit scholarship programs have a long track record of success. The EITC engages the business community in education, as businesses donate to scholarship organizations, providing educational opportunity to low- and moderate-income students.

As a result, more than 200 scholarship organizations have awarded 767,000 scholarships since the program’s inception in 2001, with an average scholarship amount of $2,200. They represent a tiny fraction of the nearly $20,000 per student spent by school districts, which, despite massive funding increases, have lost students and seen performance drop.

Because of this disparity, tax credit scholarships have saved taxpayers more than $4 billion in averted costs. And an economic impact analysis found scholarship expansion in Pennsylvania would generate billions of dollars from increased lifetime earnings and reduced criminal justice costs.

To continue reading, click here.

Editor’s note: This article appeared Wednesday on the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs’ website.

For more than a decade now, the state’s Lindsey Nicole Henry Scholarships for Students with Disabilities (LNH) program has been helping children with special needs thrive by paying for them to attend private schools that better serve them.

For many children and families, the program has been life-changing. Candace Cronin’s six-year-old daughter is among them.

“She can communicate,” Candace Cronin said. “She understands. She is awesome at reading. I mean, she is like one of the top five in her class in reading. And just two years ago, the girl couldn’t even talk.”

The Cronins’ daughter was diagnosed with sensorineural hearing loss and enlarged vestibular aqueducts (EVA). She was also born with torticollis, a condition affecting the neck that also affects hearing. Because her hearing is so compromised, the child struggled to learn to speak.

Throughout much of her young life, the Cronins’ daughter has been involved in occupational therapy, physical therapy, and speech therapy. And while she has made dramatic strides, most of her progress occurred after becoming an LNH scholarship recipient and attending a private school where she received much more personal attention.

“When she started (private school), she couldn’t even say, ‘Daddy,’” Candace Cronin recalled. “That didn’t come until later.”

The Cronins’ experience is typical of many LNH families. But the LNH program, and efforts to create similar school-choice opportunities for other children across Oklahoma, continue to face strong resistance.

Among the opponents is the Oklahoma State School Boards Association (OSSBA), an organization whose national affiliate famously urged the Biden administration to prosecute parents under anti-terrorism laws when families began speaking out about their education concerns at school board meetings.

On its website, the OSSBA claims that programs like LNH “erode public school funding and harms the 700,000 students who attend public schools”—even though the state actually spends less money per student on LNH recipients than what would be spent on those same students in the public school system.

The OSSBA also states that the LNH program “has shifted more than $38 million away from public schools to private schools over the last decade.”

However, state financial records show that figure represents a tiny fraction of total school spending during that time.

To continue reading, click here.

Editor’s note: This first-person essay from Pennsylvania father Jeremy Spontak was adapted from the American Federation for Children’s Voices for Choice website.

I am a single dad with full custody of my two children living in southwestern Pennsylvania. Raising two boys on my own is challenging, but our lives got so much better when I found out about Bishop McCort Catholic High School and our state’s Opportunity Scholarship Tax Program.

My son Joshua struggled academically for three years at our zoned public school before we found out about McCort. At one point, I requested that he be held back to give him a chance to catch up with his peers. School administrators told me that was not my decision, so they promoted him yet again, even though he could not master the material for his grade level.

The following year, he failed every subject. That’s when I decided to have him tested to see if he had a learning disability that was interfering with his progress. We did get a documented diagnosis, which I took to the school, but nothing changed. There was no additional help, no tutoring. Joshua continued to flounder.

Then COVID hit. Our public school was closed for almost two years to in-person instruction. The lack of structure – getting up every morning, getting dressed, going to school – was devastating to Joshua. He struggled for another year.

I had heard that Bishop McCort Catholic High School was offering in-person instruction. I visited the school and was impressed that it had been in operation since 1922, after Catholic parishioners in Johnstown raised $100,000 to launch it.

As much as I wanted to send Joshua to McCort, I didn’t see how I could afford private school tuition. Then school staff told me I probably was eligible for a state school choice scholarship. I applied for the A Opportunity Scholarship and was approved.

Since Joshua transferred to McCort, his grades have improved dramatically. I attribute that to the fact that class sizes are much smaller than at his previous school. The teachers have a chance to get to know every student – their strengths, their weaknesses, everything about them – and tailor instruction accordingly.

The school also provides the rigor and structure that Joshua needs. From Day 1, Joshua had the opportunity to join a community of students and teachers who are committed to advancing the rich Catholic mission of “learning to think rigorously so as to act rightly and to serve humanity better.”

With 10 Advanced Placement courses and 23 Honors courses, Joshua has lots of incentive to strive. And I am encouraged as a parent that, as the school website says, McCort empowers young generations to unlock their potential through a program of academic excellence, character building, social development, and leadership training.

Maybe best of all, Joshua has regained his love of learning. He is an all-around happier kid. This alone is assurance that moving my son to McCort was the best decision I’ve ever made for him.

I wish every parent could experience the benefit of choosing a great school for their child. If money is a barrier, I wish they would consider applying for whatever choice scholarship program their state supports.

Every child should have the opportunity Joshua has had to find educational success that I know will lead to lifelong career options and satisfaction.

On a Wednesday morning in early January, a day after he turned 20, Josep Amiguet walked into a classroom inside Matherly Hall on the edge of campus for his intermediate microeconomics class, his first as a student at the University of Florida.

“OK,” he remembers thinking, “I’m here.”

It took three years of laser-like focus on his studies at Christopher Columbus High School in Miami and three semesters of work at Santa Fe College in Gainesville before Josep reached his goal of enrolling at Florida and studying economics.

“It really was a good feeling,” he said.

Josep’s path to Florida wasn’t as straight as he would have liked. A poor year academically as a freshman at Columbus, which he attended on an education choice scholarship, forced the South Miami native to play catchup during his final three years at the private Catholic high school.

He was not accepted to Florida after graduating Columbus in the spring of 2020. So, he attended Santa Fe to work on an associate degree, graduating in December 2021.

He reapplied to Florida and was accepted, receiving the confirmation email last November while studying for a psychology exam.

“It was a cool moment,” he said.

What wasn’t cool, Josep will tell you, was what he called the “below staller” grades on his report card as a Columbus freshman and the weeks he spent in summer school.

“Why am I here?” he remembered asking himself.

To continue reading, click here.

For Leidiana Candelario, moving from the Dominican Republic to Miami at age 8 was a major lifestyle transition.

It didn’t go very well at first — until an education choice scholarship changed everything.

Leidiana was miserable in her assigned elementary school, describing herself as an “outcast.” Her unfamiliarity with English made her a target of bullying.

“Every weekday I anxiously waited to go home from school, as home became my shelter,” she says.

Home for the family of five was a small room behind her father’s shop. Those cramped quarters were preferable to the misery she was enduring in school. But her future was grim.

“I was unable to see a light at the end of the tunnel,” she says.

A ray of hope appeared in the form of the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship for low-income students, administered by Step Up For Students. After her parents applied and were awarded the scholarship, they now had options:  They could afford to send Leidiana and her two sisters to the school they chose because it was the best fit for their needs – La Progresiva Presbyterian School.

“The moment my father, with excitement in his eyes, told me ‘Mi hija, nos dieron la beca!’ (“My daughter, they gave us the scholarship!”), I knew the best of changes would come,” Leidiana said.

At La Progresiva, Leidiana blossomed. No longer an outcast, she was warmly received, and thrived. The school’s principal, Melissa Rego, is a former public school teacher who also is the daughter of Cuban exiles. The student body includes many descendants of Cubans, Nicaraguans, Salvadorans, and Dominicans. More than two-thirds don’t have parents who attended college.

To continue reading, click here.

Editor’s note: This article appeared Thursday on washingtonexaminer.com.

Republican lawmakers introduced twin bills in Congress Thursday that would establish a federal school choice program by enacting a $10 billion tax credit program to fund education scholarships.

The Educational Choice for Children Act was introduced by Rep. Jackie Walorski (R-IN) in the House of Representatives and by Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) in the Senate, and it has several high-profile co-sponsors, including Sens. Tim Scott (R-SC) and Steve Daines (R-MT), as well as Reps. Virginia Foxx (R-NC), Jim Jordan (R-OH), Jim Banks (R-IN), Burgess Owens (R-UT), and House Republican Conference Chairwoman Elise Stefanik (R-NY).

“Our children’s education is the key to America’s future success," lead sponsor Walorski said in a statement exclusively provided to the Washington Examiner. "Every child should have the opportunity to live the American Dream — regardless of their ZIP code or socioeconomic background.

“Offering families school options will help millions of children access the best possible education for them. As we look to our nation’s future, this investment will restore power to parents and equip every American child to thrive.”

The legislation would create a $10 billion federal tax credit program to incentivize donations to scholarship-granting organizations that would then be used to cover expenses related to public and private K-12 education.

To continue reading, click here.

Editor’s note: This commentary from William Mattox, a resident fellow at the James Madison Institute and a reimaginED guest blogger, originally appeared in the Summer 2022 issue of Education Next.

 My son Richard has the chutzpah of Hank Greenberg, the greatest Jewish baseball player of all time. So, soon after we moved to Florida, Richard tried out for the baseball team at Tallahassee’s Leon High, even though he didn’t go to school there.

Richard was considered a home schooler at the time, but “hybrid schooler” would have been more accurate: He took classes from an online provider, a small private school, and a performing arts program.

Richard made the team, and by midseason lots of new baseball buddies were hanging around our house on weekends. Soon we discovered that Richard wasn’t the only “hybrid student” on the ball club that year.

Leon’s first baseman spent his mornings taking online courses through the Florida Virtual School, the knuckleball pitcher was taking a “dual enrollment” English class through the community college, and the left-handed pro prospect had enrolled in a financial management course at a local college (in case he was drafted).

Moreover, one of Leon’s outfielders had figured out an ingenious way to get a music education few families could afford out of pocket. This kid took mostly music classes at Leon by day and then several online courses at night and during the summer. He ended up being a four-time All-State musician and getting a college offer from Juilliard.

When I first encountered all these hybrid students, I figured there must be something in the water at Leon High. But I came to realize that many of these unconventional schooling options were the by-product of reforms former governor Jeb Bush had initiated, especially the creation of the Florida Virtual School.

The rise of hybrid schooling bodes well for students whose needs, gifts, interests, and learning styles do not align with the factory school model of the 20th century, and for parents who know that no school can maximize the potential of every child every year in every way.

There is a Magic School Bus, but no magic school.

Customized education is good for all kids and not just for academic reasons. Several years ago, Richard entered a local talent competition structured much like American Idol. Different singers would perform at big community gatherings and then people would vote for the ones they considered the best.

Richard kept advancing week after week, until on the night of the finals, one of the organizers took me aside and said, “I don’t get it. You guys just moved here a year or so ago, and yet Richard seems to have a really strong base of support.”

As Richard’s proud papa, I wanted to tell this guy, “Of course, Richard’s got lots of support—he’s the best one.” But I knew what this guy was getting at, so I explained, “See that guy over there? That’s Richard’s drama teacher at Young Actors Theatre. He gets all his thespian friends to vote for Richard.”

Then I said, “See that family over there? They know Richard from baseball. Those kids over there took classes with Richard at the classical Christian school. The college students way back there know Richard from Young Life youth ministry. And those kids over there are in the AP classes Richard is taking at Leon.”

The contest organizer realized that Richard’s social network was far larger than he’d expected. What I marveled at was how diverse his friendship network was. Gay. Straight. Christian. Non-Christian. Jocks. Thespians. Nerds. Cool kids. Richard’s friends reflect the diversity of his hybrid-schooling life.

Now, I’m not so naive as to think that hybrid schooling will eradicate high school cliques or classroom bullying. But customized schooling can offer kids a far richer, and more varied, social experience than they might otherwise get.

And when you add these social benefits to the educational advantages of customized schooling, you can see why I’m glad that Jeb Bush and other reformers had the Hank Greenberg–like chutzpah to change the way Florida does education.