The Florida House of Representatives passed another voucher program, this time directly funded by taxpayers.
The Florida Senate already approved the program. They rejected all Democratic amendments, even one to stop people who had been previously convicted of fraud from opening a charter school!
The state constitution prohibits use of public funds for religious schools, and in the past lawmakers used a “work-around,” like tuition tax credits, to pretend that public funds were not going directly to religious schools. This bill avoids the pretense. Money to pay for religious schools will come out of the public fund for public schools. This will harm the public schools that enroll more than 80% of the state’s students.
In 2012, Florida voters opposed Jeb Bush’s effort to change the state constitution to permit the kind of bill that passed yesterday.
Recent studies agree that students who use vouchers do not make academic gains and are likely to suffer academic losses.
Voucher schools in Florida are unregulated, need not have certified teachers, and are not subject to state standards or tests. They are, as a series in the Orlando Sentinel said, “schools without rules.”
At the same time, the legislature tightly regulates public schools with burdensome mandates, and there is a statewide teacher shortage.
The decision yesterday in the Florida House was not conservative. Conservatives don’t destroy vital public goods. Conservatives conserve. The vote taken was a display of radical extremism, driven by money and ideology.
The vote was not about the best interests of children, most of whom will attend schools with an anti-science, anti-modern Biblical curriculum.
The Republican Party of Florida has no shame.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“They rejected all Democratic amendments, even one to stop people who had been previously convicted of fraud from opening a charter school!”
But how can you expect someone to be able to run a charter school if they don’t know anything about committing fraud?
It would actually be illogical to disqualify convicted fraudsters.
Best Line Award: “But how can you expect someone to be able to run a charter school if they don’t know anything about committing fraud?” 🙂
In the Republican Bizarro world the governor has said that since it’s public (taxpayer) money going to these charter schools, that makes them public schools! A stunning rationale that takes one’s breath away!
In that GOP bizarro world, if government sends money to home schoolers, they too are public schools. Anything with public money becomes “public.” They May one day regret the day they obliterated the line between public and private.
This law is a violation of the state constitution. I hope a long court battle ensues as a result of this radical right wing voucher plan. DeSantis is counting on his radical right wing judges to give him the green light. The suppression of democracy in Florida is appalling. While Scott was a thief, DeSantis is a right wing bigot that does not believe in the rule of democracy. DeSantis won the election by about 40,000 votes, and he is trying to remake the state into a libertarian dystopia.
Do you have any documentation, that the legislation in Florida is in violation of the Florida state constitution? I would like to see it.
see
https://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/education/os-ne-florida-senate-school-vouchers-new-20190425-story.html
Florida State Constitution, article 1, section 3:
Text of Section 3:
Religious Freedom
There shall be no law respecting the establishment of religion or prohibiting or penalizing the free exercise thereof. Religious freedom shall not justify practices inconsistent with public morals, peace or safety. No revenue of the state or any political subdivision or agency thereof shall ever be taken from the public treasury directly or indirectly in aid of any church, sect, or religious denomination or in aid of any sectarian institution.
OK! The Florida state constitution has a “Blaine” amendment. But the Supreme Court nullified the provisions in the Trinity v. Comer decision in 2017. (see https://www.oyez.org/cases/2016/15-577 )
The provision you cite, is null and void, under the Trinity decision.
The Supreme Court has not repealed Blaine amendments. The Trinity Lutheran case was about building a playground, not tuition. Given Trump’s addition of two religious zealots, the Court may overturn our long history of separation of church and state, but it has not happened yet.
“Betsy DeVos
Exciting news! The Florida House of Representatives just voted to expand school choice programs with the passing of the Family Empowerment Scholarship program”
Shame that the US Department of Education can never seem to find any “exciting news!” that benefits public school students, or is even in any way relevant to them.
For some reason our students are only mentioned in the context of school shootings and drug abuse. Gosh, if I just read the US Department of Education marketing campaigns I’d transfer out of a public school too. Our schools are full of low performing, violent drug addicts, according to these poorly informed ideologues.
Blatant anti-public school student state-funded propaganda. 100% negative towards public school students and families, and 100% promotion and praise of charter and private school students.
If you want to go around the people, you have a couple choices: you can bring out the guys in their riot gear from the Ministry of Love, or you can go around them. For example, if voters definitively reject a voucher referendum, you can start calling vouchers “scholarships” or “educational savings plans” or some such and fund a gubernatorial campaign and provide some boilerplate “scholarship” legislation, and this way of subverting democracy is so much less messy.
“Conservatives don’t destroy vital public goods. Conservatives conserve.”
So well put!
The Republican Party of Lincoln is dead and was buried in a paupers mass grave.
The new Party is the FFT, Fascists for Trump.
Sigh. Here I tend to fall back on my usual position, which is: let the locals decide. If they want schools that teach Christ rode a dinosaur, let ‘em. You can’t force cultural evolution. There will be factors to gradually correct things: smart kids will leave as soon as they reach majority. Industry will think twice about starting a biz where their employees can’t find/ afford a halfway decent ed for their kids w/n driving distance. If locals are so stupid as to elect govrs who make it clear they support short-sighted anti-public-good decisions in the name of ideology—all the while raking in campaign funds from those who will reap short-term profits & move on– & will do it in the face of referenda to the contrary—what are you gonna do? The state constitution is of little help in the face of such ignorance: it will be chipped away at & undermined until FL is perhaps the first state to proudly bear the title of mini-theocracy.
FL is an educational backwater. I’ve had a peephole on Orlando goings-on for 20 yrs while one of my brothers worked/ lived there half+ of the year. The move made sense biz-wise, but his family waited to do it until their kids graduated from their New England public hischs, for obvious reasons… From the ‘50’s through the ‘90’s I personally knew a fair # of folks who had to escape to FL because they were in trouble w/the law & had to start over. Their kids all ended up skipping one or two grades because FL ed was so behind NY & NJ.
While I agree with you that we should let locals decide educational decisions, and while I understand that the tradition of education might be stronger in some cultures than others, I could not help feeling a bit defensive about your tone. You see, I come from one of those places you describe as backwater and conservative. Many if not most of my students reject evolution due to admonition from the pulpit, a position I reject. Sensitive to that, I do not pound that drum, but gently argue for more general ideas, the need for doing science where science is needed and church where church is appropriate and similar arguments.
I feel like you have painted Floridians with too broad a brush. As a tennessean who has been painted with a similar brush, it hurts my feelings a bit. Let us not be prejudiced against the entire entity. Let us promulgate the best in all of us.
Roy,
I understand that you have to walk a fine line, but that’s different from teaching creationism or giving equal time to “both sides.” I would hope that no history teachers would teach “both sides” of the Holocaust.
Not my point at all. I would never okay the teaching of creationism or of the holocaust denial. All I was saying was that we should not paint our opponents with a geographical brush.
From 1810 until the sunbelt transformation began in the late 1970s, people have been leaving Tennessee and going elsewhere to earn money. Their cousins who moved return home from distant places and cast off at those of us who loved home enough to stay. During my generation, migration has changed, but people from other places still seem always to point out what we do not have, as if it is my fault.
I know that despite the best economic times, our schools are grossly underfunded due to sweet deals given to businesses who want to move here. I also know we could do a better job of we had a greater tradition of education. Moreover, I bemoan the fact that my representative assured me that he did not see any justification for spending public money on private schools and voted with Gov. Lee for his voucher proposal. But criticism from elsewhere only drives away the people who might, with other persuasive techniques that do not include demeaning statements, be willing to do the right thing.