In a statement posted last month, the Southern Poverty Legal Center clearly described the high price paid by students and citizens for vouchers.
Public schools serve all students, no matter their backgrounds. Private schools do not – they can cherry-pick which children they serve.
What’s more, when families take a private school voucher, they lose known academic standards, certified teachers, civil rights protections, services and accessibility for disabled students, free and reduced lunch options, building code regulations, and free transportation.
The Legislature passed the bill to create a fifth voucher plan, despite the fact that the state already spends $1 Billion a year to send children to voucher schools where they abandon their civil rights protections, have no guarantee of services if they are disabled, are likely to have uncertified teachers, and are likely to learn science from the Bible. Eighty percent of voucher schools are religious. Their students are not prepared to live in the modern world.
Why is the Florida GOP determined to miseducate the rising generation? Is it religious fervor? Greed? Stupidity?
When they say that “parents always know best,” are they aware of the near daily stories of parents who abused, tortured, murdered their children? Did A.J.’s parents “know best,” the parents in Illinois who abused and murdered their five-year-old? Did the parents of 13 children in California who abused them over many years also “know best?”
The voters of Florida elected these fools. They will have to take responsibility and replace them with people who care about the children and the future of their state.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
It can be a very subtle form of discrimination. Not a good idea. We need to put more money to our public schools and make them better. Having retired from a teaching career, I know the hard work teachers do, but many districts are cutting funds for other programs. We need to quit trying every new program that comes along and work on perfecting the current ones. Teachers work hard enough as it is.Give the teachers a break, please!
yes; we must publicly recognize as well that ‘every new program that comes along’ is coming along because somebody will be making a profit
Florida is gambling with future of its young people. The legislators send their children to quality private schools, not the type that will accept vouchers. They have no interest in improving public education. The so-called representatives are banking on the the out of state draw of the Sunshine State to fill any skilled jobs in the future. Some of them also intend to personally benefit from privatization. They want to divest from having to provide for the children of the poor and working class. By providing a cheap voucher instead of public education, they will offload those they feel will fill the many low paying service jobs in the state. It will allow the state to be as segregated and ignorant as it “chooses” to be. If the people of Florida do nothing, that will exactly what they will get.
The Big Lie of Vouchers is that it gives poor people the same choices that rich people have. Rich people don’t send their children to fundamentalist schools that teach creationism. Rich people send their children to schools where tuition is $30,000-$50,000 a year. Those schools do not accept vouchers and don’t want the children that get them. If DeVos really wanted to give poor kids the same choices as rich people, she would push for vouchers of $30,000-50,000 per pupil.
I saw you again on Wyatt Cenac’s show on HBO. I am glad he is tackling inequity in education as it is a huge issue that gets little attention. This week he told the story of Rainier Beach High School in Seattle. The best part of the show was when the IB students talked about how the billionaires want to avoid the tax system. They said that billionaires are only interested in their own profit, and any contribution to the common good is done on their own terms, not necessarily what is wanted or needed. They understood the problem! In a city like Seattle with so much wealth why are the schools facing a budget shortfall? Even with the silly humor, Cenac is trying to make the public aware of inequality.
It’s a real lesson for public school supporters. Florida is the poster child for ed reform. Public school supporters were told if they just supported charters and vouchers, eventually ed reformers would return the favor and start supporting public schools.
But that never happened. Public schools are still the last priority every legislative session as the echo chamber continues to support and promote EXCLUSIVELY private schools and charter schools.
There’s never any benefit to children in public schools. It doesn’t matter how many ed reform experiments public schools accept- they will never gain the support of ed reformers.
Look for yourselves- go to any ed reform site and look for a positive plan, benefit, or support of students who attend public schools. They offer our students nothing. The absolute best they offer is this – assurances that they will not HARM students in public schools. Really? This is the best we can expect out of the tens of thousands of these people we’re paying in government? They will not HARM existing public schools?
Talk about low expectations.
Can anyone anywhere point to anything ed reformers have contributed to public schools or public school students other than standardized tests? For that we’ve been paying tens of thousands of them for 2 decades? So they could mandate standardized testing and hire testing contractors?
Obviously it’s one school district so not a representative sample, but I’ve had children in a public school district for the last 20 years so I can actually COUNT what ed reform has contributed to my son’s school, which is about 50% lower income.
Testing and Ohio’s version of the common core. Twenty years of hiring and paying ed reformers in Ohio’s state government and this is the sum total benefit this public school received. A standardized testing mandate (unfunded) and a Common Core mandate (also unfunded).
How does that record justify us continuing to hire and pay these people?
Unforntnalety, most voters seem to be influenced by who spends the most money and not by spending the time to educate themselves on the facts behind the issues.
Warlike propaganda keeps winning most elections. After all, that is what won the 2016 election for Trump.
Where I live the Republican Party is entrenched. The voters are completely tribal, even though they are voting against their own self interests. This is particularly true of the many young military families with children. People of Florida need to realize the Florida Republicans in the state are not really conservative. That’s why Charlie Crist is a Democrat today. The party has been taken over by radical right wing libertarians.
The best way to think of the Republicans who privatize public services is this: anarchists.
I am not a proponent of vouchers. The best private institutions do not accept them. But your characterization of homeschoolers is a bit broad. Abuse happens in all types of homes. And sometimes it the teachers who abuse their students. Like the kindergarten teacher who kicked a child, a teacher arrested for immoral acts, or a bus driver raping a teen. These types of stories are reported all the time but it does not mean all teachers lack good judgment.
Most parents do not lack good judgment either. There are many reasons parents may choose one form of education over another. We chose homeschool after fighting our public school for special ed services and losing. Legislatures love to cap or underfund Special Ed. (I live in WA where Democrats have majority so this isn’t a partisan issue here, it is a budget issue.) We made the best choice for our family after the state failed us. Had we relied on our local public school, our child’s education would have suffered. One huge benefit to homeschool you can appreciate is taking CCSS standards and kicking them out the proverbial door. They are simply too low a bar to strive toward. Another benefit is no state testing for our kids. We don’t waste 2-3 weeks of our school year bogged down with tests. We don’t teach to tests. We spend that time continuing to learn and explore. The result is a far broader and deeper education than we would have had access to in our district.
I love your articles! Keep posting. Maybe one day in the near future our elected officials will fund special education and jettison the rank and test culture pervasive in education right now.
Your local public school is legally obligated to provide services an accommodations for children with disabilities. When you leave the public school, you abandon those rights.
I did not say that all parents are abusive. I’m a parent.
I did say that it is not true that “parents know best” because some parents choose very bad, inferior schools for their children and some parents are abusive.
I can appreciate that. But not all schools are great learning environments and that includes public, unfortunately. Washington public schools routinely do not meet their legal obligations for special education. I am one of many parents who have had their legal rights ignored. The funding models encourage districts to cap the number of students on IEPs. It has been 7 years since we began on this journey and this problem is still common. I am hopeful this legislative session will see better options in the classroom. Of course, charter options and vouchers exacerbate funding issues.
Here is a somewhat recent article from King5.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.king5.com/amp/article%3fsection=news&subsection=local&headline=cap-on-funding-leaves-kids-with-learning-disabilities-in-limbo&contentId=281-550510661
Your battle over special education is not at all uncommon. I spoke to a former special ed teacher who battled a local district for services for one of her children. It was only because she knew the law and could afford to have her child privately tested that she was able to get the necessary services. $$ rule. I remember being instructed to never say that a child needed a particular service because the district would then be obligated to provide it. The charter movement has only made it more difficult for districts to provide special ed services. You are lucky you have the skills and the flexibility to homeschool your children. That is not an option for many if not most people especially when a child needs specialized services. I am rather tired of the parents know best argument. I’m not sure why we are to assume that most people have the ability to select a quality education program. As we continue to underfund and overmanage the public schools, though, that won’t be an issue after awhile since there will be no guarantee of even a barely adequate program without a public system.
“Why is the Florida GOP determined to miseducate the rising generation? Is it religious fervor? Greed? Stupidity?”
I’m going to suggest a rhyming noun: cupidity—combined w/libertarianism, the fringe anti-govt, anti-public-good ideology that has replaced conservatism among our reddest politicians. It’s tough to figure out which part of the equation is greater, as our current govtl laws on campaign funding are lax, & our regs re: conflict of interest are uniformly winked at, & our current [Koch] libertarian pockets are so deep. [Altho granted, “stupidity” best characterizes those who vote these forked-tongued folks into office.] Religious fervor? I’d like to see a poll on that one. I’m thinking fervent evangelists are pawns in the scheme.
The candidates full of cupidity
Sell “Christians” who buy in. (Stupidity.)
Libertarians yammer
[Ideological glamor]—
But bottom line’s always liquidity.
I like your five line poem. It works for me.
The erosion of public trust in our government is demonstrated by those who believe private schools are always better. What happened to the common good? As we become more and more tribal, who will lead us into the future? Elected officials have an obligation to serve everyone; not just those who stand to profit from education at the expense of our nation’s children. Our future as one nation…indivisible is at stake.