Peter Greene here disentangles the latest move to expand vouchers in Florida and the latest attempt to demolish public schools in a state where 80 percent of students attend public schools. Florida’s voucher schools currently are not required to take state tests or to have any standards for teachers or principals or to adhere to the state curriculum. Most of the voucher schools are religious, ignoring the State Constitution which explicitly prohibits public funding of religious schools and ignoring a 2012 state referendum that rejected vouchers. There are schools where the “educators” do not have college degrees, where racism is okay, where gay students and staff are barred, and where students are using textbooks that teach hate. No matter. The Orlando Sentinel published a three-part investigation called “Schools Without Rules.” Florida wants more of the same.
Greene writes:
Florida’s legislature is at it again, joining in a national trend of using the pandemic crisis to fuel school voucher initiatives.
Manny Diaz, Jr., (R-Hialeah) has spent his career chip chip chipping away at public education in Florida, and yesterday he returned with another bold idea.
Florida has allowed choice programs to grow like an unweeded garden, but Diaz’s new bill proposes to collapse five “scholarship” (aka “voucher”) programs into just two Education Savings Account (ESA) programs. So Family Empowerment, Hope, Florida Tax Credit Scholarship–all under one roof now, along with the newly condensed Gardner-McKay programs for students with special needs...
So here comes SB 48, designed to expand the eligibility for programs, combine them, and put them under ESAs and folding in Tax Credit Scholarships. There are a few other wrinkles as well.
It also reduces oversight by the state–previously the outfits overseeing the tax credit scholarships had to be audited annually, to make sure they were spending public tax dollars appropriately; now they would be audited only every three years. That’s important, because an ESA is like a debit card given to parents, and history tells us that without some oversight, the tax dollars carried by that debit card can end up spent on….well, in Arizona they discovered about $700,000 in ESA money on beauty supplies, clothing, and even attempts to just grab the cash.
Publicity touts “adding flexible spending options” as well. The vouchers can be used for the following: instructional materials (including digital devices); curriculum; tuition for full or part-time for everything from postsecondary courses to a “home education program” to private school to virtual school; fees for tests (SAT, AP, industry certification); Florida’s prepaid college savings programs; contracted services, including classes from public school; part-time tutoring services (from someone who has certification or has just “:demonstrated mastery of subject area knowledge”); summer school or after-school ed fees; transportation (under $750). So, a whole lot of things other than just a voucher to go to school somewhere...
This, for many choice fans, is getting close to the end game. The dream– rich people pay fewer taxes and only support the schools they want to support. Wealthy people still have access to all the choices they want, while everyone else gets to pick through a free market morass in search of do-it-yourself education for their children. Education becomes mostly privatized edu-business, and the public schools remains in some markets to do their underfunded best with the “customers” that nobody wants. But hey. Lower taxes. Less paying for the education of Those People. Put Jesus back in charge of more education, even if that means the education is not very good, aggressively exclusionary, or even abusive.
We’ll see what happens. Pay attention. Because Florida remains on the cutting edge of disrupting public education into oblivion, the model which other states that hope to be the very worst still aspire to follow.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
How to create a permanent serf class to serve the master class…
So TRUE, speduktr.
Ever since Scott was elected governor, Florida has been attempting to take wrecking ball to its public schools. DeSantis has continued on this libertarian path. DeSantis has created laws that allow the state to override any local governance. With the appointment of Richard Corcoran who called the teachers union “evil,” they are attempting to implement top down privatization through charter school and voucher expansion. At the same time they have worked to under fund public schools. The reality is that most public schools continue to serve students despite all the incentives for parents to place their children in a privatized option. The vast majority of parents in Florida support quality public schools. If it were up to most of the parents to vote out DeSantis and Corcoran, they would be gone. Unless more voters support a Democrat for governor, Florida will continue on the road to insane, ridiculous education policy.
It started earlier with Jeb Bush, but while he got the ball rolling, Rick Scott certainly did his best to push forward even further.
True. Jeb Bush was the original wrecking ball. The major dismantling started under Scott. It is sad that Jeb Bush that still peddles cyber snake oil has allied himself with Biden.https://www.forbes.com/sites/petersuciu/2020/11/07/jeb-bush-among-those-who-offered-congratulations-to-joe-biden-on-twitter–others-werent-so-nice-on-both-sides/?sh=e53b74a3c35c
“It also reduces oversight by the state”
This is really key to the ed reform ideological vision- gutting regulations.
They don’t just want to outsource all education to contractors, they want no regulations at all on the contractors. A free for all- any contractor can get a state contract and there won’t be any oversight or accounting at all on the public funding.
I was looking at one of the tutoring programs they’re pushing- the ONE requirement for tutors is the tutors must be older than 13. Thirteen years old. They’ll put literally anyone on a tutoring role and pay them with public funds.
Quality doesn’t matter at all in ed reform. 90% of it is low quality junk.
This proposal “unbundles” education. Parents would receive a card from the state that will allow them to be the ultimate education consumer. They can buy math, reading, science services separately depending on what they believe they children need. The potential for gaming and swindling under such a non-system of education is extraordinary. The potential for children to get lost in such an absurd maze of education services is mind-boggling. Never mind, that children living in abusive homes will be at greatest risk.
As Greene points out, if this becomes policy, many children will be condemned to a status of permanent under class. This plan is really an anti-tax scheme for the wealthy. While wealthy young people will get access to good schools taught by human teachers, working people and the poor will shop for education products or attend surviving under funded public schools. In my opinion, this sounds like a caste system, not “opportunity.”
Well put. Thank you.
If the public is wondering why no one in government lifted a finger to assist public schools in the pandemic, I think we have our answer. They were too busy meeting ed reform demands on vouchers to perform any work at all that would benefit public school students.
Our schools and students are unfashionable. It’s not a smart career move to serve them,
Here’s Iowa, another state utterly dominated by the ed reform echo chamber:
DES MOINES — Two major education pushes favored by Gov. Kim Reynolds and majority GOP legislators — expanding school choices for Iowa parents and students and providing 100 percent in-person instruction for those who want it — will start getting Statehouse consideration next week.
Reynolds’ 65-page bill, released Wednesday, proposes three elements of school choice, which she highlighted in her Condition of the State address earlier this month. Her bill would:
• Establish state funding for students in struggling public schools who wish to attend a private school.
• Create a charter school program.
Nothing at all is offered to students and families in public schools. They simply do no work at all on our behalf.
Here’s a challenge for you if you live in one of these states- look at the executive and legislative actions over one year. Try to find anything at all that benefits or is even relevant to public school students.
Public school students are the last priority. No one does any work at all on their behalf.
The huge ed reform push to expand vouchers is interesting because there isn’t even an attempt to bring in public school parents and students.
Whole state “education plans” where public schools and public school students are not even mentioned. They’ve essentially disappeared your students and schools- made them invisible.
Outright hostility not to just to public schools, but to all the students who attend one.
Hey, if you live in San Diego, you can use your voucher money to go to Disneyland! The San Diego Union Tribune had a great feature about that last year.
Curmudgucation is one of the best education sites out there, and a substantive complement to this blog. I also regularly refer to Chapter 4 of Slaying Goliath to “Meet the Resistance” and know where to get pertinent, trustworthy information. I wouldn’t know about Florida, or anywhere else for that matter, if it weren’t for links to great blogs and news outlets. Praises.
This reaffirms the concern that while it is important to get support from a Department of Education at the Federal level, the heavy lifting is in state assemblies where the 29 have Republican majorities that are beholden to corporate and PAC special interests. Public Schools in America remain endangered.
With the exodus of DeVos, state legislatures have redoubled their quest to crush the public sector.