Governor Ron DeSantis signed legislation that will offer public money for the schooling of every student in the state, with no income limits. The state will pay tuition for private schools, religious schools, homeschooling or any other variety of schooling. Critics warned that this bill would be devastating for the state’s public schools. Voucher schools are completely unregulated. The students are not required to take state tests; the schools are not required to hire certified educators. Anything goes. Florida has tough accountability for public schools, but no accountability for voucher schools.
The Orlando Sentinel reported:
At a bill signing ceremony at a private boys high school in Miami, DeSantis described the legislation as “the largest expansion of education choice not only in the history of this state but in the history of these United States. That is a big deal.”
The controversial bill was celebrated by GOP leaders and parents who currently use the scholarships, but it also faces fierce criticism from those who say its price tag — estimates range from $210 million to $4 billion in the first year — will devastate public schools, which educate about 87% of Florida’s students.
Critics also argue an expansion will mean more public money spent on private, mostly religious, schools that operate without state oversight. Some of the schools hire teachers without college degrees and deny admission to certain children — most often those who don’t speak English fluently, have disabilities or are gay.
“Funneling this much in taxpayer dollars to private schools with no parameters to ensure accountability for student success is fiscally irresponsible and puts at risk the families and communities who utilize our state’s public schools and the services they provide,” said Sadaf Knight, CEO of the Florida Policy Institute, in a statement.
The think-tank opposes the expansion of Florida’s voucher programs and estimated the $4 billion hit to public schools.
Through its voucher programs, Florida currently provides scholarships to more than 252,000 children with disabilities or from low-income families.
Under the new law, the income guidelines are wiped out, though preference will be given to those from low and middle-income backgrounds. The result of the universal voucher law is that all of the 2.9 million public school-age children in Florida could opt for an “education savings account,” if they left public schools, and those already homeschooled or in private school could seek the money, too.
In 2017, the Orlando Sentinel published a prize-winning investigation of Florida’s voucher schools called “Schools Without Rules.” The series has been repeatedly updated. It’s worth subscribing to the newspaper to read the series.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
How is it Constitutional to indoctrinate students into a bronze-age sky faerie myth using public dollars? Is that the sound of the line separating religious and secular being erased?
Exactly
Having taught in public, private, and charter schools, I realized that a private religious school was overly focused on religious indoctrination, athletics, and remaining financially solvent rather than educating students. As an example, we were required to charge students for helping them after class. I refused to charge them. AIso, I accredited several charter schools and the problems were the lack of credentialed teachers, overcrowded classes, high turnover, and a limited pedagogical plan for addressing student needs. A cursory research on my part revealed was the over charging of rent to some of the campus locations. This doesn’t include mishandling of federal grant monies to start a charter The bottom line is taxpayer money should never be spent on either. Absolutely little to no oversight.
Thank you, Vicente. You confirmed everything we suspected about the private alternatives.
Governor Abbott of Texas has a slogan, “Education, not Indoctrination,” as he touts vouchers for private (esp religious) schools. He forgets that indoctrination is the purpose of religious schools.
Exactly, Diane
Thanks, Mr. Washington, for your experience-based insights.
There is no sugarcoating, no silver lining. Public education is the proverbial dead man standing in Florida. It’s dead. It’s only a matter of time before people notice. There is no right to education in Florida any more in theory, practice pending.
truth
“Schools without Rules” is the goal of the Federalist Society, ALEC, the Walton Family foundation, Bill Gates, et al.
Still, there will be rules: whatever every corporate CEO/billionaire wants without interference from the U.S. Constitution, state constitutions, and elected representatives.
Publicly funded private prisons are already operating outside the confines of justice. Public prisons are not free to extend a prisoner’s sentence for the slightest infraction, but the private prison industry is not, and that industry has rules (outside of democracy and the U.S. Constitution) designed to keep inmates in prison, because the more prisoners, the more money.
Without a traditional public school choice, children will become walking money and their parents will have no choice what their child is taught and how they are taught and how their children will be punished for whatever ruthless rules and punishments someone in Charter School management wants, without the wheels of democracy getting in the way.
It’s not much of a stretch to imagine a publicly funded opaque, secretive K-12 Charter School Industry building a pipeline to those publicly funded private prisons for the children they want to get rid of, permanently, where children don’t come home one day and the parents can’t find out what happened to them.
The final goal, get rid of the traditional public education system that is linked to our democracy guided by legislation mostly at the state level, and provide a voucher for parents to find a publicly funded profit based charter school (no matter how they spin their lies, every charter school is profit based without transparency).
Virtual schools will be for children that don’t want to go to school who have parents that are not doing their job as a parent. I read yesterday that the child labor laws are being ignored in every state and the federal agency responsible for catching the criminals violating those laws doesn’t have enough manpower to do its job. The private sector needs cheap labor and children are the cheapest around and easy to bully in every industry, even illegal industries like prostitution.
https://www.epi.org/publication/child-labor-laws-under-attack/
https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-report/states-look-to-ease-child-labor-laws-as-federal-scrutiny-grows
Florida is the test case to see if they can achieve their goals to destroy not only the public sector and labor unions, but to strip the working class of every protestoin there is for them.
If Dangerously Deranged Despot DeSantis, their puppet, pulls it off and destroys the public educaiton system in that state, they will repeat the same thing in state, after state, starting with the red states controlled by fascist loving, fact-hating, ignorantly dangerous MAGA RINOs.
Well said, Lloyd. The profit motive often results in exploitation of the vulnerable as we have seen in private prisons-youth facilities, nursing homes, sometimes healthcare and education as well.
Of course, DeSantis signed it. It has been the end game for right wing extremists like DeSantis and DeVos. They have always wanted to take a wrecking ball to public education and democracy. DeSantis’ idea of governance is to destroy local control and transfer decisions over to the state controlled by good ‘ole boys and sycophants. The man has a mob boss mentality.
If there’s one thing this blog has hammered home to me over the years is that I should NOT expect the United States of America to care about it’s teachers and public schools.
Because, as a nation, we don’t even care about our children.
More evidence I encountered this morning: an NPR story on the still dropping life expectancy in the U.S., alone among the most powerful nations in the world in this regard.
And, I quote: “Then, last week, more bad news: Maternal mortality in the U.S. reached a high in 2021. Also, a paper in the Journal of the American Medical Association found rising mortality rates among U.S. children and adolescents.
‘This is the first time in my career that I’ve ever seen [an increase in pediatric mortality] – it’s always been declining in the United States for as long as I can remember,’ says the JAMA paper’s lead author Steven Woolf, director emeritus of the Center on Society and Health at Virginia Commonwealth University. ‘Now, it’s increasing at a magnitude that has not occurred at least for half a century.'”
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/03/25/1164819944/live-free-and-die-the-sad-state-of-u-s-life-expectancy?fbclid=IwAR2wdS6wrZoXh4W3BzzSctKyGp0qy8UIbqFfMBtuI40DbvaTde_5UkgYsfU
I wonder how the so-called ‘Right to Life’ crowd views these facts? (More “thoughts and prayers” don’t count, at least in the real world of actual, breathing children who are being harmed at this very moment.)
Grotesque, appalling, and a cliche, all at the same time. The “banality of modern evil” right here, in our midst!
So DeSantis….Florida… vouchers galore…
We can see where this is all leading: epic tragedy.
John,
The Right to Life is only for fetuses, not for people already born. Certainly not for the mother.
Here’s more bad news that supports what you report. IQs are dropping as well. Increasing poverty and an over reliance on screens may be factors. We need to invest in our young people, get them off screens and into real reading, writing and reasoning, if we want to develop responsible citizens. https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeltnietzel/2023/03/23/american-iq-test-scores-show-recent-declines-according-to-new-study/?sh=7c04367d559f
IQ scores are 100% Pure Grade AA Bovine Excrement.
I agree, but they are an indicator of a general decline.
‘Right to Life’ crowd views these facts?
The right to life crowd scrupulously avoids facts.
Just in case someone was thinking a good Christian school environment would protect their children, we have today’s Nashville shooting at Covenant Academy to shatter the thin veil of insulation.
So sad. As long as we have easy access to guns, more guns than people, no one is safe.
This shooter was a 28 year old woman. The virtue spreads.
Diane, I thought you might be interest in this article by Baker Kurrus from the Arkansas Times. https://arktimes.com/arkansas-blog/2023/03/22/542158
What a perfect first paragraph.
Agreed…it’s a good metaphor.
Thank you!
Baker Kurrus is a wise man!
Take note, everyone. The GOP in Florida wants to pay higher taxes. The government is going to solve their problems, and they want to pay for it.
LOL
The right is interested in smaller government only in those areas in which government serves poor people, women, kids, and people of color. Otherwise, the bigger the better because more $$$$ for fat-cat donors!
I made the mistake, here, of saying that DeStalin was a smarter Trump Mini-Me.
Looks like I have to take the “smarter” part back.
This is complete and utter LUNACY!!!! The next generation of Floridians will grow up unqualified to survive in this world!
It’s frightening, Jill. Much love, btw, to you and yours!
It definitely is frightening, and what’s even more frightening is the possibility (though not likely) that DeSantis could someday have the opportunity to try to take his ideas nationwide. Sigh. Thanks, Bob, and love to you and yours as well!
Next generation? Have you ever spent five minutes in Florida? 😂
LOL. Florida Man. We put the duh in Flor-uh-duh.
Not since I was a small child and my parents took me there on vacation once, and now I am pretty sure I will NEVER spend five minutes in Florida!
The wealthy don’t care because they will still be able to pay for a world class education for their children. They only care about themselves.
The wealthy are getting a tuition subsidy from the state. What’s not to love from their perspective?
Exactly. This was what I sensed when Betsy DeVos was Secretary of Education and wanted to basically defund public schools, ensuring that only the wealthy would receive an education that would enable them to hold the highest positions in government and industry.
Yes, the next generation of Floridians will be trained to comply.
At least 45% of the American population already is.
The United States doesn’t need to worry about being destroyed by Russia or China, for we will destroy ourselves from within.
I wish someone as smart as Walter Cronkite was a current news broadcaster. Maybe some of the ignorance that prevails would hear facts instead of ‘alternate facts’ or ‘fake news’ that proliferates on the far R media. I don’t understand why anyone would vote for DeSantis or Trump. [I have a friend who actually believes that the Parkland school murders never occurred. Those were child actors.]
Freedom of the press is not just important to democracy, it is democracy.
Our job is only to hold up the mirror — to tell and show the public what has happened.
Success is more permanent when you achieve it without destroying your principles.
Whatever the cost of our libraries, the price is cheap compared to that of an ignorant nation.
The Repugnican Party has long been devoted to screwing the poor and middle class in order to further engorge the rich, who write the biggest donor checks. But in one significant way, it has changed. It used to wear the livery and fly the banner of the Free Market, a fictitious, magical entity that operated, or so Repugnican apologists and even Party leaders used to assure us, to produce the best of all possible worlds, including small government, which was supposed to result in more freedom. Ofc, this “philosophy” was the barest smear of pretend respectability over an actual belief system that melded together racism, classism, Social Darwinism, and eugenics. Pretend free Market fairy dust and small government in the name of liberty were the powder over the pox on the body politic.
Now, however, the Repugnican Party has dropped all pretense of noble motivations of the kind that used to be peddled by liars/flim-flam artists/court singers for the oligarchy like Milton Friedman and William F. Buckley. Now it has become just, simply, the party of crazy. It looks at a line around the block to get the autograph of Marjorie Taylor Greene and says, hey, this works. So, it’s now all crazy all the time. See Trump and DeSantis’s utterly unscientific and deadly denialism about Covid. Lots of blood on those tiny hands. See DeStalin’s willingness to destroy public education, to wipe it out.
Don’t look up.
Destroying public education and replacing it with private religious schools provides LOTS of opportunity for grift and for indoctrinating kids who don’t yet know better in nationalism and Bronze Age superstition and willingness to serve as cannon fodder. Lots of good ole boys will be raking in the education $$$$$s because of this legislation. And the pugs figure that if they are crazy enough, if they can keep people worked up enough with batshit craziness like wars on Disney and drag queens, they can distract from the grift. And for pugs, its ALL ABOUT THE GRIFT, sweet baby, ALL ABOUT THE GRIFT, ‘BOUT THE GRIFT. Sing it with me!
So, I figure, some pugs act and sound crazy and stupid because they are crazy and stupid, and others are just playing the old shell shill.
Tonight at 9:07 a post came up about voucher funding. Any chance someone has a copy of the article? Costs 47$ to get a copy
I don’t know what article you are referring to. If every student already in a private school and every home/schooler gets a taxpayer subsidy, that’s at least $1 billion for starters. Others in Florida have estimated an annual cost of $3-4 billion.
Hi Diane, I am so sorry for the incomplete email, got in a hurry. The post came up in my mail this morning but was dated Mar 3. Title is “Who’s putting up big the big money behind vouchers?” Inside Philanthropy is the link to the story but it cost 47$ (you have to subscribe) to see it. I am doing a presentation on the dark side/lies (of vouchers) to an Arlington Rotary Club and this info would be very helpful. Thank you
Inside Philanthropy reported on the major funding behind the push for vouchers.
Vouchers are not popular.
There have been nearly two dozen state referenda about vouchers. Vouchers have always lost, usually by large margins.
State legislatures have ignored the voice of the people and passed voucher legislation despite the public vote against them. Vouchers were rejected in Utah in 2007. Vouchers were rejected in Florida in 2012. Vouchers were rejected in Arizona in 2018. Yet the legislators in these states passed sweeping voucher laws, benefitting home schoolers and students already attending private schools.
Why?
There is a lot of money behind the voucher “movement.” The only thing moving in this “movement” is millions of dollars from rightwing billionaires into the pockets of Republican politicians.
All the usual rightwing suspects are pumping big money into the push for vouchers. Betsy DeVos, Charles Koch, the Bradley Foundation.
Connie Matthiessen of Inside Philanthropy writes:
Who is funding the push for school vouchers?
Dark money and disclosure rules make it difficult to pinpoint the funders that support vouchers or how much they are spending on these efforts. But what we do know is that a lot of the typical channels of conservative-leaning philanthropy are funding the organizations that support vouchers.
One reason it’s so hard to track is that a lot of that money is going through donor-advised funds, which don’t have to identify which individual DAF holders are making specific grants. The conservative DAF DonorsTrust, for example, and its affiliated Donors Capital Fund have been moving money to groups that support vouchers. As my colleague Philip Rojc reported in 2021, “Since its founding, DonorsTrust has given out over $1.5 billion. In addition to the sheer volume of money, a large proportion of DonorsTrust’s grantees operate in the policy arena, magnifying the impact of this funding on the public sphere.” It also raked in over $1 billion that year, according to Politico.
DonorsTrust grantees include voucher advocates like the Heritage Foundation, the American Federation for Children, which was created by Trump administration Education Secretary Betsy Devos, as well as the conservative Independent Women’s Forum. The Cardinal Institute, which is supporting education savings accounts in West Virginia, is also a grantee.
We do know some of the non-DAF funders that are supporting the voucher movement, and a few names come up repeatedly. One of these philanthropies is the Milwaukee-based Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, a long-running conservative funder that has had a major influence in Wisconsin politics and also helped bankroll efforts to discredit the 2020 election results, as Jane Mayer reported in The New Yorker….
The Bradley Foundation funds the Wisconsin Center for Law and Liberty, which supports education vouchers through its Bradley Impact Fund, a donor-advised fund. The Bradley Impact Fund includes among its grantees the Badger Institute, a conservative Wisconsin think tank that is advocating for the expansion of the privatization of the state’s public education system, as the Wisconsin Examiner reported. According to its 2021 grants list, the foundation has also supported Ohio-based Buckeye Institute and the Goldwater Institute in Arizona, which are both pushing voucher-type movements in their respective states.
DeVos herself is another major voucher backer, and has supported efforts in her home state of Michigan and beyond. She is involved with a number of organizations, including the American Federation for Children, which she chaired and helped found. That organization and its affiliates — the American Federation for Children Action Fund (a 527 group that supports candidates) and the 501(c)(3) American Federation for Children Growth Fund — have promoted education vouchers for years, including in Washington, D.C., as the Washington Post reported in 2017. More recently, it backed efforts to push ESA legislation in Idaho, according to a report in the Idaho Capital Sun (Republican state legislators just rejected a voucher bill there). The organization has also been active in privatization efforts in Texas, according to the Texas Monthly; and in Nebraska, the Nebraska Examiner reports that DeVos and her husband provided most of the dollars identified as funding from the American Federation for Children.
DeVos has worked hard to influence education policy in her home state of Michigan, with some success, but so far, has failed to establish a voucher program there. Most recently, in November, voters overwhelmingly opposed a school voucher plan she helped fund, as Chalkbeat reported. Devos and her family gave $6.3 million in support of the ballot proposal.
The State Policy Network also played a role in the pro-voucher campaign in Idaho, according to the Idaho Capitol Sun report. That organization, which oversees a coalition of state-based conservative think tanks, is backed by the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation and Charles Koch, according to a report by Documented, and has also received funding from DonorsTrust and Donors Capital Fund, according to Jane Mayer’s reporting. In an opinion piece for Washington Examiner, Chantal Lovell, the State Policy Network’s director of policy advancement, credited her group for expansion of education savings accounts across the country.
A number of organizations that Charles Koch has funded over the years have played a role in the voucher movement. The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a membership organization of right-leaning state legislators, promotes education vouchers, for example. ALEC has received support from Charles Koch, Donors Trust and the Bradley Foundation. ALEC-affiliated state legislators have spearheaded the voucher movement in Texas, according to the Texas Monthly. The libertarian Cato Institute, which Charles Koch helped create, according to Mayer, supports a form of school voucher called Scholarship Tax Credits.
Open the link and read the article to learn who else is funding the voucher putsch. You may surprised, as I was, to learn that the Gates Foundation gave $1 million to the Reason Foundation, a libertarian organization that supports vouchers and opposes public schools.
Senator Mike Braun [R-IN] wants more school choice. Here is part of a letter that he sent in reply to my protest letter. I highlighted parts of his letter. How wonderful that he ‘will be sure to keep my thoughts in mind’!! Braun receives my thoughts quite frequently and it never affects him. I don’t donate enough campaign money.
……………………….
…It is because I know how important my own educational experience was that I believe in school choice. Though my own K-12 public education was sufficient to prepare me for the career I have built since, I understand that in some cases, public education is not sufficient for some students’ individualized needs. Instead of arbitrarily assigning students to a school based on their geographic location, school choice programs expand opportunities for students. There is no doubt that high quality charter schools are a key part to ensuring that all children have the opportunity and space to succeed in education.
During my time in Congress, I will continue to support efforts to promote school choice, including high quality charter schools. That is why I am a proud cosponsor of, the Creating Hope and Opportunity for Individuals and Communities through Education (CHOICE) Act, a bill to expand school choice for elementary and secondary school students. More specifically, this legislation, ensures disabled children have access to the best educational option suited for them, expands choice for military families, and expands educational opportunities for low-income students in Washington, D.C. I am also a proud member of the Congressional School Choice Caucus, where we continue to work toward bipartisan solutions regarding education and ensure that funding for charter schools is not diminished. Simply put, private schools and charter schools allow for healthy competition with the public education system and lead to innovative approaches to education overall, which best serves children and their needs.
Yes it will be soon enough. Thank you