Lizette Alvarez, a journalist in Miami, wrote an opinion piece for The Washington Post, explaining the outrageousness of Florida’s universal voucher program.
What I find outrageous is that this story is not being covered by the Washington Post, the New York Times, or any of the other major media outlets. Nor is it reported as news by any of the network or cable stations.
Why are these stories not in the news every day?
CONSERVATIVE REPUBLICANS ARE WIPING OUT THE LONG-HONORED TRADITION OF SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE!!
CONSERVATIVE REPUBLICANS IN EVERY RED STATE ARE DESTROYING THEIR PUBLIC SCHOOLS DESPITE PUBLIC OPPOSITION!!
Well, at least, the Washington Post printed an opinion piece telling of the greatest theft of the public good in our lifetimes:
Florida public schools are having an awful year. Record numbers of teachers have left their jobs, and those who remain face a minefield of ambiguous culture-war dictates about what they can say and how they teach.
And it’s about to get worse for Florida’s beleaguered public schools.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) recently signed legislation that might radically undermine the state’s education system by making Florida’s already robust school voucher program the largest and most expensive in the country.
Beginning in July, the state will make it possible for every Florida K-12 student to receive a taxpayer-funded voucher or savings account worth $8,648. And for the first time in Florida, the vouchers will be available to children from wealthy families, even those who are home-schooled or who already attend private or religious schools. The money can go to tuition and educational expenses.
At least five other states have passed so-called universal choice programs — Arizona, Arkansas, Iowa, Utah and West Virginia — but Florida’s is, by far, the biggest. Other Republican-led states are considering similar bills.
The new policy is a revolutionary (and expensive) expansion. The original state voucher program, which began in 1999, was designed exclusively for a small number of children in F-rated, or failing, public schools and, later, special-needs students. The program grew to more than 177,000 students, from households earning up to $100,000.
About 2,300 private schools in Florida accept vouchers; 69 percent of them are unaccredited, 58 percent are religious and 30 percent are for-profit, according to the Hechinger Report.
In a state infamous as a magnet for schemers and grifters, there’s plenty of reason to worry as millions of dollars in new spending will soon pour into schools that have little accountability. When DeSantis celebrated passage of his vouchers-for-all gambit as a victory for school choice, he was no doubt being cheered on by those with no ideology other than diving into any trough freshly filled with public money.
But, as of July 1, even the child of a private-jet-flying tycoon will be eligible for a voucher. As state Rep. Marie Woodson (D) said, “This bill is an $8,000 gift card to the millionaires and billionaires who are being gifted with a state-sponsored coupon for something they can already afford.” The rich might not need it, but who passes up free money?
Estimates of the cost range from $209 million to $4 billion a year. About 2,300 private schools in Florida accept vouchers; 69 percent of them are unaccredited, 58 percent are religious and 30 percent are for-profit, according to the Hechinger Report….
In a state infamous as a magnet for schemers and grifters, there’s plenty of reason to worry as millions of dollars in new spending will soon pour into schools that have little accountability.
When DeSantis celebrated passage of his vouchers-for-all gambit as a victory for school choice, he was no doubt being cheered on by those with no ideology other than diving into any trough freshly filled with public money.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
And while Florida started a lot of this nonsense, a lot of other states, including Utah, are following Florida like lemmings off a cliff. SMH.
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Sick!
Vouchers and charters are BAD.
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This law is massive transfer of wealth from the poor and working class to the already wealthy. It panders to DeSantis’ right wing Christian base who believe that education should be in the hands of parents or the church. It will cost the state dearly. DeSantis’ reckless policies will eat up the surplus he keeps harping on in public. Then, citizens will start paying the price for DeSantis’ rogue policies that ingratiate him with right wing extremists while he further undermines public education.
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State by state, do protestant or Catholic schools get more tax money via vouchers?
An internet search proves that the term, Christian schools, is universally defined as a Protestantism category.
The word, Christian, is used deliberatively by influencers and media to provide cover for the power house of right wing Catholic politicking.
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I wonder if anyone in the public actually misunderstands the use of the term “Christian school.” Perhaps a few. Weren’t most people, growing up, or now, as citizens in a town, familiar with Catholic schools– always named after a saint, or a common Catholic phrase plus the word “Catholic” right in their title? That hasn’t changed. A “Christian school,” as the internet search demonstrates, is understood to indicate the non-Catholic variety. In the WaPo article posted, I count 5 relevant phrases, only one of which uses the term “Christian.” The other 4 say “religious.”
I hear you, though. It would be great to see some major articles that would bring into view the hand the Church hierarchy plays in this scene. Most attribute the movement to evangelicals, whether article mentions them or not.
But—there’s a leak somewhere! I’ve started to see the names of Leonard Leo and Koch pop up in comment threads to articles like this one. Maybe the exposure Leo has gotten (and Catholics in general) due to recent SCOTUS decisions is causing some to start following the money. The press attention to 1st Catholic charter school will increase scrutiny.
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bethree5 One of the most pervasive falsities about Catholic schools is that they are all about indoctrination. NADA. Often (in most cases?), their curricula are geared towards college prep. CBK
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CBK– And that is why they generally produce grads as educated as those from public schools (and far more so than grads of the one skillion little anodynic-named “Christian schools”).
I wouldn’t know about lack of indoctrination. But try telling it to my cradle-Catholic-educated husband, who swore never to darken the door again for that very reason. Ditto all my friends over the years likewise educated. Did things change somewhere along the line?
I suspect nonetheless that you are half-correct– and herein lies the irony of the great numbers of Church-alienated grads of Catholic schools, especially when you include through 12th grade.
My husband’s Catholic ed was terrific—superior: his hischool lit anthology was equivalent to the one I used as an Ivy League freshman; he was able to resurrect his hischool Spanish decades later for a project in Puerto Rico; his math ed got him a scholarship to a well-known engrg school. The Marist brothers were rigid and intolerant about questioning Church principles– yet taught them how to question and analyze perspicaciously via academic courses. All students had to do was connect the dots! 😉
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If this all is accurate, what possible need of 8600 bucks does a millionaire have? Indeed, what possible use of another million or so provide such a person?
This question gets at the fundamental problem of wealth. Why do the wealthy need to increase their wealth? Once comfort is attained, what else is needed?
The answer, I think, is a strange mixture of self-gratification and power, each feeding the other. I see this in myself. I live comfortably enough, but enjoy the ability to express myself on forums like this. How much more would I be enamored of my own opinion if I had the money to expand that opinion by contributing to some idea in a significant way?
This is why we equate freedom with economic equality (or a degree thereof). We cannot have real freedom until all of us are obliged to speak and listen to each other. If some can speak, and others, by virtue of their economic status, are prevented from doing so, how can we say this is not tyranny?
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Let’s give money away unnecessarily to the wealthy, but require people in their fifties that get laid off, just shy of their ability to collect a pension, and force them take a low wage job to qualify for SNAP benefits.
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retired teacher As I read your note, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
But I think having a lot of money and power comes with the fear of losing it; and so, having it only ripens whatever obsessiveness we already foster. CBK
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Roy,
Read “The Spirit Level,” written by British sociologists. The takeaway: the more equal a society is, the happier. The less equal, the more anger and unhappiness.
Among the rich, enough is never enough. There is always someone richer.
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Roy- it is about preserving a power structure. The goal is to inculcate in the next generation the same, White over Black, man over woman, straight over gay and Christian/Catholic/LDS over non-believers and those in other religious sects.
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Roy– Sigh. Probably true. But on this particular point– giveaways to the rich– I never imagine the vastly wealthy devoting a second thought to ideology. I picture instead a drafty Victorian office full of Bob Cratchits dutifully applying any potential penny of profit to Scrooge’s plus column. That is their job, and they’d be fired if they didn’t find and implement every one.
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Hello Diane In the light of this and other discussions here, it might be good to clarify the distinction between public support of (a) “Religious Schools” and (b) having curricula and “sections,” etc., in public schools on world religions (by whatever name).
I know some schools do this already; and it’s a given in most colleges and universities; at least in my experience with “core” courses from awhile back; and my courses at University of Virginia on education were not shy about the intimate relationship between religious movements and the history of education in our own country, both good and bad. At Georgetown, they offered courses on historical aspects of religion (like on Jefferson’s studies, Thomas Aquinas, and Augustine,) but none were required. Also, if you’ve read Tocqueville’s “Democracy in America,” you will know how democracy and religion are entwined in history.
Giving religious movements “lite” treatment or leaving it out of the study of history altogether (as an aspect of history) in K-12 cripples that study and serves the same kinds of biases as does avoiding the study of slavery, or women’s disenfranchisement, or the Holocaust (fill in the blank). It makes public education itself into a quasi-propaganda machine . . . by omission.
On the “however” side of things, even though it seems such a study would satisfy many people who belong to religious organizations, such a study serves to put students’ own religious/familial background in the context of many other religious movements and their conflicts; and so, for some who think education means indoctrination, and who harbor tribal and totalitarian ambitions (i.e., uncivilized), such contextualizing would not satisfy and might even be seen as insulting to their own religious order.
I have heard of some schools over the years, both religious based and secular, who offer an opt-out situation to parents. For many, however, “secular schools” means anti-religious or even atheist. And there’s the crux: NONE or ALL . . . the historical prescription for ongoing conflict. CBK
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I’ve yet to see a study that puts
religious backgrounds in the same
context as government backgrounds.
They’re both concocted, made up, in
need of a make believe dose of
wishful “thinking”.
Imprinting ideas and opinions,
in the strict sense of the word,
prejudices, on the minds of the
children, occurs whether the
“process” is named education
or indoctrination.
A change in naming doesn’t change
the outcome.
The proof is in the pudding…
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The purpose of religious schools is to INDOCTRINATE children into the dogma of the religion. There is no ambiguity.
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NoBrick Brick. CBK
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No Brick
A democratic government has as definition, majority rule, minority right. Why is comparable in the Catholic or LDS churches?
The government follows the rule of man. Churches follow the rule of God (as interpreted by self-serving priests, for example, denying the top jobs to women based on the ludicrous notion that Jesus doesn’t want women in the pulpit).
If you are a woman or gay and don’t know the difference between government and religious sects, oh my…..
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Thank you for writing this. We HAVE TO GET this information out to the public and also make everyone aware of what the Moms for Liberty, haha, are doing to school books and curriculum
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