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Police Remove 3-year-old from Soccer Game Because He is Too Good

By dianeravitch
October 26, 2026 //
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This is a remarkable story. The parents of a 3-year-old in Winter Park, Florida, signed him up for a league of mostly 5-year-olds. The little guy dominated the game. No one could get the ball away from him, and he easily scored against the older boys.

Someone called the police and complained about the 3-year-old.

It’s not a hoax. Watch the little guy playing soccer, and you can see a future great in soccer.

One journal called The Baller Alert reported:

A 3 year old soccer standout named Nevada was kicked out of his youth league in Winter Park, Florida, and police escorted his family off the field after parents on the opposing team complained that none of their kids could get the ball from him.

Another one, Blacksportsonline, reported the story.

A family says police escorted them and their 3-year-old son off an i9 Sports youth soccer field in Winter Park after the league issued a trespass, following complaints from opposing parents that the boy held the ball too much and was “trying to put on a show.”

The incident, captured in video the family posted to TikTok under the handle @nevadaney10 and later shared widely, shows the child — identified by his parents as Nevada — playing in a league with kids roughly two years older. According to the family’s accounts in the video and related posts, he dominated possession, was substituted multiple times in a roughly 30-minute game, and still scored multiple goals (the family cited 10 in one game). Opposing parents are heard complaining that the play was unfair.

Nevada is black. Most of the other players are not. Could that be the reason he was ejected from the game?

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Categories Bigotry, Competition, Ethics, Florida

Bruce Baker Evaluates the Sorry Condition of Education in Florida

By dianeravitch
October 23, 2026 //
0

Bruce Baker’s evaluation of education policy in Florida demonstrates that the state operates on the crazy theory that cutting funding is good, diverting funding from district schools to charters and vouchers is good, and underpaying teachers makes them better.

All of this makes no sense.

Read his report.

Here are his conclusions:

Several themes emerge from the analyses presented in this report.

First, regarding long term trends in Florida school funding, adequacy and efficiency:

• Florida schools have been squeezed by declining state aid since the early 2000s as the state has pursued its race to the bottom on taxpayer financing of public elementary and secondary schools.

• That squeeze has resulted in declining competitiveness of teacher wages over time and even more so, declining staffing ratios in schools increasing the workload on those that remain.

• Adjusted for labor costs over time, school spending per pupil in Florida and in Miami-Dade specifically, is less than it was 30 years ago.

• Florida school districts have responded by producing achievement levels beyond expectations given the resources they’ve been provided. Florida school districts are efficient when compared to school districts nationally, accounting for differences in costs.

• Still, because of the long slow reduction in effort, spending, staffing ratios and competitive wages, student outcomes in Florida have continued to decline, dropping among states and dropping in recent, post-COVID years as other states and the nation, on average, have begun to rebound.

• As the state has reduced its share of funding for public schooling, local districts have been forced to make up the difference with increased property taxes, to mitigate further damage to student outcomes by slowing the declining of competitive wages for teachers.

Second, regarding providing equal educational opportunity to all children in Florida:

Financing Florida’s Schools

• The state school finance system provides no discernable support to schools serving students with greater educational needs, outside of additional support for children with disabilities.

• The state’s charter school sector exacerbates inequality across student populations by operating within low-income neighborhoods, but serving far fewer children from low-income families, fewer children who are English learners and fewer children with disabilities.

• The state’s charter school sector also yields poor educational outcomes on state assessments when compared to traditional district schools or district magnet schools serving similar populations within the same district.

Finally, regarding spending for the greatest return on investment:

• The state has currently budgeted $3.8 billion dollars to be spent on students attending private schools, approximately 70% of which will likely be spent on children from higher income families who had not previously attended public district schools. That 70% of $3.8 billion would likely yield far greater return on investment and greater public benefit, based on existing research, if invested in public district schools in high poverty settings.

These findings lead to a clear set of policy recommendations. As shown in this report, the state has the economic capacity to pursue these recommendations. Even at the state’s own prior (2000s) education effort, funding for public schools would be 28% higher than it is presently. Add to that, more efficient allocation of funds currently being diverted to the school voucher program, and much of the state’s public education adequacy gap could be eliminated. As such, we propose the following recommendations:

Recommendation #1 – Phase 1: Engage in the work of setting a manageable standard of “high quality” public schooling for Florida’s children by engaging in analyses of the costs associated with providing each and every child in Florida with equal educational opportunity to achieve high education outcomes.

d. Establish a statewide commission on school funding.

e. Engage stakeholders in setting standards of excellence for Florida children.

f. Engage experts to estimate the costs associated with meeting those standards, applying appropriately rigorous methods.

Recommendation #1 – Phase 2: Guided by those estimates, reform the school finance formula and increase state aid to schools so as to provide them with the necessary resources for all children to have equal educational opportunity to achieve high education outcomes. That is, meet the constitutional standard ratified by Florida voters in 1998 and 2002. This should include estimates of commensurate funding for charter schools, based on needs and costs.

b. Take eliminating or reducing property taxes off the table. The most effective form of property tax relief is increased state aid, as would occur under implementation of this recommendation.

Recommendation 2 – Part 1: Impose a moratorium on charter school expansion, including the Schools of Hope Program. The existing charter school sector in Florida is compromising equity, eroding efficiency and producing poor educational outcomes for those it serves. New York’s Success Academies have no proven track record of serving children like those they’d be called upon to serve in Miami-Dade, having served very few English learners and underserving Latino communities in New York. Like Miami-Dade’s current charter sector, they have also underserved low-income populations and children with disabilities. Introduction of Success Academies in Miami-Dade will most likely exacerbate equity concerns that are already significant.

Recommendation 2 – Part 2: Establish new regulations for evaluating existing charter operators and vetting new charter operators to ensure improved equity in the distribution of students by their needs across schools. Adopt and enforce stricter regulations pertaining to student outcomes.

Recommendation 2 – Part 3: Adopt updated charter school legislation to ensure that charter schools are sufficiently “public,” required to operate as if “state actors,” protecting children’s constitutional rights and abiding by all relevant federal statutes.

Recommendation 3: Freeze expansion of the voucher program to free up state resources to support a fully funded, overhauled public school finance formula, to provide a uniform system of schools.

Categories Academic Freedom, Accountability, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Extremism, Florida

Students Pay the Price for Failing Voucher Programs Where Education is a Fiction

By dianeravitch
October 13, 2026 //
0

Bruce Baker has written a sterling article about the real price of voucher programs. Who pays? Students.

Universal voucher programs like those of Arizona and Florida provide little, if any, educational benefit to students. They attend schools where teachers need not be certified or experienced. Their curriculum is non-existent. Their standards are phony.

The state pays for them not to get an education. The same may be said of home schooling, where in many cases uneducated parents are sharing their lack of an education with their children.

The result of this negligence is that these young people will earn less money over their lifetimes and have limited opportunities because of their mediocre or non-existent education.

The parents and the state are stigmatizing children by giving them a voucher.

The infamous federal report called “A Nation at Risk” warned about “a rising tide of mediocrity.” Today’s vouchers and home schoolers are responsible for “a rising tide of failure.”

Baker writes:

Back in January 2013, I wrote about three Kansas judges who saw right through the state’s claim that deep funding cuts would cause no harm. The Shawnee County District Court panel in Gannon v. State of Kansas (decision, p. 188) put it this way:

Simply, school opportunities do not repeat themselves and when the opportunity for a formal education passes, then for most, it is most likely gone. We all know that the struggle for an income very often – too often – overcomes the time needed to prepare intellectually for a better one.

If the position advanced here is the State’s full position, it is experimenting with our children which have no recourse from a failure of the experiment.

The Kansas experiment was a legislature cutting school budgets and betting that nobody would be hurt. That was bad enough. But at least in Kansas, the children were still in schools. There were still teachers, curricula, and test results that a court could look at.

A decade later, Arizona and Florida are running a different experiment. They hand public money to parents, place few limits on how it is spent, and ask almost nothing about whether the child learned anything. If that experiment fails for a particular child, who answers for it? Who does the 18-year-old sue?

The new experiment: money out, no questions asked

Arizona’s universal Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) program, expanded to all students in 2022, now serves more than 100,000 children and is expected to cost over $1 billion a year. Florida followed in 2023 with universal eligibility and a homeschool ESA, the Personalized Education Program (PEP), worth roughly $8,000 per child.

Consider what the statutes actually require of the parent. Under A.R.S. § 15-2402, the Arizona parent signs an agreement to use “a portion” of the money to provide instruction in reading, grammar, mathematics, social studies and science. That is the whole of the academic obligation. Then comes the remarkable part, subsection I: a signed agreement “constitutes school attendance” for purposes of the state’s compulsory attendance law. The contract is the education, as far as the state is concerned.

There is no testing requirement for ESA students in Arizona, no curriculum approval, no portfolio, and no evaluator. Even homeschool guides that are friendly to the program say so plainly. The state checks receipts, not learning.

Florida asks slightly more. PEP families must submit a student learning plan and have the child take a nationally norm-referenced test each year, with results sent to the scholarship funding organization (FLDOE PEP FAQ; Step Up PEP Family Handbook). But what triggers loss of funding is failing to take and submit the test, not the score. A child can test at a first-grade level in tenth grade and the money keeps flowing.

That is the experiment. The state funds the choice, defines the choice as compliance, and measures nothing that would tell anyone whether the child is learning.

What the money has bought

Reporters in both states have spent three years documenting what this money buys. Some of it was approved under the rules. Some was flagged as improper only after the fact. All of it was spent from accounts that exist, by law, to educate a child.

Baker here posts a chart that includes tickets to theme parks, video games, pianos, lingerie, jewelry, gift cards, payments to parents, trampolines, kayaks, appliances, paddle boards, LEGO sets, dolls, stuffed animals, surfboards, treadmills, swing sets, and much more. Open the link to see his chart.

In fairness to the programs’ defenders, Arizona’s education department maintains that most purchases are valid and that misspending is a small share of the total. Florida’s administrator, Step Up For Students, requires a statement of educational benefit for theme park tickets and caps them at $500 a year (WFTV). When Florida legislators tried to tighten the list in 2024, families lobbied against it and the restrictions failed.

But “small share” is the wrong frame. Arizona auto-approved purchases under $2,000 — over a million requests and $124 million — to clear a backlog, with plans to audit later. Of 18,000 parents flagged for $10.3 million in banned purchases, only six were referred for prosecution. And every audit is an audit of purchases. None asks the only question that matters to the child: was anyone teaching me to read?

The legal question: who does the 18-year-old sue?

Imagine a young woman turning 18 in Phoenix or Orlando. For a decade, her ESA paid for theme park passes, a television, a trampoline and a lot of LEGO. Nobody ever taught her to read beyond a primer. She has no transcript and no diploma. The state that funded all of it called her “in attendance” the entire time. What are her options?

I’m not a lawyer, and what follows is a policy researcher’s tour of the doctrinal terrain, not legal advice. But the terrain is not encouraging.

1. Sue the parent. Arizona abolished parental immunity in Broadbent v. Broadbent (1995), replacing it with a “reasonable and prudent parent” standard. Florida has never gone that far. So in Arizona, at least, a negligence claim against a parent is not barred at the door. But she would then run into the doctrine of educational malpractice. Since Peter W. v. San Francisco Unified School District (1976), courts have refused to recognize a duty of care for academic outcomes. They cite the lack of a workable standard of care, uncertain causation, and the burden on schools. If courts won’t hold trained, licensed educators to a duty to teach a child to read, a court is unlikely to impose one on a parent the legislature expressly freed from any measurable standard.

A narrower theory may be stronger: misappropriation. The Arizona statute says ESA money may be used “only” for the expenses of the qualified student. A diamond necklace or a family Disneyland trip is not that. A custodial-account or constructive-trust theory, treating the parent as having diverted money held for the child’s benefit, at least fits the facts. But that recovers the misspent dollars, not the lost education. And a judgment against a parent with no assets is worth little.

2. Sue the vendor. The private school, the online program, the tutoring center or the “ESA-approved” camp are private actors. A contract or consumer-fraud claim might reach a vendor that took money and delivered nothing. But a vendor that delivered exactly what was purchased (a ski pass, a paddleboard) did nothing wrong. And educational malpractice bars claims that the instruction itself was inadequate.

3. Sue the state, under the federal Constitution. This is where the Kansas panel’s warning bites hardest. San Antonio v. Rodriguez (1973) held there is no fundamental federal right to education. DeShaney v. Winnebago County(1989) held the Due Process Clause generally imposes no duty on the state to protect a child from harm inflicted by a private actor, including a parent. The one federal appellate ruling to recognize a right to a basic minimum education, Gary B. v. Whitmer (6th Cir. 2020), was vacated when the full court took it up after the case settled. She might argue that the state created the danger by funding the deprivation and deeming it lawful attendance. That theory is untested in this setting.

4. Sue the state, under the state constitution. Both states have education clauses. Florida’s is among the strongest in the country, declaring education a “paramount duty” and requiring a “high quality system of free public schools.” In Bush v. Holmes (2006), the Florida Supreme Court struck down a voucher program for diverting public funds to private schools outside that uniform system. But in Citizens for Strong Schools v. State Board of Education (2019), a divided court held that “high quality” offered no judicially manageable standard. More fundamentally, state adequacy litigation produces prospective, system-wide remedies. It is not a damages action for an individual who already aged out.

5. Ask the state to step in. Ordinarily, a child receiving no education might trigger truancy enforcement or an educational neglect inquiry. In Arizona, that door is closed by statute: the signed ESA agreement constitutes school attendance under § 15-2402(I). When the state does catch misspending, its remedy is to suspend the account or send it to collections. Any money recovered goes back to the state, not to the child whose education it was meant to buy.

So the honest answer to the legal question is: almost none. The 18-year-old is, in the Kansas panel’s words, a subject of an experiment with no recourse from its failure. The difference is that in Kansas, the state was cutting the budget of institutions still obligated to teach her. In Arizona and Florida, the state has written itself out of that obligation and handed the obligation, and the money, to someone the law does not hold to any measurable standard.

Please open the link and finish reading this excellent critique.

Categories Arizona, Education Reform, Florida, Privatization, School Choice, Students, Vouchers

Florida Wants to Be First State to Repeal All Vaccine Mandates

By dianeravitch
October 9, 2026 //
2

Florida is one crazy state. Its state leaders interfere in every aspect of people’s lives. Under the leadership of Governor Ron DeSantis, it passed a rigid abortion ban, denying every woman in the state the right to control her body and her life choices.

DeSantis has led a campaign to destroy the state’s public schools, so the state now spends billions yearly to subsidize charter schools, unaccountable voucher schools, and home schooling. Most of the voucher schools are religious schools with uncertified teachers.

As his Surgeon General, DeSantis chose a doctor with extremist views against vaccines. Parents can still get their children vaccinated, but they will be in school with unvaccinated children.

Dr. Joseph Ladapo’s goal is to eliminate all vaccine requirements.

CBS News reported:

TALLAHASSEE — The Florida Department of Health is moving forward with its push to remove the requirement for four vaccines for children entering schools, but has dropped its attempt to expand exemptions for the immunization requirements.

In August, the DOH struck the words “sincerely held moral or ethical belief” from a proposed rule change that would have allowed parents to opt not to get their children vaccinated for various diseases, which are normally required to attend K-12 public schools. The exemptions currently in place must be based on religious tenets and practices.

Meanwhile, the DOH also announced a public meeting next Thursday in Lake Mary to discuss repealing the requirement of four vaccines from entry requirements for PreK-12 public and private schools.

Immunizations for Hepatitis B, varicella (chicken pox), Haemophilus influenza type b (Hib) and pneumococcal conjugate would no longer be required to attend Florida schools under the proposal. The move has been in play for over a year after Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo announced his intent to get rid of all vaccine mandates in the state.

The immunization requirements considered for repeal by DOH are an agency rule, not in state law, and can be repealed by the agency itself.
The Florida chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics said in a statement they “remain concerned,” about the state’s move to weaken the state’s vaccination mandates.

“Florida’s pediatricians will continue to make their voices heard in opposition to this proposed rule that would undermine the health of Florida’s children and communities,” the statement reads. “When school vaccine protections are eliminated, immunization rates decrease, leaving more people, including those too young or medically unable to be vaccinated themselves, vulnerable to contracting these dangerous illnesses.”

In a comment submitted by FCAAP in opposition to the proposed rule, the advocacy group estimated the repeal of vaccination requirements in Florida would result in a reduction of the state’s GDP by $74 million in the first year and nearly $9 billion over a decade.

Attempts to repeal all vaccine mandates in the state began over a year ago when Gov. Ron DeSantis and Ladapo called on the Legislature to change state law. Legislative action is needed to remove the requirements for the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine, polio, diphtheria, rubeola and tetanus vaccines.

But even though the move to repeal all vaccine mandates was supported by DeSantis, First Lady Casey DeSantis and then-Education Commissioner Anastasios Kamoutsas, no legislator filed a bill in any of the multiple legislative sessions in 2026.

Multiple attempts at a “Medical Freedom” bill that would have expanded vaccine exemptions and mandated doctors to provide an alternate vaccine schedule passed the state Senate but failed to pass the state House.

Categories DeSantis, Ethics, Extremism, Florida, Health, Medicine, Science

Florida Parents and Teachers Aghast at Downplaying of Climate Change and Evolution in K-12 Science Standards

By dianeravitch
October 5, 2026 //
13

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis doesn’t want the state’s children to learn modern science. The Orlamdo Sentinel reported that parents and teachers were “gobsmacked” by the state’s new science standards. In one of the states most threatened by environmental degradation, the state has deleted the study of evolution and diminished the study of climate change.

Stephen Walker reported:

Florida’s new plan for teaching science in public schools lacks depth, skirts around the important topics of climate change and evolution and would be a “disservice” to the state’s students, dozens of parents and teachers told the Florida Department of Education late Wednesday.

Nearly 300 people attended a virtual education department forum, with nearly all 29 speakers criticizing the state’s proposed new science standards, which are benchmarks for what should be taught in science lessons in kindergarten through 12th grade. Experts who’ve reviewed them have shared similar views, calling them a step backwards

The state released its proposed standards on Sept. 25 and is now taking public comment on them, both on its website and in several meetings.

Robin Williams, a retired biology and environmental science teacher, called them a “disservice” to Florida students because they don’t fully tackle evolution.

The state’s current standards, adopted in 2008, call evolution one of science’s “big ideas” and insist it must be taught.

That makes sense and should not change, Williams said.

“Evolution is a fundamental underlying process unifying all of biology. To leave it out is ideology posing as biology,” she said.

The proposed standards barely mention evolution — a scientific theory explaining change in living species over time from natural selection that has been a cornerstone of biology for more than a century. The term “evolution,” in fact, is never defined in the new high school life sciences standards, though the concepts are sprinkled across several units.

The new standards would replace the current set, adopted after a months-long, statewide fight over the inclusion of evolution as a required subject of study. Those who opposed the 2008 standards argued creationism, or the biblical story that God created all living things, should be taught alongside evolution.

Education Commissioner Henry Mack seemed to some to re-ignite that fight with a statement released with the new standards that included a reference to “the book of creation.”

But Thursday morning he took to social media to insist he was not “smuggling a Sunday-school lesson into Biology,” adding in his post on X that, “I am not advocating religious influence in the standards. I am opposing the opposite error: treating nature as a prop for adult ideology, or treating wonder as something to be talked out of children by leftist zealots.”

His original statement said, “The classical tradition taught that nature is intelligible because it is ordered—that the book of creation can be read by reason. Florida’s new science standards will form students who observe carefully, reason rigorously, and treat the natural world as something given to be known, not invented.”

During Wednesday’s forum, one parent asked for clarification on what Mack meant by that. But state education department employees facilitating the meeting did not respond to that or other questions from speakers, instead thanking attendees and encouraging them to submit their concerns in writing.

Chris Vercelli, a parent in Sarasota County who regularly attends government meetings to preach Christianity, suggested at Wednesday’s meeting that he read the commissioner’s statement as an endorsement of his views and said he was in “full support” of the new standards.

It was “refreshing” to hear the state was “entertaining the idea of teaching creation and intelligent design in schools,” he said, referring to the argument that an “intelligent cause” better explains living things than evolution by natural selection.

“The way that evolution is taught really is like a bait and switch … that means that everything originated from primordial soup, and there is no God. That’s just ridiculous. That is like total non-science,” Vercelli said.

The proposed standards also give little attention to human-made climate change and do not use that term, instead referring to “anthropogenic activities” that affect “Earth’s systems.”

Brad Dupke, an Earth science teacher and geologist in Hillsborough County, asked how the state expects him to teach a required unit on fossils without teaching evolution and climate change.

“We need to call a spade a spade instead of trying to dance around what it is. I can’t teach geologic history of the Earth without being able to say how the climate changed,” he said.

In addition to complaints about the state’s proposed handling of evolution and climate change, several speakers said the standards were too numerous and lacked rigor and others criticized the way the state posted its proposal for public review. Instead of a single document, the department initially posted each standard on a separate page, requiring clicking through hundreds of pages to view all the standards.

I have s hunch that students in Florida don’t learn about the Scopes trials read the fictionalized version Inherit the Wind.

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Categories Accountability, Censorship, Curriculum, DeSantis, Environment, Ethics, Florida, Science

Florida Couple Homeschooled Their Grandchildren While Confining Them to a Truck and Sexually Abusing Them

By dianeravitch
September 4, 2026 //
13

In Florida, a couple were arrested and charged for keeping their four grandchildren confined in a truck for six years and allowing them to be sexually abused during their long confinement.

The good news (sarcasm) is that they homeschooled the children by enrolling them in Khan Academy online classes.

Did the couple know they were eligible for $32,000 in voucher payments to pay for all their educational expenses from the state of Florida? Maybe they did and were collecting. Why pay for the Khan Academy classes when the state will pick up the bill?

The New York Times reported:

A grandmother and her fiancé are accused of trapping four children for six years inside a semi truck’s cab, where the children endured sexual abuse, malnutrition and neglect, prosecutors in Florida said on Tuesday.

Starting in 2019, the victims, two girls and two boys who now range in age from 11 to 15, slept on a top bunk without all fitting on the mattress, the authorities said in an arrest warrant. They urinated in a plastic cup and defecated in a grocery bag, the warrant said.

One child scarred her hand permanently when hot noodles burned her, and she was not taken to the hospital, the warrant said. One girl contracted a sexually transmitted infection, the warrant said.

“This is just straight evil, and a scourge on our society,” Mark Glass, the commissioner of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, said during a news conference held on Tuesday.

The victims are the biological grandchildren of Keysha Monique Epps, 51, of Atlanta, according to Jae Williams, a spokesman for the state attorney general’s office, which filed charges against the suspects.

The ordeal began when Ms. Epps and her fiancé, Tamra Marshon Stewart, 37, of Jacksonville, Fla., traveled with the children from Atlanta to Miami, James Uthmeier, the state’s attorney general, said during the news conference. Ms. Epps was a licensed semi truck driver, Mr. Williams said.

The couple served as primary caregivers for the children, and they all lived inside the truck’s cab.

The cab included two seats for a driver and a passenger, a bunk bed, a refrigerator, a microwave and a space for storage all packed into tight quarters, the authorities said in the arrest warrant.

“This was a prison, a rolling prison,” Mr. Uthmeier said.

One of the girls, who is now 12, said Mr. Stewart had touched her inappropriately every day for two years, the authorities said. She said her grandmother knew what was happening to her, and in one instance pretended to be asleep, according to the arrest warrant.

Mr. Stewart furnished the other girl, now 11, with candy and money after sexual encounters in an effort to keep her quiet, according to the arrest warrant. The victim “said it didn’t work,” the warrant said.

A 15-year-old boy confronted Mr. Stewart, calling him a pedophile and a child molester, according to the arrest warrant from the state’s attorney general office. Mr. Stewart punched the victims after the dispute, according to an arrest warrant filed by the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office.

The children did not attend school while with Ms. Epps and Mr. Stewart and instead used Khan Academy, a website with educational videos that is not accredited, the authorities said.

Categories Accountability, Childhood, Corruption, Cruelty, Curriculum, Ethics, Evil, Florida, Home Schooling, Vouchers

Corey DeAngelis: Are Public Schools Unconstitutional?

By dianeravitch
September 1, 2026 //
15

Corey DeAngelis hates public schools. He has spent his professional life attacking and demeaning them. I tried to identify the source of his contempt for these great engines of democracy, but was unsuccessful.

Corey graduated from the University of Texas at San Antonio, then received a Ph.D. in education policy at the University of Arkansas’ Department of Educational Reform. This is a program funded by the Walton Foundation, dedicated to the proposition that public schools are illegitimate and the government should give every family vouchers to escape them. Gene Glass, one of the giants of education research, described this program as one of the strangest in academia, because of its decided slant towards school choice.

Corey attended public schools in San Antonio. When he started high school, he applied and was accepted to a public magnet school on the campus of his zoned high school.

DeAngelis attended Communications Arts High School (CommArts), a magnet school operated by Northside ISD. It was founded in 1995 and was located inside the William Howard Taft High School campus. CommArts had high admissions standards, small classes, and an enrollment of about 500. Taft accepted all students and enrolled about 2,800 students.

Having enjoyed the privileges and perks of an elite public school, Corey must have been contemptuous of the large public school he avoided.

Taft was not a failing school. It accepted everyone, so of course its student body included all kinds of youth, including students who were low-performing, students with disabilities, students who were rebellious. The magnet school Corey attended screened out students who did not have high test scores or high grades and were not highly motivated. 100% of its students graduated from high school.

His life experience might have made him a supporter of public school choice, but he somehow evolved into a far-right hater of public schools who is certain that students would be better off if they received a voucher for religious schools, private schools, homeschooling, or anything else.

Corey doesn’t care that some religious schools teach racism, have no certified teachers, and are unaccountable for meeting any state standards. He doesn’t care that some homeschoolers are poorly educated. He doesn’t care that a sizable number of students attend for-profit charters that care more about profits than learning.

In this article, which appeared in The Washington Post, he argues that public schools are unconstitutional, despite having been treasured by most Americans for two centuries, and despite the Founding Fathers having included provision for them in the Northwest Ordinance of 1785 (also called the Land Ordinance of 1785), which set aside land specifically for a public school in every town in the newly created states.

The Land Ordinance of May 20, 1785 established the federal township survey system: each township was divided into 36 one-square-mile sections, and Section 16 (640 acres) was reserved “for the maintenance of public schools within the said township.”

The specific provision of land for public schools should end any doubt about their constitutionality, unless you think that today’s far-right zealots know more about the Constitution than the men who wrote it.

As a graduate of Houston public schools, none of them selective, I strongly reject the claim that public schools are inherently evil. Unlike Corey, I will always be grateful to the public schools that educated me: Montrose Elementary School (six years, including kindergarten); Sutton Elementary School (one year); Albert Sidney Johnson Junior High School (three years); and San Jacinto High School (4 years). They gave me a solid foundation in every subject; i became friends with a wide variety of students; I had some spectacular teachers; and I was able to gain admission to an elite women’s college.

Think about it. Ninety percent of Americans went to public schools, and most graduated from public schools. These are the very people who turned the United States into a successful nation. If you spit on public schools, you are spitting on the engine of American success. That’s crazy.

DeAngelis writes:

In 2021, Columbia University law professor Philip Hamburger argued that the U.S. public school system violates the First Amendment. “Education,” he wrote, “consists mostly in speech, and parents have a right under the First Amendment to exercise authority over what their children hear.” Forcing families to accept government messaging — or pay a steep price to escape it — amounts to unconstitutional pressure.

A lawsuit filed in Nebraska on Aug. 13 brings that argument into court — and could open a path toward universal school choice.

Justin Jacobsen and Timothy and Joanna Menter, parents in the Lincoln Public Schools district, are suing state and local officials in Lancaster County District Court. Represented by the New Civil Liberties Alliance, they are challenging Nebraska’s combination of compulsory education and public-school-only funding.

Nebraska law requires parents to enroll children in a “public, private, denominational or parochial school” or to home-school them. Noncompliance is a Class 3 misdemeanor punishable by up to three months in jail and a $500 fine.

Yet the state offers educational benefits — roughly $19,000 per student statewide in 2024-25, and about $17,400 in Lincoln — only to families that enroll their children in public schools, thus accepting the government’s preferred viewpoints. Nebraska ranks near the bottom nationally on school-choice indexes and provides no scholarships, tax credits or charter schools. (Gov. Jim Pillen has opted Nebraska into the new federal tax credit scholarship program, effective Jan. 1, 2027).

Families that opt out of the public system shoulder the full cost of their children’s education themselves. Average private school tuition in Nebraska runs about $7,800 a year. The resulting penalty, over a K-12 career, exceeds $100,000.

The Menters now home-school their school-age children after pulling the two oldest out of Lincoln Public Schools. The Jacobsen family home-schools one child, sends the two youngest to a private religious school and has another trying public high school. It would send all four to private schools if it could direct its tax dollars to the education providers of its choice.

Both families withdrew most of their children because remaining in public schools meant adopting educational speech they reject. The Menters’ elementary school displayed a classroom door sticker promoting alternative sexuality and transgender ideologies and pressed climate-change views the parents found fear-based. The Jacobsens’ school taught transgender ideology; the children were also exposed to divisive narratives suggesting certain races were victims and others were oppressors because of their skin color.

The parents’ complaint rests on three theories. First, the combination of a criminal education mandate and funding limited to government viewpoints directly abridges parents’ free-speech rights under the First Amendment. Education is inherently speech, and parents hold the primary right to speak or to choose who speaks on their behalf. Second, the same facts violate the Nebraska Constitution’s free speech clause, which state courts treat as mirroring the federal guarantee. Third, the arrangement creates an unconstitutional condition: that is, the state may not condition a valuable public benefit on the surrender of a constitutional right.

This combination of a compulsory mandate and exclusive public school funding is viewpoint discrimination, not a neutral funding decision. Nebraska mandates educational speech, then funds only the government’s perspective and withholds support from any other. That arrangement fails strict scrutiny. The state has no compelling interest in government-run education specifically, as opposed to education generally, and less-restrictive alternatives exist. The government could still fund education with taxpayer dollars, for example, while allowing the money to follow the child to the school or program that aligns with the family’s values.

The lawsuit does not ask the court to invent a new system or order the legislature to adopt any particular program. It seeks only a declaration that the current structure is unconstitutional as applied to these plaintiffs, an injunction against continuing the unconstitutional conditions, and prospective damages from the city of Lincoln and Lancaster County equal to the per-pupil value of local benefits directed to Lincoln Public Schools, continuing until the violation ends or each child graduates from high school, earns a GED or turns 19. The plaintiffs do not challenge the content of any specific curriculum — the claim is structural, concerning funding and compulsion.

Universal school choice resolves the constitutional problem while preserving public support for education. Nebraska can keep its compulsory-education laws and continue to provide education with taxpayer funding. The difference is that families, not the state, would direct that money to the schools or programs that best align with their values — public, private, religious or home-based. Funding would follow the child rather than force every family to be indoctrinated in a single government viewpoint.

This approach respects free speech. Parents who prefer the public system’s messaging can remain there. Parents who do not can exit without financial penalty. Every child still receives an education funded by the public, and no family is compelled to underwrite or accept speech it rejects for its own children. Force gives way to freedom.

The Nebraska case makes plain that the status quo cannot stand. Universal school choice is the path that honors both education and the Constitution.

Corey DeAngelis is a research fellow at the Heritage Foundation and a senior fellow at Americans for Fair Treatment. He also worked for Betsy DeVos’s American Federation for Children. He is known as an evangelist for vouchers.

Categories Accountability, Florida, Privatization, School Choice

Florida School Board Member: “I Am Not a Unicorn!”

By dianeravitch
August 31, 2026 //
2

The blogger who identifies as “Accountabaloney” wrote to report on his/her political fortunes in a deep red county in Florida. It’s no secret that the blogger is a Democrat, but gets re-elected as a strong supporter of public schools. Trump, DeSantis, and the Florida legislature love charter schools, vouchers, homeschooling, and other alternatives, but Accountabaloney wins as a forthright supporter of teachers and public schools.

Accountabaloney writes:

In case you didn’t know, in my “spare time” I am an elected member of the Monroe County School Board and, unless expressly stated, the views stated here reflect my own opinions and should not be construed to represent the views of the Monroe County School Board.

I have been told that I am a unicorn: a registered Democrat who has repeatedly won countywide in an increasingly Republican county.

I was first elected to the Monroe County School Board without opposition in 2018. By then, I was already well known in my district as a passionate advocate for our public schools. Before filing to run, I reached out to virtually everyone I thought might be interested in the seat, told them I planned to run and asked for their support. One by one, I received it. In the end, no one filed to run against me.

In 2022, that support was tested at the ballot box. I faced a well-financed, politically savvy Republican opponent who had been recruited and endorsed by Moms for Liberty and Gov. Ron DeSantis.

I didn’t respond by running away from public education or by trying to out-partisan my opponent. I ran on my record and on my belief that strong public schools are essential to strong communities.

I won.

This year, the partisan question became even more explicit.

My opponent prominently displayed the word “CONSERVATIVE” on her campaign signs and made her political and religious identity an important part of her campaign. She attended churches encouraging voters to support a candidate who shared their Conservative Christian values and promoted publicly funded homeschooling and tuition vouchers. She even accused me of “hiding behind the nonpartisan label.”

But nonpartisan wasn’t a label I chose. Florida school board elections are nonpartisan by law.

And I wasn’t hiding.

People knew I was a Democrat.

So rather than fight an election over partisan identity, I made a different bet. I trusted voters to care more about what I stood for than the letter next to my name in other elections.

And I made what I stood for unmistakable.

I ran unabashedly for public education.

I talked about our successful schools and the extraordinary people who work in them. I talked about putting great teachers in every classroom—and paying and supporting them well enough that they can afford to stay. I talked about expanding opportunities for students through the arts, athletics, career and technical education, advanced academics, dual enrollment and field trips.

I talked about responsible stewardship of taxpayer dollars and protecting classrooms when budgets get tight.

Most of all, I refused to accept the premise that our public schools are failing institutions from which children need to escape. I talked about them as valuable community institutions worth protecting, investing in and making even better.

The voters responded.

I received 64 percent of the vote and won every precinct in Monroe County—including precincts that had voted overwhelmingly for Donald Trump just two years earlier.

The voters didn’t suddenly become Democrats.

They knew I was a Democrat, and they voted for me anyway.

They chose a public education advocate for School Board.

And that makes me wonder whether the real lesson of this election has much to do with unicorns at all.

For years, education politics has been dominated by the language of “school choice”—vouchers, education savings accounts, publicly funded homeschooling and the growing movement of public dollars into private education. Advocates for public schools have too often allowed themselves to be put on the defensive, as though supporting the public system that educates the overwhelming majority of American children is somehow the politically risky position.

Maybe we have that backward.

My election certainly doesn’t prove that every person who voted for me opposes vouchers or publicly funded homeschooling. Elections aren’t referenda on a single issue. Many people who strongly support public schools also support a parent’s right to choose another option for their own child.

But there is an important difference between respecting individual choice and abandoning our collective commitment to public education.

And perhaps candidates have underestimated how many voters understand that distinction.

Supporting public schools is popular.

Supporting teachers is popular.

Giving children more opportunities is popular.

Believing every community should have an excellent public school is popular.

Those aren’t Democratic values or Republican values. They are community values.

So perhaps I’m not a unicorn after all.

Perhaps candidates don’t need to attack school choice to win the education debate.

Perhaps they simply need to stop being afraid to champion public schools.

Categories Education Reform, Florida, Supporting public schools

Florida Threatens to Defund Catholic Schools Unless They Allow Students to Opt Out of Vaccines

By dianeravitch
August 4, 2026 //
11

Florida has become a very weird state. There’s hardly a conspiracy theory that Governor Ron DeSantis is not championing, especially when the subject is public health. DeSantis hired Dr. Joseph Ladapo as the state’s surgeon general, putting the lives of Floridians at risk.

Dr. Ladapo doesn’t believe in vaccinations. Disregarding science, he has sought to make all vaccines a matter of choice, not the protection of public health. Thus, no matter what other medical professionals may say, Dr. Ladapo wants to ban all vaccines mandates.

It’s an odd time to take a stand against vaccinations. Florida is experiencing an uptick in measles cases: As July 2026, Florida has reported 154 confirmed measles cases. Florida ranks among the states with the highest measles case counts in the country this year. 

Nationally, the CDC reports 2,371 confirmed measles cases in the U.S. so far in 2026—the highest annual total in more than 30 years.

Now Florida’s state attorney general has threatened to withhold public funding from Catholic schools unless they allow their students to opt out of vaccines.

The Independent reported:

Florida’s attorney general has threatened to pull funding from Catholic schools unless they allow their students to opt out of vaccine requirements. 

James Uthmeier, the attorney general, revealed on X that he had sent a letter to the Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops (FCCB) expressing concern that schools within the faith may refuse to grant religious exemptions for vaccinations for the upcoming school year.

The letter, which was sent on July 31, is the latest in a series of pushes by lawmakers to change Florida’s vaccine mandates.

According to Uthmeier, at least one diocese appears to have “embraced” a position raised by the National Catholic Bioethics Center that the schools cannot offer exemptions on religious grounds because the Catholic Church does not teach that use of vaccinations produced in cell lines derived from the tissue of an aborted fetus is “intrinsically evil.”

Uthmeier, a Catholic himself, says that such a position is “concerning” as state law requires public and private schools to offer exemptions if parents have religious objections.

“I therefore urge Catholic schools to comply with Florida law and grant religious exemptions to school vaccine policies,” Uthmeier wrote. “Failure to comply could jeopardize eligibility for state educational scholarship programs.”

The Archdiocese of Miami says that over 95 percent of students attending the city’s Catholic schools are on some kind of state scholarship, according to The Miami Herald. Many receive around $6,500 with which to pay for their tuition.

Uthmeier has demanded an answer to his letter by August 7.

Michele Taylor, a spokesperson for the FCCB, told CBS News that the conference is reviewing the letter and will respond to the attorney general. 

“Be assured, Florida’s Catholic schools are operating in accord with the law and Church teaching,” Taylor said.

Under state law, students attending both public and private schools must be vaccinated against diseases including polio, chickenpox and measles. Schools, including Catholic institutions, do permit medical exemptions from vaccines with a valid doctor’s note. 

Vaccination mandates have increasingly come under attack in Florida, with Joseph Ladapo, the state’s surgeon general, likening the mandates to “slavery” late last year.

“Who am I to tell you what your child should put in your body?” he said. “I don’t have that right. Your body is a gift from God.”

Ladapo also pledged to end “every last one” of the mandates. 

However, experts slammed his claims, with Democratic state Representative Anna Eskamani branding the plans a “public health disaster in the making.”

The Florida Education Association also said that reducing vaccinations puts “children’s health and education at risk.”

Categories Ethics, Extremism, Florida, Health, Medicine, Safety, Science

Florida: How Vouchers Are Destroying Public Schools and Violating the State Constitution

By dianeravitch
August 3, 2026 //
3

Article IX, Section 1 of the Florida constitution:

a) The education of children is a fundamental value of the people of the State of Florida. It is, therefore, a paramount duty of the state to make adequate provision for the education of all children residing within its borders. Adequate provision shall be made by law for a uniform, efficient, safe, secure, and high quality system of free public schools that allows students to obtain a high quality education and for the establishment, maintenance, and operation of institutions of higher learning and other public education programs that the needs of the people may require. 

Article I, 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.

The Florida state constitution explicitly requires that the state provide a free public education for all children. It explicitly forbids the use of any public funds for religious schools. In 2012, then Governor Jeb Bush promoted a referendum to change the constitution and allow vouchers for religious schools. Florida voters resoundingly said NO. But the voice of the people did not dissuade Bush and his friends.

Florida now has a full/blown universal voucher system where the state funds children who attend religious schools, private schools, even home schools, regardless of family income. Most of the children who use vouchers were already in nonpublic school.

The state now spends billions of dollars every year on charter schools and vouchers. Many charter schools operate for profit. Their lobbyists work in tandem with the legislature, which seems eager to defund public schools.

Ironically, Jeb Bush used to boast that Florida was successful because of its toughs count ability. Yet this is the same governor who pushed through vouchers, even though voucher schools have NO accountability.

Go figure.

Stephanie Vanos wrote the following article for the Orlando Sentinel. She is a member of the Orange County School Board, where her children are enrolled.

She wrote:

There is an alarming misuse of public funds in Florida that isn’t just unfair and irresponsible, it undermines our state’s constitutional obligation to provide a high-quality, uniform education for every child and erodes trust in the very system meant to serve all of Florida’s children.

The taxpayer-funded voucher program has created a shadow educational system, one where billions in taxpayer funds move with little oversight, leaving families and communities in the dark about how their money is spent. This lack of accountability and transparency has created a fractured, unequal  education landscape, robbing students of stability and opportunity no matter where they go to school.

Approximately $5 billion in taxpayer money is being siphoned away from our traditional public schools into voucher systems. Private schools that accept vouchers are held to a tiny fraction of the standards our public schools must meet, if any at all. Nearly a quarter of all state funding for education is now drained by voucher programs that serve only 15.3% of Florida’s students and overwhelmingly benefit families who were already paying to send their child to private school. How is this fiscally responsible?

The consequences of this system are clear in Orange County, where my kids go to school.

This year, our county was forced to close seven public schools and cut hundreds of positions despite the district earning high grades. An estimated $315 million of education money will be diverted from Orange County Public Schools to vouchers just this year. These closures and loss of funding are a direct result of a state system that puts politics and profits ahead of students.

Traditional public schools across the state are held to incredibly high standards on how and what they teach students, who they hire, how they report grades and more. However, the taxpayer-funded voucher program and charter schools are not held to the same standards and measures of accountability despite receiving public tax dollars.

Charter schools, deemed public schools by law, sometimes serve an unmet need in a community, and may operate transparently under a fully nonprofit model. In some cases, they can benefit our larger communities. However, charter schools operate with far fewer requirements and accountability measures than traditional public schools, and far too many are franchise operations, run by for-profit management companies that benefit affiliated for-profit entities with our tax dollars.

Categories Accountability, Closing schools, Democracy, Education Industry, Equity, Ethics, Extremism, Florida, School Choice, Vouchers
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