Should Public Education Be Defined Solely by its Funding Source? Please Discuss.

In a private religious school in Orlando, Commissioner of Education  Richard Corcoran declared Friday, February 15, 2019, as “Victory Day” for education in Florida because of a new announcement, by Governor DeSantis, outlining what will be “the most dramatic school choice empowerment bill.”

On Friday, Florida Governor Ron Desantis announced plans for a new voucher program in Florida, the “Equal Opportunity Scholarship,” which he intends to fund directly from Florida’s general revenue, allowing $90-100 million this year to provide vouchers to 14,000 new recipients (he claims this will eliminate the current waitlist). He admitted he has ambitions to expand the program in the future.

The event was held at Calvary City Christian Academy, a private religious school in Orlando, where almost 75% of the students rely on Florida Tax Credit Vouchers. The event was sponsored by Step Up For Students, the organization, founded by school choice advocate and billionaire John Kirtley,  that administers the majority of Florida’s current voucher programs.

The name “Equal Opportunity Scholarships” is a nod to Jeb Bush’s previous “Opportunity Scholarship” program which was struck down by a Florida Supreme Court ruling in the 2006 case Bush v. Holmes, which ruled the vouchers violated the state constitution’s provision that requires a “uniform” system of public schools for all students. DeSantis and his Step Up For Student allies aim to reverse that ruling. According to former Senator, charter school founder and Step Up For Student’s Board Member, John Legg : “I think people are hoping for a lawsuit, so the Court can weigh in on what is that type of uniformity.” DeSantis, when asked, was confident his newly appointed conservative court will rule on the side of “opportunity” opening the flood gates for direct funding of an array of private school options, including homeschooling, with tax payer dollars.

This must be what Commissioner Corcoran meant when he told a gathering of The James Madison Institute “It’s hard not to be a little giddy right now.”

Previously, Florida Tax Credit Scholarship/Vouchers were funded through a corporate tax diversion scheme, but that program seems to have hit a funding ceiling this year, with fewer corporate donors willing to participate, resulting in fewer vouchers available. By creating a new program to “complement” the corporate tax scheme, voucher programs can be expanded directly, eliminating the money-laundering-ish corporate scheme and allowing tax funds to flow directly to private, mostly religious schools.

 “To me, if the taxpayer is paying for education, it’s public education. It doesn’t matter if you’re going to the district managed school that you’re zoned for, it doesn’t matter if you’re going to a public Magnet, a public Charter, if you take a tax credit scholarship and go to a private school or if you use an ESA for homeschool, to me that is all the public’s commitment to make sure that our kids have the best education.”

Let that sink in.

How should we define public education? Is the definition solely dependent on the funding source? This deserves a state wide discussion.

Furthermore, is this really how we want our public tax dollars spent? Where is the accountability that we have been told is so vital to improvement in our public school system? Please don’t tell us the ol’ “families will vote with their feet” hogwash. Currently there are 2.7 million students attending district-managed public schools. These families choose these schools DESPITE the oppressive test and punish accountability system the state demands. Are there problems? Of course, but these things could be fixed (as shown by recent turnaround and Community School successes) with proper attention and funding. For 20 years, Florida has had little of either. Florida’s public schools are underfunded, with basic funding well below inflation-adjusted spending from 20 years ago. In 2018, tax payers showed their OVERWHELMING support for PUBLIC schools, approving 24 out of 24 local school funding referenda (by contrast, Governor DeSantis won with 49.6% of the statewide vote). Floridians support public schools and are demanding better funding. Why isn’t Governor DeSantis listening to public school parents?

There are currently 100,000 Tax Credit Scholarship recipients (today’s increase will result in 114,000) whose academic progress is monitored in whatever low stakes manner their private school decides, with no academic oversight or accountability by the state. STILL, over 60% of Tax Credit recipients return to the public school system within 2 years. (Do they count as voting with their feet?)

For the vast majority of Florida’s taxpayers and families, we should NOT be celebrating Victory Day. Governor DeSantis should question whether allowing families to “vote with their feet” is fiscally responsible or merely politically expedient. If his goal is truly to ensure ALL students have the best education, then he should equal the accountability playing field, by overhauling the A-F School Grade system and eliminating the high stakes attached to state mandated testing, and commit to fully funding and supporting the overwhelming choice of Florida’s families: our public schools.

Yikes! It looks like the Definition of Public Education will need to be a national discussion:

As I finished writing this post, I discovered this on Twitter. (For the record, US Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, is a close colleague of Step Up for Students’ John Kirtley, served on Jeb’ Foundation for Excellence in Education and has be actively involved in promoting vouchers in Florida for more than a decade).