Rep. Weatherford,
Your assertion that Florida's private school voucher program "saves" Floridians money is iffy, at best, on a couple of fronts. I will limit my comments for the purposes of this letter to the "Step Up for Students" Florida Tax Credit (FTC) voucher. (For the record, however, I also advocate for better accountability for Florida's direct voucher program for special needs students, the McKay voucher. I disclose that my husband has served as chairman of the board for a McKay voucher school. We never used the McKay voucher for our eventually-eligible child.)
As a conservative, you are likely well acquainted with the business concept of "economies of scale." I'm sure you also know that when students leave public schools to attend private schools, the public school they would have otherwise attended loses the per pupil funding for each student. It is absolutely true that when the child leaves the public school for a voucher school, the public school is not responsible for educating him unless and until he returns. More often than not, however, those schools' fixed costs do not decrease. In fact, public schools are seeing cost increases, due to rising staff healthcare costs, and increased energy and transportation expenses, among other increases.
While the tax credit voucher pays only $4,106, the public school loses $6,843 per child. The loss to public schools adds up to nearly $20 million for Duval County alone, and $213.8 million statewide. These voucher losses absolutely impact the scale operations of public schools—and that costs us all.
These public school losses are occurring at a time when you and most of your peers in the Florida legislature have consistently and repeatedly decreased the per-pupil funding amount. Please note that the vast, vast majority of students in the state attend school in Florida public school.
Granted, these tax diversions would be tax dollars well spent if proponents could provide any evidence that student outcomes are better than the outcomes they'd experience in public schools. But they can't. The state's own studies, the last ones to compare performance in an apples-to-apples manner, were completed by Northwestern Economics Professor David Figlio in 2009. He concluded that voucher students did no better than their socio-economically eligible (poor) peers in public school. Lawmakers and voucher proponents would like to spin this news to imply that voucher schools perform as well as public schools at large, but the studies say they perform only as well as those public schools where our poorest students attend--i.e., often Florida's neediest, most struggling public schools. These unacceptable outcomes, too, cost us all.
(Dr. Figlio has, in conjunction with Dr. Hart, produced another study regarding "school competition" in Florida. Without going off on a tangent, this study is flawed on several fronts. )
In conclusion, the state of Florida is draining tax dollars from general revenues which should be used to fund its paramount obligation--the public schools. The tax-credit-charity scheme has been used as a means for getting around the Bush v. Holmes decision in order to fund religious schools. Meanwhile, the job that these voucher schools are doing rivals only Florida's poorest, neediest, often "failing" public schools, and not public schools on the whole.
We are creating a tax diversion for millionaires, one that allows them to deduct a "charitable" contribution from their federal returns; we are draining hundreds of millions of dollars from Florida public schools; we are not seeing any benefit to the children who use the vouchers. Subtracting the smaller voucher expenditure from the larger public per pupil figure ignores scale operational losses, and implies that it’s okay for poor children to continue to perform poorly so long as they get to choose which underperforming institution to attend. This line of thinking is unconscionable.
The Florida legislature should take immediate steps to restore apples-to-apples accountability for (non-McKay) voucher schools. No expansion of the voucher should occur until equal accountability is restored. (McKay schools should be held accountable by non-waivable federal due process procedures and by prevailing scientific standards relevant to each child’s disability.)
Voucher families, public school families, and the taxpayers of Florida deserve better accountability for their tax dollars, whether paid into the treasury or diverted to a “charity.” But most of all, if we are going to drain dollars away from our state’s paramount obligation, then we’d better make sure the children who participate in voucher programs can clearly demonstrate, empirically, that they are deriving academic benefits. Shame on us for allowing anything less.
Regards,
Julie Delegal
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