From the Bradenton Heralds editorial page
Public education is sailing into a perfect storm. Just as federal stimulus dollars disappear, class-size amendment expenditures rise and school districts face costly state penalties for overloaded classrooms, Florida Gov.-elect Rick Scott is churning up heavier seas with the idea of expanding school tuition vouchers.
The incoming governor and his education advisers have a new name for universal vouchers -- education savings accounts -- but the impact will be the same. Students would be given public education money to spend on private school tuition, a virtual school or private tutoring. This would drain public schools of their lifeblood.
Scott also wants to slash property taxes, which fund education -- this coming at a time when diminished property values and the loss of revenue is already putting tremendous pressure on school boards. Manatee County’s district expects to cut millions more next year after spending reductions of $53 million over the past three years.
Public education targeted
Along with a Republican-dominated Legislature bent on restoring the major education reforms lost in the veto of Senate Bill 6 -- establishing merit pay and eliminating teacher tenure -- public education and teachers are in Tallahassee’s crosshairs.
Scott is following in former Gov. Jeb Bush’s education reform footsteps, working with the Foundation for Florida’s Future, a Bush creation, and appointing Bush associate Patricia Levesque to his education team. She authored the draft report on education savings accounts.
Universal tuition vouchers failed to pass muster with the Florida Supreme Court when justices ruled in 2006 that Opportunity Scholarships -- vouchers for students in failing schools that were enacted under Bush -- violated the state constitution’s provision mandating a uniform system of free public schools. The decision stated public money was diverted into “separate private systems parallel to and in competition with the free public schools that are the sole means set out in the Constitution for the state to provide for the education of Florida’s children.”
How will Scott’s education savings accounts be any different than Bush vouchers? His education team’s early outline of the proposal claims it “effectively addresses” the court decision “because the program is not part of the uniform public education system.” That remains to be seen. We’re highly skeptical. There doesn’t appear to be much wiggle room in the justice’s statements.
The state’s two surviving voucher programs serve students from low-income families and the disabled.
Show us the money
At a time when Florida’s legislative budget-writers will be grappling with additional revenue shortfalls next year -- at $3.5 billion in this past week’s prognostication by state economists -- how much school tuition vouchers will cost the state is unknown.
But if all of Florida’s 2009-2010 private school students qualify for the vouchers, the figure will be astronomical.
The draft proposal calls for parents of eligible students to receive 85 percent of the state’s per-student allocation. A voucher would amount to about $5,500 this year. Current enrollment in Florida’s 2,100 private schools stands at 313,000, according to the state Department of Education. That adds up to about $1.7 billion.
Even if far less, where will this additional new money come from with lawmakers expecting to cut spending by billions? Rest assured, private school parents will claim state money in order to quit paying out of pocket.
Scott vows to find the money by reducing state spending elsewhere, but with the projected multibillion dollar revenue shortfall and his proposed 19 percent property tax cut -- plus his idea of eliminating the state’s corporate tax -- this looks like a pipe dream.
Severe consequences
Even if education savings accounts pass constitutional muster with the courts and a miracle occurs on the financing end, we fear the program would exact considerable damage to public education and lead to more failing schools.
The Legislature should reject this idea
Read more: http://www.bradenton.com/2010/12/19/2821611/reject-scotts-idea-for-universal.html#ixzz1AVINz2a2
No comments:
Post a Comment