Scott's voucher plan has Jeb all over it

From the Sun Sentinel

By Stephen L. Goldstein

Our I-can't-believe-he-was elected governor, Rick Scott, has gotten a bum steer. He's letting himself be manipulated on education policy by Jeb Bush. During Jeb's eight years in office, he instituted reforms that failed significantly to improve Florida schools.

During Charlie Crist's four years, Jeb plotted to remake education in his image through a number of failed draconian measures. He still thinks he's governor.

On Jeb's advice, even before Scott had been sworn into office, he's turning into "governor-giveaway." He wants to raid the state treasury of public-education funds and privatize public education. According to accounts in the St. Petersburg Times, Scott recently publicly touted his plan to give potentially all primary and secondary students taxpayer money from public-school budgets so they can go to any school they want. But his vouchers-for-everybody plan has actually been concocted by Jeb's Foundation for Florida's Future.

Here's how the Bush/Scott plan to dismantle public education works: Every year, parents would be able to receive state funds for an education savings account equal to 85 percent of the amount a student would have generated in the public-school system. The current state per-pupil funding is $6,843. So, if the program were underway, parents would get $5,474 per student.

Any student who was in public school for a year, as well as the school-aged sibling of a student already in the program, would be eligible. With Bush/Scott's giveaway money in hand, parents could send their kid(s) to any school they wanted. The money could even be used for everything from books to laptop computers and Florida prepaid college tuition.

That's because it's a giveaway to parents who would send their kid(s) to private school anyway, but who now would get lots of free extra money in state aid.

In fact, the Bush/Scott plan amounts to an unprecedented and unconstitutional redistribution of dollars out of the pockets of the middle-class, socialism masquerading as free-market education.

Concocters of the plan will try to sell it to the public with the usual line that money for public schools is really taxpayers' money, not the government's, so parents should be able to spend their money for their children's education as they see fit.

But the money that would be deposited into almost any child's education savings account is not theirs. It comes from the pool of property taxes.

For example, in Broward, with a countywide 2.2 percent millage, to generate $5,474 for just one student, a family would have to own property with an $899,775 taxable value, far beyond most assessments.

Most of the money Bush/Scott gives away would come from property owners without kids in school, who would be legally forced to hand over their money to make up the shortfall of most families.

It's one thing for citizens to be taxed to fund a public school system, quite another to be forced to pay for someone else's kid(s). At least one advocate for education savings account argues incorrectly that they're like Bright Futures college scholarships. But that money comes from state Lottery revenues — voluntary payments, not taxes. Critics who oppose Obama's health plan because everyone is forced to buy insurance should be equally outraged at Tallahassee Republicans if they create a "private education mandate" that redistributes their money.

The Bush/Scott scheme is also unconstitutional because the Florida Constitution mandates that the state provide "a uniform ... and high-quality system of free public schools that allows students to obtain a high-quality education." Dismantling the system by redistributing its funds willy-nilly into private hands violates that provision.

Florida desperately needs to develop sound education policy. The state's students and public schools have been shortchanged for too long. But the governor should resist implementing sweeping, radical, untested policies. He needs to reboot and give Jeb the boot.

Otherwise, in the not-too-distant future, I won't be the only one who can't believe he was elected — or worse.

Stephen L. Goldstein is an op-ed columnist for the Sun Sentinel in Fort Lauderdale. He can be reached at trendsman@aol.com.

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/opinion/fl-sgcol-scott-oped1226-20110104,0,1074953.story