By Tracy Gordan Butler
This morning the Senate Education Committee met and passed out several bills including a bill that will once again expand the Corporate Tax Private School Voucher program. The bill will increase the cap for Florida's corporate tax credit scholarship program. It passed its first Senate committee today along partisan lines.
Sen. Lizbeth Benacquisto(R-Fort Myers) is the sponsor of this year’s expansion efforts. Once again the claim is that vouchers save the state money and gives needy children a helping hand.
Benacquisto told the committee the program leaves about 32 percent of the per-student funding behind for other school needs.
Sen. Bill Montford (D-Tallahassee) challenged her assumption that the money goes to the public schools and noted that some of the schools the students attend are not of high quality.
He acknowledge that some public schools need to improve but the state's accountability program points that out and focuses improvement plans at those schools. The question, Montford suggested, is why not hold the private schools receiving state funding to the same standard?
"Would you consider requiring those schools to take the FCAT?" he asked. "If it's good for the public schools, why not these? ... What's wrong with holding those schools to a high level of accountability and a high level of transparency?"
Benacquisto pointed out that current state law does not allow the private schools to administer the FCAT. She suggested that a change to the law, if offered, might be welcomed. The bill next heads to the Senate budget committee.
A similar House bill has been assigned to three House committees.
SB 962 proposes to siphon even more scarce tax dollars away from our public schools.
• Public schools and public school students are still reeling from recent cuts, yet SB 962 will nearly double the amount of tax money that companies are currently allowed to redirect from our public schools to private schools.
• SB 962 substantially increases the amount of public tax dollars going to Florida’s least accountable voucher program. The bill increases the current cap on the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship Program from $140 million for by $110 million to $250 million beginning with FY 2012-13 and by another 25 percent each year thereafter.
• The Legislature continues to increase the funding for the voucher program despite the lack of any evidence that students are doing better or even as well as their public school counterparts.
• The Florida Tax Credit Scholarship Program was initially capped at $50 million in tax credits per fiscal year. The Legislature expanded the cap to $88 million in 2003; increased the cap in FY 2008-2009 to $118 million and again in 2010-11 to $140 million.
• Until 2009, tax credits under the scholarship program were only available against the state’s corporate income tax. In 2009, the Legislature expanded that to the insurance premium tax paid by insurance companies. In 2010, the Legislature added severance taxes on oil and gas production; self-accrued sales tax liabilities of direct pay permit holders; and alcoholic beverage taxes on beer, wine, and spirits.
• In fiscal year 2011-2012 and thereafter, the cap is scheduled to increase by 25 percent of the tax credit cap amount for that year. The tax credit cap amount is $175 million for the 2011-2012 state fiscal year and $218,750,000 for the 2012-2013 state fiscal year.
• There’s no link between vouchers and gains in student achievement. There’s no conclusive evidence that vouchers improve the achievement of students who use them to attend private school. Nor is there any validity to claims that, by creating a “competitive marketplace” for students, vouchers force public schools to improve.
• Vouchers undermine accountability for public funds. Private schools have almost complete autonomy with regard to how they operate: who they teach, what they teach, how they teach, how – if at all – they measure student achievement, how they manage their finances, and what they are required to disclose to parents and to the public.
• Vouchers do not reduce public education costs. Actually, they increase costs, by requiring taxpayers to fund two school systems: one public and one private.
• Vouchers do not give parents real educational choice. Participating private schools may limit enrollment, and in many cases may maintain exclusive admissions policies and charge tuition and fees far above the amount provided by the voucher. Unlike public schools, private and religious schools can – and do – discriminate in admissions on the basis of prior academic achievement, standardized test scores, interviews with applicants and parents, gender, religion, income, special needs, and behavioral history.
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