Correct voucher policy?

The hypocrisy of the intelligentsia in Florida is truly appalling, as exemplified by this Palm Beach Post editorial, which tries to rationalize a distinction between the three voucher programs:

In its January voucher ruling, the Florida Supreme Court hinted that vouchers might be constitutional if they provide necessary services that regular public schools can't offer. Properly monitored, McKay vouchers could fit that niche.

The reality is that the programs are all pretty similar and that they should all pass or fail the same constitutional test.  So why the support for the McKay vouchers and not the others?  Pure politics -- there are already 16,000 children receiving McKay vouchers and -- here's the key -- these aren't just low-income, minority children, but a lot of children from wealthy white families.  Politicians (and newspapers and the ACLU) know better than to mess with these parents...

So, here's the brutal truth: if you're the wealthy parents of a kid with a learning disability, you can have a voucher so that you can choose the school that you think is best for your child, but if you're poor and minority, screw you!  You're forced to continue sending your kid to the local public school, no matter how dangerous or persistently failing it is. 

What an outrage!

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Correct voucher policy? Stick to McKay vouchers

Palm Beach Post Editorial

Saturday, May 13, 2006

Gov. Bush and other school voucher advocates could have made more progress if they had focused exclusively on the only voucher idea that makes sense.

McKay Scholarships, one of Florida's three voucher programs, are named for former Senate President John McKay, who sponsored legislation that created them. Since 2000, students with disabilities have used McKay scholarships to attend private schools. This year, about 16,000 students are getting them.

But the state never required sufficient financial and academic oversight for schools taking McKay vouchers. Post reporters have found home-schoolers misusing McKay vouchers for which they didn't qualify. Non-existent oversight and resulting scandals also have been a problem for schools taking vouchers paid for by corporate donations, for which the donors received a dollar-for-dollar tax break. About 14,000 low-income students are getting corporate vouchers this year.

Lax standards pose a fundamental legal problem for the voucher programs. The state Supreme Court this year ruled that the third voucher program - the governor's so-called "Opportunity Scholarships" used by about 700 students whose schools repeatedly scored an F on the state's FCAT-based grading system - is unconstitutional. The justices based their finding, in part, on the Legislature's failure to hold private voucher schools to the same standards as public schools.

A weak accountability law the Legislature just passed won't protect McKay and corporate vouchers from the same flaw. There are some common-sense protections against financial fraud, and employees have to undergo background checks. But the supposed academic accountability is laughable.

Schools taking corporate vouchers must give a standardized test - but not the FCAT. And the state won't grade voucher schools. Schools taking McKay vouchers have to give standardized tests only to students whose parents request them. There are no requirements that teachers in voucher schools have proper credentials.

The legislation is so weak and unacceptable because Gov. Bush and GOP legislators are most interested not in vouchers for disabled students but in vouchers students can use at religious schools. The legislation also offered a way to slip students in the banned voucher program into the corporate program that hasn't been declared unconstitutional, at least not yet. The new setup begs for a legal challenge.

In its January voucher ruling, the Florida Supreme Court hinted that vouchers might be constitutional if they provide necessary services that regular public schools can't offer. Properly monitored, McKay vouchers could fit that niche. Legislators would focus on that if they were as committed to helping disabled students as they are to defending voucher ideology.