According to this Yahoo! article, the Florida Supreme Court has struck down the state's voucher program, which allowed students to use state funds to attend private schools. The court ruled that the program "diverts public dollars into separate private systems parallel to and in competition with the free public schools," which are the sole means set out in the state constitution for educating Florida children. Chief Justice Pariente wrote the opinion for the majority, and also noted that private schools are not uniform when compared with each other or the public system and are exempt from many standards imposed by law on the public schools, such as mandatory testing. The effect of the voucher program was that students were able to leave a public school, which had to meet state requirements and use public funds to attend private schools, which were not bound by such standards.
This ruling helps ensure that the public tax dollars go towards paying for public education expenses, to help the schools meet the standards by providing better pay for better teachers and better resources for education, as opposed to taking a stipend of money earmarked for public education and reserving it for private use. It will go towards fixing a problem for many students, as opposed to the few who left for private school (in Florida, about 24,000 students, which is undoubtedly a small total number of total students).
One of the arguments ruled on by the 1st Court of Appeals was that the voucher program violated the requirement of separation of church and state. This was not ruled on by the Supreme Court of Florida.
I like this ruling. I think it's better to work toward the good of the educational system, not try to take the students who have the means to get out and send them to schools that don't have to meet the state's standards.
4 comments:
And I want to add that I think it was good to not comment on the separation between church and state angle. Allowing for private education gave the students the choice to attend whatever private school they wanted, not any one religion, and therefore couldn't reasonably be considered an active endorsement by the state of one religion over another (in my opinion).
Right now, public schools have two things against them: they are a monopoly and they are run by the government. The result is that they're just terrible. Putting the fear of competition into them, and into the teachers' unions, would be the best thing that could ever happen to public schools. The Florida court's ruling ensures that quality private schools remain the preserve of the rich, while the poor have to struggle with a lousy governmentally-run, monolithic enterprise.
I can't see how taking funds that are marked for the education of the public at large and sending them for the benefit of a few students is the answer. If it's fear of competition, and that competition has several legs up (tuition, private investment, public tax dollars that could be used by the schools, no federal/state standards or standardized testing to fear passage), then it would be similar to puitting me up to bat against the New York Yankees. Yes, I can play baseball, but I don't have nearly the resources they do to compete against them.
The answer is to fix the problem, not to shuttle those fortunate enough to be able to leave the problem away, and take the monies with them.
Bookworm, I wonder what your experience with public education really is. I have 19 years invested in public education, and I am grateful that I have a union that protects me. Most people don't know much about public schools except what they learned when they were public school students. Maybe, like me, you have 19 years experience teaching. But if you haven't walked in my shoes, please don't make blanket generalizations about my employment. How often do you work with students who come to school wearing rubber sandals and no socks in January (I don't live in Houston); how often do you teach students who don't have coats, or who live in motels, or down at the homeless shelter? How often do you work with kids whose parents are in jail? How about the kindergarten child whose father sexually abused her before he died of AIDS? How many children do you work with who have parents deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan? All of these are part of my daily life. Forgive me if I think PUBLIC money ought to stay in PUBLIC education.
Well, sorry for the rant. I believe in public education. It is my passion, and my ministry. It is the real world.
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