Julie Delegal
Duval County School Board member Jason Fischer, a rising young conservative in North Florida, wrote an admirable op-ed on transparency and accountability for our public schools.
Most citizens would agree that while the school-grading system needs major tweaking, accountability is a good thing. Fischer advocates for full disclosure of data that relates not only to school achievement, but also to how schools spend their tax dollars. Missing from Fischer’s treatise, however, is the call for transparency and accountability for publicly funded “private” schools.
After several years of diverting tax dollars to pay for private education in Florida, the state has yet to find an effective way to determine if private-voucher schools spend taxpayer money efficiently.
Duval County should put a hold on the “extra” Title I funds that private-voucher schools seek until firm plans for apples-to-apples accountability can be implemented.
The state Department of Education has asked the researcher tasked with assessing the progress of voucher schools to do the impossible: compare student performance between public and private-school students without using identical measures.
To his credit, in his latest round of research, Northwestern University Professor David Figlio declined to again compare apples to oranges. He chose instead to analyze the private schools’ norm-referenced data alone. In terms of assessing student gains, the results are, in a word, inscrutable.
Norm-referenced tests were designed to assess student progress compared to other students. They were never intended to measure learning “gains.” Students who score lower among their fourth-grade peers than they did among their third-grade peers may or may not have made learning gains, but we won’t be able to gage them without the right instrument.
We won’t know for sure how Florida’s voucher students are progressing in relation to their public-school peers until they take the same criterion-referenced tests (FCAT or its successor) that public school students take.
Privatization proponents argue that the “marketplace” can deliver a better product or service than “government” can. We’ve seen with charter schools that this is not necessarily so. There is evidence, in fact, that when race and socio-economic status are accounted for, charter schools do significantly worse than traditional public schools.
The public-private distinction makes no difference to the lowest achievers. Private schools may nonetheless have something to offer our most vulnerable students. If they’re going to use public dollars, however, they should be transparent and accountable, too.
Catholic schools have made a good first step. In a story in The Florida Times Union, they acknowledge that only schools with ample resources and dedicated, child-centered staff will bring up our lowest achievers. The voucher-receiving schools are acknowledging that they need additional federal funds to better serve their low-income voucher students.
As Florida moves to its new set of educational standards, there is a fresh opportunity to decide how best to measure individual and school achievement.
The Jacksonville Public Education Fund has introduced several workable ideas about what should be included on a school’s “report card.” Florida’s Catholic schools and other private-voucher schools should join the conversation about how to measure student and school progress, and then submit themselves to the state’s new accountability framework.
Florida’s taxpayers, parents, and students — especially our students — deserve no less.
Julie Delegal is a writer who lives in Jacksonville.
4 comments
Kim Walton
February 7, 2014 at 11:11 am
First of all– tax credit scholarships are saving Florida taxpayers tens of millions of dollars annually (57.9 million was the FL state govt estimation for 2012-2013: http://www.redefinedonline.org/2012/03/report-tax-credit-scholarships-vouchers-will-save-florida-taxpayers-57-9-million-next-year/). I’m less inclined to ask for fiscal transparency when, worst case scenario, a private school gives the same awful academic result for a poor kid than a traditional public school would for two or even three times the price.
I want to know what evidence Ms. Delegal has to show that Florida’s overall student achievement has declined or suffered in any way since 1997 when charter schools and virtual school, and subsequently vouchers and tax credit scholarships in 2002, entered the education scene in Florida? Where in Florida is a lower percentage of kids reading or doing math on grade level or graduating on time after choices came on board? And while charter schools are more likely to be F schools, they are also more likely to be A schools, too, even though, like FL traditional public schools, they serve a majority-minority population and a majority low-income population.
School choice opponents are making a flawed argument when they focus on pitting public charter school or voucher students versus traditional public schools students. Rather, the right question to be asking is what has happened to all of student achievement in Florida’s public education system since it began offering more choices? Even Florida’s fiercest critics cannot claim that our student achievement has flat lined or fallen. If anything, it has skyrocketed, to the tune of being a national leader in gains since 2003 on the NAEP.
The whole choice movement is about making sure no education provider that accepts tax dollars in the for of per pupil funding gets to keep accepting it regardless of how that provider serves children. And it’s about recognizing that no one school, even an A-rated one, can be all things to all children, and that parents ought to have the right to pick which option is best for their kids.
Simply put… when you oppose school choice, either through public or private, you are saying it’s okay for school choice to be means tested. To buy or rent a house in a high-performing school zone, to transport your kids on your own dime, to pay private school tuition or to forgo income and home school your kids are all means-tested abilities. And for that reason, people with means have had school choice since the beginning of time. So if you want to roll back charter schools, vouchers, magnet schools, virtual school, whatever, ALL YOU’RE DOING IS ALLOWING WEALTHIER PEOPLE TO HAVE MORE EDUCATIONAL FREEDOM THAN POOR PEOPLE. Poor parents will just have to make do with one or two choices the local school system gives them, and that’s it.
Chris Guerrieri
February 8, 2014 at 9:37 am
I was going to write about how Mrs. DeleGal got it wrong both about Fischer and the JPEF, he’s not admirable and their ideas aren’t any good but then I read the comment above and thought wow this lady really has got it wrong. First unfettered choice is a bad choice and all you have to do is look at the 250 charter schools in Florida that have opened, taken money and closed and the 164 voucher schools that teach creationism to know that. If we want choice then we have to do it right because if not we’re short changing kids and paying mercenaries and charlatans to do so.
But what this lady obviously doesn’t understand is public education is for all of us, rich, poor, have kids or don’t and when choice kneecaps it by siphoning away resources and providing substandard educations,it knee caps all of us. If you support choice as Florida does then that’s what you support too.
Julie Delegal
February 8, 2014 at 9:45 am
Chris and I are generally clear on where we overlap and where we disagree. Ms. Walton will find her response in her email “in box” as it was very detailed and addressed her concerns one by one. Thank you both for the opportunity to discuss this issue in more depth.
Kim Walton
February 9, 2014 at 1:38 pm
Thank you, Ms. Delegal, for your thoughtful reply.
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