Julie Delegal: The simple cure for voucher-school lawsuits

Synecdoche means using one part of something to speak for the whole.

When it comes to school-privatization rhetoric, voucher proponents have mastered the art of synecdoche. They find an individual — a successful, accomplished voucher student — and tell a glowing story that is meant to represent all private school voucher students, indeed, the entire voucher school experience.

True to form, Duval School Board member Jason Fischer has done just that in his guest editorial in the Florida Times Union. In it, he decries the individuals and organizations that have mounted constitutional challenges against Florida’s tax-credit tuition vouchers.

The problem is that when we are called to make large-scale policy decisions affecting Florida students, we should be relying not on stories, but on scientific evidence. Anecdotes like Mr. Fischer’s do nothing to further the understanding of how our 69,000 students in voucher schools perform in relation to their public school peers in Florida. For that, we need science.

Northwestern Education Policy Professor David Figlio has been assigned to review schools that participate in Florida’s tax credit tuition voucher program. Since 2009, I have called on Figlio to abandon his apples-to-oranges approach to comparing Florida’s voucher schools to its public schools. To his credit, he has done just that.

Now, given very little to work with by the Florida Legislature, Figlio has examined voucher student test scores, not FCAT scores, mind you, in comparison to other students — students who do not live in Florida.

Unfortunately, the test he has been provided, a norm-referenced test, was not designed to measure student gains from year to year.  Instead, NRTs measure where students land in relation to other students at the end of each year.

Imagine a foot race where runners run as far as they can and are plotted according to where they stop running. That’s akin to the NRT test that voucher students are judged by: Where they finish doesn’t necessarily determine whether they can be passed along to the next grade.

Now, imagine a race in which students are required to reach a finish line before they’re permitted to advance to the next level. That’s akin to both the FCAT and the new Common-Core-based “Florida test.” Public school students who take these tests must master certain standards, as measured by standards-based tests, before they are promoted to the next grade level.

Recently, in response to a decision by the Lee County School Board to opt out of standards-based testing (which the board rescinded Tuesday), Patricia Levesque, CEO of the Jeb-Bush-affiliated Foundation for Excellence in Education, (FEE) had this to say:

“The Lee County School Board is neglecting its duty to ensure a meaningful education for their students and uphold state law.”

The plaintiffs suing over vouchers are mirroring Levesque’s reasoning: In this state, we’ve decided on a set of tests for measuring accountability. Publicly funded entities that don’t participate in the state’s uniform system of accountability, in her opinion, are violating the law. Worse than that, though, they’re jeopardizing the effective education of children.

If the Board of Education simply required Florida’s voucher schools to administer the same Common-Core-based test that public schools administer, many of the lawsuit’s claims would evaporate.

More importantly, though, Figlio would have the apples-to-apples data he needs to make meaningful comparisons. He’d also have the right tools for the job — the type of test that was designed to measure student gains, not percentile rankings on a bell curve. Florida’s voucher students, their families, and taxpayers deserve no less.

What are voucher schools afraid of?

Julie Delegal, a University of Florida alumna, is a contributor for Folio Weekly, Jacksonville’s alternative weekly, and writes for the family business, Delegal Law Offices. She lives in Jacksonville. Column courtesy of Context Florida.