Guest Author
The point of school choice is to give parents options because we know different students thrive in different learning environments. So our need to assure that all these schools are holding up their end of the bargain is made no easier by those who demand we treat them as though they are all alike.
Julie Delegal’s recent commentary, “Private-voucher schools must show how they spend tax dollars,” was a rich example of how such simple protestations ignore the more complex realities. I have a deep personal respect for Mrs. Delegal and I do believe her heart is centered on helping children.
Unfortunately, when she suggested “the state has yet to find an effective way to determine if private-voucher schools spend taxpayer money efficiently,” for example, she seemed to miss a rather salient point: Tax Credit Scholarship schools in Florida receive about 55 cents on the public school dollar. Certainly that must qualify as at least one measure of financial efficiency.
The welcome reality is the Florida education landscape is changing dramatically. Last year, nearly 1.5 million students, or roughly 42 percent of all students in PreK-12, chose a school other than the one assigned to them by their district.
The possibilities for a parent these days are inspiring: open enrollment, magnet schools, career academies, online courses, dual enrollment, and scholarships for disabled and low-income students. Last year, one of every 13 students in this state attended a charter school, which is a type of learning option that didn’t even exist a generation ago.
For policymakers like me, one of the most important challenges in this arena is to assure that all of these options are helping students to succeed. But one of the greatest obstacles is partisan hyperbole — those who argue either that there is no need for regulation, or insist that one size must fit all.
Tax Credit Scholarships serve underprivileged children. The scholarship serves 59,674 students in 1,414 private schools this year. What we know at this point is that the students come from homes that struggle, with incomes on average that are only 9 percent above poverty, and with the majority headed by a single parent. We know more than two-thirds are black or Hispanic.
More importantly, we know the students who choose the scholarship are among the lowest performers in the public schools they leave behind. And we know this: these same students achieve the same gains in reading and math as students of all incomes nationally.
That’s encouraging data, but detractors call it irrelevant and “inscrutable” simply because the students don’t take the state FCAT. While it would be simpler if all students in all schools took the same test, the nationally norm-referenced tests required of scholarship students are undisputed tools of academic measurement. Also undisputed is their ability to gauge whether students are gaining or losing ground to their peers nationally.
So policymakers are sometimes required to strike a balance. Until 2012, private schools were prohibited from administering the state test.
Now they can only do so under carefully prescribed circumstances, and scholarship schools face a special quandary. On average, three-fourths of their students are paying their own tuition, and their parents want national tests. Should these schools be forced, then, to administer two sets of tests? What about the 363 schools with fewer than 10 scholarship students? Or the 102 with just one or two?
In a public education basket that is now loaded with all types of delectable fruit, we should not judge the taste of each only by its comparison to apples.
Jason Fischer is a father, businessman, and member of the Duval County School Board. He represents District 7.
