Black Students Lose Again is the headline on John Tierney’s Jan. 7 New York Times column on the Florida Supreme Court’s decision to throw out vouchers for students attending low-performing schools.
Democrats once went to court to desegregate schools. But in Florida they’ve been fighting to kick black students out of integrated schools, and they’ve succeeded, thanks to the Democratic majority on the State Supreme Court.
Most voucher recipients are black students who’ve used the tuition aid to transfer from nearly all-minority schools to integrated private schools that offer a college prep education. Tierney cites Adrian Bushell, who chose a Catholic school that is 24 percent black instead of Miami Edison, a large local high school that’s 94 percent black and 6 percent Hispanic.
His experience is typical. In other places that have tried vouchers, like Milwaukee and Cleveland, studies have shown that voucher recipients tend to move to less segregated schools.
Besides helping Adrian (who’s got a 3.1 average and plans on college), the Florida program has also benefited students in public schools like Miami Edison. Because each voucher is worth less than what the public system spends per student, more money is left for each student in the public system. And studies have repeatedly shown that failing Florida schools facing voucher competition have raised their test scores more than schools not facing the voucher threat.
The court majority ruled the vouchers are unconstitutional because Florida is required to provide a “uniform” system of education.
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Before deciding whether NYT’s Tierney’s playing of the racial/anti-Democrat card is reasonable or right-wing blather, one should look at the Florida’s Supreme Court’s decision and rationale.
The decision, in short, is that the Florida Constitution limits the Legislature’s power to dispense funds for education only to a “system of free public schools”, and not to private schools, and that the law, creating a voucher system, which takes taxpayer money from the public school’s accounts, and transfers that money to private schools is facially unconstitutional.
Quoting from the Court’s decision regarding the consitutionality of Florida’s Opportunity Scholarship Program (OSP):
Under the OSP, a student from a public school that fails to meet certain
minimum state standards has two options. The first is to move to another public
school with a satisfactory record under the state standards. The second option is to
receive funds from the public treasury, which would otherwise have gone to the
student’s school district, to pay the student’s tuition at a private school. The
narrow question we address is whether the second option violates a part of the
Florida Constitution requiring the state to both provide for “the education of all
children residing within its borders” and provide “by law for a uniform, efficient, safe, secure, and high quality system of free public schools that allows students to
obtain a high quality education.” Art. IX, § 1(a), Fla. Const.
Our inquiry begins with the plain language of the second and third sentences
of article IX, section 1(a) of the Constitution. The relevant words are these: “It is .
. . a paramount duty of the state to make adequate provision for the education of all
children residing within its borders.” Using the same term, “adequate provision,”
article IX, section 1(a) further states: “Adequate provision shall be made by law
for a uniform, efficient, safe, secure, and high quality system of free public
schools.” For reasons expressed more fully below, we find that the OSP violates
this language. It diverts public dollars into separate private systems parallel to and
in competition with the free public schools that are the sole means set out in the
Constitution for the state to provide for the education of Florida’s children. This
diversion not only reduces money available to the free schools, but also funds
private schools that are not “uniform” when compared with each other or the
public system. Many standards imposed by law on the public schools are
inapplicable to the private schools receiving public monies. In sum, through the
OSP the state is fostering plural, nonuniform systems of education in direct
violation of the constitutional mandate for a uniform system of free public schools.
—————
The Court’s rationale notes that the legislative intent for the law enabling OSP quoted from above constitutional provision but critically failed to include the word “system of free public schools”. This latter phrase restricts the legislature in funding — it must fund “free public schools” not private.
It should be apparent to all that a decision otherwise would have allowed the government of Florida to ensure and cause the Florida Public Schools to decline in effectiveness by pulling resources from them, use those funds to pay private schools (from which the Legislators will get kickbacks?). The result: a death spiral for public schools.
Are the public schools in florida doing a good job? — not according to recent NAEP test scores. The same is true in Wisconsin and Madison, I believe. But the solution is to force them to do better (accountability) not make it impossible for them (and us) to do so.