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Hearing from the other side of the Florida voucher debate

Roberto Martinez, former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida and member of the state Department of Education:

Students in schools that have failed them should not be trapped in those schools merely because their parents cannot afford a better educational choice. Families with more financial resources make these choices regularly, but students with limited resources cannot. Why shouldn’t low-income students be given that same choice through school vouchers? The case for school choice is that morally clear.

Regrettably, last week the Florida Senate voted to deny Floridians the opportunity to decide for themselves whether to amend the state’s Constitution to protect school choice. The amendment is necessary to override a decision by the Florida Supreme Court, which invalidated Florida’s landmark effort to enhance parental choice over their children’s education.

Apart from its moral imperative, school choice, through vouchers and their threat, has been shown to improve the quality of public education in our state. Under Florida’s principal voucher program (the Opportunity Scholarships Program, OPS, created by Gov. Jeb Bush’s A+ Accountability Plan), students at schools that fail two out of any four years can receive a voucher to attend any school — public or private. Research at Harvard University and elsewhere has concluded that Florida’s voucher program has had a positive impact on student performance in public schools. The gains have been greatest among African-American students.

This school year, 740 students participated in the OSP: 64 percent are African Americans, 30 percent are Hispanics and most come from low-income families.

Unfortunately, the Florida Supreme Court decision eliminated the OSP. This is the first time that the state’s Supreme Court has eliminated an educational program solely because private schools participate in them. That ruling threatens adversely to affect thousands of school children enrolled in other scholarship programs in which private schools also participate.

Remember that the Florida ruling was based on uniformity, not on the sectarian status of the schools.  As a result, rest assured that ACLUNEAAFT lawsuits against all other forms of school choice in Florida are well on their way.