April 7, 2021
By Jeanne Allen, Founder and CEO of CER

This month, a study released by University of Arkansas researchers shows that as Florida led the nation in expanding choice over the past 20 years, its students with disabilities and students of color showed some of the biggest academic gains. GETTY

They are wrong.

In 2016, Martin Luther King III led a rally of 10,000 people, most of them Black and Hispanic, against a lawsuit that sought to kill the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship, the biggest private school choice program in America. “This is about justice,” he told the crowd. “This is about righteousness. This is about truth. This is about freedom – the freedom to choose what’s best for your family, and your child most importantly.”

In 2020, the teachers unions organized a protest in Tallahassee against the very focus of that King march for education justice, demanding more money for education, and threatening work stoppages. The heads of the two national teachers unions were there leading the charge for what would become one of many protests throughout the year, in primarily red-leaning states, where educational choice has become mainstream and helped diversify schooling options for parents.

A few months later, throughout the United States, almost all schools would universally close from COVID-19 and render all students remote for at least several months, if not the full year. For months, battles and high pitched media analyses have documented the reopening saga and the extent to which teachers unions and their allies have kept schools closed, even after billions of dollars began flowing to allegedly ensure that schools could reopen, first in the fall of 2020, then in winter, then in early 2021, and then in the spring of 2021. But barely half of the nation’s schools are actually open full-time, in-person as of this writing, and the unions are continuing to challenge whether the billions headed toward public schools for safety and reassurance will even be enough.

The few exceptions to the rule have been only with certain types of schools and in certain types of states. First, it has been well-documented that private and predominantly Catholic schools have remained open for nearly the entire school year in almost every jurisdiction in the nation. Second, states that have robust educational choice programs in place are more likely to have had both public schools and private schools re-open to students for a full or a majority of the year. Nowhere is this more true than in Florida, whose two decades of educational choice and charter school programs have turned educational performance for the poorest students on its head. The National Assessment of Educational Progress is but one of many objective measures of the increase created by these programs. Because of the diversity and flexibility of schools of choice in Florida, decisions about reopening were made on a community basis, and its leaders were more willing to make schools work for students no matter how difficult and to put science above politics during Covid.

All of this (just a fraction of the history of Florida’s major turn-around on education) is why an ideological report about the most successful of education scholarship programs in the state and a national model demands not only scrutiny but skepticism.

The once highly respected League of Women Voters has long opposed educational choice programs. The author of the latest report by the League in Florida, Dr. Sally Butzin, claims that the program that created the opportunity for the more than 100,000 students who are able to attend the school of their choice has somehow duped the taxpayer through “shadowy operations;” and further, that the practice of giving companies tax credits for contributions to the fund that creates educational scholarships is shady, lacks transparency and is bad public policy. One wonders if she has looked at the charitable contributions we all deduct on our tax returns annually – or the credit U.S. businesses receive for everything from wind to solar power to stadiums.

It’s also clear that the author may not understand how to read a federal 501(c)(3) 990. She reports that Step Up For Students, the leading and oldest scholarship granting organization (SGO) in the state, has billions in assets, when in reality a non-profit reports its pledges as income when they are made. Non-profits like Step Up have to continually work to secure pledges that ensure enough funds exist to cover scholarships year after year.

In recounting her opposition to this program last January 2020 on the occasion of the aforementioned teachers march, Butzin wrote in the Tallahassee Democrat:

“Soon a parallel school system began to grow…this led to publicly funded vouchers for private schools. Ironically, these new schemes (emphasis added)had no accountability to taxpayers, as well as blatant conflicts of interest where the politicians who were creating these parallel schools were benefiting financially.

“And this parallel system has bled the life out of public education, as billions of dollars flowing to it have left millions of children behind.”

Schemes? Benefiting financially? Any evaluation should be guided by a tangible look at the benefits of the program.

The Florida Tax Credit Scholarship now serves 100,000 students every year, two-thirds of them Black and Hispanic. The evidence shows students are consistently getting better outcomes – at a substantially lower cost, which is why hundreds of corporations choose to contribute to non-profit groups like Step Up For Students.

A decade’s worth of standardized test score analyses shows that students on scholarship are typically among the lowest-performing students in their prior public schools. But instead of falling further behind each year, they’re now gaining a year’s worth of knowledge in a year’s worth of time. A 2019 study by the Urban Institute found those same students are up to 43 percent more likely to enroll in four-year colleges than their public school peers, and up to 20 percent more likely to earn bachelor’s degrees.

These gains come at a lower cost. The scholarship is worth 59 percent of per-pupil spending in Florida district schools and it enables students to choose from thousands of schools that are diverse in size, demographics, educational focus and location. A review of eight independent financial studies over the years demonstrated that the scholarships save taxpayers money that can be re-invested positively in public schools as well.

The scholarship isn’t hurting traditional public schools academically either. As Florida ramped up school choice, the academic trend lines rose for all its public schools.

Florida’s graduation rate was 54 percent in 2001, the year the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship was created. It’s 90 percent now. Florida now ranks No. 3 in K-12 Achievement, according to Education Week, and No. 2 in AP exam success, according to the College Board.

Access to Project-Based Learning is just one of the benefits scholarship programs like Florida’s bring to students. XQSUPERSCHOOL, CROWDSCHOOL, GETTINGSMARTThe scholarships are a key part of this rising tide. A 2020 report from the National Bureau of Economic Research found that as the scholarship program grew, public schools most impacted by the competition saw higher test scores and less absenteeism. This month, a study released by University of Arkansas researchers shows that as Florida led the nation in expanding choice over the past 20 years, its students with disabilities and students of color showed some of the biggest academic gains.

The Florida League of Women Voters’ only reference to educational quality is rhetorical:

“When asked about quality control and learning outcomes, voucher proponents always revert to ‘parent choice.’ It is up to the parents to make those determinations about ‘what is best for their child.’

“This assumes that all parents are up to the task. Are we on the road back 200 years ago when schooling was solely a parent’s responsibility? Parents back then cobbled together clusters of one-room schoolhouses and private tutoring. Parents with means had access to private schools with qualified teachers, while the Catholic Church created a system of parochial schools.

“As the industrial age approached, it was clear that this parent-driven school system was inadequate for a modern society. In 1838, Horace Mann founded and edited The Common School Journal. Mann is considered the father of public education.” 

Butzin goes on to enumerate Mann’s principles for public education, criticizing the Florida legislature for allegedly unwinding that vision, seeming to prefer a “modern” vision of school created nearly 200 years ago! Among hundreds of other advances, the advent of brain science not available in prior decades has proven the importance of variety, diversity and individualization in education and learning, and it is agnostic about the kind of school one attends, whether it’s public, private, or charter, or whether it’s a microschool, wholly virtual, or a traditional brick-and-mortar schoolhouse.

Scenes from the public school classrooms of the 19th century PINTEREST
Scholarship programs like Florida’s exist in 19 states and provide less advantaged students the opportunity to make decisions about their choice of education, among a diversity of offerings never before available to them.

This is the future road for education. It should be celebrated and built upon, not condemned and distorted.Follow Jeanne on Twitter or LinkedIn or some of her other work here. 

Founded in 1993, the Center for Education Reform aims to expand educational opportunities that lead to improved economic outcomes for all Americans — particularly our youth — ensuring that conditions are ripe for innovation, freedom and flexibility throughout U.S. education.