Newly elected Florida Governor Ron DeSantis seemed to be off to a good start. He called for the entire South Florida Water Management District to resign over allegations of gross mismanagement and his movement on medical marijuana has pleased many across the state. The first polls show that DeSantis is still in his honeymoon phase with the voters.
But the honeymoon may be at an end.
Florida already has a program that allows corporate taxpayers to skip paying Tallahassee and instead send their money to private schools where it is used to pay for the State’s Tax Credit Scholarship Program.
Florida has four voucher programs providing money to private schools. The tax credit program is the state’s largest, serving nearly 100,000 students. Another 14,000 students are waiting to get in on the program.
DeSantis’ plan? Take $90 to $100 million more from general revenues and pay that over to private schools to take the kids off the waiting list, out of public schools, and into private academies.
Florida’s teacher unions tried to have the existing tax credit voucher program declared unconstitutional. Florida’s Constitution has a provision that education is a fundamental value and guarantees that each student residing in the state is entitled to an education from a “uniform, efficient, safe, secure, and high quality system of free public schools.” The Florida Supreme Court rejected the challenge and let a lower court ruling stand.
The problem is that private schools are not the same as public schools, contrary to the Governor’s assertions. Private schools are not bound by the same requirements for teacher qualifications..
The Orlando Sentinel had published stories detailing how private schools that take state money used fraudulent fire and health reports and even hired untrained teachers, some with criminal records. These private schools also freely discriminate based on religion, disability, language skills, and even sexual orientation.
The private schools aren’t the panacea they claim to be. About 60 percent of the students who use a tax credit scholarship return to public school within one or two years. Those who come back do worse on state tests, meaning the public schools have to expend even more resources to try to get the children back on track.
That’s no surprise in a private school system that lacks both standards and accountability.
DeSantis is clearly trying to appeal to his conservative base that would rather that the State get out of education all together. Well, except for the money part. They’re fine with the state writing checks to private schools. They just bristle at the idea that these schools, many of which are religious academies, be held to the same standards as the public schools that they want to replace.
Education can’t be treated like any business. When a store or factory closes down, the impact is localized and temporary. When a child is cheated out of the promise of a high-quality education, the damage is felt for a lifetime for the child and for generations by the people of Florida.
U.S. News & World Report ranked Florida at number 40 among the states for K-12 educational achievement, even behind states like Alabama and Arkansas. We can do better. Statewide, our college system ranks among the nation’s best. Our primary education system slacks by comparison.
And diverting even more money from our public school system just guarantees that we will be frozen forever in failure, like a fly fossilized in amber.
Voters should let the Governor and their State Senators and Representatives know that they should stop the slow dismantling of our education system and reject the expansion of the Tax Credit Scholarship Program.
Grant, you are a parrot for the teachers union and then send your kids to private school, really???
And he’s a real car buff! His reviews on various vehicles are informative and interesting.
What polls? Grant Miller writes some very good articles. He has written some very accurate op-eds on bad government in South Miami City Hall!
Are you one of those sugar farmers? Are you one of those who renewed the land lease for big sugar with no public hearing? That was bad, man! DeSantis did right!
As a follow up please note that senator TRavis Hutson from north Miami beach has filed a bill s1028 that would require all public school districts in the state to share funds allocated for teacher pay raises with the charter schools teachers.
All of the polls show that Community Newspapers earned another big Failure “F” grade for extremely poor opinions from publisher Grant Miller. Seems he will never ever graduate!! Poor Thing !
I went to public schools all my life, my children have as well & i would not have it any other way, taxpayers fund Miami-Dade public schools thru our property tax dollars and on top of that are superior to the majority of private schools, charter schools should NOT be funded with Public School funds ever!. Ransom Everglades is a private school in Coconut Grove its current annual tuition is $38,400! so it is expected to be the top school it is.
Thanks for the article. But public schools suck.
Excellent idea to have an honest, true evaluation of charter schools & for that matter public as well. Use the data to improve where needed. But absolutely no one in their right mind should give public money away for a purpose where there is no accountability & oversight! That is TOTALLY irresponsible & should be unlawful. Not my tax dollars! That’s not what I voted for!
Tatiana, thank you for your comment. If only the teachers in the public school system would be interested and engaged as those in the private schools….
TIRED OF FLORIDIANS BEEN CHEATED LIKE THIS. DE SANTIS SEEMS TO FAVOR PRIVATE SCHOOL AT OUR EXPENSE. LIKE ALWAYS IN AMERICA. PEOPLE , WORKERS ARE THE ONES TO PAY FOR ALL OF GOVERNORS AND POLITICIANS DESIRES.
If the Governor wanted to do something for education he would ha e an evaluation done of all Charter Schools in FL and see how they compare with the public schools. There are great, good and poor Charter Schools.
Personally, I am against using public funds for private schools. The private schools are as different from one another as are Charter and public schools.
Thank you Mr. Miller for bring this important issue forward. In the interest of disclosure I am a former public school teacher and my wife is a public school teacher.
There are good public schools and bad public schools. There are good private schools and there are bad private schools. Instead of blaming the system, maybe we should blame the students and the parents of the underachievers. How about some personal responsibility of the students to go to school, behave and learn. How come some students in the inner city “bad schools” excel? Is it because of a lousy school system? It all starts at home, we as parents must instill in our children a desire to learn, the importance of an education and RESPECT of ones elders.
I agree the Governor has done a good job but this voucher idea is misplaced. It is a slippery slope. The State will not be able to pick and choose which schools will get “our” money. There are many religions are we to fund all religious private schools? There are Muslim schools in town, do we want to fund those learning institutions? What if a Santeria priest wants funding for a new school? Maybe an atheist or agnostic organization wants to get into the education business now that public funding will be available. Where does it stop? I used those institutions as examples not because I find them objectionable but because some in our society do. I respect everyone’s right to worship or not, I just don’t want my tax dollars funding those institutions. I am a product of both private Catholic school and public school and can say that in my experience the public school curriculum was more rigorous but in the private school there was more discipline hence a better learning environment.
Let’s leave the government funding for the government schools and lets get big business out of our education system. It seems as if the focus is on some so called experts new education idea and every few years the State changes its mandates, technology and curriculum.
There are 2 obvious issues here. One is taxpayers getting a say to where their education dollars go – 2. Lack of oversight – Simple soulution let their be school choice and if they want to tap into public dollars they need to implement oversight and testing.
Lets be honest here most people sending their kids to non-religious private school is because they are better then their public school counterparts – there is a waiting list in most charter schools.
Where did the old argument that it will hurt the public school students go – that was the only legitimate one – no oversight is a general cop out.
Totally agree with Comment writers Max, Henry Gomez, and Lisa with their bullseye comments. Guess the teacher’s unions do not want to provide vouchers to the millions of illegal children in our school system nationwide in order to at least give them a voucher opportunity to fully assimilate. How selfish….
Public Schools system is a sham. “qualified” teachers who don’t care about the students and who do the minimum for their success. Public school are only focusing on test outcome. Students spend an entire school year preparing for tests. There is no safety in the schools, no moral values nor civic duties. The reason why all students perform better is because the public schools systems, introduces concepts in elementary schools when children are not really capable of comprehension. This is repeated year after year, spiral concepts never really understood in depth. Vs Private schools that go a slower pace, yielding the same exact results at the end. Private school children are expected to volunteer for community hours as are the parents. They are expected to show up and work.
Parents need to do their homework and find accredited schools. BUT A ZIP CODE should never determine the level of success of a child. That is what is criminal.
The first part of the article is incorrect the South Florida water management was not missed managed I have served on the board for almost 4 years following the best ideas from science-based information that I could make for Floridians, And also following the law. The employees of the district some serving over 30 years is one of the greatest teams that I have ever worked with.
There are a lot of special interests interested in preserving the public school monopoly, namely the teacher’s union and the bureaucrats in the school districts. There is nothing more indicative of the evils of big government than public. They take your money and force you into a substandard school because of your zip code. I have a child on the autism spectrum. The common core curriculum is bad enough for any kid, but it’s horrible for autistic kids. I had to put my boy in private school. Thank God for the McKay Scholarship. Anyone who advocates for school CHOICE gets an A+ in my book. Anyone who would force someone else’s child to attend a certain school gets an F-.
It’s infuriating to me the ignorance of so many! Do you know how many parents out there have no idea about the “facts” of private/charter schools accreditation, qualified teachers/staff, safety standards, food etc. Do you know how many kids come to my PUBLIC SCHOOL after realizing that their “private/charter” isn’t nationally accredited and NONE of their high school credits are going to count for the college/university their applying for? Then they come here and try to cram all those classes that DIDN’T count? That is CRIMINAL! Or the teacher that is not certified, has no experience with teaching or working with children? It’s all a SCAM! No one cares about the kids, it’s about the $$$ AND FOR THAT WE SHOULD ALL BE ASHAMED!!!!!!!!!! Our Governor is so far done a good job, except for this. Then again, he can not relate to the public school system….most in politics have NO CLUE!!!!!!!!!!
Grant, not sure why you are repeating the teachers union talking points but your article is full of holes. The goal is to educate children and most agree that public funding to do this is a good thing. This does not mean that we must force kids to go to lousy public schools because they have no other option. You have opted out of the public school system yourself by sending your children to a 40,000 + private school so why is your child given a choice and the poor inner city kid has no choice? Your weak stats concerning people who leave the system and then come back with lower scores has nothing to do with the charter school or private school and everything to do with most parents of troubled kids are trying to find a solution and to compare them to regular students is dishonest. Your do as I say not what I do is disturbing.
Education of our children should not be a matter of choice but rather a guarantee by the state.
Public schools are not failing our students. That statement is not supported by any data. Our schools in Miami Dade continue to excel. Private schools are for the most part a joke. You pay to play. No worries, everyone passes if the check clears.
Parents are failing our kids when they are fooled by the false promises of charter and private schools.
It always amazes me how people can’t believe that their candidate of choice can’t possibly be doing one part of the job wrong. DeSantis is doing a pretty good job so far, but Florida’s education system is a mess and we have had Republican Governors forever. How about trying a slightly different approach… Invest in public education and the teachers in public schools and just maybe they get better. Might also be helpful letting educators decide on tests and school programs that grade our students as opposed to companies deciding what tests are best for the kids. I look forward to seeing how Mr. DeSantis handles this.
My overall thought is, if charter schools are as bad as you say, why do any parents send their children there? And why is there a waiting list to get in?
I’ve known teachers in charter schools in Miami and also kids who’ve attended charter schools in Miami. I have heard of none of the issues you raised in your piece from them. Problems may well exist, but I do not have personal experience with the issues you raise.
I have also known some kids who were products of Miami-Dade Public Schools who were absolutely amazing smart, creative and hard-working kids. So I know the Public Schools are capable of great things.
I am always a bit leery of statements such as “Those who come back do worse on state tests, meaning the public schools have to expend even more resources to try to get the children back on track.” Does this mean these individuals placed worse relative to their peers when they came back to the public school system than they did individually prior to going to charter schools (retrogressed) or does this mean the students coming from the charter schools (perhaps kicked out due to disciplinary or other issues or having gone to charter schools because they were doing poorly in the public school setting) as a whole score worse than the whole public school population? Perhaps a better metric might be how do charter school graduates do compared to public school graduates on standardized tests or with college admission. There are problems with this approach as well, but it illustrates how selection bias can be used to get whatever results you want.
Certainly charter schools need to be held to the same standards as public schools and there needs to be oversight on health and safety issues especially, but it is not clear at all from the limited issues you raise that some portion of the charter schools aren’t wonderful for the students who go there.
I personally have seen examples of tremendous waste of taxpayers’ money in the public school systems in Florida. To be fair, these are not because of the teachers, who seem to me give a lot more than they get in return. Most of the waste I have seen deals with administration, procurement and construction. From Taj Mahal headquarters like you see in Palm Beach to new construction that fails after five years with no one held to account as can be seen in multiple school districts, there is a tremendous amount of waste. This also needs to be addressed. Perhaps if the school districts demonstrated that they were a better deal, the people of Florida wouldn’t want their kids in charter schools.
The overall tone of your opinion piece makes one wonder if you or someone close to you isn’t connected in some way with the public school system or teachers union. If that is the case, it would be good for you to disclose that. If not, that would also be useful information for your readers.
I have been a public school teacher since 1997. My children have gone to public school with me. My daughter, now 16 attends a college prep catholic high school. I do not know what vouchers allows a child to attend her school for free? Also, her school has highly qualified teacher and college professors on campus to teach AP and dual enrollment courses. If you can afford and wish for your child to get a religious education than it is your choice. There are many reputable HIGHLY accredited private schools. This article is putting down all private schools and raising up the public schools. Unfortunately as an educator and my administrators as well, our hands are tied when it comes to disciplining the students. Administrators cannot expel a student or severely suspend them for vaping, selling weed or wax as they say, and other very disturbing acts that is seen at even the middle school level. In a private school that is not tolerated and children do get expelled. When I first started teaching this was also the case in public schools and those students that were expelled for drugs and such were sent to an opportunity school or military school to hopefully put them on the right track. The system is flawed and we are facing a population of children that do not respect and think they deserve it all. There needs to be dire consequences in order to gain respect back in the public school system
What’s wrong with letting parents decide which school they want to sent their kids to? Vouchers is the way to go!!! The schools that don’t survive because parents decided that they are not good for their kids need to close down. Let the free market determine which schools are good/bad.
Your generalization of public schools and private schools is laughable. Best school in Miami Dade County as far as college entrance and the quality of college accepting: Ransom Everglades…a PRIVATE school!
As the child of a Miami Dade Public School teacher, most of the certifications and accreditations that these poor teachers are required to take are completely crap and worthless. My mother pulled me out of the public school and put me into private because it was a zoo in public school. The private schools focus on the math, science, English and history. They don’t focus on liberal sensibilities that you desire most in public schools.
Sorry….this is a hackjob of an article. Your basically a mouthpiece for the Teachers Union. We’ve been listening to this garbage for 30 years. And its only getting worse when people like you starting writing for the public’s “mis”-information.
DeSantis is just an extension of 8 yrs of Republican Rick Scott. Miami-Dade county taxpayers approved a teacher salary increase November 2018 elections. No new teachers wanted to work in Florida which is the 6 largest school system in the country yet its salaries were ranked near the bottom @ #45 nationwide.
https://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local/Referendum-to-Raise-Miami-Dade-Teachers-Salaries-Overwhelmingly-Passes-499968371.html
Republicans,in general, represent business interests and not the overall interests of every citizen. Charter schools should be privately funded!
Our Public Schools should be funded with dollars from our taxes, and Private Schools should not be taking students and getting monies ie Charter Schools unless they can prove that they are actually better at providing the education. Miami Dade County Public Schools need to reinforce the structure and positive education, and more monies and accountability should fall in place. Florida should be ashamed, when it comes to what it pays its teachers, and hopefully Ron DiSantis will make a change here. Thank you for this opinion piece, Neighborhood Newspapers.
As someone who teaches children who are recipients of those scholarships at a private school, I have to say that this article is very misleading. The public schools in our area are terrible, and they have historically been terrible. The children in my class receive more attention as we have a small class size, a more rigorous curriculum because we aren’t bound by the state standards, and more active relationships with families, which is highly beneficial to student success. We may not be a perfect school, and we have a long way to go, but our students are undoubtedly receiving a better education thanks to the scholarship program. I, for one, am grateful for the ability to contribute to private education in the inner city!
Thank you Grant Miller for your article. I personally experienced lack of oversight in private schools. My son was in a private school for 8 years. I suspected he wasn’t being taught what he was supposed to and moved him to a magnet public school. When he was tested, he was 2 grades behind his grade level. The teachers in the public school tutored him through lunch for almost the whole year till he caught up. My daughter’s private school used the money that was supposed to go to buying new textbooks to put a rustic glaze on the floors. I won’t trust private schools anymore.
I disagree, public schools are failing our kids! Ron DiSantis is doing a great job! Still has my vote!
Vouchers are the way to get kids out of mediocre education. Obviously traditional public schools have failed, , it is time for choice in education for those that want to get ahead!
I agree with Grant Miller on this issue. Indeed, I very strongly support his observations and opinions. The great college and university education the state provides will be for out-of-state freshmen unless the children in Florida get a competitive elementary and secondary education.
Public funds should absolutely not go to fund privately held, “corporate” run schools! I object to my tax dollars supporting this especially in light of the lack of oversight & accountability. Privatization is not a cure all – not in education, healthcare, or SS.
Hi Grant!
I completely disagree.Governor DeSantis is doing a great job.
Thanks for the great column!
https://youtu.be/q5DeZAoiKSI
Thank you very much for your input; what is very interesting that Miami’s Community Newspapers hosted a luncheon for Ron DeSantis, over 275 people attended back in October 2018. We also endorsed Ana Rodriguez (R) for State House – District 105, Marili Cancio (R) for State Senate seat, Mario Diaz Balart (R) for U.S. House of Representatives – 25th District. Also, in the primaries we endorsed Adam Putnum (R), hosted a luncheon for Maria Salazar (R), but back to the point. Ron DeSantis is doing a great job as of now, and this is one issue that we disagree on.
Keep reading our paper, thank you very much.
– Grant Miller
What a bunch of bull crap > this is from a newspaper that endorsed Andrew Gillum > maybe a revenge article?