With all the buzz around school choice, I decided to take a look at some of the key points that school choice proponents pose.
Will school choice really save taxpayers money? If we allow the “money to follow the child,” does that really ensure a better education than traditional public schools can provide? Are school choice programs a safety net for the socioeconomically disadvantaged? Will children with special needs benefit from school choice?
Let’s start by following the money. In 2006 the Florida Supreme Court found the Opportunity Scholarship Program unconstitutional. “But the ruling didn’t kill vouchers. It just made voucher entrepreneurs more crafty, and meant that the public dollars being siphoned to private—and often religious—schools would have to be managed with the same bit of clever opacity that drug dealers employ when laundering their riches,” according to Palm Beach Post columnist Frank Cerabino. “In Florida, that took the form of the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship Program and a group called Step Up for Students, which is organized as a charity.”
Their clever maneuvering involved corporate donations to charities that then pass money on to students looking for grants. These charities then skim 3 percent off the top of the diverted tax dollars for administrative fees. Of course, these charities had their own lobbying group to make sure they secured partisan support, in this case, by way of the Republican party.
Are taxpayers really getting more bang for their buck or are private corporations and charities reaping the largest benefit?
“When you look at the [charter] schools . . . They look more like private schools, and so, what we think is really happening here, is that these schools that should be private schools are accessing public funds,” said Integrity Florida’s research director Ben Wilcox.
“They are giving parents and students more choices,” he added, “but that choice comes at a cost. And I don’t think our taxpayers in Florida are aware of what they are being asked to spend their education resources on.”
The Integrity Florida report notes that the boom in charters may lead to an issue with Florida’s Constitution, which requires a “uniform, efficient, safe, secure, and high quality system of free public schools that allows students to obtain a high quality education;” as the number of charters has grown, with different rules than traditional schools, the report questions whether a uniform system actually exists.
In 2020, an audit claimed Oklahoma Epic charter schools owed the state $8.9 million dollars.
“For years, the pair of public charter schools have been the subject of a criminal investigation into allegations that include embezzlement, obtaining money by false pretenses and racketeering. The schools have also been accused of enrolling ‘ghost students’ to increase their share of state aid,” according to nondoc.com.
This is just a small sampling of how school choice initiatives are costly to taxpayers. These programs are a breeding ground for fraud due to the lack of oversight.
Taxpayers should also be aware, as reported by the Hampton Institute, “According to a 2018 state-by-state information chart from the Education Commission of the States, more than 25 states (including Washington, D.C.) either do not require charter school teachers to be certified or allow charter schools to hire a large portion of teachers with no teaching certification. It should also be noted that, on average, charter school teachers have fewer years of teaching experience and fewer credentials than their public school counterparts.”
The documentary Killing Ed also exposes the lack of credentials of teachers employed by the Gülen charter school network, which is one of the largest in the U.S. Learn more at killinged.com.
School choice has been touted by some as “The civil rights issue of this century.”
“This has become the battle cry for many conservative politicians seeking election, yet, it has been proven that vouchers increase racial and socioeconomic segregation,” this from a 2019 paper titled Socioeconomic Segregation and School Choice in American Public Schools. It makes me stop and wonder how many of these politicians have read the data in regards to the programs they are actually peddling. This is a slap in the face to the individuals that fought for the desegregation of schools during the Civil Rights movement.
U.S. Rep. Kathy Castor expressed her concern about charter schools and segregation, particularly “findings from a 2019 Urban Institute report which concluded that growth in charter school enrollment increases the segregation of black, Latino and white students,” as she worked to secure legislation to increase oversight.
Special needs students, especially those with severe disabilities, are more costly to educate. The majority of those students are left in traditional public schools, which, when school choice is adopted, are even more underfunded.
“Especially in Florida, where the governor and legislature are intentionally undercutting our public school students and local control,” Rep. Castor continued. “Florida, the third largest state in the country, ranks 43rd in per-pupil funding and it diverts an enormous amount of public money to for-profit charter schools that are not accountable and often fail to provide the full range of educational services required by law like those for special needs and disabled students.”
Robert Garda Jr., a professor at Loyola University of New Orleans School of Law, sounds the alarm.
“One thing is certain—charter schools struggle to enroll and appropriately serve students with disabilities such as mental retardation; serious emotional disturbance; autism; specific learning disabilities; and hearing, speech, language, or orthopedic or visual impairments. The harm to disabled students is obvious: they are denied equal educational choices and opportunities in violation of their civil rights. The harm to the charter movement is more subtle,” Garda wrote.
“Chester Finn, a staunch charter advocate, predicted early in the movement that ‘special education may turn out to be the most dangerous land-mine buried on the charter school’s property.’ This premonition is proving to be correct. Charter schools’ violation of disabled students’ civil rights undermines their viability as a widespread alternative to traditional schools,” Garda’s paper continued.
When we look at the big picture in regard to school choice, we discover that the system is riddled with fraud, employs teachers without teaching credentials, facilitates segregation, and fails to serve society’s most vulnerable.
What are school choice proponents fighting for, then? Are proponents more concerned about serving students or lining their pockets? I guess we all need to “follow the money” for that answer.
