F.A.C.E. to FACE   F.A.C.E. BULLETIN     January 5, 2009 Dear Friends, Orlando Sentinel, More students get state to pay for private tuition, on their front page in Q & A format. Orlando Sentinel, What they think, Corporate scholarships help kids at greatest risk, by Doug Tuthill's (OPPAGA ) column in Orlando Sentinel in response to the Welner’s column, Legislature's vouchers report is based on smoke and mirrors. THE GRADEBOOK, Voucher report: An alternate point of view. Palm Beach Post Letters to the Editor, by Doug Tuthill, Tax credit scholarships help students, save money. Palm Beach Post Editorial, Vouchers of dubious quality, illustrates that we will have some work to do in this area among others… Thank you for Stepping Up For Students, Michael A. Benjamin Executive Director, F.A.C.E. Florida Alliance for Choices in Education Happy New Year! It’s time to get geared up to start stepping up our communication and contact with members of the legislature for the 2009 session. We will again need to make grassroots contact with the legislators in order to encourage them to pass the proposed legislation (we are working on that now). We will need to have parents, teachers, administrators, clergy and members of the community write letters, send emails, attend district office visits with state legislators etc. in order to bring about the desired end. Please look for upcoming trainings and any communiqué from me giving direction towards our 2009 game plan and strategy.   More students get state to pay private tuition Denise-Marie Balona Sentinel Staff Writer December 29, 2008 More than two years ago, the state stopped giving tuition vouchers to students who wanted to leave failing public schools for private school. Since then, Florida's other two programs that pay private-school tuition for disabled kids or poor children have grown by 21 percent and 65 percent respectively. Today, 42,000 Florida students attend private school on the public's dime. And a new study touting voucher benefits could trigger more expansion. Why is the number growing? As more people learn about the programs, more sign up. Low-income families are thrilled they can afford to find a school that meets their children's needs. Why are these 2 programs still allowed? A 1999 lawsuit that challenged vouchers targeted only Opportunity Scholarships, offered to students at public schools that had received two F grades in a four-year period. The Florida Supreme Court ruled it was unconstitutional to do that. But no one has fought the two other programs in court. The state's teachers union, one group that sued to kill Opportunity Scholarships, isn't planning to go after those two because of the cost and time involved. Critics argue the court ruling should apply to all three programs because they are so similar. But the Supreme Court justices noted it would be improper to make that assumption. How much do vouchers cost Florida? Last school year, the state gave out a total of $205 million through both programs. This year, legislators expanded the program for poor students by $30 million, which means $118 million can be distributed and 5,000 to 6,000 more poor children can participate. How does it save money? The biggest voucher a low-income child can get is $3,950 annually. That's about $3,000 less than what public schools receive per student on average. How are voucher recipients' grades? They should have a better idea this spring. Low-income kids with vouchers must take standardized tests to gauge their academic progress. The state is supposed to study the data and release a report in March. Do public schools suffer? Though voucher advocates argue the programs help alleviate public-school crowding, school districts argue they are hurt financially. Each year, districts hire teachers and staff and buy supplies based on how many students they expect. When a student doesn't show up, the public school loses the money it needs to cover those costs, said a district official in Orange County. Schools there already had to let some teachers go because of drops in enrollment and state funding. Can kids still sign up? Yes. There's no limit to the number of disabled children who can get vouchers to attend private school. The money earmarked for the program serving poor kids will cover almost 29,000 students. As of last week, 27,612 applications had been approved. Voucher advocates hope lawmakers expand the program again. A recent report by a state auditing group says the vouchers given to poor students saved taxpayers $38.9 million last year -- that is sure to get legislators' attention. What about next year? In addition to opening the program to more students, voucher supporters are pushing the state to increase the amount students receive in vouchers. Vouchers often don't cover the full cost of private school; some families end up having to drop out. By the numbers 41,843: Florida children use state vouchers 10,862: Central Florida kids use state vouchers. 134%: Rise in participation in Osceola County, where growth was the fastest in Central Florida. $21,769: The biggest scholarship awarded to a special-needs student last school year. $38.9 M: How much a state auditing group says one voucher program saved taxpayers last year. Florida's 3 programs McKay Scholarships: Available to disabled students since 1999. Last school year, scholarships ranged from $5,160 to $21,769; vast majority of the $131.3 million given out went to private schools. Program also allows transfers to other public schools. Corporate Tax Credit Scholarships: Created in 2001 to pay for private-school tuition for low-income students. Income limit: $39,220 a year for a family of four. Businesses donate money and get state-income-tax break. Vouchers also help cover transportation costs to attend public school in another county. Vast majority of $73.5 million distributed last school year went to private schools. Opportunity Scholarships: Most of program, introduced in 1999, was thrown out by 2006 court order. Paid for kids attending public schools that received two F grades in a four-year period to transfer to private schools. Program also helps children transfer to higher-performing public schools, which is still allowed. More aid for poor The number of low-income children using state Corporate Tax Credit vouchers to leave public schools for private schools has risen sharply in Florida since 2005. District 2008 2007 2006 2005 Brevard 694 545 443 396 Lake 260 210 164 167 Orange 3,120 2,808 2,448 2,496 Osceola 954 868 669 389 Polk 510 469 292 295 Seminole 524 441 382 318 Volusia 857 694 475 402 Florida 22,272 19,416 14,502 13,497 -- SOURCE: Florida Department of Education Denise-Marie Balona can be reached at dbalona@orlandosentinel.com or 352-742-5928.   Original Article Legislature's vouchers report is based on smoke and mirrors Kevin G. Welner | Special To The Sentinel December 24, 2008 A program intended to prompt corporate contributions for private-school tuition assistance saves the state money, according to a recent report prepared for the Florida Legislature. The program gives tax credits to corporations in exchange for their contributions, and the report contends that for every dollar lost in revenue due to the tax credits, the state last year saved $1.49 in forgone public-school expenses. But this figure is based on smoke and mirrors. The report concocts its numbers out of thin air. The report's author -- the legislature's Office of Program Policy Analysis and Government Accountability -- says as much in an appendix, "we had no information from which to estimate [the key] percentage" on which the fiscal-savings claim is based. The tax-credit law offers a dollar-for-dollar credit for companies that pay Florida's corporate income taxes, a system I call "neovouchers." Instead of paying those taxes, they can donate to a scholarship-funding organization, which distributes the money as private-school vouchers. This system provided more than 21,000 neovouchers in 2007-08. Neovouchers can save the state money when students are prompted by their availability to switch from public to private school. If Bobby enrolls in first grade in his local public school, the public funding is about $6,100 per school year. But if Bobby uses a $3,400 neovoucher (the average last year) to switch from public to private school, the state can be considered to have saved the $2,700 difference. But consider Bobby's classmate Nancy. She also received a $3,400 neovoucher, but her parents had always intended to enroll her in private school, which they would have paid for all by themselves. While the state saved $2,700 on Bobby, it lost $3,400 on Nancy. The 21,000 neovoucher recipients last year were made up of many Bobbys and Nancys. But to calculate the budgetary impact of the program, we would have to know how many of each. OPPAGA didn't have that information. In fact, nobody does. So OPPAGA guessed. And it guessed 90 percent, as if there are nine Bobbys to every one Nancy. The defense of this guess is tucked away in the report's appendix. Neovouchers are available only to low-income students, so according to the report, it's "reasonable to assume a high percentage of low-income students would not be able to afford private school without a scholarship, and therefore, would attend public school in absence of the program." But the reality is that Catholic schools in urban areas sometimes enroll 60 percent to 70 percent low-income children. More importantly, the low-income families at the head of the line to receive neovouchers are probably those who had already planned to enroll in the private schools. This means that, contrary to the report's assumptions, the relative percentages of Bobbys and Nancys would not mirror the general enrollment percentages for low-income students in private schools. In fact, all 21,000 neovoucher recipients could be accounted for with just a 6 percent low-income enrollment among the more than 350,000 students attending Florida's private schools (although the law effectively prevents the benefits from going to many students currently enrolled in private schools). These possibilities cannot be ignored, given the likelihood that the percentage of switchers is substantially below the 90 percent assumed by the report. In fact, the appendix acknowledges that any fiscal advantage to the state disappears when the percentage of switchers drops from 90 percent to 60 percent. So if there's a 50/50 split, the program's in the red. The question asked in the OPPAGA report is an important one. But the argument that neovouchers save the state money is grounded in guesswork, not fact. When a report's appendix acknowledges that it's based on "no information," we would all do well to ignore its conclusions. Kevin G. Welner is a professor and director of Education and the Public Interest Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He is the author of "NeoVouchers: The Emergence of Tuition Tax Credits for Private Schooling." ----------------------------------------------------------- Response What they think Corporate scholarships help kids at greatest risk Published Monday, January 5, 2008 Doug Tuthill The state Office of Program Policy Analysis and Government Accountability needs no help defending the integrity of its research -- least of all against a Colorado academic who alleges the agency "concocts its numbers out of thin air." (“Legislature's vouchers report is based on smoke and mirrors,” OrlandoSentinel, Dec. 24.) But the argument that scholarships for poor children are a money loser because low-income families or Catholic schools could pick up the tab themselves is itself starved of oxygen. University of Colorado associate professor Kevin Welner may well believe the agency erred in its finding that the Corporate Tax Credit Scholarship program for low-income students saved taxpayers $38.9 million last year. But his attack is most peculiar. Welner acknowledges that the average scholarship amounts to only 56 percent of the direct state cost-perstudent in public schools, a number that disregards the cost of constructing classrooms. But he says the savings disappear because at least half these students would have gone to private schools anyway. In making such a claim, Welner breezes past the fact that the average household income of scholarship families was $24,543 and the average tuition is $5,000. He says that if families can't afford the tuition, the Catholic church can. “The reality,” he writes, “is that Catholic schools in urban areas sometimes enroll 60 to 70 percent low-income children.” Welner's “reality” would have been enhanced by some basic research. A White House report issued in September states that more than 1,200 Catholic schools have closed since 1990. In Florida, the other “reality” is that only one in 10 private schools is Catholic, and they too are under enormous pressure. Welner spares no criticism when it comes to corporate scholarships. He wrote a book labeling them as “neovouchers,” and condemned the program in other states as "an obfuscation of public expenditures" and has written that the scholarships are “used by wealthier families with children who already attend private school.” He even argues that they “move policy away from democratic control over education and from a societal commitment to public schooling.” None of those strident assessments applies to Florida, where a strong bipartisan majority of lawmakers expanded the scholarship program in May. The corporate scholarships here were created in 2001 specifically for children who live in poor and working-class families, and whose income meets the federal guidelines for free and reduced lunch. These are the children at greatest risk in public education, and they tend to have the fewest options. In Florida, where at least one in every four students opts for a less traditional and more customized approach to learning, corporate scholarships are a way to strengthen public education and increase equality of opportunity. They serve as another tool, alongside such options as the Florida Virtual School, charter schools, dual enrollment and magnet schools, that allow students to match their individual needs with the learning environment that suits them best. Whether they save tax money is secondary to their mission. But the OPPAGA report is the third independent study to find that the scholarships do save taxpayers money. And its findings should not be interpreted as a competitive threat to traditional public schools. What the report shows is that one vital option for low-income children does not come at the expense of the options available to all 2.6 million public school students. That's good news for Florida taxpayers and for all schoolchildren. Doug Tuthill, a former teachers' union president, is president of the Florida School Choice Fund. The fund oversees the scholarship funding organizations that run the Florida School Choice Fund. The fund oversees the scholarship. THE GRADEBOOK December 30, 2008 Voucher report: An alternate point of view Critics have made their voices heard on OPPAGA's recent analysis of the savings that education vouchers bring to Florida. Guest blogger Doug Tuthill, president of the Florida School Choice Fund, offers a different perspective: "The numbers are hard to refute. Florida taxpayers saved $38.9 million last year while also providing different learning options to 21,493 children from poor and working class families. But that finding, issued [two weeks ago] by the respected state Office of Program Policy Analysis and Government Accountability, should not be interpreted as a competitive threat to traditional public schools. What the savings actually mean is that one vital option for low-income students is not financially compromising any of the other opportunities available to 2.6 million public school students. That's good news for all educators and taxpayers. The Corporate Tax Credit Scholarship program, now in its seventh year, was created to help students who are at the greatest risk of failing. Children who come from impoverished homes face enormous obstacles, and we owe them our best collective efforts. This year, about one of every 52 children on free and reduced lunch is using the scholarship to attend a private school that may better suit his or her needs. Remarkably, their families, with average incomes of $24,543 per year, are so motivated they often end up paying the difference between the $3,950 scholarship and the actual school tuition out of their own pockets (about $1,200 per year on average). This kind of customized learning is an integral part of today's public education system. Students choose from magnet and fundamental schools, career academies and International Baccalaureate programs. They take advanced placement or online courses or dual enrollment on college campuses. Last year, 105,239 students attended privately run charter schools, 19,582 students with disabilities chose private providers, and 136,436 four-year-olds went mostly to private schools for prekindergarten — options that didn't exist a generation ago. In Florida today, one in four students attends something other than what their parents would call a traditional public school. When lawmakers expanded the Corporate Tax Credit Scholarship program last May by a strong bipartisan majority, they asked OPPAGA to answer a narrow financial question: Do the scholarships undermine the operational budget for traditional public schools? The report issued Tuesday said no, and went further. The state, OPPAGA wrote, actually saves $1.49 for each $1 that is lost in corporate tax income. That finding should prove reassuring to public school advocates, but appears to have created unnecessary angst instead. A Florida Education Association spokesman said: 'It seems like there's a lot of scenarios and a lot of assumptions and not a lot of facts.' Herald- Tribune columnist Tom Lyons went so far as to call the scholarship program 'a money-laundering scheme.' That's unfortunate. These scholarships are part of a publicly funded system that is customizing education and finding ways to match different children to the learning environments that suit them best. They strengthen public education and save tax money. Surely that can't be a bad thing." December 30, 2008 on http://blogs.tampabay.com/schools/   Tax credit scholarships help students, save money Palm Beach Post Letters to the Editor Tuesday, December 30, 2008 The numbers are hard to refute. Florida taxpayers saved $38.9 million last year while also providing different learning options to 21,493 children from poor and working-class families. But that finding, issued Tuesday by the state Office of Program Policy Analysis and Government Accountability, should not be interpreted as a competitive threat to traditional public schools. What the savings actually mean is that one vital option for low-income students is not financially compromising any of the other opportunities available to 2.6 million public school students. The Corporate Tax Credit Scholarship program, now in its seventh year, was created to help students who are at the greatest risk of failing. This year, about one of every 52 children on free and reduced lunch is using the scholarship to attend a private school that may better suit his or her needs. When lawmakers expanded the Corporate Tax Credit Scholarship program last May, they asked OPPAGA to answer a narrow financial question: Do the scholarships undermine the operational budget for traditional public schools? The report said no and went further. The state actually saves $1.49 for each $1 that is lost in corporate tax income. These scholarships are part of a publicly funded system that is customizing education. They strengthen public education and save tax money. DOUG TUTHILL Tampa Editor's note: Doug Tuthill, a former teachers' union president, is president of the Florida School Choice Fund. The fund oversees the scholarship funding organizations that run the Corporate Tax Credit Scholarship program. Vouchers of dubious quality Palm Beach Post Editorial Wednesday, December 31, 2008 School voucher advocates are trumpeting a report that concludes that one of Florida's voucher programs saved Florida $38.9 million last year, or $1.49 for every dollar spent on the so-called "corporate scholarships" that low-income students use at private schools. The celebration by voucher fans is premature and not entirely honest, because the study by the state's Office of Program Policy Analysis and Government Accountability does not consider the quality of private school education that the students who use corporate vouchers receive. "Corporate scholarships" are paid for by allowing companies to donate money for vouchers. In return, they receive a dollar-for-dollar deduction from state taxes. The Legislature recently increased the amount of money available for corporate vouchers to $118 million from $88 million. The program serves about 21,500 students. The state isn't really saving money if it's shuffling low-income students off to poor quality schools any more than it would save money if it bought cheaper, inferior vehicles for highway patrol officers or built buildings that folded in the first hurricane. But the corporate voucher program always has been about ideology, not quality. Former Gov. Jeb Bush was determined that the state would offer vouchers. Low-income students are eligible for the corporate vouchers regardless of how well their designated public school is rated or how well they may have been doing in public school. Students entering first grade or kindergarten are eligible for the vouchers even if they haven't attended public school at all. Moreover, the Legislature and former Gov. Bush steadfastly have refused to provide any meaningful point of comparison between public and private schools that accept the vouchers. The role of the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test in public schools and the lack of any FCAT role in voucher schools remains particularly hypocritical. In the last decade, the state has made the FCAT the be-all and end-all of public school assessment. Teacher bonuses, promotion and graduation depended on FCAT scores. Principals who couldn't raise FCAT scores were dismissed. Electives disappeared from the curriculum so teachers could focus on FCAT skills. But private voucher schools, many of which have a religious curriculum, have not been required to give the FCAT to students using the state-sponsored vouchers. Voucher schools are required to administer a "norm-referenced" test of the school's choice. But there is no penalty if the school's test scores are poor. For private voucher schools, the state's position always has been that if the parents are happy, the state is happy. Why aren't public school parents granted the same level of trust? The new report makes clear that private voucher school operators have no interest in providing more accountability. "None of the private school representatives who participated in our focus groups supported adopting the FCAT, and they asserted that their schools would not accept financial incentives to have their scholarship students take the FCAT. Further, if required to use the FCAT, some school representatives indicated that their institutions would likely stop accepting scholarship students." Whether the state should give vouchers for private schools at all is questionable. The state certainly should not provide vouchers to schools that refuse to show whether they're doing a better job than public schools.   The Step Up For Students (SUFS)/Corporate Tax Credit (CTC) Scholarship Program administered through Carrie Meek Scholarship Foundation, Children First Florida and Florida P.R.I.D.E. provides K-12 scholarships that currently allow over 22,000 low-income Florida students to attend an eligible private school or out-of-district public school. School Year 08 - 09 Income Eligibility Guidelines Persons in Household New & Add-Ons (185%) Renewals (200%) 2 $25,900 $28,000 3 $32,560 $35,200 4 $39,220 $42,400 5 $45,880 $49,600 6 $52,540 $56,800 7 $59,200 $64,000 8 $65,860 $71,200 9 $72,520 $78,400 10 $79,180 $85,600 11 $85,840 $92,800 12 $92,500 $100,000 13 $99,160 $107,200       For each additional person, add $6,660 $7,200       Effective from July 1, 2008 to July 30, 2009

 

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