Dear Friends,
Florida Supreme Court
Sets Argument Date for School Choice Case: Bush v. Holmes
The St. Petersburg Times published
John Kirtley’s (Florida PRIDE Scholarship Program), response
to their anti choice composition published Sunday the
20th (Test
or No Tests?).
Great column about “Fudging high
school dropout rates”, which appeared in the
Naples newspaper. Star Parker talks about
the need to open the education marketplace.
Harvard study: Florida
voucher threat causes schools to improve.
An interesting article regarding
lawmakers who send their children to private school.
Unfortunately, there is no discussion as to why these
lawmakers who choose to send their children to private schools
oppose school choice for low income parents. Basically
they are saying that if they can afford it, they do what’s
best for their kid, but you can’t. So you must stay in a
school that doesn’t work for your child even though you will
save the state money by transferring.
Thank you for Stepping Up For
Students,
Michael A. Benjamin
Executive Director,
F.A.C.E.
Florida Alliance for
Choices in Education
ALERT
TALLAHASSEE
RALLY 6/7/05
* * * * * * * *
*
EVENT:
Florida Supreme Court
Sets Argument Date for School Choice Case: Bush v.
Holmes
DATE/TIME:
Tuesday,
June 7, 2005 at
9
a.m.
PLACE:
Florida Supreme
Court
500 South Duval
Street
Tallahassee,
FL
SUMMARY:
The Florida
Supreme Court has scheduled oral argument for Bush v. Holmes, the
legal battle over the state's groundbreaking Opportunity
Scholarships school choice program, which enables parents in
failing public schools to choose better-performing public or
private schools for their children, including religious
schools. The Court will hear the case at
9
a.m. on Tuesday, June
7.
The Institute for
Justice, the nation's leading legal advocate for school
choice, is defending the program on behalf of parents using
Opportunity Scholarships and the Urban League of Greater
Miami. Also defending the program are attorneys for the
State of Florida.
Responding to
claims made by lawyers for teachers' unions and other special
interests challenging Opportunity Scholarships, IJ argues that
decades of Florida practice and
precedent have enabled thousands of students to freely choose
their schools-including public, private and religious
options-using publicly funded scholarships, and there is no
reason to change course now.
Those opposed to
K-12 school choice argue that Opportunity Scholarships are
unconstitutional "aid" to religious schools in violation of
the Florida Constitution's Blaine Amendment. The Florida
Supreme Court is the first state supreme court to consider the
Blaine Amendment, its discriminatory pedigree, and school
choice after the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Locke v. Davey.
IJ points out that
not only do Opportunity Scholarships "aid" parents and
students-not schools-but they operate just like similar
Florida education and social service programs that have for
decades allowed aid recipients to freely choose among
religious and non-religious service
providers.
More than 20 state
and national organizations joined amicus briefs urging the
Florida Supreme Court to uphold Opportunity
Scholarships. Those briefs, as well as Institute for
Justice briefs and other background materials, are available
online at www.ij.org/schoolchoice/florida.
Original
Editorial
Jon East, editorial writer
St. Petersburg
Times
March 20,
2005
Test or No
Tests?
Florida, which hands out
more school tuition vouchers than any other state in the
nation, is looking this fall to add more. This time, children
who score badly on state reading tests would be given money to
go to a private school under the presumption they would do
better. But the "Reading Compact Scholarship" offers no
assurances. In fact, a child could be sent from a public
school the state deems academically excellent to a private
school whose academic record is a secret.
This educational hypocrisy underlies
Florida's rapid expansion of school
privatization. Six years and some $440-million after plunging
into vouchers, the state has yet to resolve a structural
contradiction. Under the sweeping A
reform laws, the Florida Comprehensive
Assessment Test is the No. 1 measure of success and failure
for public schools. Yet most of the voucher schools refuse to
use the FCAT.
So no one really knows whether
vouchers are working.
"If we're pulling students out of a .
. . public school and putting them into a private school, then
where is the validation that they're doing better?" asks state
Sen. Jim King, R- Jacksonville, a consistent supporter of
vouchers. "Just the fact that we moved them doesn't mean
they're doing okay. My thing is this: If we spend state
dollars, then we have an obligation to make sure the dollars
are well spent. To think that we shouldn't do that is simply
nonsense."
The reading voucher, which is winding
its way through the Legislature, is only one illustration of
King's point. The House version says a public school student
who scores at Level I on the FCAT reading test for two out of
three years should be offered a voucher. (Nearly 350,000
students currently fall into that category.) But the House
bill offers only the possibility that a different standardized
test might be required and its results viewed by a private
research group. Private school lobbyists argue the FCAT is
based on a public school curriculum and shouldn't be required
in private schools, as though reading is somehow a specialized
skill.
The reading voucher would be the
state's sixth new voucher program in six years, and it has
come a long way from the 52 students who were awarded vouchers
in 1999 because their two Panhandle schools were judged to
failing. By conservative estimates, Florida
could send $350-million to private schools next year alone.
The voucher enrollment could reach 113,000 students, roughly
the size of the Pinellas school district. Even removing
prekindergarten students from the mix, the voucher enrollment
would be larger than 46 of the state's 67 districts.
Yet virtually none of the state's
normal educational standards apply.
In most voucher schools, the teachers
don't need to be certified, the schools don't need to be
accredited, the operators don't have to be screened for
possible criminal backgrounds, the students don't have to take
the FCAT and they don't have to be held back or denied a
diploma because of their performance on any standardized
test.
The lack of standards is only part of
the problem. The oversight provided by the state Department of
Education has been a disaster, leading to at least five
administrative and criminal investigations. Here is only a
sample of what they have found:
Parents who were prompted to sign
powers of attorney at a Panhandle school, which, according to
criminal investigators, then signed $146,268 worth of checks
for students who no longer attended.
A Tampa Islamic school
that was receiving corporate tax vouchers at a time when the
FBI claimed it was a base for terrorism.
A Boynton Beach group
that took vouchers for disabled students who were being taught
in their own homes.
An Ocala businessman in
bankruptcy and with a history of racketeering charges who was
handed $268,000 in voucher money that he never gave to
children.
Two schools in Seminole and Orange
counties that had their charters revoked by school boards
because of uncertified teachers and declining test scores,
only to reopen as private schools supported by state
vouchers.
Students receiving more than one
voucher because the state wasn't comparing lists from the
separate programs.
DOE just appointed its eighth voucher
administrator in four years, and lawmakers have grown so weary
of the department's embarrassments they turned over the new
pre-K program to the Agency for Workforce
Innovation.
For those keeping score, the state
could soon be running six different voucher programs with
three different types of oversight and six different forms of
payment. The Opportunity Scholarship, the oldest and smallest
program, is offered to students whose schools are deemed to be
failing because of low FCAT scores. McKay Scholarships are
available to any disabled student. Corporate Income Tax
scholarships are for economically disadvantaged students.
Virtual school vouchers are for students in kindergarten
through eighth grade who are willing to learn at home through
a computer. Pre-K vouchers will be available this fall to any
4-year-old. The reading voucher is still in bill
form.
The McKay is the most lucrative for
entrepreneurs, offering as much as $20,000 per student,
depending on the disability. The Corporate Tax voucher offers
only $3,500 per student, a sum that stands in curious contrast
to the online voucher, which is run with no buildings and few
teachers, at a cost of $4,800 per student. Four of the
vouchers are overseen by DOE, but the money poured into the
Corporate Tax vouchers goes directly to private organizations.
Pre- K will be handled through the state's workforce network.
The Opportunity Scholarship is the only one based on the
theory that a public school is performing
badly.
"I think the only reason there hasn't
been more of a blending, moving toward some symmetry, has to
do with the litigation on the first (voucher program)," says
Patrick Heffernan, president of Floridians for School Choice.
"Once the litigation runs its course, I think we can begin to
deal with the piecemeal approach."
The litigation, now before the Florida
Supreme Court, questions whether the state can spend tax money
to send students to religious schools. But the constitutional
issue bears little relation to the political battle over
accountability. One reason the state has failed to bring true
oversight and organization to this exploding privatization
effort is that critics have been branded as enemies. The two
voucher plans that do require FCAT testing are by far the
smallest, and private school operators who want no testing and
few standards are a potent political force.
Florida is also becoming
a haven for national voucher groups. This last election, a
group called All Children Matter pumped $1.6- million - all of
it from out of state - into the campaigns of legislative
candidates who support vouchers.
As the voucher world has expanded,
though, the calls for accountability are coming not just from
public school competitors. Some of those who operate respected
and credentialed private schools don't want to be lumped in
with those who chase government dollars. The Florida Catholic
Conference has repeatedly voiced concerns, and even hinted
that its schools might not participate in the pre-K vouchers
this fall if the state doesn't impose real
standards.
"In early '99, when the
A
Plan was debated, there was a sense
that many private schools could provide a better education,"
Larry Keough, education associate for the Catholic Conference,
said last year. "Now we're at a different place. What we have
found is that there have been many dubious types of schools
created for the express purpose of drawing down state dollars.
As a result, not all the children are being well
served."
Legislation to bring financial
accountability was blocked in the House last year, and Gov.
Jeb Bush and the House are resisting a more comprehensive
reform proposed by King this year in the Senate. Bush's
education board chairman, Phil Handy, has likened the failings
in oversight to "hiccups," and the governor himself has been
almost flippant about the lack of checks and balances. In
announcing his reading voucher plan, Bush told reporters: "I
think it's frankly as American as apple pie to give people
choices when what's provided them isn't
working."
For better or worse, the governor
relies on the FCAT to tell him that "what's provided them
isn't working" in public schools. But he has no way to tell
whether most of the students on vouchers are succeeding. He
and education commissioner John Winn often claim success, but
they are generally referring to enrollment increases. One
voucher advocacy group, the Manhattan Institute, released a
report in 2003 that described McKay voucher schools as
"superior" based solely on a survey of parents. Without test
results, it had no other source of
information.
"My biggest problem with vouchers is
that there is not a standard accountability measure," says
Wayne Blanton, executive director for the Florida School
Boards Association. "Quite frankly, there are some very good
public schools and some very good private schools. But until
we compare apples to apples, we don't know which ones are
doing a good job and which aren't."
As Florida ratchets up
the number of private schools getting public money, the
excuses are sounding more and more strained. After all, in the
Bush view of education, standardized testing is the essential
tool to verify whether students are learning. The governor has
repeatedly denounced those who claim the FCAT is used in
onerous and punitive ways, and President Bush has beaten the
same drum in the nation's capital. Just last month, when asked
about testing requirements under the federal No Child Left
Behind Act, President Bush said: "I've heard every excuse in
the book not to test. My answer is, how do you know if a child
is learning if you don't test?"
The president's question is one his
brother has yet to answer. If the FCAT is to be the engine
that drives Florida's education system, how does
the governor excuse any school that refuses to use it? That's
the Florida voucher conundrum.
Jon East is an editorial writer with
the St. Petersburg Times. He can be reached at
east@sptimes.com or 727-893-8667.
Response
Education needs drastic
reform
Re: Test or no test? March
27.
The main points of this 1,700-word
article appear to be that vouchers are rife with fraud and
that they are not "accountable." By your own account losses in
choice programs amount to less than one-tenth of 1 percent. Do
you believe the public schools operate as efficiently?
Taxpayers recently spent $60-million just to renovate
Jones High School in Orlando during a period
when it lost students. The Miami Herald recently detailed
losses in the Miami-Dade County public schools in the hundreds
of millions.
Florida graduates less
than half of its minority children, and yet here in my own
Hillsborough County taxpayers will spend $8,523 per child in
the public schools this year, according to its published
budget. That's just in operating costs - nothing for
construction or interest on debt. This situation is more than
dire, it is tragic. It calls for drastic reform and trying new
ideas. You may be satisfied with the status quo, but
low-income parents are not. They are desperate for
choices.
We have 12,000 children in the state
on tax credit scholarships. Their parents earn an average of
$23,000 per year, yet they are willing to pay out of their own
pockets to supplement the $3,500 maximum scholarship. By law
we can't pay for extra tuition, uniforms or activities fees.
The schools they choose are required in both the House and
Senate accountability legislation to administer nationally
recognized standardized tests such as the Stanford 9. Private
schools already face that requirement from parents. They
demand testing because they want to know how their children
are doing.
You claim that vouchers "avoid the
test by which public schools are measured," the FCAT. Yet
public schools avoid the much harder test faced by schools
taking voucher students: If the child doesn't learn, the
parent takes the business elsewhere, just like in the real
world. Do you not trust the judgment of these low-income
parents to make the right decision for their children? I do,
because I have seen them do it.
Let's make a deal to really "level the
playing field." Give all low-income parents in
Florida the right to choose the best schools for
their children, regardless of who runs them. Fund every
low-income child the same no matter where they go. Do that,
and you will have the moral justification to demand they take
whatever test you please.
John Kirtley, Florida
PRIDE Scholarship Program, Tampa
Fudging high school dropout rates.
By
STAR PARKER, Scripps Howard News
Service
April 2, 2005
According to a study recently released
by the Civil Rights Project at Harvard
University, high-school graduation rates in California are
almost 20 percent less than those officially reported by the
California Department of Education.
While the state data show 87 percent
of high-school students graduating in 2002, the Harvard study
says the graduation rate was 71 percent.
More shocking is the snapshot the
study provides of minority graduation rates. Statewide, 57
percent of blacks and 60 percent of Latinos graduate from high
school. In the Los Angeles Unified School
District, 39 percent of Latinos and 47 percent of blacks
graduate.
The California Department of Education
does not appear to be challenging the data that Harvard is
reporting. The state's data seem to ignore the fact that many
kids simply drop out of school, generally between the ninth
and 10th grades. These dropouts often get conveniently
reported by schools simply as transfers.
The Los Angeles Unified
School District consists of 782 schools with 742,000 students
who are mostly from poor homes. Sixty percent of the schools
in the district have at least 80 percent of their students
from low-income families, as measured by the number qualifying
for free or subsidized school lunches.
Given that education is the principal
predictor of future earning power, we are looking here at a
classic cycle of poverty. Poor kids incapable of taking
advantage of the single resource available to them — education
— that can change their lives.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau,
as of 1999, the earnings of full-time workers without a
high-school degree were 77 percent the earnings of those with
high-school degrees and 45 percent of those with bachelor's
degrees. The gap between education and earnings widens over
time. Back in 1975, those without high-school degrees earned
90 percent of those with high-school degrees and 58 percent of
those with bachelor's degrees.
Not only are inner-city high schools
factories of hopelessness, but as society becomes more
complex, with increasing demands for an educated work force,
the hole just gets deeper for kids, overwhelmingly black and
Hispanic, who are not getting educated.
The No Child Left Behind Act puts
performance pressure on non-performing schools to both improve
test scores and graduation rates — or face sanctions.
L.A. school
Superintendent Roy Romer says the problem is school size. He
has a plan to subdivide existing school campuses into smaller
schools that will allow more personal attention for students.
The Los Angeles Times reports that Romer has a $1 million
grant from the Gates Foundation to pursue this project.
I have no reason to question either
the diligence or sincerity with which Romer is approaching
this prodigious problem. Given the constraints he faces, my
guess is he's doing the best he can. However, I have little
optimism that he will make much of a difference because the
constraints he faces are unreasonable.
The frameworks for standards, reform
and sanctions defined by No Child Left Behind are important
reforms for our public school system. But the problem is our
public school system itself. How do you fix a business that
has no competition and for which government itself limits the
possibilities for reform?
Poor kids are simply trapped in a
government school monopoly where the manner in which education
is defined and administered and the values that are conveyed
are by and large pre-scripted by a politically correct
establishment.
When I log onto the Web site of the
National Education Association, the national union of the
teachers staffing our public schools, the first thing I see is
a headline announcing a study that says "the goals of 'No
Child Left Behind' cannot be met without a significant
increase in resources." According to the Pacific Research
Institute, the L.A. Unified School District
spends more than $9,000 per year per student. I am confident
that if inner-city parents had $9,000 through a voucher or
scholarship to send their child wherever they chose to school,
more than one in two would graduate.
Businesses that face competition
deliver more and more for less and less. Monopolies deliver
less and less for more and more. What else can we expect from
the NEA and the government school monopoly than claims that
spending is the alleged answer for everything?
Problems today in the inner cities are
complex. Many poor families are broken, single-parent homes.
This itself is a major predictor for failure in school. Kids
from these homes get sent to public schools where prohibitions
on providing any framework for values make it impossible to
help them find meaning amidst the chaos in which they live. It
doesn't take much imagination to predict where this leads.
We can educate these kids. But we need
to open the education marketplace, take it out of the hands of
the unions and monopolists, and let people who really want to
help these families and their children have a chance with
them.
Star
Parker is president of CURE, Coalition on Urban Renewal and
Education (www.urbancure.org), and
author of "Uncle Sam's Plantation."
Harvard
study: Florida voucher threat
causes schools to improve
By BRENDAN
FARRINGTON
Associated Press
Writer
TALLAHASSEE,
Fla. Gov. Jeb Bush's
education accountability plan is working a lot better than his
brother's is in getting low performing schools to improve, a
Harvard
University study
found.
The stigma of
receiving an F grade under the governor's "A+ Plan" combined
with the threat of losing students to private schools has led
to an increase in test scores, according to the study
distributed Tuesday.
"At these schools,
students performed at a higher level in the subsequent year
than did students at similar schools not so threatened," the
study said.
But President
Bush's No Child Left Behind Act doesn't quite have the same
impact, largely because the stigma of not making the grade
isn't as strong and its school choice provision doesn't have
as much of an impact on school districts, the study
said.
"An accountability
system that identifies problems with many schools, while
giving few sanctions or incentives to improve, appears
unlikely to be of much consequence," it
said.
In
Florida, about 75 percent
of elementary schools weren't making "adequate yearly
progress" under the president's plan, the study
said.
While parents in
schools that struggle under No Child Left Behind can send
their children to public schools in the same district, that's
less likely to happen if most of the schools are found not to
be making progress, the study said.
Florida grades its
schools based on how their students score on the Florida
Comprehensive Assessment Test and rewards schools that improve
their grade or consistently make an A. Schools that make a D
or an F are assigned an assessment team and students at
schools that receive an F two years out of four can receive
vouchers to attend private schools.
The study found
that students in F and D schools made significant gains while
student performance in A, B and C schools continued to test at
about the same level. Gains were highest in schools faced with
losing students to vouchers.
"It has worked in
Florida," said Martin
West, one of the study's authors. "We'll be very interested in
following this story and this particular program to see
whether these gains that F schools are making at the moment
will continue in the future."
The FCAT is also
used when schools are assessed under the federal No Child Left
Behind Act - but there's a twist. The federal law takes into
consideration the performance of students in different ethnic
groups, students from poor families, disabled students and
students who speak limited English. Every group must meet the
standard for the school to make the grade under the federal
law.
Gov. Bush's office
was pleased with the Harvard report.
"Florida is proud of its
students' achievements," said Bush spokeswoman Alia Faraj.
"School choice is one of the many important components of the
governor's A+ plan. Year after year we have seen our students
rise to the occasion and prove that they can
succeed."
|
A
survey finds that 39 percent of lawmakers with children
in grades K-12 enrolled them in private schools.
By RON MATUS,
Times Staff Writer
Published April 6,
2005
Nearly 40 percent
of Florida lawmakers with
school-age children send their kids to private schools,
a rate four times as high as that for parents statewide,
a St. Petersburg
Times survey has found.
The rate climbs to
60 percent for lawmakers on education committees that
make key decisions about K-12 policy and
funding.
Does it
matter? Some lawmakers say
yes.
Lawmakers with
children in private schools "know there's a problem"
with public schools, said Rep. Dennis Baxley, R-Ocala,
who chairs the House Education Council and has a child
enrolled in Catholic school. "They want to fix the
problems for everybody else along with their own
kids."
Many public school
parents come to a different
conclusion.
"They are
evidently concerned their own children won't get a
quality education" in public schools, said Chris Clark,
who chairs the School Advisory Council at
St. Petersburg's
Perkins
Elementary
School. It's "a vote of no
confidence."
Lawmakers are at
the mid-point of a legislative session with potentially
huge impacts on public schools.
They are expected
to dramatically expand the use of vouchers, which allow
students to transfer out of public schools and attend
private schools at state expense. They are considering
an end to social promotion in all grades. And they are
pushing to temper the 2002 constitutional amendment to
reduce class sizes in return for a small teacher pay
raise.
They also are
debating a 5 to 6 percent increase in per-pupil spending
- a hike that would still leave Florida near the
nation's bottom ranks when it comes to education
funding.
To do the survey,
the Times
reached 159 of 160 state lawmakers, either
through written or electronic questionnaires or from
interviews with the lawmakers or staff
members.
Only Sen. Jeff
Atwater, R-North Palm Beach, declined to
answer.
The survey found
that 39 percent of lawmakers with children in grades
kindergarten through 12 enrolled them in private
schools. Sen. Daniel Webster, R-Winter
Garden, homeschools his
children, and Rep. John Stargel, R-Lakeland, enrolled
his in a charter school.
Statewide, the
percentage of private school enrollment in K-12 is about
10 percent.
The Times survey
shows a 60 percent private school rate among members
serving on the Senate education and education
appropriations committees, and on the four House
committees with the most direct influence on K-12 policy
and funding.
"Wow," said Rep.
Frank Peterman, D-St. Petersburg. "That's pretty
significant."
Peterman, whose
children attend public schools, said lawmakers who are
private school parents bring an important perspective to
the debate about improving public schools. But there
should be a "balance between those who believe in solid
public school education vs. private," he
said.
Towson Fraser,
spokesman for House Speaker Allan Bense,
R-Panama
City, said
legislative seniority, geography and political party
were the big factors in determining who got committee
assignments - not personal school
choice.
"One of the boxes
was not, "Where do your kids go to school?' " Fraser
said.
The Times survey also
found:
Most lawmakers do
not have children in school. Only 37 percent of House
members and 33 percent of Senate members have school-age
children.
Democrats with
school-age children were more likely than Republicans -
44 percent to 37 percent - to have their children in
private schools.
Lawmakers'
children who are in public schools are more likely to be
enrolled in A-rated schools than the population at
large, 59 percent to 46 percent.
Surveys in other
states have shown similar results.
In
Texas last year,
the Dallas Morning
News found that 34 percent of state lawmakers
with school-age children had at least one child enrolled
in private school, and the Los Angeles Times
found roughly the same percentage among
California lawmakers in
2000. In 2001, a Heritage Foundation survey found that
47 percent of U.S. congressmen and
51 percent of U.S. senators with
school-age children sent them to private
schools.
Among
Florida lawmakers, money
is one reason for disproportionate private school
enrollment. More than a quarter of lawmakers are
attorneys. Nearly a third are
millionaires.
Lawmakers with
children in private schools offer multiple
reasons.
Rep. Frank Farkas,
R-St. Petersburg, said he chose a private school for his
child because of its small class sizes and its location
a few blocks from the family's house.
Baxley, the
committee chairman, has a son at the public
St. Augustine
School for the Deaf and
the Blind and a daughter at a Catholic school. She gets
a solid religious education and more help for a reading
disability, he says.
Rep. Ralph Arza,
R-Hialeah, taught social studies and coached football in
Miami-Dade public schools for 19 years. Now, two of his
children are homeschooled by his wife, and another is at
a Catholic school.
Arza, who chairs
the House PreK-12 Committee, said that as a teacher, he
was frustrated by the vast number of ninth-graders who
couldn't read and the high percentage of minority
students who drop out. His wife was fed up with the
social environment at public schools, where too many
kids curse and one of his daughter's friends wore a
beeper in elementary school.
"She felt she
could do a better job," he said.
Ultimately, those
personal decisions factor into policy, said
University of
Virginia political
scientist Larry Sabato.
"Oftentimes, the
personal IS political," he said in an e-mail. "While I
believe it is possible to send one's kids to private
schools and still support the public school system, I
doubt that the breadth and intensity of support would be
the same."
Some public school
parents were less diplomatic.
Lori Lencioni, the
PTSA president at Martinez
Middle School in
Hillsborough
County, said she
recently attended a fundraiser so that the school could
renew the service contract for its copy
machine.
Public schools
"don't have the basic necessities," she said. "And these
lawmakers are off in la-la land."
Even as some of
their policies have frustrated public school parents,
teachers and school districts, many lawmakers see
themselves as reformers.
With Gov. Jeb Bush
leading the way, Republican legislators have
consistently downplayed the notion that there is a
strong link between more money and better schools.
Instead, they have highlighted higher standards,
standardized testing and the competition created by
vouchers and charter schools as keys to improving
sluggish academic performance.
Some lawmakers
said their experience with non-public schools was a
plus, leading them to embrace the idea of giving more
parents more options.
"Some of the
policies we're passing say, "Hey, let's make sure
everybody has access to the educational choices we
have,' " said Stargel, who chairs the House Choice and
Innovation Committee.
Other lawmakers
said their personal education decisions are
irrelevant.
Legislators often
make decisions about issues to which they are not
directly tied. Few of them are farmers, business owners
or scientists, yet they weigh in on policies involving
agriculture, business and the
environment.
It's also true
that some lawmakers who are private school parents are
lauded as strong public school
advocates.
Sen. Ron Klein,
D-Boca Raton, is widely hailed by teachers for his role
as a critic of Bush's education initiatives. And Sen.
Lisa Carlton, R-Osprey, has been named Legislator of the
Year by the Florida School Boards Association three of
the past four years.
Cliff Roberts, the
PTA president at Bevis Elementary in Hillsborough, said
he doesn't begrudge lawmakers for choosing private
schools, and he doesn't think that choice necessarily
makes them less of an advocate for public
schools.
But those
lawmakers must do more homework than public school
parents if they want to understand what's going on, he
said.
"You lose touch if
your children are not there," he said.
Roberts' stretch
of east Hillsborough is represented by state Sen. Tom
Lee and state Rep. Trey Traviesa, both Brandon
Republicans.
Both send their
children to private schools. |
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