F.A.C.E. to FACE
F.A.C.E. BULLETIN
8/12/05
Dear Friends,
Academics aren't supposed to approach studies with conclusion already in mind, right? A professor at Florida Southern is somehow picked as an “expert” in vouchers before studying them, and is asked to present a paper at Oxford. He says “my gut reaction [about vouchers] was, this is a bad idea.” Students are using Bright Futures and Florida Resident Access Grants to go to his college, and these are vouchers. Does he want to kick these students out of his classes? (FSC Professor Off to England as Part of Prestigious Student Voucher Forum)
A letter to the editor submission (in response to FSC Professor Off to England as Part of Prestigious Student Voucher Forum) from a college student who attends a faith based university on a taxpayer funded scholarship follows the original article.
Even if only 77,000 children sign up, our new state pre-k program will still be the biggest voucher program in the country and more than half of the children are expected to be in faith based schools (Prekindergarten enrolls fewer kids than expected). Again, that is pending the Florida Supreme Court ruling.
Note the anti voucher comments made by candidate for Governor Jim Davis (Davis vows to pull Capitol 'for sale' sign). Note the positive words about school choice made by candidate Gallagher (Gallagher makes his governor pitch in Martin).
Teachers unions target Wal-Mart (COMPANY ALLEGEDLY UNDERMINES PUBLIC EDUCATION). This is ridiculous—Wal-Mart is one of the biggest supporters of public schools in the country. Let’s all go out and buy more at Wal-Mart Stores in response!
Thank you for Stepping Up For Students,
Michael A. Benjamin
Executive Director, F.A.C.E.
Florida Alliance for Choices in Education
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
FSC Professor Off to England as Part of Prestigious Student Voucher Forum
By Cary McMullen
Ledger Religion Editor
The spires of Oxford may seem a long way from the constitutional battles over vouchers for Florida students, but a local professor will try to shed some light on the controversy at a forum next week at the University of Oxford in England.
Alan Smith, professor of religion at Florida Southern College, will participate in the prestigious Oxford Round Table, which begins Sunday and continues through Friday. He is scheduled to deliver a paper at Thursday's session, "Faith-Based Initiatives Meet the Public Schools: Florida's School `Voucher Program' and Its Effects on Education, Faith and Public Policy."
Smith will be one of 40 participants in the Round Table, 28 of whom were selected to present papers. As far as he knows, he says, he is the first Florida Southern faculty member invited to be part of the Round Table, which brings scholars together from around the world to exchange views on a variety of topics.
How Smith was invited is a bit of a mystery. He has visited Oxford and taught a short class in England as part of a Florida Southern program, but he has never attended a Round Table. For a while, Smith was acting chairman of the education department at FSC, and he says that may have fit in with the topic of this year's Round Table, Religion, Education and the Role of Government. He suspects a friend who participated in the Round Table a few years ago may have nominated him.
Smith says he seized the opportunity to prepare a paper about a subject he had long been interested in.
"As soon as the school voucher program was announced, my gut reaction was, this is a bad idea. This was a good opportunity to research why it's a bad idea," he says.
Smith's paper shows how the school voucher program, which allows parents of children in low-rated schools to send them to private and sectarian schools, fits into President George Bush's faith-based initiative, which gives religious organizations government grants to carry out social services.
"I tried to show how they've worked, which basically they haven't. There's no research that indicated any educational gain," he says.
Smith is critical of some other aspects of the school voucher program, such as what he calls the disproportionately high standards for public school teachers and the lack of academic accountability in private schools. But he says the "most troublesome issue" in the debate has to do with the separation of church and state.
"One reason it's troubling is that no one in the state education system is in charge of ensuring that students are not going to be proselytized. In the literature, it says students are not supposed to be coerced, but who's going to check on it?" he says.
Smith, who will be traveling to England with his wife, says the Round Table program has a reputation not only for high-level academic discussion but for treating the participants well. The Smiths will stay at Lincoln College, one of Oxford's several schools, and spend a few days sight-seeing in London.
"It's a fascinating place. When I visited there a few years ago, I e-mailed my wife and said, I could picture myself teaching here. It's a heady atmosphere," he says.
Cary McMullen can be reached at cary.mcmullen@theledger.com or by calling 802-7509.LETTER TO THE EDITOR
Dear Editor:
Your recent article about a Florida Southern College professor's presentation of a voucher paper at Oxford indicates that education reform has become bogged down by partisan politics, to the detriment of Florida's students. Academics should conduct research in search of meaningful answers, not prepare papers to support their own "gut reactions." Furthermore, those who claim to study the issue choose to acknowledge only the evidence that supports their own view. Alan
Smith ignores two 2003 Harvard University studies that found that public schools do respond to competition by improving achievement, and those schools that are at risk of losing students improve the most. When significant education data is dismissed because it doesn't support a partisan viewpoint, our children lose out.
Smith teaches at a faith-based college, where dozens of students enroll with Bright Futures scholarships and Florida Resident Access Grants, both vouchers. If vouchers are a bad idea for someone else's students, why not his own?
Sincerely,
Leah Cousart
Bright Future Scholarship Recipient
108 Spanish Oaks Lane
St. Augustine, FL, 32080(904) 460-9591
Prekindergarten enrolls fewer kids than expected
In the rush to set up the program, it seems crucial marketing was left out.
By JEFFREY S. SOLOCHEK, Times Staff Writer
Published August 2, 2005
CARROLLWOOD - Amid a sea of churches, preschools and businesses, the large yellow banner hanging outside the Terry Learning Center on Ehrlich Road jumps out.
"Enroll now," the red lettering boldly announces. "Free prekindergarten."
Owner Nancy Dorsey bought the sign to let parents know they could attend the state's new prekindergarten program at her northwest Hillsborough center. Waiting for the state to market the $400-million program, which begins in Hillsborough and Pinellas counties this week, wasn't working.
"It was getting so close to the time," lead teacher Renee Beaudoin said. "We thought parents would be coming in to register their children, and we just weren't getting the parents coming in."
The situation is much the same across Florida. Only about half of the expected 154,000 4-year-olds have signed up, and most counties have more seats available than children to fill them.
Why the lag? Lots of parents know little or nothing about the program, in part because of a limited marketing effort. Many families preregistered in the spring, only to learn later they had to do more. Others refused to jump in until the state could tell them what schools were participating.
State bureaucrats, meanwhile, are still changing program rules.
The result has been a last-minute rush that surprises almost no one.
"This is like flying a plane and building it at the same time," said Barbara Weinstein, president of Family Central Inc., the agency coordinating pre-K services in Broward and Palm Beach counties.
Still, even critics acknowledge Florida has managed a substantial feat. It isn't easy to create an education system for 4-year-olds in less than eight months.
"That's very, very large," said Linda Alexionok, the prekindergarten director for the Tallahassee-based Children's Campaign.
She and others credit local early learning coalitions - groups of educators, business people and community members - with pulling the many pieces together.
"They've done a better job than I would have thought in a short period of time," said Libby Doggett, who leads Washington-based Pre-K Now.
But the program could have been better if participants had been given more money and more time to prepare, Doggett said.
More than 2.8-million Floridians voted for high-quality, universal pre-K in November 2002. But lawmakers did not write the bill Gov. Jeb Bush signed into law until December 2004. They didn't fund the program until May 2005.
"Obviously, the Legislature acted way too late," Doggett said. "They handed the state a Herculean task."
Rep. Dudley Goodlette, the Naples Republican who crafted the pre-K bill, defends the Legislature's actions. Lawmakers could have waited until spring to tackle pre-K, he said, but held a special session in December instead.
While Goodlette acknowledges concerns about lagging registration, he isn't losing sleep over it.
"We're embarking upon new ground here, and there will be some hiccups," he said. "But I don't think they will be insurmountable."
Besides, he said, lawmakers have pledged to fix the law if necessary.
Parents, however, are having to deal with the fallout - a big reason so many waited to register, and many others aren't signing up at all.
"I actually called in May and was told that Pinellas County wasn't doing the program. I called the School Board," said Misty Brockway of Tarpon Springs, as she waited to sign up her daughter, Novalee, last week at the Safety Harbor library.
It wasn't until mid July that Brockway learned that private schools, not public school systems, are offering the bulk of pre-K instruction in Florida. So the full-time mom began a fast search for a participating Christian school.
"Absolutely, it was poor marketing," she said. "Otherwise, I would have signed up in March."
Yvette Stroehlein, who lives in the Waterchase subdivision of northwest Hillsborough, also thinks the state did a poor job of getting out information. Working full time and caring for two kids, Stroehlein was simply too busy to learn about the program.
And it wasn't as if there were commercials running during CSI or other television programs her family watches. The entire state budget for publicizing pre-K was about $200,000, with some smaller amounts available in individual counties.
To run even one 30-second spot a week on CSI during June would have cost about $38,000. And that's just for the Tampa market.
Ultimately, a co-worker with twin 4-year-olds told Stroehlein about pre-K.
"She e-mailed me the Web site, I did my own research and went from there," Stroehlein said.
While generally pleased with the state's help in planning pre-K, early learning coalition leaders say Tallahassee deserves much of the blame for the struggle to fill seats.
State bureaucrats set up a spring preregistration system, for instance, but then required families to formally register in the summer, in person.
"A large majority of parents out there perceived that (spring drive) as registration," said Julia Ware, who heads the joint Volusia-Flagler coalition.
Several also expected more state-run publicity.
"It was a veiled threat that if we spent money for ads, it would be disallowed," said Janet Chapman, executive director of the Pinellas County coalition. She still hired a marketing firm to get the word out, primarily through mailers and handouts.
Warren May, a spokesman for the state Agency for Workforce Innovation, said his department gave coalition leaders hints on how to fit marketing into the limited startup dollars they had.
The state also produced two public service announcements for a last-minute push, he said.
Another trouble spot was the state contract for providers. It wasn't finished until early July, leaving it unclear until then which schools would offer pre-K.
Without the contracts, many coalitions postponed registration. They didn't want to sign up parents without having a list of schools to consider.
Some of the problems are particular to individual counties.
Santa Rosa County doesn't have enough pre-K providers. Hit by two major hurricanes in the past year, the county has lost several preschools, particularly along the coast.
In Leon County, the main concern has been the location and, sometimes, the quality of available schools, said Regina D'Souza, the school readiness director for the Leon-Gadsden coalition.
She and others expect many parents will sit out the school year program and wait for the public schools to offer a 300-hour summer session.
That has school district officials worried about the arrival of hundreds, if not thousands, of children in June. Many issues remain unresolved.
Teachers, for instance, generally work on 10-month contracts. Yet the state requires certified teachers to instruct public school pre-K.
Most schools don't have custodians or kitchen staffs in the summer. Most aren't open Fridays.
"There's a lot of things about the summer that logistically are going to need a lot of attention," said Donna Rippley, the early childhood education supervisor for Pinellas schools.
A court case over the constitutionality of school vouchers also could blow a hole in pre-K.
The Florida Supreme Court has yet to rule on the use of state money to support faith-based and private education. Its decision could come this month.
If the court rules state aid is unconstitutional, many private providers are expected to drop out of the pre-K program.
Carlos Velasco, a Clearwater dad, hopes that won't happen. He plans to send his son, Nicolas, to a church-based prekindergarten program the family could not otherwise afford.
"It's a choice," Velasco said. "You don't have to take your kids where you don't want to."
Politicians and local organizers recognize the possibilities but have decided not to put much time into what-ifs. Instead, they're trying to make sure pre-K goes off without a hitch.
The Department of Education has advised districts to prepare for 4-year-olds who mistakenly show up at bus stops and schools. The Agency for Workforce Innovation also has sent teams of workers to help local coalitions register children.
"It's a massive undertaking," Bush told reporters recently. "It's a big deal to get done for the first time."
--Staff writer Joni James contributed to this report. Jeffrey S. Solochek can be reached at 813 269-5304 or solochek@sptimes.com
Davis vows to pull Capitol 'for sale' sign
The Democratic gubernatorial candidate says he will curb the power of special interests in Tallahassee.
By ADAM C. SMITH, Times Political Editor
Published August 6, 2005
ST. PETERSBURG - Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jim Davis touted his bipartisan spirit Friday, even as he bashed the priorities of Republican-controlled Tallahassee.
"If you are looking for a candidate for governor who's going to spend the next year tearing down the Bushes, I am not your candidate," he told a largely friendly Suncoast Tiger Bay Club crowd in St. Petersburg. "But if you are looking for a candidate for governor that's going to talk about our values as Floridians - what makes us special, how we come together to build something, a better Florida, a better home for our children and grandchildren, please join me."
The Tampa congressman painted Tallahassee as controlled by special interests. He said he would remove the "for sale" sign on the Capitol, promote open debate, and "make sure the people's voice is heard again in Tallahassee.
"Those of you who know me know that I am a proud Democrat. But you also know that I have spent the last 17 years trying to work with everyone, trying to listen to both sides of every issue I have dealt with," said Davis. He praised Pinellas County's tradition of "independent-minded, moderate Republicans."
Davis, an attorney and former state legislator, is vying for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination against state Democratic chairman Scott Maddox of Tallahassee and state Sen. Rod Smith of Alachua, who on Friday was in Tampa having private meetings.
A lawyer with a reputation for immersing himself in policy, Davis sought to show his light side with a top 10 list ("My wife, Peggy, says women find a guy sexy who can recite Medicaid reimbursement rates"), and he frequently mentioned his two children.
He devoted much of his speech to education, saying the current voucher system lacks accountability and that instead of passing tax breaks for corporations and wealthy Floridians, state leaders should be better preparing its children for global competition.
"This crowd here in Tallahassee, they may be competing against Mississippi in their (treatment) of schools. But my children and your children and everybody's children are going to be competing against China, and Japan, India, Brazil."
Questioners asked him why he voted to authorize force in Iraq (he gave the president the benefit of the doubt, and would not have voted for it with the information he has today); why as a consistent supporter of trade agreements he voted against a recent Central American agreement (Davis said the White House did not provide adequate job-training funding); and how he intends to be independent of "special interests" while raising money from many of those interests.
Davis acknowledged winning the election will cost at least $30-million, but said regardless of his contributors, he will remain independent. "We will open up the doors and we will have open and honest debate on the merits of the issues."
Clients?
Editor, Naples Daily News:
Last Saturday a Daily News editorial referred to 4-year-old preschoolers as "clients" rather than "students," the term normally used to describe schoolchildren.
Perhaps this shift in nomenclature was influenced by the recent guest commentary, "Pre-K program intended to operate in free market," by Florida Rep. Dudley Goodlette.
More has shifted than the reclassification of students. The constitutional amendment passed by Florida voters has been hijacked by the Legislature and shifted to the private sector. Student rights have shifted to private provider rights such as setting up schedules to suit their needs and choosing which students they want to admit.
Mr. Goodlette calls this a "choice" program. For whom, Mr. Goodlette? Parents are stunned and confused.
In November 2004 the 1st District Court of Appeals became the third court to rule that Florida's school-voucher law violates the state's constitution because it allows tax dollars to be spent on religious schools (65 percent of private schools), a violation of the separation of church and state. And yet, in a blatant disregard for these rulings, Mr. Goodlette championed a law the following month setting up prekindergarten vouchers. Is it any wonder there is massive confusion for the families with pre-K children? They were expecting a "uniform, efficient, safe, secure, and high quality" pre-K public education, as mandated.
The governor is trying a last-ditch effort to undermine the Florida Constitution by pandering to the national political forces to whom his brother is indebted. Our children are the pawns, the taxpayers are left holding the bag and the future of Florida's work force is compromised.
Lee Willer-Spector/Marco Island
Gallagher makes his governor pitch in Martin
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 11, 2005
STUART — If you're wondering how Florida has changed since 1974, ask Tom Gallagher.
That was the year Gallagher was first elected to the Florida House as a member of the Miami-Dade delegation.
The Delaware native was the only Republican in the group.
"The only person more surprised than me about me winning was my opponent," Gallagher said.
Now, more than 30 years later at the state Capitol, Gallagher is surrounded by Republicans — some of whom want the same job he does.
The state's chief financial officer is one of six Republicans looking to replace term-limited Gov. Jeb Bush.
But as Gallagher pointed out Wednesday in Stuart, only he and Attorney General Charlie Crist are considered serious GOP candidates. The two already have raised more than $3 million each for their campaigns, more than a year before the September 2006 primary.
Gallagher, who is making his third attempt at the governor's office, told a crowd of about 60 people at The Flagler Grill that there are serious differences between he and Crist.
He pointed out he is the only non-attorney among the five Democrats and Republicans considered strong candidates for governor.
Gallagher also criticized Crist's reaction to a recent Supreme Court decision that broadly defined eminent domain power for local governments.
Crist opined in several Florida newspapers that state laws already protect landowners and said local governments may only force the sale of blighted property that is needed to serve a public purpose.
Gallagher, however, said cities in Broward and Volusia counties have begun the eminent domain process in order to turn property over to developers.
"They've already started it," he said. "Florida's law hasn't slowed them down at all."
The meet-and-greet attracted several current and former Martin County politicians, including former County Commissioners Dennis Armstrong and Elmira Gainey, Schools Superintendent Sara Wilcox, School Board Chairwoman Sue Hershey and Stuart Mayor Michael Mortell.
Earlier, Gallagher toured two-year-old Jensen Beach High School, ate lunch with the Martin County Economic Development Council and spoke at the county GOP headquarters.
Teachers unions target Wal-Mart
COMPANY ALLEGEDLY UNDERMINES PUBLIC EDUCATION
By Chuck Carroll
Mercury NewsMembers of teachers' unions from San Jose and across the country launched a campaign today urging consumers not to buy their back-to-school supplies at Wal-Mart, accusing the country's biggest retailer of anti-education policies.
In San Jose, members of the National Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association were joined by Democratic state Assembly members Joe Coto and Sally Lieber at Robert F. Kennedy Elementary School -- just down the road from a Wal-Mart on Story Road.
About 20 teachers handed out ``report cards'' to reporters that gave Arkansas-based Wal-Mart failing grades for allegedly paying low wages, failing to provide affordable health care, discriminating against women, violating child labor laws and shifting more than $2.5 billion a year in health care and welfare costs for its underpaid and underinsured workers to U.S. taxpayers.
Coto, D-San Jose, said if enough people heed the call to buy their back-to-school supplies elsewhere in the next few weeks, Wal-Mart will feel the pinch.
``It's important for us to let them know the damage that they do,'' he said.
Wal-Mart spokeswoman Cynthia Lin responded today that its customers would see through the campaign's ``publicity stunt,'' and recognize it as a ``smear campaign'' against a company with an ``unshakable commitment to education.''
Wal-Mart is the largest publicly traded company in the world.
Don Dawson, a math teacher at Silver Creek High School in San Jose, said the Walton Family Foundation -- run by the heirs of Sam Walton, the founder of Wal-Mart -- has spent about $250 million in the past six years promoting the school-voucher movement and lobbying for tax credits for parents who send their kids to private schools.
Public education advocates are staunchly oppose such changes, saying they will drain funds from public schools that, in California, already rank near the bottom in per-pupil funding.
``You don't solve problems in public education by taking money away,'' Dawson said. ``We can't afford to go backward.''
To Coto, the former superintendent of the East Side Union High School District, Wal-Mart's wage and benefits policies mean too many kids are going to school hungry and with undiagnosed or untreated health problems that make it more difficult to for them learn.
Similar news conferences were scheduled in 33 other cities and in 24 states. Consumers were urged to log onto www.wakeupwalmart.com to find out more about the campaign. The ``Send Wal-Mart Back to School'' campaign was started by the United Food and Commercial Workers union and is backed by the teachers unions, which claim about 3 million members.
Wal-Mart strongly denied being anti-education. ''This year alone in the state of California, we have given over $200,000 to honor teachers of the year in our communities, and we have given scholarships to 347 high school seniors, for a total of over $350,000,'' said spokeswoman Lin.
''Through low prices -- like 25-cent crayons -- and substantial support for local education, students are our priority, not politics. Isn't it time the teachers' unions do the same?''
Wal-Mart said it gave more than $45 million to education initiatives last year, including scholarships and grants to public school teachers. ``We continue to be one of the nation's largest supporters of teachers and education.''
Wal-Mart said interested teachers and customers should go to www.walmartfacts.com to see how it supports education.
At the nearest Wal-Mart to the San Jose school, the store on Story Road, two customers said they hadn't heard the complaints about Wal-Mart's policies before today.
Marycruz Villagomez, a mother with children in public school, said she had been planning to do her back-to-school shopping at Wal-Mart because the price is right. After she heard about the numbers behind the anywhere-but-Wal-Mart campaign, she wavered. ``I'm thinking here,'' she said, pointing to Wal-Mart, ``but maybe I'm going to change my mind.''
Villagomez said she might go to an office supply store that's offering a percentage of its profits on school supplies to a school of the customer's choice.
Frances Delgado, a mother of four school-age children, was more skeptical. ``I don't believe everything I hear," she said, adding that she had no intention of shopping somewhere else.
``Sometimes whoever has the lowest prices is what's best, and right now, Wal-Mart has the best prices.''
Contact Chuck Carroll at ccarroll@mercurynews.com or (408) 920-5206.
Florida Alliance for Choices in Education (F.A.C.E)
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