Nixed

Vouchers hurt Florida's public education

In a major victory for public education, a state judge ruled Tuesday that Florida's school voucher program violated the state constitution and would have to be ended after this year. Florida's program had been the first statewide voucher program instituted in the United States. Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush has pledged to bring the program to the rest of the nation if elected.

This ruling, along with an earlier decision that struck down Cleveland's use of vouchers, clearly illustrates the incompatibility of school vouchers with federal and most state laws. Cleveland's program was ruled unconstitutional for using public money to pay for tuition at parochial schools, a practice which violated the constitutional separation of church and state. Florida's program was overturned based on a provision of the state constitution mandating a "high quality system of free public schools" which the judge said would be undermined by redirecting public money to private schools.

Both of these rulings should be signals to politicians across the nation to work on measures that will actually help public school students and to stop holding out the false promise of vouchers as the only solution. Voucher proponents usually argue that students will receive better educations in private and parochial schools and should not be prevented from attending them because of cost. Besides the fact that studies have shown this to be untrue, only a small portion of students would have that option because of the relatively tiny number of private schools. Most students would have to remain in the public schools at the same time money was being funneled out of them. Most students could also not choose to attend better public schools because of distance and school capacities.

Another problem with voucher programs is they give public money to private schools without any public oversight. Schools operating without any accountability or that are not required to adhere to certain educational standards should not be publicly funded. The recently outlawed Florida program points out another huge problem with many voucher programs. In order to help get them instituted, many voucher systems only affect students in poorly performing schools, as measured by standardized tests. It is often claimed that those schools will themselves be improved by the competition with private and parochial schools. As the schools affected by this program demonstrate, they certainly do change their behavior in response to vouchers, but not for the better. In order to score higher on the state's standardized tests, these schools have eviscerated their science and social studies programs, subjects which do not appear on the tests, and are pouring all their available resources into the tested subjects of reading, writing and math. While these subjects are obviously important, they certainly do not constitute a complete education on their own.

Voucher programs can violate the separation of church and state, take needed money away from already ailing public schools and warp the curricula of those schools. There are many steps politicians could be taking that would be of actual benefit to public schools and they should stop continuing to peddle vouchers, which are clearly detrimental to the vast majority of students.