Last week’s rally for tax credit scholarships continues to spur debate on editorial pages across Florida, but perhaps the most poignant exchange took place in the capital city’s newspaper, where a parent responded to the leader of the statewide teachers union.
Joanne McCall, the president of the Florida Education Association, wrote a guest column last week in the Tallahassee Democrat:
It has become an annual tradition during the legislative session and this Tuesday was no exception: Voucher proponents empty out private schools that receive money from the state, and bus students up to Tallahassee for a political pep rally.
Lawmakers continue to pump more money that should be going to state coffers into the tax-credit voucher program, making it bigger every year. But what do we know about the quality of these schools that receive tax dollars from the state? Not a whole lot.
The rally was neither annual nor political, but Faith Manuel, a former scholarship parent who spoke at the event, addressed that and other issues in her response.
As a parent who was honored to stand with Martin Luther King III and other respected black, white and Hispanic leaders in a historic rally in Tallahassee on Tuesday, I was stunned to read the reaction of Florida teachers union president JoAnne McCall.
In her attempt to ridicule the 10,000 students, parents and educators who came from around the state to voice support for Tax Credit Scholarships for low-income children, Ms. McCall intentionally misled Tallahassee Democrat readers. We could only wish this had been merely a “political pep rally,” as she termed it, in the same vein as the union rallied four days earlier to criticize lawmakers. But we were there for one purpose, as expressed on our shirts: “Drop the Suit.”
McCall criticized the scholarship program for not requiring students to take the same test as public-school students.
One would expect accountability measures for these schools to look like public school accountability. But Florida allows these private schools to make their own rules about testing. Not surprisingly, none of these schools uses the Florida Standards Assessments or the FCAT to measure their students’ learning. These schools don’t have to follow the state’s academic standards, they don’t have to hire qualified teachers and they don’t have to prove to the state that they are using public money wisely.
Manuel notes the program does have annual testing requirements for students, as well as financial safeguards, both for schools and scholarship funding organizations like Step Up For Students, which publishes this blog. But more importantly, she writes, the scholarships gave her children access to learning environments where they could thrive.
I was a single parent at age 15. My children could have ended up as many in similar situations do — part of sad statistics. But I had the power of choice. My two sons started at assigned public schools. When they needed a different environment, the scholarship gave me the power to do what was right for them. I put them in a private school, and they thrived. Then my younger son went to a public high school. My eldest is now at the University of North Florida, and my second has been accepted to three Florida universities.
Ms. McCall, this program has accountability. It has required testing. The nonprofits that run it and schools serving kids have financial reporting requirements. But hear me: The most important accountability is parents like me. If we’re not satisfied with a school, we take our business elsewhere.
Read McCall’s full column here, and Manuel’s column here. Manuel has also shared her story at greater length, here.
