Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Vouchers in FL Going Mostly to Religious Schools
It’s bad enough to have vouchers available to disabled and low-income students, but for vouchers to be allowed for religious schools is beyond the pale for the far Left. Their mission, of course, is to characterize the religious schools in the worst possible ways, since the majority of voucher funding so far has been allocated for religious school attendees.
Parents of the students going to Islamic schools have chosen to send their children to “an Islamic environment” free of the “evils of modern society”; boys and girls who are attending an Orthodox Jewish school are enrolled in separate classrooms and boys and girls will not be mixing at summer camp; and a Baptist school publishes a “biblical stance on homosexuality, marriage and sexual identity” in its handbook, which would exclude LGBTQ students. (I’m correcting this statement, because the original article didn’t say they would be excluded; it said “a policy that indicates LGBTQ students and staff are not welcome.”–thanks, Mark Camp.)
Sounds good to me.
So what does this bill involve?
This month, the Florida Legislature began pushing a bill (HB 1) aimed at making most of Florida’s 2.8 million public school students eligible for vouchers that would, in effect, defund traditional public schools for a patchwork of alternatives — private, religious, or home schools — that lack state oversight for teacher certification, academic and testing requirements, and other accountability standards traditional public schools face.
Keep in mind that the bill hasn’t even been passed yet, so some of these concerns will be worked out in the details. Also, testing requirements have been included, but specific testing agencies have not been identified yet. But there’s no point in the Left wasting the opportunity to condemn any of these efforts.
Of course, this work to expand the school vouchers system supposedly demonstrates the Republican hatred of the public schools, when in fact Republicans are trying to provide viable options for parents who realize the public schools are failing miserably to educate their children. In addition, the children are being exposed to progressive ideology, including CRT (disguised in a vague vocabulary), transgenderism, systemic racism, and the other accouterments of the woke agenda.
What are the other protests against the voucher programs?
Here is one argument:
‘If you want to religiously educate your child, that’s good and wonderful. Do it the old-fashioned way — pay for it yourself,’ said Rabbi Merrill Shapiro, who lives in Flagler County. He is a past president of the board of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, which opposes Florida’s voucher programs.
Under Florida’s voucher programs, Shapiro said, he and other taxpayers end up ‘funding religious education that is anathema to us.’
As many people know, this belief is a distortion of the intent of church and state separation, which was meant to prevent a state religion, not to keep religion out of the schools. Also, low-income children may not be able to afford tuition without vouchers.
Some of the protests are pretty typical of those who are trying to protect the public schools and unions:
Rev. James T. Golden, pastor of an African Methodist Episcopal Church in Port Tampa and a former Manatee County School Board member, said the state should spend its resources improving public schools, not paying tuition for children to attend private schools. He said public schools will have fewer resources as the scholarship programs grow.
‘I think that this is a part of a strategy by one of the political parties in the state of Florida to literally destroy quality public education in Florida,’ he said.
I think the unions and teachers have done a pretty good job of destroying the public school system all on their own. Efforts that might actually help to improve the public schools will most certainly be discounted or ignored by them.
And of course, there are those who fear that the public schools will lose funding as private schools’ funding grows.
Perhaps the public schools should have thought of that long ago.
To review the bill now in process, you can go here.
Published in Education
I would love to see a version of the bill unadultered by Democrat amendments . . .
I think these folks have it backward. Funding viable alternatives to public schools at a scale large enough will force competition. The folks in public schools need a real incentive to “improve their product”. We have seen that with no incentive to respond to the shrinking pool of customers (children) and the parents that have to make the decision on where to send their offspring, the school understandably don’t need to change.
This is true of all businesses not just the schools, and the public education has lived in a bubble of comfort for too l long. It time to return to some semblance of excellence in education if we are not to become a third rate nation.
Public schools will only respond to some being closed and the remaining staff come to understand that they must cater to the wishes of the parents. So some public school need to get pruned to save some of the public schools. The upper management and union bosses might not like this, however I suspect that many teachers would like to feel relevant given there choice of a career profession.
Remind me again of where in the bill it restricts vouchers going to secular or radically political schools (which meet State standards otherwise?) I’ll bet they could start their own school that taught only Howard Zinn history.
A voucher program can improve government (“public”) schools, if the administrators are willing to work for it.
My anecdotal experience is thirty years old, so maybe the newer generations of school administrators are too far gone, but when our children were in elementary school they attended a government school located on the line between a wealthy part of town and a much less wealthy part of town. About 2/3 of the school’s attendance area was the wealthy section. We lived in the less-wealthy section.
The school administration and teachers were well aware that they were in competition with private schools. At least 2/3 of the students came from families that could easily afford private school. So the government school administrators and teachers worked hard to make the government school the school of choice for those families. (State funding depended on enrollment and attendance, so the teachers and administrators had incentive to keep students enrolled and attending.)
Vouchers that follow the students do not need to translate to less money for government schools, if the government schools are providing the services the parents want. But, if government schools insist on working against the parents, then yes, the government schools will lose.
It’s already been happening for a long time in the public schools.
I have never understood the vehement opposition to the concept of some government school funding going to religious schools.
The theory behind government funding of schools in the United States is that a representative republic (and maybe a functioning economy) depends on a population that is universally educated in certain topics, at least to some minimal level: Reading, writing, arithmetic or math, and civics (which would include some history).
Nothing in that theory requires or even suggests that the government actually run the schools. If a school is educating students in the basic topics necessary for a functioning society in a representative republic, whether the school is also teaching other topics, or infuses the basic topics with a particular worldview or religion, should not matter. If an Islamic school, or a Jewish school, or a Christian school, or a Druid school, or a Earth-worshiping school is teaching its students to read, to write, to do basic math, to understand civics, the school is fulfilling the purpose for government funding of schools, and there is no theoretical basis on which to refuse to government funding to a school because it also teaches religion.
[I know, the real argument is about power to indoctrinate children into select “secular” religions, but I like to keep the theoretical issue up once in a while.]
If the Leftist voices dominate, GLD, they will allow themselves to be wiped out. The normal folks are going to have to strike out and take control. The idea of “being competitive” is probably anathema to them.
I love it, EOD! But think of all the kids who will miss their propaganda!
Precisely!
And I’m glad you do that, FST. It gives me the chance to remind people how much the Left hates religion, since they see themselves as fighting them for power.
No one is stopping anyone from putting up their own money and time to create a school, get approval and convince parents to send their children there. They could teach whatever they want. But I’ve been wrong before.
There are several states offering voucher programs and Education Savings Accounts. You can review them here The article also explains that there are limitations to these programs (although those are probably dependent on the state). Those are worth reviewing, too.
It’s potentially worthwhile to point out that much of the modern homeschool movement was started a little over fifty years ago by hippie-dippy (“tune in, drop out, free love”) parents who wanted to keep their children out of conventional “institutional” schools with their dress codes, standardized teaching methods, rigid grading systems, and often strict social structures. Those hippie parents also started a fair number of “alternative” schools, some of which grew to become institutions of their own. Private schooling and homeschooling need not be the exclusive province of “conservative” parents belonging to conventional religions.
I was pretty involved in Catholic schooling for about 20 years.
My thoughts on this:
1) Good families make good students. Good students make good schools.
1a) Therefore, a set of good families does not need much money to have a good school.
1b) Therefore, a set of bad families cannot have a good school no matter the budget.
2) The families most interested in the educational outcome of their kids (good families) will choose to put their kids into the best schools they can find. The kids remaining in the public schools will suffer a little bit, but then the public schools can focus on making improvements with a smaller population.
3) K-8 private schools are generally working on shoestring budgets. The vouchers will help families a lot and make the schools more stable, but it will be a challenge for them to scale up. Facilities are limited. There will be waiting lists. It will take decades to build capacity.
4) Catholic high schools generally have capacity to grow, but the voucher will be half or a third of the tuition.
Very helpful points, Don. I don’t know about the availability of facilities. In some areas there may be schools that have already closed or even vacant buildings that can be modified (hopefully without too much expense). They’ve also found that some Catholic schools have reduced tuition (at least to a degree) to offset the difference between the vouchers and tuition costs. Maybe with the added income of vouchers, the Catholic schools will continue to be able to adjust.
Very good article as usual, Susan.
As a Christian, I want to mention a fine point about our theology. It has no relation to the point of your article; it concerns only a peripheral matter.
Re this…
…in my understanding, an orthodox biblical stance on homosexuality, marriage, and sexual identify would probably not exclude LGBTQ students.
I mention it because that assumption will surely be central to the radical left’s propaganda. We oughtn’t spread the distortion for them, if distortion it is.
Excellent point, Mark. A bad assumption on their part. I suspect that parents won’t be sending their LGBTQ+ to a Christian school. Then again, they’d might send them and then demand the schools change to suit their kids. Sigh.
Precisely.
If Rabbi Shapiro were to follow his own argument to its logical conclusion, he would advocate abolishing all public funding for education. Then everybody would be able to follow his advice to “pay for it yourself.” And we would freed from funding education that is “anathema to us,” which is what most of us are doing right now.
And I’d agree with him.
My husband has said for years that it’s not fair that our taxes are used for public education; I’ve always answered that we are educating our future citizens. That argument is getting harder and harder to make…
It is very safe to say that in the Education Industry children and parents are not the customers. Teachers’ unions, consultants and administrators are. Children are the products.
Our points should be short and sweet:
-the funding should follow the students to the school of their choice, just like state-funded college scholarships do
-if you are against this you are against “equity.” The system the left wants is biased against the poor.
-the bigotry of the atheists and left against religious schools must not be tolerated
I fully agree.
Thanks for lettting me know about this. I missed that this was under consideration. I will let others know and conctact my legislator that they better vote for this if they want my vote. This is huge its been needed for decades. Parents need to take back control over their childs education this gives them all the power of the pruse as it should be.
No need to start their own charter schools. Zinn and his disciples already have the public schools in most areas.
A biblically-based curriculum would not exclude instruction on homosexuality, same-sex”marriage”, and the arary of contemporary claims regarding sexual identity. It’s just that LGBT activists would not approve of what would be taught. [I imagine at Hillsdale they teach students about the Communist Manifesto. Medical schools similarly teach about cancer.]
Schools of Education are the place to begin reform.
‘If you want to religiously educate your child, that’s good and wonderful. Do it the old-fashioned way — pay for it yourself,’ said Rabbi Merrill Shapiro, who lives in Flagler County. He is a past president of the board of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, which opposes Florida’s voucher programs.
Under Florida’s voucher programs, Shapiro said, he and other taxpayers end up ‘funding religious education that is anathema to us.’
Where does he think the money comes from? It is coming from the people. He, like others so hyper focused on the public trust, think this money, once submitted to the state, is fully laundered from its source.
The only argument that remains is the role of vouchers as distribution of wealth. In theory in the voucher mode, the voucher is a gateway drug to residents just keeping their money and purchasing the education that they want for their kids, like we did as lifelong Florida Homeschoolers and paid twice for education. The goal of the voucher is for people like me (whose kids are now grown) to help fund education for FL residents who might not be able to afford it for their kids.
– Bill DeWeese, who lives in Pinellas County and is the imaginary President of the board of imaginary Americans United for Separation of Individuals and State
The teacher’s union responded as expected …
Exactly right! Every time I read or hear of a public school teacher bragging on tic-tok of their wonderfully affirming “discussions” with their grade school classroom about their “lifestyles”, I want them fired and fined. It’s not an appropriate topic for gradeschool classrooms. They are sacrificing the innocence of children to their narcissism. Wake up folks. (I know; preaching to the choir. Harrumph.) :-)