factcheckED

Dispelling the ‘damaged goods’ myth about school choice scholarships

Ron Matus February 25, 2021

Ron Matus

Students at all three locations of Academy Prep — Tampa, St. Petersburg and Lakeland — routinely matriculate to top high schools and go on to attend top colleges. All Academy Prep students attend on state scholarships.

There is no evidence that students who use Florida school choice scholarships return to public schools worse off academically.

But that doesn’t stop critics of education choice from repeating variations on that claim.

The Florida League of Women Voters is the latest to air this “damaged goods” myth. In a Feb. 21 newspaper op-ed criticizing Senate Bill 48, which would convert Florida’s school choice scholarships into education savings accounts, two of its officials wrote:

“Stories abound of children who return to their neighborhood public school after a private school closes, only to find they are far behind academically.”

But for the qualifier “after a private school closes,” the Florida League of Women Voters op-ed echoes a charge that choice opponents have been levelling for years (for example, here and here.)

We can’t say with certainty whether “stories abound.” But data to support such claims certainly does not.

The authoritative take on this issue comes from respected education researcher David Figlio, dean of the School of Education and Social Policy at Northwestern. For years, Figlio was tasked by the state of Florida with annually analyzing the standardized test scores of students using the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship, the biggest choice scholarship program in the nation. (The scholarship is administered by nonprofits such as Step Up For Students, which hosts this blog.)

In his 2011-12 report, Figlio addressed the academic performance of scholarship students who return to public schools. He wrote:

FTC participants who return to the public sector performed, after their first year back in the public schools, in the same ballpark but perhaps slightly better on the FCAT than they had before they left the Florida public schools. The most careful reading of this evidence indicates that participation in the FTC program appears to have neither advantaged nor disadvantaged the program participants who ultimately return to the public sector.

Figlio also wrote:

These pieces of evidence strongly point to an explanation that the poor apparent FCAT performance of FTC program returnees is actually a result of the fact that the returning students are generally particularly struggling students.

Subsequent analyses led to the same conclusion.

The best available evidence doesn’t point to shortcomings with choice scholarships. If anything, it underscores the need for even more options for the most fragile students.

Other evidence also turns the League of Women Voters claim on its head.

Thirteen years’ worth of test score analyses offer remarkably consistent findings about Florida Tax Credit Scholarship students. No. 1, they were typically the lowest-performing students in their prior public schools. And No. 2, they’re now, as a whole, making a year’s worth of progress in a year’s worth of time.

A 2019 Urban Institute study found even more encouraging results: The same students are up to 43 percent more likely than their public school peers to enroll in four-year colleges, and up to 20 percent more likely to earn bachelor’s degrees.

These outcomes don’t suggest damaged goods.

They suggest more students living up to their potential.

February 25, 2021 0 comment

Analysis Education and Public Policy Education Choice Education Equity Education Legislation Education Research factcheckED Featured Florida Tax Credit Scholarship News Parental Choice Private School Scholarships School Choice Tax Credit Scholarships

Courts, facts, logic refute false claims of education choice critics

redefinED staff December 23, 2020

redefinED staff

Editor’s note: Our critics often assert that giving lower-income families access to more learning options hurts district schools. Below we have assembled evidence showing that these claims are false. Empowering Florida’s lower-income families to access the best education options for their children does no harm.

COURT CASES

June 2015 Second Circuit Court decision in McCall v. Scott (Florida Education Association lawsuit against Florida Tax Credit Scholarship (FTC) program for low-income students)

Conclusion: Court determines that FEA’s allegations of FTC program causing harm to traditional district schools were insufficient to establish standing. Court offers an opportunity to amend complaint to include additional factional allegations to support their claim of harm. FEA declined the offer. Circuit Judge George Reynolds dismisses case with prejudice.

“… Whether any diminution of public school resources resulting from the Tax Credit program will actually take place is speculative, as is any claim that any such diminution would result in reduced per-pupil spending or in any adverse impact on the quality of education. The purported injury asserted here – the loss of money to local school districts – is necessarily speculative…(and) requires speculation about whether a decrease in students will reduce public school costs and about how the legislature will respond to the decrease in students attending public schools… Hence, any claim of special injury to any Plaintiff is speculative and conclusory.”

Link to decision: Second Circuit Court – McCall v. Scott

August 2016 Appellate Court decision in McCall v. Scott

Conclusion: The First District Court of Appeal upholds the lower court decision ruling that the Appellant’s claim that the FTC program creates “special injury” or harm to district schools is without merit.

“… The trial court correctly determined that Appellants lacked special injury standing because they failed to allege that they suffered a harm distinct from that suffered by the general public. Indeed, Appellants failed to allege any concrete harm whatsoever.”

“Appellants’ diversion theory is incorrect as a matter of law. A close examination of the statutory provisions authorizing the (FTC program) exposes the flaws under Appellants’ argument.”

“Further, even assuming that Appellants’ diversion theory was legally sufficient, Appellants’ allegations that the (FTC program) has harmed them are conclusory and speculative.”

Link to decision: First District Court of Appeal – McCall v. Scott

January 2017 Florida Supreme Court decision in McCall v. Scott

Conclusion: Court declines to hear the case, reaffirming First District Court of Appeal that there is no evidence showing that the FTC program harms district schools.

Link to decision: Florida Supreme Court – McCall v. Scott

FISCAL STUDIES

Collins Center for Public Policy 2007 Fiscal Analysis

Conclusion: The FTC program did not have a negative impact upon K-12 General Fund Revenues for public education for the three years studied (2002-2004).

“In fact, K-12 General Fund revenues increased over $2 billion during a three-year period while the state accrued $139.8 million in actual revenues by saving the difference between the value of the $3,500 scholarship and the value of K-12 per pupil revenue. These savings would allow the state to increase per pupil spending by an average of $17.92 per year for the 2.6 million children in the public schools during this period.”

Link: Collins Center for Public Policy Updated Fiscal Analysis

OPPAGA December 2008 and March 2010 studies examined the fiscal impact of FTC scholarships

Conclusion: No evidence that the FTC program adversely impacts the state budget or school district budgets.

From December 2008 report: – “…in Fiscal Year 2007-08, taxpayers saved $1.49 in state education funding or every dollar loss in corporate tax revenue due to credits for scholarship contributions. Expanding the cap on tax credit would produce additional savings if there is sufficient demand for the scholarship.”

From March 2010 report: “For Fiscal Year 2008-2009, OPPAGA estimates that the scholarship program saved (a net of) $36.2 million.”

Links: OPPAGA December 2008 Report; OPPAGA March 2010 Report.

Florida Revenue Estimating Conference 2012 Analysis of FTC scholarship tax credit cap increase

Conclusion: Fiscal impact created by increasing scholarship cap is offset by the savings of the cost of the scholarship vs. per-pupil FEFP dollar amount.

Line 55 of the analysis shows net FEFP savings for 2012-13 as $57.9 million, $57 million for 2013-14, $48.8 million for ’14-15, and $36.1 million for ’15-16.

Link: 2012 Florida Revenue Estimating Conference Analysis

EdChoice 2016 Tax-Credit Scholarship Audit (Martin Lueken)

Conclusion: FTC program saved taxpayers between $372 million and $550 million since its inception in 2003 (as of 2014), or $1,100 to $1,700 per scholarship recipient.

Link: 2016 EdChoice Tax-Credit Scholarship Audit (Florida pg. 39)

ACADEMIC OUTCOMES

Urban Institute 2019 report by Matt Chingos on effects of private school choice on college enrollment and graduation.

Conclusion: Several findings in the study. Chingos compared college enrollment and graduation outcomes of scholarship students with a group of similarly disadvantaged students in public schools.

Scholarship students up to 45 percent more likely to get college degree.

FTC students were 11-20 percent more likely than similarly disadvantaged students in public schools to earn a bachelor’s degree. Those who were on the scholarship for at least four years were 45 percent more likely to earn a degree.

FTC students were 16 to 43 percent more likely than similarly disadvantaged students in public schools to attend a four-year college. Those who were on the scholarship for at least four years were 99 percent more likely to attend college.

FTC students were 12 to 19 percent more likely than similarly disadvantaged students in public schools to attend either a two OR four-year college. Those who were on the scholarship for at least four years were 38 percent more likely.

“The available evidence indicates that FTC enrolls students who are triply disadvantaged. They have low family incomes, they are enrolled at low-performing public schools (as measured by test scores), and they have poorer initial test performance compared with their peers.”

Link to study: The Effects of the FTC program on College Enrollment and Graduation – An Update

Original 2017 study: The Effects of Statewide Private School Choice on College Enrollment and Graduation

David Figlio (Northwestern) and Cassandra Hart (UC-Davis) June 2010 academic study examined the competitive impact of FTC on district school achievement.

Conclusion: Found that the academic achievement in district schools most impacted by tax credit scholarships increased.

“Our results indicate that the increased competitive pressure faced by public schools associated with the introduction if Florida’s FTC Scholarship Program led to general improvements in public school performance.”

Link to study: Competitive Effects of Means-Tested School Vouchers

In 2006, the Florida Legislature required that every scholarship student in grades 3-10 take a nationally norm-referenced test approved by the Department of Education every year. Those test scores are reported to a research team under contract with DOE to write an annual evaluation. Evaluations are currently done by researchers at the Learning Systems Institute at Florida State University.

Conclusion: FTC students make roughly the same annual learning gains as students from all income levels nationally. This is despite the reality that the FTC students are typically the lowest-performing students from the lowest-performing public schools in their area, with an annual household income of $26,578 for a family of four. Fifty-three percent of all scholarship students are from single-parent households. (NOTE: Cassandra Hart October 2011 study examining characteristics of scholarship participating students can be found HERE.)

From the 2011-12 report: “There exists compelling causal evidence indicating that the FTC Scholarship Program has led to modest and statistically significant improvements in public school performance across the state. Therefore, a cautious read of the weight of the available evidence suggests that the FTC Scholarship Program has boosted student performance in public schools statewide, that the program draws disproportionately low-income, poorly-performing students from the public schools into the private schools, and that the students who moved perform as well or better once they move to the private schools.”

Links to Learning Systems Institute’s annual assessments: 2008 (baseline report), 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

In May 2014, former state Senator Nan Rich claimed $3 billion over the subsequent five years “…will be taken out of our public schools and be put into vouchers.”

Conclusion: The statement was analyzed by Politfact in June 2014. They rated the claim Mostly False.

“Based on the program’s size, it’s possible that it could fund a voucher program in the ballpark of $3 billion over the next five years. But there’s no guarantee that money would otherwise have gone to public schools. And, private school vouchers tend to cost less than what it costs to educate a child in public schools, which complicates how much money taxpayers would pay if the children in private schools instead went to public schools.”

Link to Politifact analysis: Politifact on Sen. Rich’s voucher claim

December 23, 2020 0 comment

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FACT-CHECKED: Tallahassee educator’s attack on ‘monstrous’ system is misleading

Jon East January 23, 2020

Jon East

Editor’s note: The goal of fact-checkED is to bring clinical precision to complex issues that are easily misunderstood, aiming to counteract incorrect information before it continues to circulate.

Sally Butzin has a rich and accomplished history in public education, as a classroom teacher, instructional innovator and published author. But her latest column in the Tallahassee Democrat offers an unfortunate brew of bitterness and hyperbole about modern reforms.

Butzin cast Florida today as something of an educational wasteland, reminiscing about the early 1990s when “innovation was encouraged” and contrasting that with the election of Gov. Jeb Bush in 1998 when “the bottom fell out.” She deplored the “emphasis on testing and accountability” but especially blames charter schools and private school vouchers. They constitute a “monstrous parallel system” that “has bled the life out of public education” and “left millions of children behind.”

We’ll leave to others the political defense of Bush, who ushered in a wave of education reform in his eight years in office, and instead focus on three of her more tangible claims.

Claim No. 1: “These new schemes had no accountability to taxpayers.”

The “schemes,” in this context, refer to charter schools and private school scholarships.

First, charter schools are created through a contract with each public school district that involves oversight into educational goals and tax dollars received. Their students are required to take the same state assessment tests as all other district students and the schools receive the same letter grade ratings as public schools. Further, under state law, a charter school can be shut down, and many have been, for receiving two grades of F.

Second, the state’s largest scholarship program, the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship serving 108,570 economically disadvantaged students in 1,836 private schools, is overseen by the state Department of Education. Students are required to take nationally norm-referenced tests approved by the state and those test results are reported publicly each year. Schools that receive more than $250,000 in scholarship dollars are required to submit financial reports by certified public accountants, and scholarship funding organizations are audited each year by the State Auditor General and private accounting firms. The students, schools and scholarship organizations are subject to roughly 17,000 words of statutory and agency regulations.

Third, both charter schools and scholarship schools face a form of accountability that can be more intense than state regulations and audits. Because they are schools of choice and students are free to attend or not, they can go out of business if parents are dissatisfied and choose elsewhere.

These points are brief in part because Butzin’s claim is categorical. She wrote that they have “no accountability,” which is flatly false.

Claim No. 2: “This parallel system has bled the life out of public education, as billions of dollars flowing to it have left millions of children behind.”

This claim seems to have a life of its own, despite the fact that it is refuted by extensive independent research. At its core, it assumes that public schools should be paid tax dollars without regard to how many students attend them, even though Florida has always funded education on a per-student basis. And it ignores the fact that students choosing these two alternative options receive fewer dollars than they would if they remained in a traditional public school.

This is the third time in the short history of fact-checkED that we have analyzed this financial cost claim, and for more detail we invite you to read our first effort. Once again, we rate this claim as false.

Claim No. 3: “Now, it would be one thing if this parallel system was improving outcomes for all our children. But this is simply not the case.”

Butzin did not share her data on outcomes, but the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) is generally regarded as one of the most reliable indicators of academic achievement in elementary and secondary schools. NAEP, often called the “Nation’s Report Card,” paints an entirely different picture.

By every measure, the NAEP reading and math test scores of fourth- and eighth-graders have increased over the past two decades – the period after which Butzin says “the bottom fell out.” The percentage of fourth-graders who meet basic standards in math is up by nearly two-thirds, and the percentage rated proficient or above has tripled. The percentage of fourth-graders who meet basic standards in reading is up by a third, and the proficient and above is up by two-thirds. Similarly, the percentage of eighth-graders who meet basic in math is up by a fifth, and proficient is up by four-fifths. The percentage of eighth-graders at basic in reading is up by a tenth, and the percentage above proficient up by half.

And, according to the Urban Institute’s adjustment of rankings for race, income and English language learner status, Florida ranks first in fourth-grade reading, first in fourth-grade math, third in eighth-grade reading and eighth in eighth-grade math.

A few other measures are worth mentioning. The most recent Education Week Quality Counts report ranked Florida fourth in the nation in terms of K-12 academic achievement. The College Board ranked Florida third in percentage of graduating high school seniors who have passed college-caliber Advanced Placement exams. The high school graduation rate has jumped from 60.1 percent to 86.9 percent in the past two decades.

We don’t know the data Butzin used, but we rate her claim as highly misleading.

January 23, 2020 0 comment

2020 Presidential Election Analysis Education Choice Education Politics Education Spending factcheckED Featured School Choice Tax Credit Scholarships Testing and Accountability

fact-checkED: Sanders’ education choice claims in Florida op-ed misleading

Jon East January 16, 2020

Jon East

With the presidential primary election in delegate-rich Florida just two months away, Democratic candidates are beginning to knock on the door.

In a Monday column in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders found little to like about Florida’s public education system. But our focus is on educational choice and three assertions he made while insisting that “Florida is ground zero of a school privatization movement intent on destroying public education.”

“Each year almost $1 billion in state money goes to private schools instead of public schools.”

“These private schools operate with little to no accountability.”

“In many cases, their students’ math and reading skills have declined.”

These claims are misleading, at best.

Claim No. 1: The $1 billion citation draws attention but does not prove Sanders’ point. He implies that private school voucher and scholarship programs harm public schools financially, which is a longstanding and erroneous argument advanced by the Florida Education Association (FEA) that we have dealt with previously in this space. There is simply no evidence to support it.

Eight different independent financial studies all have concluded the scholarships, which cost less per student than the total amount spent in a traditional public school, save tax money that can be used to enhance public schools. Florida TaxWatch weighed in last year, finding existing scholarships cost 60 cents on the public school dollar. And the FEA lost its legal challenge to the 19-year-old Tax Credit Scholarship program in part because the trial and appellate courts summarily rejected its argument that public schools “have been and will continue to be injured by the scholarship program’s diversion of resources from the public schools.”

Claim No. 2: The qualifier in this assertion – that private schools operate with “little to no” accountability – gives Sanders some wiggle room in part because accountability is hard to objectively measure. But Sanders seems to dismiss entirely the accountability that is inherent with any school that survives only if parents choose it for their children.

That market concept may not appeal to a self-professed socialist but does have real-world consequences and, in the case of the state’s two scholarships for underprivileged students, gives genuine educational power to parents who typically have little.

As to the regulatory oversight, Florida’s largest program, the Tax Credit Scholarship serving 108,570 economically disadvantaged students this year, is ranked among the nation’s most aggressive. The students, schools and scholarship organizations are subject to roughly 17,000 words of statutory and agency regulations.

Among those requirements: scholarship students must take state-approved standardized tests; those test results are reported publicly every year; schools must submit annual financial reports by certified public accountants; and scholarship organizations must be audited each year by the state Auditor General and independent accounting firms.

Sanders is entitled to believe the program is not subject to sufficient regulation, but we rate his claim of “little to no” accountability as misleading.

Claim No. 3: Once again, Sanders uses an interesting qualifier – “in many cases” – in his assertion that scholarship students’ “math and reading skills have declined.” Eleven years’ worth of standardized test reports refute his claim.

Students who receive the Tax Credit Scholarship must take a nationally norm-referenced test each year approved by the state, and most take the Stanford Achievement. The test scores are sent to Florida State University’s Learning Systems Institute, which is paid to aggregate and report them publicly.

For the most recent year, 2017-18, scholarship students scored on average at the 47.4 percentile in reading and 45.2 percentile in math. That’s basically average, which is encouraging given that these scholarships students are among the poorest in the state and were among the lowest-performing students in the public schools they left behind.

More to the point, their annual gains have been remarkably consistent. The scores reflect that these low-income students have achieved the same annual gains as students of all income levels nationally.

In other words, they have increased, not declined.

Certainly the average doesn’t reflect every student. In the most recent report, about as many students – 0.6 percent – achieved extraordinary gains of more than 40 percentile points as those who dropped an equivalent amount. But Sanders’ qualifier that “many” students declined seems intended to distort the overall test findings. We rate it mostly false.

January 16, 2020 0 comment

Analysis Education Legislation factcheckED Funding Gardiner Scholarship McKay Scholarship Private Schools School Choice Tax Credit Scholarships Vouchers

fact-checkED: This ‘quick fact’ about scholarships hurting public schools is no fact at all

Jon East November 26, 2019

Jon East

A story in Sunday’s Lakeland Ledger about a union-sponsored public education summit in Polk County included a chart of “Quick Facts” that bears scrutiny. One of them, about the financial impact of Florida Tax Credit Scholarships, is false.

The statement: “In 2018, tax-credit scholarship programs totaled $1.058 billion, money that went to private and religious schools that could have gone to public schools.”

First, the total dollars are off. According to the state Department of Revenue, which tracks tax credits awarded under the scholarship law, companies received permission in 2018-19 for tax-credited contributions of $689.3 million. Those dollars translated into scholarships for 104,091 lower-income and working-class children to attend 1,825 private schools in that same year, according to the Department of Education.

The $1 billion figure may well include money spent on two voucher programs – McKay and Gardiner Scholarships – for students with special needs that are funded directly from the state treasury, but it is nonetheless misleading.

The more substantive claim, though, is that the money “could have gone to public schools.” This is at the core of a longstanding and erroneous argument – that vouchers harm public schools financially – offered by the Florida Education Association. In fact, FEA lost a 2014 legal challenge to the Tax Credit Scholarship in large part because it could prove no such harm.

In that case, McCall v. Scott, the FEA argued that public schools “have been and will continue to be injured by the scholarship program’s diversion of resources from the public schools.” The Leon Circuit judge who heard the case, George Reynolds, offered union attorneys the chance to amend their complaint to provide facts that bolstered that claim.

They declined, and Reynolds dismissed the case, writing: “Whether any diminution of public school resources resulting from the Tax Credit Program will actually take place is speculative, as is any claim that any such diminution would result in reduced per-pupil spending or in any adverse impact on the quality of education.”

On appeal, the union lawyers went a step further and asserted the scholarship program cost public schools $300 million in 2013-14. But the state education budget that year increased by $1 billion and per-student funding went up by 6.3 percent, leading First District of Appeal Judge Lori Rowe, during oral arguments, to ask: “But exactly what is the special injury you are articulating here? You haven’t alleged that any individual student is suffering. You haven’t alleged that per-student funding has been reduced. You haven’t even alleged that the education budget has been reduced.”

Outside the courtroom, eight different independent financial studies have all concluded the scholarship saves tax money that can be used to enhance public schools. That’s because the state spends less to educate these students on the scholarship than it otherwise would spend in a traditional public school.

In March, Florida TaxWatch added to that body of research with a report on what it called the “true cost” of education in 2017-18. TaxWatch went beyond the basic operating formula used to fund public schools and added all the other appropriations as well. It found the state spent $10,856 to educate the average student in public school, and contrasted that amount with $6,447 spent on the average Tax Credit Scholarship student. In other words, the scholarship cost 60 cents on the public school dollar.

One final note: Amid the lawsuit challenging the Tax Credit Scholarship in 2014, Nan Rich, a former state senator, made a similar claim about scholarship programs pulling money out of public schools, and PolitiFact Florida rated it “mostly false.”

We rate this “quick fact” to be false.

November 26, 2019 0 comment

Education Politics factcheckED Family Empowerment Scholarship School Choice Tax Credit Scholarships

fact-checkED: Family Empowerment Scholarship not ‘a hit to public schools’

Scott Kent November 1, 2019

Scott Kent

Editor’s note: This post is another in our fact-checking series, one that focuses solely within the arena of educational choice. The goal of fact-checkED is to bring clinical precision to complex issues that are easily misunderstood, aiming to counteract incorrect information before it continues to circulate.

An Oct. 30 news story in the Gainesville Sun about the Family Empowerment Scholarship (FES) included an uncontested assertion by the Florida Education Association that the new program will drain money from public schools:

Researchers from the state’s teachers union say according to their calculations with those averages, the program will pull $1.2 million to 1.3 million from the Alachua County School District and $2.2 million to 2.4 million from Marion County Public Schools.

“It’s a hit to public schools,” said Eileen Roy, Alachua County school board member. “Parents need to know that it’s $1 million less to help their children. This is a very scary move, and we can’t afford to ignore it.”

The article continues:

Shortly after the program passed, the Florida Education Association projected that the scholarships would divert $11 million from Alachua County Public Schools over the next five years. For Marion County, they predicted a $19 million loss.

This is false.

It’s appropriate that this claim was published around Halloween, because it perpetuates what amounts to a ghost story aimed at frightening people.

Leave aside the school board member’s us-versus-them statement that “parents need to know that it’s $1 million less to help their children” – which completely ignores the low-income parents in her county who see the new scholarship as a way to help their children find the right education environment. Do they not count in her social order?

Instead, let’s focus on the math.

Florida has 18 years of financial data from the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship (FTC), on which the new scholarship is modeled. Eight different independent fiscal impact studies have concluded the FTC saves taxpayer money that can be re-invested in public schools. Not a single study has shown otherwise. That’s because the value of the scholarship is less than what taxpayers spend per student in district schools.

A Florida Tax Watch report on the “true cost” of public education, released in March, determined the FTC scholarship in 2017-18 was worth 59 percent of all categories of per-pupil spending for district schools, which Tax Watch calculated to be $10,856.

The new FES vouchers, like the current FTC scholarships, average between $6,775 and $7,250.

Florida will spend about $130 million this academic year to award Family Empowerment Scholarships to 18,000 students. If you add the basic per-pupil funding increases over the last two years to update the Florida Tax Watch calculation from 2017-18, it would cost the state about $200 million to educate the same students in district schools.

It’s worth noting that the Florida Education Association was the lead plaintiff in a years-long lawsuit that sought to kill the FTC scholarship. The Florida Supreme Court ultimately dismissed the suit in 2017, after a lower court found the plaintiffs couldn’t provide any evidence that the program harmed public schools. That included an “analysis” similar to the one the union has trotted out against the FES.

Finally, the state doesn’t pay school districts for empty seats in classrooms, regardless of why students left. If they move to another district, or out of state; if their parents decide to home-school them; or if they leave to attend a private school and their families pay tuition out of their own pockets, the impact on the districts in per-pupil funding is the same.

Oddly, it only seems to become an existential threat to public education when a low-income student takes advantage of a scholarship or voucher to attend the school of his or her choice.

November 1, 2019 0 comment

Education and Public Policy Education Politics Education Reporting factcheckED Family Empowerment Scholarship Florida Tax Credit Scholarship Gardiner Scholarship McKay Scholarship School Choice Vouchers

fact-checkED: Family Empowerment Scholarships are not the only state-funded voucher

Jon East October 18, 2019

Jon East

Julian Cruz, pictured here with his mother, Emily, was one of the first students to receive a Gardiner Scholarship for students with special needs. The direct-state-funded scholarship now serves nearly 12,000 students.

Editor’s note: We add a new feature today, called fact-checkED, that is inspired by the many factchecking efforts across the media landscape these days. Our work will focus solely within the arena of educational choice, and our goal is to bring clinical precision to issues that are often complex and misunderstood. Our intent is not to shame but to inform.

In an editorial Sunday criticizing 19 “bad bills” that became state law this year, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel wrote the following of a new school voucher called Family Empowerment Scholarships:

“Tuition vouchers (SB 7070). For the first time, money goes straight from (the) state treasury – not just by tax credits.”

This is false.

We begin by first acknowledging that the sentence above ends with a phrase describing the money as going “to unregulated private schools, most of which will be religious and can cherry-pick their students.” That’s a handful in itself, particularly given that the participating private schools are subject to roughly 17,000 words of statutory and agency regulations and that annual state evaluations of a similar program, called the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship, have concluded it draws some of the state’s poorest and lowest-performing students from public schools.

But our focus here is on the claim that the Family Empowerment Scholarship (FES) is the first school voucher to draw funds directly from the state treasury. That’s in part because the claim has current legal and political salience. Ron Meyer, attorney for the Florida Education Association, the state’s largest teacher union, has told reporters he plans to file a lawsuit asking courts to declare the new program unconstitutional. Even before the bill was passed, Meyer told the GateHouse Capital Bureau: “This could lead to the dismantling of the public school system as we’ve known it.” In June, a month after the bill was signed into law, he told the Florida Phoenix: “There is going to be a challenge.”

The Sun Sentinel editorial draws a proper contrast between the new FES program and an existing 18-year-old program called the Tax Credit Scholarship. Both serve disadvantaged students from low-income and working-class households, but the Tax Credit Scholarship is fueled by contributions from corporations. In turn, those contributions receive 100 percent credits against six different state taxes. Last year, the Tax Credit Scholarship served 104,091 low-income students at a cost of roughly $644.7 million. The funding distinction is important, and led in part to the 2017 dismissal of a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Tax Credit program.

As the editorial notes, FES is funded directly by the state. In fact, it is funded directly out of the operational funding formula, known as the Florida Education Finance Program (FEFP), that pays for district public schools. One distinct difference between FES and district schools is that the scholarships receive money only through state general revenue dollars and do not receive any local property tax money (see subsection (11)(e) in the law).

The claim of being first, though, is wrong. FES is neither the first nor the only state-funded education voucher in the PreK-12 arena. It’s not even the only voucher funded directly through the FEFP. Here are the others:

The McKay Scholarship for students with learning disabilities. It was created two decades ago and last year served 30,695 students at a cost of $219.7 million. The students are tracked inside the FEFP from each school district in which they live, as is exhibited in this FEFP calculation sheet from 2018-19 (note the second column, which subtracts McKay dollars from each district). 1819 FEFP 3rdCalc
The Gardiner Scholarship for students with specifically named special needs. It was created in 2014 and served 11,917 students last year at a cost of $124.1 million. Gardiner is funded by a direct line-item appropriation (see line item 110 on page 28 of this year’s State Appropriations Act).
Voluntary Pre-Kindergarten for 4-year-olds. This program was approved by voters in 2002 and took effect in 2005. In 2017-18, it served 133,870 students in private schools and day care centers at a cost of roughly $326.2 million. The VPK program is funded by a direct line-item appropriation (see line item 89 on page 20 of this year’s State Appropriations Act).

To its credit, the Sun Sentinel published a partial correction to the editorial above. We rate the original claim as FALSE.

October 18, 2019 0 comment

Education and Public Policy Education Research factcheckED Florida Education Revolution Florida Tax Credit Scholarship Know Your History Myth Busters School Choice Tax Credit Scholarships Vouchers

Busting myths of 20 years ago

Patrick R. Gibbons September 27, 2019

Patrick R. Gibbons

Florida’s then-Gov. Jeb Bush testifying before a U.S. House committee Sept. 23, 1999.

Twenty years ago this week, Gov. Jeb Bush spoke before the House Education Budget Committee about Florida’s recently passed A+ Plan and the state’s first voucher, the Opportunity Scholarship Program.

“It’s been fun, in all honesty,” Bush said with a smirk, “to watch the myths that have been built up over time when you empower parents.”

Those myths were shattered, Bush said, though he admitted the program was only just a few months old at that point. Nevertheless, two decades of evidence have proved him correct.

By the time of Bush’s presentation, the Opportunity Scholarship had awarded scholarships to 134 students at two schools in Pensacola. Seventy-six of those students used the program to attend another higher-performing public school, while 58 used the voucher to attend a private school, according to Bush’s testimony.

The first myth Bush called “the brain drain,” which occurs when only the high-achieving kids leave public schools. But according to Bush, the students on the program were no more or less academically advantaged than their peers who remained behind.

The second myth was that vouchers would only benefit higher-income students. “Eighty-five percent of the students are minority,” Bush said. “Eighty-five percent qualify for reduced and free lunch. This is not a welfare program for the rich, but an empowerment program for the disadvantaged.”

The third and final myth he called “the abandonment myth” — schools where students leave will spiral ever downward.

Twenty years later these myths remain busted.

Eleven years of research on the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship show the critics’ claims ring hollow.

• Students attending private schools with the help of the scholarship are among the lowest-performing students in the public schools they leave behind.

• Today, 75 percent of scholarship students are non-white, 57 percent live in single-parent households, and the average student lives in a household earning around $27,000 a year. Researchers at the Learning Systems Institute at Florida State noted that these students are also more economically disadvantaged than their eligible public-school peers.

• More importantly, scholarship students are achieving Jeb Bush’s goal of gaining a year’s worth of learning in a year’s time.

• Even the abandonment myth remains untrue. Overall, public schools with large populations of potentially eligible scholarship students actually performed better, as a result of competition from the scholarship program, according to researchers David Figlio and Cassandra Hart.

When Jeb Bush took office just 52 percent of Florida’s students graduated. Today 86 percent of students graduate. According to the Urban Institute, students on the scholarship are more likely to graduate high school and attend and later graduate from college. State test scores on the Nation’s Report Card are up considerably since 1998 too. And when adjusting for demographics, Florida, which is a majority-minority state, ranks highly on K-12 education compared to wealthier and whiter peers.

There’s still room for improvement. But the naysayers at the turn of the century have been proven wrong.

September 27, 2019 0 comment