Washington Post education reporter Valerie Strauss is not known for an open mind on school choice, but she would have been wise to do a little homework before reprinting a 1,300-word oped from an anti-voucher activist in Florida. Had this column been submitted to The Fact Checker at the Post, 4 Pinocchios might not have done it justice.
The op-ed is written by a Palm Beach parent activist, Rita Solnet, who sincerely believes every parent wants his or her child to attend the school down the street. But her attack on a proposed expansion of the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship suffers not only from a lack of sensitivity to the plight of desperately poor parents, mostly of color, who have their children on waiting lists. Unfortunately, it also shows a remarkable indifference to basic facts.
Let’s walk through some of the highlights:
“The courts ruled Jeb’s first voucher program unconstitutional. Not to be outdone by the courts, Jeb created another ‘corporate voucher’ program that sidestepped the court’s concern over separation of church and state by using a middleman agency.”
This is a two-fer. The Florida Supreme Court did in fact rule against Opportunity Scholarships, but not on the no-aid-to-religion clause. Instead it found the first voucher program to violate the uniformity clause in the state’s public education article. More striking, the claim that former Gov. Bush rushed to enact a tax credit scholarship after the decision as a legal subterfuge is more than a little time-challenged. The court issued its decision in 2006. The scholarship program was created in 2001.
“This year, a massive voucher expansion bill was filed seeking a limit of close to the “B” word – nearly a billion dollars.”
That bill was actually passed back in 2010.That legislation created an automatic escalator allowing the program to grow up to 25 percent per year, so long as corporations are willing to donate, and so long as parents desire scholarships for their children. The current bill allows the program to grow slightly faster in order to reduce the current 34,000 waiting list quicker, but ultimately, provides only $44 million extra.