As an ordained Baptist minister whose wife is a retired Florida public school teacher, I am almost genetically hardwired toward two things: truth and public education.
The Christian Bible teaches that the truth will set us free. Public education is, and always has been, our nation’s best hope for the delivery of fact-based truth and free thought to all our citizens. Senate Bill 48, titled Educational Scholarship Programs, compromises truth and threatens public education.
How does SB 48 compromise truth? First, the title of the bill, Educational Scholarship Programs, is misleading.
The bill is about more than scholarships. It reduces oversight of private organizations from annual reviews to reviews every three years. It limits oversight to financial administration and provides that parents, not educators, be the evaluators of their children’s educational progress.
As Marie-Claire Leman said before the Senate Education Committee, “parents are taking on all the burden of managing, budgeting, evaluating their children’s unbundled educational services and they are taking on the risk that providers won’t be qualified.”
Second, the bill provides for private, not public, education scholarships. Five voucher programs, all of which shuffle students and funding away from public schools, are combined into a single “Education Savings Account” debit card pre-loaded with $7,600. Anyone familiar with how a Health Savings Account works CONTINUE READING: The Educational Scholarship Program threatens truth and education