Almost five years after accepting Florida's first voucher students, private Catholic schools are pushing for higher academic standards. Why is it, then, that their chief adversary is the state Department of Education?
The department is responsible for overseeing a $135-million school voucher program, and its commissioner, Jim Horne, has responded to embarrassing revelations about the lack of oversight by recommending changes to the law. Yet Horne has repeatedly rejected pleas by the Florida Catholic Conference, which is the largest educator of voucher students, to seek school accreditation and fully disclosed student testing. That puts Horne in a peculiar position. He is saying he wants less stringent standards for voucher schools than do many of the schools themselves. Is that any way to protect schoolchildren?
"In early '99, when the A+
Plan was debated, there was a sense that many private schools could provide a better education," says Larry Keough, education associate for the Catholic Conference. "Now we're at a different place. What we have found is that there have been many dubious types of schools created for the express purpose of drawing down state dollars. As a result, not all the children are being well-served."
Catholic schools, which serve 95,000 students across the state, are no strangers to private education or to helping children in need. They were also an early supporter of the private school voucher plans advanced by Gov. Jeb Bush. But what the bishops have seen bothers them, and they propose some basic safeguards: Make sure the schools are accredited (allowing time for schools that aren't) to meet basic educational qualifications; require schools to have been in operation for at least three years so they have a track record for parents to judge; give students standardized tests to measure whether they are meeting state or national norms.
It is worth noting that the Catholic Conference is joined by the Florida Council of Independent Schools, which represents 158 schools and 77,000 students, in the quest for higher standards. That means two organizations representing nearly half the private schools in Florida are actively pushing for higher standards, yet DOE is uninterested. Worse, there are indications that the governor's education adviser, Patricia Levesque, has tried to silence the Catholics. She even contacted Keough's boss, which prompted Keough to write her: "I ask that you refrain from personal attacks and veiled threats, which serve no useful purpose. In fact, intimidating tactics are counterproductive."
Horne and voucher advocates long have suffered from a regulatory paranoia, viewing any proposal for change as an attack from political enemies. But the Catholic Church can hardly be viewed as an enemy to private education. Why, then, are the church's views summarily dismissed? To what constituency is DOE now listening that it won't seek higher academic standards even when the schools themselves request them?
