Support grows for voucher reform

Abuses in the school voucher program have lawmakers looking for ways to ensure accountability.

The premise seemed noble: Poor children in failing public schools would get free passes to attend the state's private schools.

In 1998, a year before the words "compassionate conservative" became the springboard for his brother's presidential campaign, Jeb Bush's platform for school vouchers promised new opportunities for Florida's poor and "left behind."

Six years later, the image of school choice is altogether different. While Florida's voucher movement now provides $135-million in tuition checks to more than 24,000 students, holes in the program have both critics and proponents calling for change:

More than half of the state's vouchers are being used at unaccredited private schools.

A number of criminal investigations into voucher-related organizations and one arrest has raised questions about how susceptible voucher-tied tax dollars are to abuse.

Students' academic progress in their new schools goes largely unmonitored by the state. There is no testing requirement comparable to the public school FCAT, required in grades 3-10.

Voucher critics say such problems were inevitable given the state's reluctance to regulate the program. Now even the people who got the voucher ball rolling say changes are needed. "If tighter controls are not implemented," said voucher advocate Larry Keough, a lobbyist for the Florida Catholic Conference, "I think school choice will be considered a failed experiment in Florida."

In the past year, voucher proponents - including Education Commissioner Jim Horne - have tried to muffle escalating media attention on the program's problems. But a series of embarrassing revelations have split their once-united front.

Tom Gallagher, the state's chief financial officer, is going head-to-head with Horne over what he has termed the program's lax oversight.

Voucher providers John Kirtley of Tampa and Pat Heffernan of Miami are now ideologically opposed to Keough and other private school leaders. They disagree on what accountability standards should be imposed on the students, schools and corporations involved in the program.

So as the election year 2004 Legislative session prepares to open March 2, legislators are taking stock.

Provoucher forces are taking issue with provoucher forces, high-ranking Republicans are questioning high-ranking Republicans, and Democrats are more willing than ever to work on issues of school choice.

"I've never been a big fan of vouchers," said Democratic leader Sen. Ron Klein. "But what we do have, we need to make sure they're held accountable."

A few weeks ago, after a heated Pasco County education forum, U.S. Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite approached Jim Warford, chancellor of the state's K-12 schools and a Horne appointee.

"We can't have storefront schools without any kind of credibility," said Brown-Waite, who voted in favor of Bush's voucher initiatives when she was a state senator.

"We're going to deliver," Warford said, nodding. "I promise you."

It's difficult to find anyone involved in the issue who doesn't agree with the idea of greater accountability.

The key question for state lawmakers is exactly what that means.

The reform issues up for discussion vary with each of Florida's three distinct voucher programs: the Opportunity Scholarship for students in schools rated "F" two years in a row; the McKay Scholarship for disabled students; and the Corporate Income Tax Credit program, in which companies get tax credits for financing vouchers that allow poor children to attend private schools.

Among the key reforms under discussion:

Accreditation: A private schools coalition that includes the Catholic Conference, the Florida Council of Independent Schools and the Florida Association of Christian Colleges wants the state to require voucher-receiving private schools to be accredited.

"We want to have a high confidence that these kids on vouchers are not floundering in a low-performing private school," Keough said.

So far, neither Kirtley - a leading architect of the corporate tax credit program - nor the state Department of Education has shown interest.

"I don't think accreditation ensures fiscal and academic accountability," said Kirtley, who notes that two-thirds of the public schools that have received double-F grades have an accrediting agency's stamp of approval.

Keough disagrees.

"They are going to be in a peculiar situation if they oppose accountability measures that the private schools themselves are advocating," he said of Department of Education officials.

Standardized testing: By now, many involved in the voucher debate agree students attending school on the public dime should be tested. Several bills likely to be introduced during the session establish some kind of testing requirement.

Voucher advocates desire it so they can point to data showing what they believe are obvious student gains. Voucher skeptics say anything paid for with the public dollar should be measured.

"I want to know that it's working," said Sen. Anna Cowin, R-Deland, who has authored an amendment that adds a testing requirement to the Corporate Tax Credit program.

What the sides don't agree on is what form a test should take.

"I would like to see the private schools do the FCAT test," said Rep. Don Sullivan. But the Largo Republican is sponsoring a Department of Education-endorsed bill that calls for voucher students to be graded on a norm-referenced test - an exam that measures students in comparison with others in the nation.

Sullivan said he hopes to make that test the FCAT, which has a norm-referenced component.

"I'd like to be able to compare apples to apples," Sullivan said.

Others say the FCAT is curriculum-specific and would not be a good measure of students in private schools. Many have alternate, heavily religious curriculums. "I don't think anybody would say that one size always fits all," said Kirtley, a venture capitalist who runs Florida PRIDE scholarship funding organization.

Teaching credentials for special education instructors: The voucher program does not require teachers of special needs students on McKay Scholarships to have any special credentials. As the law is written, the minimum requirement for teachers in those private schools is that they "have special skills, knowledge, or expertise that qualifies them to provide instruction in subjects taught."

In other words, a college degree, teaching certificate or even instructional experience is not required.

"You could pull someone off the street . . . and say, "You have some other expertise,' " Keough said.

Financial stability: Much of the criticism directed at the voucher program in the past year has focused on the state's refusal to put financial controls over private schools and the nonprofit organizations that dole out corporate scholarships.

In January, the leader of the Silver Archer Foundation in Ocala was charged with one count of grand theft and accused of stealing more than $268,000 in voucher money.

Just a month before, in a scathing Dec. 11 letter to the state Board of Education, Gallagher singled out Heffernan's FloridaChild scholarship funding organization for charging families $15 application fees, soliciting 2 percent donations from its voucher-taking schools and taking millions of dollars in transfers from other voucher groups.

Despite Heffernan's denial of any wrongdoing, FloridaChild has since gotten out of the voucher-granting business.

"My work is not to kill the program," Gallagher said. "Mine is to give it corrective criticism to have accountability in it."

Gallagher's findings and the criminal investigations have focused legislators on a variety of proposed safeguards.

Those include new minimum requirements for how long a private school should be open before being eligible; fingerprinting requirements for private school employees and scholarship funding organization leaders; mandates that private schools secure surety bonds proving financial solvency; and increased regulations on how scholarship funding organizations handle corporate donations.

"I think back in 1998-99, we had complete faith in parents, and we thought parents had universal choices," Keough said.

Today, he said, schools have sprung up for the sole purpose of drawing down state voucher dollars.

It's still early, voucher advocates maintain.

It's just a good law that needs help, they say. "The whole voucher movement is in its infancy," said Warford, the state's K-12 chancellor. "We still have growing pains. You don't expect the same thing out of a 5-year-old you do out of a 15-year-old."

- Times researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.

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