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REBECCA CATALANELLORepublicans are leery of having accountability on a par with what public schools face.
Florida's school voucher movement was sold five years ago as a get-tough accountability measure for public schools.
Failing public schools would be forced to repair themselves, Republican lawmakers said, if the alternative was losing students and money to private schools.
But as lawmakers head toward the final stretch of this year's legislative session, discussions over how much accountability should now be imposed on voucher-receiving private schools sound eerily similar to the argument over public schools - with one major difference:
The party positions are almost reversed.
Republicans are leery of too much accountability. Their Democratic counterparts are demanding it.
So far, both sides agree that voucher students should be required to take a standardized test, as public school students must do under Gov. Jeb Bush's A-Plus accountability program.
But other Democrat-backed changes have been defeated, including a measure that would have required any private school taking public money to meet basic accrediting standards.
"We want to know that our money is spent well," said Sen. Ron Klein, D-Delray Beach, who is trying to persuade fellow lawmakers to raise the bar for voucher accountability. "There needs to be some type of standard by which we measure these schools."
Sound familiar?
Try President Bush, while on the presidential campaign trail in 1999.
"It is the conservative philosophy that insists on high standards, strong accountability systems and different options for parents whose children are trapped in failed schools," Bush said then, claiming the standards movement for the GOP.
But what if the failed schools are private schools that receive voucher money? The president-to-be didn't address that possibility.
Democrats like to compare Florida's voucher requirements with the accountability measures in place for public schools.
President Bush's No Child Left Behind education law, for example, dictates everything from teacher certification to school grading. It requires states to issue school report cards, and publicize student test performance, including how they score by ethnic group, gender and disability.
Compare those mandates to a few of the changes being discussed for voucher-receiving schools in Florida:
While lawmakers are moving toward a testing requirement for voucher students, the legislation backed by Republicans would not allow the public to know how the students are doing.
Democrats want to make public the names of companies that make contributions to voucher programs in exchange for tax credits. The chairman of the Senate education committee said that would be a disaster.
"The contributions will fall," said Sen. Lee Constantine, R-Altamonte Springs. "Maybe that's the objective of this amendment. But the contributions will fall if identities are revealed."
Sherman Dorn, an education professor at the University of South Florida, said the different treatment of public and voucher schools is hurting the state's efforts at education reform. Dorn recently authored a policy brief on that topic for the Educational Policy Studies Laboratory at Arizona State University.
"It isn't a philosophical switcharoo," said Dorn of the party stances. "It's a conversion of convenience for those who don't want accountability for voucher schools."
But Pat Hardman, director of the Dyslexia Research Institute, makes no apologies for the idea that private schools should be left largely unregulated despite the millions they receive in public funds.
Private is private, she said. Parents are the best measures of accountability.
"Your public schools and your private schools are different entities," said Hardman, whose organization runs a voucher-receiving private school in Tallahassee. "We simply have to be allowed to be different. And different isn't bad."
Though she said recent accountability measures have helped public school performance, Hardman resists the notion that similar mandates would benefit voucher recipients.
"If we try to turn the private school into a public school setting with the same regulations, you are going to have the private schools leave you - the good ones," she told the Senate Education Committee.
Constantine says Republican lawmakers have no intention of doing anything they think will hurt the voucher movement.
About 11,585 Florida students are attending private schools this year using corporate tax credit vouchers, down from more than 19,000 the year before. Another 12,439 students are enrolled courtesy of McKay vouchers for disabled students.
Gov. Jeb Bush, Senate President Jim King and House Speaker Johnnie Byrd promised to help voucher activists during a rally last month organized by a Tampa businessman who opposes many of the Democrat-backed accountability measures.
On Wednesday, Senators briefly debated their two voucher accountability bills (SB 2882 and SB 2978), and then combined them to match the structure - though not the content - of the House bill. They could be ready to vote on it today.
The House, meanwhile, was still hammering away at its version (HB 313) in committee. It gives a go-ahead to standardized testing and a requirement that schools demonstrate three years of "fiscal soundness" before being eligible to participate.
The bill's sponsor, Rep. Don Sullivan, R-Largo, said he was pleased with the legislation's chances.
But it still faces the scrutiny of Rep. Eleanor Sobel, D-Hollywood, who was calling for the same amendments that failed in the Senate: Private schools should be accredited, teachers should be credentialed and the FCAT test should be the measure.
- Times staff writer Alisa Ulferts contributed to this report