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DOE, correct thyself

The state Department of Education is responsible for grading public schools and holding them accountable for their failings, but can't seem to fix its own.

While Florida continues to turn up the heat on public schools, the push for accountability has not reached the state Department of Education. It is comfortable pressuring school districts to reach higher but can't seem to find the time or the will to correct its own shortcomings.

In an audit released last month, state auditor general William Monroe uses the words "still" and "again" to describe financial and management problems that have gone unaddressed from audit to audit. The DOE still doesn't require full audits of all student finance programs. The agency still contracts with a software company whose prices are higher than state policy allows and whose work performance still has not been correctly assessed. The auditor general again recommends that DOE build a student financial database as required by state law. He finds again that the agency fails to correct errors in the per-student allocations of state money to districts.

Even more astonishing is that the department still can't get its act together with school vouchers. Vouchers are one of Gov. Jeb Bush's highest political priorities and have existed in one form or another for six years. Over that period the program has been the subject of stinging criticism in state audits, legislative reports and criminal investigations. Yet Monroe says DOE still can't get it right.

Two years ago, the auditor general looked at a small sample of voucher checks and found that one in three was not properly endorsed and could be fraudulent. In this new report, he found precisely the same ratio. He also found that DOE, despite intense legislative scrutiny, has yet to write rules for either the McKay Scholarships for disabled students or the Corporate Income Tax Scholarships for poor children. The rules are required by state law.

If these were the agency's first offenses, they would be bad enough. But DOE keeps finding itself answering for jarring mistakes. Remember the $7.6-million legislative bailout for a new computer system the agency built on the mistaken belief a federal grant would cover it? Remember the $1.1-million the agency handed out to online school students who were clearly ineligible under state law? Remember when DOE authorized a Gainesville man with a history of racketeering arrests to oversee voucher money and the $268,000 that police said disappeared as a result?

DOE is the agency that grades every public school, berates those that don't measure up, and threatens to withhold tax money from districts that don't follow the rules. Yet in recent years it has consistently answered criticism of its own performance by condemning the critics. The next time Education Commissioner John Winn feels the impulse to wag a dismissive finger, he might want to look in the mirror.

[Last modified July 8, 2005, 21:09:02]