Now that the state Supreme Court has ruled vouchers unconstitutional, it's time for lawmakers to get back to fixing public schools.
A Times Editorial
Published January 6, 2006
Every court that has been asked to examine Florida school vouchers has found them unconstitutional in one way or another. But Gov. Jeb Bush reacted to the state Supreme Court's ruling Thursday as though it was only another legalism to be outwitted. Isn't it time, finally, to stop playing games with the Constitution and the schoolchildren who have gotten caught up in this ideological war?
The court overturned vouchers based on an education, not religion, clause in the Florida Constitution. That provision guarantees a "uniform, efficient, safe, secure and high quality system of free public schools." The court's 5-2 majority opinion said the voucher program "diverts public dollars into separate private systems parallel to and in competition with the free public schools that are the sole means set out in the Constitution for the state to provide for the education of Florida's children."
The ruling leaves precious few grounds, if any, for the state to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. It also leaves unsettled the issue of state aid to religious schools, which was the grounds on which the district appeals court rejected vouchers.
The governor's education policy adviser has previously recommended Bush try to circumvent such a ruling by changing the method of voucher payment. But that would be a ruse and lead only to another legal battle. Vouchers now have been ruled in violation of the state Constitution, which only a constitutional amendment can truly cure.
Bush has been resisting this day for more than six years, stalling and appealing and hoping for an answer that was not to come. In the face of repeated adverse rulings, he and the Legislature created four other voucher programs, and he asked for a fifth last year. The same governor who promoted Opportunity Scholarships in 1999 as way to help students to escape a select number of "failing" public schools offered a much broader rationale Wednesday. "The public never benefits," he said, "from the government protecting a monopoly."
Enough political blood has been spilled in pursuit of the governor's privatization agenda. Opportunity Scholarships, the program on which the court ruled, serve only about 700 of Florida's 2.6-million public school students, and lawmakers would be wise to get back to basics. The point is to provide the highest quality public education possible, and vouchers are mostly a distraction in that regard.
Lawmakers who might be inclined to swim further upstream with the governor should first read the court's opinion. The court leaves little room for wiggling, and it has not even ruled on religious issues. More to the educational point, though, lawmakers need to reflect on the slippery nature of their voucher experiments. None of the newest voucher programs is tied to the performance of corresponding public schools, and no one knows whether the voucher schools are delivering a better education because they are not tested or held to any equivalent standards.
This legal fight needs to end so the state can turn its focus once again to making sure that every public school is, as the Constitution promises, "high quality."
