A Times Editorial

Schoolchildren as voucher pawns

© St. Petersburg Times, published May 15, 2000

When Leon County Circuit Judge L. Ralph Smith Jr. ruled in March that school vouchers violate the Florida Constitution, Gov. Jeb Bush talked passionately about his concern for the educational stability of the 52 children who already were receiving vouchers. "I personally am not going to let parents who have been given assurance that their children could go to another school," Bush told reporters, "I'm not going to force them to go back to schools they don't want to go to."

Yet as the case now heads toward judicial appeal, the governor is doing a curious thing. He has decided to take the slower track of appealing the case first to the 1st District Court of Appeal in Tallahassee, instead of the Supreme Court. More disturbing, he has decided to begin writing voucher checks to a potentially much larger group of children. When the state issues grades next month, as many as 78 schools and 60,000 students could qualify for vouchers. Bush, with the court's approval, is planning to push full throttle.

The issue is not whether vouchers will be the salvation or the destruction of public education. Let's put aside that overheated debate for the moment. The issue is whether it makes sense to put hundreds, maybe thousands, of children in educational limbo before the courts decide the voucher program's legality.

Such recklessness is part of a clear political pattern with vouchers. In his first session as governor last year, Bush made vouchers his top priority. The bill was pushed through the Legislature so quickly that educators were given almost no chance to provide input. Bush said the goal of vouchers was to spur improvement of public schools, and he promised improvement would be measured by an elaborate system of evaluation. But he started writing voucher checks within months -- before schools had a chance to improve and before the state adopted a system that would measure progress. Though he said he wanted to "rescue children from failing schools," he fought attempts to measure the fitness of the private schools they would attend.

The voucher program has been driven with such haste that even the private schools themselves have not kept pace. When the May 1 deadline passed this year for private schools to register to accept voucher students, only 80 had done so. Not to worry. State Education Commissioner Tom Gallagher simply extended the deadline, and a voucher advocacy group pumped $2-million into incentive programs for private schools. Never mind that the May 1 deadline is written into law.

Given Judge Smith's strongly worded judicial rebuke of vouchers, the plan to write more voucher checks while the court order is on appeal is plainly irresponsible. What caring educator would pull a student out of one school to attend another that might ultimately reject the student? Such actions tend to suggest the goal has less to do with saving today's schoolchildren than with building a political constituency. Each family that receives a government check is predisposed to fight to keep it, which Bush uses to help insulate himself from critics. The families also serve to put pressure on the court.

As the court case moves slowly ahead, the voucher crusade continues. In almost every press opportunity over the past 15 months in which he has argued for his A+

education plan, the governor has wrapped his arm around a young child he says he is helping to get a better education with vouchers. Those children, unfortunately, are beginning to look more and more like pawns.

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