This is the second of two articles on “school choice” and its consequences in Flagler schools. See the first part, “Flagler Schools Face $2.5 Million Deficit as 400 Students Leave District for Private Vouchers in 3% Enrollment Decline.”
Flagler County School Superintendent LaShakia Moore is all for school choice. Choice is good. Choice is necessary. But choice, to be authentic, must be fair.
In Florida and in Flagler County, school choice isn’t a choice of equals.
The state’s two-year-old universal voucher system provides between $7,321 and $34,000 in public education dollars per student per year to attend private school or to be home-schooled. It requires districts to advertise and facilitate that “choice.” Districts, in essence, must shill for the competition.
It also requires public schools to maintain all pre-voucher academic, testing, financial and other costly standards in place. Few to none of those requirements exist for private or homeschooling parents receiving tax dollars. Students in the voucher program have to sit for just one standardized test per year, but the kind of test is the parent’s choice.
“There’s been this language of ‘we’re giving parents more choice. We’re giving parents more choice,’ Moore said in an interview, “which, absolutely, go for it. Give parents choice. However, what’s happening is they’re giving parents choice, but they’re not allowing us as a public school district to be competitive in that choice.”
Moore explained: “We have graduation requirements. We have standards that we must teach. We have all of these different pieces that we must include. You can go and do all of these things and not be required to do that. So if it’s good enough for families to choose that, and we as a state to pay for it, then why isn’t it good for public school as well?”
Moore isn’t asking for standards to be lowered–only to be equalized. If requirements apply to public schools receiving public money, the same requirements should apply to private schooling, otherwise it’s a false choice: the public schools are being asked to compete with a different set of rules. It’s as if private schools are playing on a 50-yard football field, while public schools are required to stick to 100 yards.
“It’s hard to really articulate what the issue is in a way that to parents, it doesn’t appear that we’re just against choice,” Moore said. “We will get some flack. But we will take it on. It will reflect who we are and how I lead. So we will take it on. We’ll take it on in a positive manner. We will provide facts. We will provide choices and information that is accurate to families so that they can make a choice for themselves.”
To earn a public school diploma, a student must sit through a required number of credits and a required number of instructional hours, down to the minute. The student has to pass numerous tests (or “assessments,” as the Department of Education likes to call them). A student in private school doesn’t have to. A student schooled at home doesn’t have to. Their instructional hours aren’t tracked. Not even their competence, though by the time they take college-entrance tests or other standardized measures, they show what they’re capable of.
Public school districts have to abide by financial accounting and accountability requirements to ensure that tax dollars are spent where they should be spent. Public schools have to prove that students under their roofs have sat in their seats down to verified attendance record. Private schools and homeschooling parents who receive $8,000 a year in tax dollars, per student, and up, don’t have to show any of that accountability. They are not evading accountability so much as they are granted cover by the state to evade it.
“This is not me knocking our private school,” Moore said, “but you can go to the private school and not have to do any of those things. And we as taxpayers, we as a community, we as a state, we’re paying for that. So if that’s a choice that we’re giving to families, and we’re saying: families, we’re giving you so much choice, do what’s best for your kid. Why is it, if it’s good for them, why isn’t it good for us?”
She gives an example: parents love the idea of schooling four days a week, and they can do that at home. Why aren’t public school districts given the flexibility to offer something similar? She speaks of numerous other regulations that could be adjusted to enable as much flexibility within the public school system as there is outside of it, while preserving standards.
Moore doesn’t think the community at large–whether businesses or parents–are as aware as they should be about the disparities in requirements. They hear “choice” and stop at that. Who doesn’t want “choice”? But the word is projecting a misleading picture.
Until now districts have had to grin and bear it. Internally, teachers and administrators are despairing over the imbalance between what they are required to do and what private schools can do, refraining from speaking of it publicly. They don;t want to be seen as complainers or defenders of the status quo. Any criticism of “choice” has been interpreted as an attack against “choice,” when it isn’t so.
Moore’s willingness to break that barrier was remarkable–and potentially risky.
The superintendent has been having discussions with her top staff about developing a strategy to address the imbalance–on the same terms that “choice” is presented to parents and to the community at large. She is not interested in sitting back. She wants the district to compete, aggressively and factually. She wants to show that in the end, the Flagler County school district remains the best choice for most.
“When you go to fight for these things, you have to be able to have the strong data to really support it,” Moore said. The state doesn’t make it easy, since a good deal of the comparative information is not provided. The state doesn’t require it from private schools in the voucher system. The district has to show what it can provide and convince parents that it is better than other choices.
Vouchers are draining students from traditional public schools, including in Flagler, where enrollment has been flat for 16 years, and is now declining. The school district is projected to see a 400-student decline between this year and next year–a 3 percent decline–due in large part to vouchers. Moore considers the local decline not as steep as what other districts are experiencing, because this district has already made strides in addressing the value of the public education “choice.” “We are addressing concerns that parents bring to us,” Moore said.
In some ways, Moore wants to turn the tables on the imbalance. She wants to make the accountability and record requirements that public schools live up to work for them. For example, a private school doesn’t have open-record requirements, it doesn’t publicize its security and disciplinary issues. Public schools do. “If the sheriff makes an arrest on our campus because of our relationship with our SRO (school resource officers), that’s going to be released. We’re not trying to hide that,” More said. The same may not be true in more private environments. The same transparency can work to the district’s advantage on other counts.
“I think what is going to happen is that, as we just educate even in conversations like this, and when I’m sitting with different stakeholders in our community,” Moore said, “this is going to cause all of us to start looking around and saying: We’re either for it or against it, right? You’re either for the direction it’s going, or you’re not for the direction it’s going. People are going to have to begin putting a stake in the ground for where they are.”
For now, it is undeniable that the majority of the people who are in leadership want the state’s education system to go the way of vouchers. The cost has been abstract to most. But the lack of accountability in the voucher program itself is costing districts real dollars, and compounding their difficulties in competing on an equal footing.
Take double-dipping as one example. In the state, the number of dollars withheld for vouchers this year is $3.139 billion. The state withheld from school districts $3.187 billion–a difference of $48 million. Where is that $48 million? “This also tells me that $48 million worth of funds was spent to provide education funding in two different places for students,” Moore said. That $48 million represents 22,000 students across the state.
It is against the rules for a family to have children enrolled in public school while still getting thousands of dollars in voucher money. But that $48 million indicates the size of the double-dipping. The state is responsible for preventing that.
But the state is as if intentionally making it impossible for districts–or the public–to account for students attending school on the public dime in private or homeschools. “Right now as a school district, and it’s not just our school district,” Moore said, “we do not have an accurate list that the state can provide to us of the students who are taking vouchers.”
It’s not just a statistical but an accountability void: “We need to know that number to ensure that we’re getting our share right. If we’re educating the kid and we’re saying that the student is here in our seat, we should be getting the funding for it. I’m sorry that the parent has elected to put in a voucher, and there is no accountability measure for that parent producing anything to say: yes, my kid is also in a public school.” The state requires parents to certify that they don’t have a child in public school while receiving vouchers, but it gives districts no tools to ensure that that’s the case.
The district, too, wants to get a stronger handle on vouchers’ effects. Moore will be proposing to the Flagler County School Board that a position be dedicated to voucher oversight. “We need to have that person, because we need to have a very robust choice department,” Moore said. Families will be welcome to opt for choice. “We can also help them to identify what they can do still with us with the voucher that they’re receiving.” Many parents don’t realize that they can still contract with the district for school services (outside of extracurriculars, which remain free) as additions to their private or homeschool choices.
“The only way this will be sustainable for public schools, for Flagler schools,” Moore said, “is that we are going to have to make sure that we are appealing to the families so that they understand that we still are a choice, and we are the best choice. The district, she said, has to make sure that if one family chooses a private option, “whatever it is, doesn’t mean that it is a bad choice for you to choose public school. And I think that we have to be able to make sure that we are empowering families in that way.”
But the superintendent cautions again: “There’s no way we’re going to be able to be competitive with all these things, if we are not all held to the same level of accountability. And we know that it has been shown that our current leadership is not interested in providing more accountability to these other individuals.”
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