Thar's Gold in Them Thar Voucher Schools!

Kimberly Miller writes in The Palm Beach Post today of the purchase by an investment firm of a Florida voucher school company. "A private investment firm that owns the largest ice manufacturer in the United States, makes plus-sized clothes and oversees a leading cabinet company has been educating Florida's disabled students — and doing it with taxpayer dollars."

On how many levels is this wrong? Here in Florida First Brother Jeb has been pushing voucher schools for well over 6 years now, insisting that it was all about the kids. We have to get those poor children out of the failed factory schools that are doing them a disservice. Never mind that we won't fund those schools properly, that we have no vision for improving the schools other than slapping a failing letter grade on them, and that our approach to oversight is to turn the kids over to a for-profit school with nearly zero oversight. Let's pull the money out of the public system, give it to entrepreneurs, and let the marketplace decide. The marketplace economy is a fine place to decide what kind of car you might buy or what soda you might drink, but to make those kinds of decisions with the lives of children is flat-out wrong. And yet we persist.

But hey, accountability is on the way. One proposal before the Florida legislature "would force private schools taking vouchers to give students standardized tests, and would require schools to hire teachers with a bachelor's degree or three years of teaching experience." Oh. I feel so much better now.

Let's close with a few quotes from the article shall we?

"It's not brand new with this administration, but there is no question that education is seen by some entrepreneurs as the next frontier," said Elliot Mincberg, vice president of the People For the American Way Foundation. "When there is an opportunity for profit with minimal accountability, private enterprise will see education as a cash cow."

"This program was always rife to be a profit-driven program as opposed to a program that will improve education for children with disabilities," said U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Pembroke Pines, who as a state senator sat on a board charged with making suggestions to improve the McKay program.

"Obviously, a private investment corporation has decided that this law was designed to help people make money," she said. "It should have been designed to help kids."