Orlando Sentinel exposes Florida’s $1 billion school voucher scam

originally posted by: Irishhaf
Having spent 24 years in Florida I have no doubt about the depths of the corruption in the state..

That said the article and the OP do a disservice too the story by focusing on Devos and Trump, if its up to a billion in corruption now this is not a new thing, its been going on for years.

Lets focus on stamping out the corruption instead of scoring points for our "team".

Allowing people to spend their tax dollars how they want isn't corruption.

The article basically is written from a perspective of complete denial and total big government worship.

a reply to: muzzleflash

The rawstory article is bias, the Orlando Sentinel is fairly balanced.

Vouchers can be a good thing, as so many public schools are failing. As another poster pointed out, the parents need to do the homework on what school they are sending their children to.

I do regret running with the RawStory headline. I did not realize who slanted their view is when I originally posted.

a reply to: jrod

It's ok, and to be fair I bet that a lot of private schools do suck.

Some of them are the best in the world though, like really world-renown class places.

There is an Academy here in Nashville a mile or so away from me that's extremely high-class and just going there and graduating will really improve your odds of getting accepted into Ivy League or equivalent level universities.

I realize that the price tag on some of these higher end schools can keep 90% of the community out. I'm betting a voucher would barely scratch the tuition fees...

a reply to: muzzleflash

I am actually in favor of the vouchers, my take on the corruption is just the state in general it has a serious problem with corruption from the city/county level all the way through the capital.

originally posted by: Justso
a reply to: Tashie

I was shocked and so sad. Tampa is a ghetto; the parents are the problem-plus half the kids didn't speak English and they felt so lost and I really felt sorry for them.
Apparently, Clearwater has more private schools per square mile than any other place in the US.
Realtors told me that anyone that cared about their child did not send them to the public schools. Florida was also one of the first states to offer classes on the internet-now I know why.

This is Detroit in a nutshell. The public schools are terrible, and it's largely because too many parents just don't care. That's why Michigan was an early supporter of charter schools. There's a ton of them, both in Detroit and in suburbs close by, and they're full. Quality-wise, they're a bit hit-or-miss, but it's an improvement on Detroit Public Schools, which are a guaranteed "miss."

originally posted by: grey580

I'm not sure why conservatives are advocating charter schools an not improving public schools. Either way that money is being given out via tax dollars.

Like many they have given up on public schools since they're under control of the Teachers Union and NEA. If I had school age kids right now I'd probably put them in private schools. I don't put much water in college degrees, great teachers come from all walks of life. I would be more interested in their curriculum and the personality of the teachers myself.

a reply to: grey580

The problem with improving the public schools is that you have to fight the teachers unions. They are two (I think there are two) huge public union monopolies who tend to go on strike at every proposed change.

The government has to have the will to break the unions and break the bureaucracy before any real change can be imposed on public schools. That is much harder than freeing up the funding for parents to free themselves from the system itself than it is to re-write the system as it stands.

For example, look at the school funding situation in Kansas. The Kansas Supreme Court has grabbed control over the school funding equation. The schools can pretty much write a blank check for whatever funds they want, and if the legislature won't grant it, they can take them to court and the state SCOTUS uses an interpretation of a legal statute to demand that the legislature fund according to what the courts want.

Right now, the schools are eating up a significant portion of the state's annual budget more or less making tax hikes inevitable. Being a school bureaucrat in Kansas is a plush 6-figure gig if you can get it. And six figures for a salary in Kansas is darn good money!

The $13,000+ per year per student the state spends on kids would send your child to most any private school outside the most exclusive.

originally posted by: Asktheanimals

originally posted by: grey580

I'm not sure why conservatives are advocating charter schools an not improving public schools. Either way that money is being given out via tax dollars.

Like many they have given up on public schools since they're under control of the Teachers Union and NEA. If I had school age kids right now I'd probably put them in private schools. I don't put much water in college degrees, great teachers come from all walks of life. I would be more interested in their curriculum and the personality of the teachers myself.

Again this could be Detroit. The state (both Dem & Rep governors) spent decades trying to improve Detroit Public Schools. And when they weren't fighting the teachers' union, they were fighting the ghetto parents who were outraged that whitey was messing with their schools. None of the money they spent made any difference that anyone noticed, and much of it was misappropriated.

In the end, they got tired of trying. The path of less resistance was to create a voucher system. Now the parents who care about their kids' education (and there are a lot of them) can send their kids to a decent charter school, and the public schools can do their own thing.

a reply to: AndyFromMichigan

Ideally, the individual schools would be more or less self-contained with a body to oversee and make sure the kids in them are reaching minimum standards with no real scheme to how this is done.

Then there should be a more centralized agency for all the schools in an area to provide specialized services for children who have learning needs that won't take them out of the main classroom but may need some support like speech language services or occupational therapy style support, etc.

There should be a group that works with the gifted children who need specialized and targeted education if there isn't just a school set up that addresses them.

Likewise there should be a school for those children who cannot be in the main classroom.

The specialized facilities can be run with allocated funding, but parents should be responsible for picking and choosing among the rest to find one with an approach that best suits their child. Not all kids learn the same and different schools can reach success with their kids in different ways. One size does not fit all and it's time our education system recognized it.