Educational Vouchers Unconstitutional?

[Dr. Shane]

Warning: This link is to an opinion piece - it is not meant to be objective.

Court backs the schools, but Jeb won't turn page

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When Gov. Bush took office in 1999, he made creating a system of private school vouchers his paramount concern. On Thursday, the Florida Supreme Court struck down that decision, which the court ruled "undermines the system of high-quality free public schools that are the sole authorized means of fulfilling the constitutional mandate to provide for the education of all children residing in Florida."

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The court bypassed what some had thought would be the main issue — whether state money can go to religious schools — and ruled that any state program that sends students to a system of private schools is unconstitutional.

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I will restate my case for vouchers later. At this point I only wanted to point out the run-away court. The elected representatives of the people made a law and the court vetoed it. The men in black veto the will of the people again.

[Gregory Matthews]

Re: "At this point I only wanted to point out the run-away court. The elected representatives of the people made a law and the court vetoed it. The men in black veto the will of the people again."

Shane, I have not read the legal opinion, and therefore I do not have a personal opinion. But, I wonder if you have read the actual legal ruling issues by the judges. Have you? Or is the above statement simply a reflection of what you have read in the media. NOTE: I have not read that either as your link comes up empty.

But, I would like to reflect on what you have posted. According to your post, the Supreme Court fo the State of Florida rulled that the Constitution of the State of Florida (one enacted by the people of Florida) prohibited such a system.

On the basis of your post, it appears to me that the "peoples court" rulled that the people of Florida had prohibited such. This appears to me to be a decision that states that the will of the people should "trump" the will of a small group of elected representatives.

You will note that such a ruling allows the people of the State of Florida to change the Constitiution, and with such the elected representatives could act in accord with that change in the Constitution.

I would say that the ruling of the peoples court (Supreme Court) of Florida struck a strong blow for the will of the people of Florida. I am surprised that you seemingly wish to impose the will of a small group of people on the united people of Florida!

[Dr. Shane]

If it were a people's court, in that the judges were elected and up for re-election, I doubt it would be so quick to subvert the will of the people. Thier logic in this case is a stretch. The Court is basically saying that since the state government is constitutionally bound to maintain a public school system it cannot provide vouchers which undermine the system.

The question becomes, how do vouchers undermine the public school system? Are there school children in Florida without public schools available to them becuase of vouchers? Have student/teacher ratios increased because of vouchers? Are students without textbooks in public schools because of vouchers? How? How are vouchers undermining the public school system? If they are merely creating more competition, it is likely that they are helping the public school system.

The same arguement could be made of post-secondary option. This is a program some states have that allows high school seniors and juniors with good grades to attend a university and meet their high school requirements with courses offered at a university. Or charter schools or open enrollment, which allows parents to send their children to public schools outside of the school district where they live.

From what I have read, the Court ignored such arguements made by the state of Florida. It does appear that the governor will have to pursuit a constitution ammendment, which are much easier to get on the state level than the federal level. Such an ammendment would give the people choice. It would give the people more options. If marketted right, that shouldn't be hard to get passed.

[Gregory Matthews]

O. K. Shane.

Why don't you post the URL where we can read the decision along with you. Then we can see what the logic was.

[Dr. Shane]

I don't know that it has been published on the Internet. I have been relying on the legal scholars discussing it. FOXNews is great because they get the opposing views together to discuss issues like this. If you don't have FOXNews and don't want cable TV in your house (I completely understand) - FOXNews is on SkyAngel.

[Dr. Shane]

This is what I found.

Florida School Choice

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This year more than 700 students have taken advantage of the Opportunity Scholarship Program and educational choices they could only dream about before. Of the Opportunity Scholarship students currently enrolled in private schools, 64 percent are African-American and 30 percent are Hispanic students whose parents cannot afford to send them to private schools.

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[Gregory Matthews]

Re: "Thier logic in this case is a stretch. The Court is basically saying . . . "

Shane, when I read a statement like the above I am going to want to read the opinion.

I am going to want to see where the Judges of the Florida Supreme Court have issues an illogical opinion.

To put it in another perspective, if I were to read a post in CA by Sam Spade that Shane had make a post in CA where his logic was a stretch, I would want to read Shane's post to see if Sam's post was accurate. I would not consider it to be determinative is Sam responded to me by saying: Well I depended on the opinion of Ralph Thompson who clearly considered an opposing opinion before he formed his opinion.

To be clear, I do not know enough about the decision that you brought to our attention to have an opinion. My major reason for responding is because I am interested in the subject.

[Dr. Shane]

In college I had to take a business law class and a Construction and Design law class. We were lectured on various cases and read about many more, but we never actually read the written rulings and arguements of the cases. I am sure that one must read such written rulings and arguements in law school but we did not in business school. Yet we were able to form educated opinions based on summeries. Perhaps that is a flaw in our educational system but it is the status quo. I imagine the news networks ratings would drop dramtically if they just read the rulings themselves on air.

So one can have an intelligent discussion with the facts available or one can decide not to participate in such a discussion. I am more than willing to discuss the issue with the facts available. If additional facts become available, I may change my position in consideration of them.

So let's get back on topic. If one doesn't feel they know enough about the issue to discuss it, by no means should they feel obligated to participate in the thread. We don't have to be experts to have opinions and learn from each other.

[Dr. Shane]

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I have not read that either as your link comes up empty.

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Here is the link if one needs to do a cut and paste. The original link I posted works for me.

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/opinion/content/opinion/epaper/2006/01/06/a12a_vouchers_edit_0106.html

The link is to a liberal opinion piece. The author is very much against vouchers.

[Dr. Shane]

Here is a link to a pro-voucher site

>>> Education Reform <<<

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Today, however, with scholarship or voucher programs in 11 states, more than 75 privately funded programs covering 39 states, and nearly 3,400 charter schools operating in 40 states, many researchers have begun to examine the effects of choice. Now critics of school choice are not only being answered, but proven wrong. With every new program and rigorous piece of research, public support for school choice grows stronger.

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# According to Harvard researcher Caroline Hoxby, isolating the effects of competition on public school achievement levels shows that public schools where choice occurs improve. Hoxby evaluated three programs: the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program and the charter school programs in Michigan and Arizona. In the 32 Milwaukee schools that faced the most competition – with two-thirds or more students eligible for vouchers – fourth-grade math achievement test scores exhibited what amounted to an annual gain of 6.3 National Percentile Rank (NPR) points over a four-year period. The 66 Milwaukee schools facing less competition (with less than two thirds of voucher eligible students) saw an annual gain of 4.8 points. In contrast, the schools facing no competition saw an annual gain of only 3.5 points.

# In Milwaukee, both per-pupil and overall funding for the public schools increased significantly under school choice. Between 1990 and 2002 – the MPS reaped this 32 percent increase in spending, enrollment grew by only 5.4 percent, and local residents saw their property tax burden decrease by over 30 percent.

# Florida’s A-Plus Program, offers Opportunity Scholarships to children in schools deemed failing, two times in a four-year period. The “F” schools earned the highest achievement gains of all public schools, and those gains were 60 to 75 percent higher than “D” schools (that had the second highest achievement gains).

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