Florida Becomes Lab for School Voucher Debate

PENSACOLA, Fla. — A single mother of three, Brenda McShane felt trapped. She knew her neighborhood schools were failing because her kids were failing. “We dreamed of private school,” she said, “but couldn’t afford it.”

Then McShane won the lottery. Her 6-year-old daughter, Brenisha, was one of 62 students picked at random to receive an “opportunity scholarship”--a voucher to attend private school. She is to enter first grade at the Montessori Early School on Aug. 16, and the state will pay the $3,400 tuition. Thus begins the nation’s first statewide school voucher plan, the hotly debated centerpiece of what promises to be the largest experiment in public education reform ever conducted in the U.S.

A hearing is pending in a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the plan, which will funnel public money into both private and religious schools. The suit has been filed by a coalition of groups, including Florida teachers’ unions, the NAACP, the Florida PTA, the American Civil Liberties Union and the American Jewish Congress.

One teachers’ union has likened the use of vouchers to “bleeding a patient to death,” charging that conservatives are bent on privatizing all education. Others fear vouchers will skim off the best students from bad schools, leaving only the poorest behind.

In Florida, as around the nation, lawmakers’ votes on voucher plans generally reflect political affiliation. Republicans are for them, Democrats are against.

Yet even some career educators admit that years of dismal test scores call for a drastic response. “The old methods are not working. One size won’t fit all,” said David Mosrie, director of public schools for the state Education Department. “And if education is not working, there is no good excuse.”

Indeed, in a nation where 6 out of 10 low-income fourth-graders cannot read, many people are eager to gauge the effectiveness of giving almost 400 poor-performing Florida public schools an ultimatum: Improve or risk losing your students. Among those watching:

* Researchers: “This is the large-scale experimentation we need to look at,” said Paul E. Peterson, director of Harvard University’s program on education policy and governance. “This has the potential to be extremely interesting.”

* Education reformers: “If this works in Florida, it will prove that vouchers are not a radical concept, and school choice will eventually become a no-brainer,” said Jeanne Allen, president of the Washington-based Center for Educational Reform, which favors school choice.

* Other states: Legislatures in Pennsylvania, Texas, New Mexico and Arizona all considered and rejected school choice plans this year. But supporters vow to bring those proposals back.

Perhaps most interested to see if the plan works are parents.

“It’s been a nightmare,” said McShane, 43, referring to the public school experiences of one son who is two grades behind in high school, and another who at 22 is a dropout stuck in a dead-end job. “They are not learning. I’m frustrated. So I hope this will be a great awakening.”

The state’s voucher program is starting here in this Deep South city of 56,000 because two public elementary schools--both in low-income, predominantly African American neighborhoods--became the first in Florida to receive failing grades on standardized tests for a second time in four years. The parents of all 842 students were invited to apply for vouchers good for as much as $3,400 tuition at five cooperating private schools, four of them Roman Catholic.

Ninety-two parents signed up for a chance at 62 spots. All the lottery losers, along with any other students attending the two elementary schools, were offered a transfer to another Escambia County school.

Not all of those parents who entered the lottery saw their children failing in public schools. “My kids made the honor roll last year, but I just want to see if they can do better,” said Shalinda McAroy, explaining why she’ll use a voucher to send Tanisha, 10, and Kisha, 8, to St. John the Evangelist this fall.

And Dermita Merkman said that her daughter Jessica, 5, will begin kindergarten at the Montessori school rather than at a closer public elementary “because if it’s a failing school, I don’t want to risk it. . . . You have to get the kids off to a good start.”

Support for School Choice Rises in U.S.

Indeed, polls show that parental dissatisfaction with public education is fueling support for school choice nationwide. When a private philanthropic group, the Children’s Scholarship Fund, last spring offered low-income families a shot at 40,000 vouchers, more than a million parents applied.

Although California voters rejected a voucher proposal in 1993, a recent survey found that a majority supported the idea.

Florida Gov. Jeb Bush’s wide-ranging plan to improve school performance helped catapult him to an easy election victory in November. And in a state that last year, like California, ranked in the bottom third nationally in student reading and math proficiency, the Legislature quickly gave the go-ahead.

Evidence that vouchers work to improve education is scant. Small-scale experiments in Cleveland and Milwaukee have provided inconclusive results. Harvard’s Peterson said, however, that a study of 2,000 New York City elementary students--half of whom use vouchers--has shown a rise in math and reading scores by the fifth grade.

Barring court intervention, what’s happening in Escambia County this year could be a template for Florida’s future. According to the latest test scores, 78 public schools, including 26 in Miami, received F grades this year. If they fail again, up to 13,000 students in Miami alone could qualify for vouchers as early as the fall of 2000.

“Parents are shocked. They thought their kids were at a great school,” said Patrick Heffernan, a lobbyist who helped promote the voucher plan. “This is going to serve to shake up our educational system.”

But critics contend that the reform plan merely penalizes schools in poor, minority communities by enticing the best students to transfer out while undermining the morale of teachers. Critics also see racial implications, since most of those schools identified as failing are in black and Latino neighborhoods. And in Pensacola, only the Catholic diocese and one small Montessori school agreed to take vouchers. In an area rich with fundamentalist Christian schools, many religious leaders expressed concern that accepting vouchers could invite the state to regulate the curriculum.

“It is very telling that 95% of students [in the two F-rated schools] don’t have any choice of a private school,” said Andrew Kayton of the ACLU in Miami. “And most of those who do have a choice get to choose a Catholic school.”

A Principal’s Lament: ‘It’s Not Fair’

In Pensacola, school administrators and teachers are angry and embarrassed at having two of their schools labeled the worst in Florida.

“It’s not fair,” said Judith O. Ladner, principal of A.A. Dixon Elementary. “One test, at one grade level, can’t tell you what’s happening, especially when our kids come in two years behind in language and reading skills.”

The correlation between poverty and poor academic achievement is well documented. And most of the people who live in the small, wood-frame homes that surround A.A. Dixon and Spencer Bibbs Elementary are poor. A majority of students live with single moms, or with relatives other than their parents. Low household incomes qualify nearly every student for free or reduced-price breakfast and lunch at school. “More than half my kids don’t have telephones in their homes,” said Ladner, a teacher and administrator for 26 years.

Both Ladner and Linda Scott, principal of Spencer Bibbs, described arriving kindergartners and first-graders as woefully unprepared. “They have no knowledge of the alphabet, they don’t know colors, have delayed language skills,” Ladner said. “Show them a picture of an elephant, and they have no idea what it is.”

In relative terms, Escambia County school officials insist, the students at Spencer Bibbs and Dixon do learn--making annual leaps in test scores greater than one grade level. Yet on the all-important test of fourth-graders, on which a school’s letter grade is based, both schools flunked in all three areas--reading, writing and math.

To come off the failing list, this year’s fourth-graders only have to pass one of the three tests. So the pressure is on--on Scott, Ladner and especially the fourth-grade teachers. If the schools fail again, each could be closed, and all but the few students who win a school voucher would then be bused to one of the 36 other Escambia County elementary schools.

Dixon and Spencer Bibbs began classes July 19 in a school year extended by 30 days.

“We almost cry everyday,” said Ladner, 48, talking about the daily struggle during an interview in her office. Stuck to a wall near her desk is a sign: “Failure is an opportunity to begin again.”

Ladner, Scott and a delegation of Escambia County school officials traveled to Tallahassee in June to present Bush and his Cabinet with a proposal for improvement. Along with the longer school year, the schools will require teachers to hold monthly meetings with parents or guardians. The two schools also will share $75,000 in state-administered grants to fund mandatory remediation programs.

“I believe we are going to come off the list,” Scott said. “But it is demoralizing to think you’re being judged by things that are out of your control.”

Allen of the Center for Educational Reform doesn’t buy that. “I think the teachers are all very good, earnest people,” she said. “But the attitude that suggests nothing else can be done is what is driving so much mediocrity and failure in public education. It’s a defeatist attitude.”

Private Schools Relish Chance to Shine

Officials of the private schools accepting vouchers this year express confidence that they can do better than the public schools. While anticipating that most voucher children will need extra help, Catholic schools superintendent Sister Mary Caplice said: “It’s a smaller system, with a sense of community, and our teachers are better. They have a sense of dedication.”

At the Montessori school, students are grouped in multi-age classes, and teachers rely on interaction between students as much as on textbooks.

“I hope the voucher program will force these public schools to improve,” said school owner Maria Mitkevicius, explaining why she agreed to take five students for less than the normal $4,000 tuition.

Those fourth-graders who use state vouchers to attend private schools will be tested along with all the other fourth graders in the state. So comparisons can be made.

But skeptics still see the taint of politics in Florida’s plan. “Vouchers are worth experimenting with,” said Bruce Fuller, a UC Berkeley professor of public policy and education. “But for politicians like Bush, it is easier to beat up on teachers than to face the reality of poverty.”

But reformers such as Allen insist that vouchers are a tool--and an opportunity.

“The fact is that some children in public schools are not learning,” Allen said. “So those teachers should be happy to let someone else have a chance.”

*

Times researcher Anna M. Virtue contributed to this story.