Public? Private? Does it matter?
For too long, many folks have viewed the fight over school choice as a battle of public versus private, instead of a battle to make sure every child has the education that best meets his or her own unique learning needs. Opponents of choice want to try and pit people against each other, as if giving families options is an attack on public schools, rather than giving children hope.
This great article, When private and public meet in class, by Doug Tuthill- a lifelong public educator who has served as president of two local teachers unions, and now serves as president of the Florida School Choice Fund, which oversees tax credit scholarship funding organizations, takes a closer look at what is really at stake.
Public is not always the enemy of private, and Florida’s Corporate Tax Credit Scholarship program is a case in point. This program serves more than 23,000 low-income students and is intended only to offer a different type of learning environment for students who often have the fewest options. It has managed to build bipartisan support over its first seven years, and, in May, the Legislature approved an expansion with the support of a third of the Democrats and half the Black Caucus.
Senate sponsor Al Lawson, an African-American senator who is the Democratic leader in the Senate, said: “When you have a lot of poor kids in your area that need help, and you have people saying, ‘We’re willing to work with these kids,’ it’s hard to say no. … I am the strongest possible supporter of public education. But I know that not every school works for every child.”
Those who claim that public funding of private schools is a Republican attack on public education have short memories. Both Hubert Humphrey in 1968 and George McGovern in 1972 included a tuition tax credit for elementary and secondary school students in their Democratic presidential platforms, and liberal icon Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, D-N.Y., was among its biggest advocates. In the 1960s, “freedom schools” served as an alternative to racially hostile school bureaucracies, a point not lost on the Rev. H.K. Matthews, a Florida civil rights legend. “This is a flashback of the old movement,” Matthews told thousands of Tax Credit Scholarship supporters last year on the steps of the old Florida Capitol. “It’s a continuation of the dream.”
The full article is definitely worth the read.
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[...] options as both a benefit to families and a benefit to taxpayers. It also underscores something we have talked about here before- this isn’t a matter of “public versus private,” but rather about creating great [...]