Politico Panics: FL Gov. Ron DeSantis “Wildly Successful” In School Choice, Warns Public Schools Might Close
But of course, they are not addressing the real questions.
American public schools have been declining for decades. We used to score at or near the top in the world for education in maths, the sciences, reading comprehension, writing skills, etc. Now? We trail behind (among other nations) China, Estonia, Korea, Finland, and Singapore.
American students actually graduate high school unable to read or write at the sixth grade level. But don’t worry, we’ve been long assured by the ludicrous left: students just need to be coddled, not taught; they need to achieve their best by ‘being’ and by discussion and group struggle sessions, not boring old lectures; they need to be embraced for their feewings about maths (2 + 2 = purple is just as correct as, say, “4” because feewings and ‘felt experiences’). Besides standardized tests are racist and scary . . . unless you actually know the freaking material and can answer the questions posed.
Add on the American public school teachers’ unions, the activist ‘teachers’ being churned out of activist campuses, and you have a clear recipe for disaster in terms of American public education.
Florida governor Ron DeSantis is having none of it. He’s not allowing DIE to kill Florida’s schools and colleges, and he’s not letting teachers’ unions kill Florida’s children’s futures. Instead, he has fought for years to allow parents to decide where their children are educated, to make the right and best choices for their children’s futures. Parents—finally given a choice—are deciding, in droves, that failed federal government-run public schools are not adequate for their dreams and hopes for their children’s future.
In keeping with his promise to stand with Florida’s families, to defend them against the federal government’s and public teachers’s unions assault on public education, DeSantis has championed school choice, vouchers, and homeschooling. He has remade the K-12 education system in Florida so that parents are free to choose what kind of education their child or children receive. This is wildly popular in Free Florida.
It’s not so popular at Democrat hactivist site Politico.
School choice programs have been wildly successful under DeSantis. Now public schools might close. https://t.co/f2yIivGctI
— POLITICO (@politico) May 26, 2024
From the linked Politico piece (archive link):
Gov. Ron DeSantis and Florida Republicans have spent years aggressively turning the state into a haven for school choice. They have been wildly successful, with tens of thousands more children enrolling in private or charter schools or homeschooling.
Now as those programs balloon, some of Florida’s largest school districts are facing staggering enrollment declines — and grappling with the possibility of campus closures — as dollars follow the increasing number of parents opting out of traditional public schools.
The emphasis on these programs has been central to DeSantis’ goals of remaking the Florida education system, and they are poised for another year of growth. DeSantis’ school policies are already influencing other GOP-leaning states, many of which have pursued similar voucher programs. But Florida has served as a conservative laboratory for a suite of other policies, ranging from attacking public- and private-sector diversity programs to fighting the Biden administration on immigration.
“We need some big changes throughout the country,” DeSantis said Thursday evening at the Florida Homeschool Convention in Kissimmee. “Florida has shown a blueprint, and we really can be an engine for that as other states work to adopt a lot of the policies that we’ve done.”
The Democrat hacks at Politico actually think that public school closure is a bad thing. Imagine!
Needless to say, people have thoughts:
Good!
If those schools can’t deliver a worthy product that can compete, they deserve to close. Parents deserve a choice and children deserve access to good schools. https://t.co/p5Vr2ERMLF
— AG (@AGHamilton29) May 26, 2024
And ranked one of the highest in the country in test scores- proving schools choice is good for children (bad for teachers unions and mediocre school administrations) https://t.co/0OgEOkbv9M
— 𝗦𝗵𝗼𝘄 𝗠𝗲 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗗𝗮𝘁𝗮 (@txsalth2o) May 26, 2024
Is this an indictment of public schools disguised as an indictment of school choice
— Clifton Duncan (@cliftonaduncan) May 26, 2024
Ultimately, though, Politico is ducking and dodging the real questions.
Here's a neat idea: why not investigate WHY such programs are so wildly successful? What is it about them that is more attractive than public schooling? Why would parents prefer NOT to send their children to public schools? Isn't that the REAL problem here? Journalism hard.
— Fuzzy Slippers (@fuzislippers) May 28, 2024
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Comments
Say what? “mathsssss”? Fuzzy, are you British or something?
Public school has become not only a complete waste of tons and tons of money, but has gone on to become a danger to society. Public schooling should be stopped. Period. No more. I am sick of paying INSANE property taxes in order to hire incompetent marxist turds to try and poison the minds of the kids in the area. They can’t teach any of the three Rs but do a bang-up job convincing Johnny and his parents to hack his penis off and pretend he’s a girl. It’s beyond sick.
People need to pay for the education of their children. They can get tax breaks and the like but I do not want to be sucked dry to have other people’s children brainwashed into thinking that America is evil and terrible, least of all to have this done by the stupidest cohort on the planet – the brain dead morons from the education field.
Public schools are so dysfunctional and the culture so bad, they are not salvageable. Burn to the ground and rebuild.
So you’ve been in every public school and have observed the culture firsthand to make this sweeping statement?
Government schools are inherently totalitarian, and therefore inherently anti-American – one size fits all. They have been used by the powerful to indoctrinate the children of the less powerful using their own taxes. Lack of competition always results in corruption.
Parents DO pay for their kid’s education, through onerous school taxes…
Let the money follow the student, instead of “the public schools get their money regardless, and parents that want out have to effectively pay twice.”
Parochial schools do a better job for less (although teachers could be paid more), and they didn’t close for the covid fauxdemic to no detriment.
If there are no public schools, there shouldn’t be any school taxes at all. Let the parents pay directly and cut out the bureaucratic middlemen and their labor unions.
P. Galvin, Strike a Victory for Freedom
and
P. Galvin, Achieve Educational Freedom, Excellence and Harmony: Eliminate the Public Schools
These two articles, now years old, published on Lew Rockwell’s website, are still relevant.
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2009/10/paul-galvin/providing-balance-americashomeschoolers/
So do the rest of us and I have no children in public school but I still have to pay those high taxes. I’d at least like to see good results for the money they steal
Let’s say public schools did close. Your property taxes won’t go down a dime.
Maybe not immediately, but without the public schools to set a price benchmark, good enough schools might compete on price as in a normal free market, lowering prices. With all the computers and AI coming, that should take over the role of a lot of the teachers (and therefore also administrators).
Car owners should also build their own roads?
Education is a public good, and can legitimately be funded by taxes. But schools should not be run by government bureaucracies.
Fine by me. Bring back turnpike and private funding of road construction. Pay the toll or go around somewhere else. Nothing wrong with a user fee collected at point of use.
Car drivers through gas taxes pay for the roads. Likewise parents should pay for their children’s education.
Education doesn’t have to be a public good. Sure I don’t mind and am happy when someone else’s kid learns to read. That doesn’t mean the best use of my money is teaching someone else’s kid. It’s all a matter of which services the government ought to provide — and education wasn’t in the original social contract here.
Parents are doing you a favor by having children.
Why? I don’t feel I did my neighbors a favor because we had children. We did that with no concern one way or the other for the welfare of our neighbors or the country. Our decision to have children was for entirely different reasons.
hear hear … wife teaches at private christian school … the kids
read in kindergarten…
there is a waiting list to get in.
I pay for the public schools and I have no children. I have to pay more than 10K/yr in property taxes for the school system – that is just for the school taxes part of the property taxes. That is insane. I pay almost $1,000 every single month for public schools … and they suck (at best).
Honestly, just the fact that the government is stealing money from me to pay for someone else’s schooling makes schooling for EVERYONE more expensive and worse. If parents had to pay for their kids’ schooling then the price of education, in general, would come down to reasonable levels and it would be much better, on top of it. But they have convinced people that it is fair to suck the blood out of everyone … “for the chillin’!!!”, just to have the government directing money and perverting the education field.
My next move is going to be to a place with little or no schools. The cost of supporting a junk government school system is just completely indefensible and is the worst sort of theft by force.
Many paid for you when you were in school
First of all, how do you know? I did most of my education on my own – from a very young age. I got my own books and did my own work … because the schools were slow and were generally useless for me.
Secondly … so friggin what? Just because people got ripped off decades ago means that I should be ripped off, now? That’s ridiculous. The government forcing people to pay for the government system (or even just to put money in a pot to be spent on “education”) insures that the education system will be overly expensive and complete junk.
“Many paid for [me}” … sheesh. Give me a friggin break. That is no argument for anything – especially not for the continued perversion by the government of the education system – which ANY forced contributions by them will lead to.
Of course, it is my choice in the end. I will move away from here and stop paying the school taxes for this district in toto. As I wrote, I’ll find somewhere to live where there are no expensive “public” school systems to support. Property taxes is one of the main criteria I am looking at, right now.
What kind of answer is that? I also have no kids and pay for the school system. The difference is that when I was in public schools we learned something from some very good teachers. Now my complaint is not paying taxes for public schools but that the schools teach nothing of value, spend all their time on DEI crap and turn out kids that can’t read or write. If they were good schools I wouldn’t mind so much but I dislike paying for administrators and nonsense DEI offices.
It would have fewer thrills. Maybe less of useless subjects like Social Studies and more of the meat and potatoes, reading and arithmetic/math. Maybe less emphasis on school sports teams and rah-rah. Maybe less electives geared for kids who should really be in job training, because their best path does not include college in the foreseeable future. Maybe (how could we ever stand this??) no student government, after all students are there to learn useful skills, not to play power games against each other.
It would be simpler, less able to go off on tangents, more results oriented.
Private schools pay teachers so poorly I’m surprised they can get any quality teachers
One of the most idiotic comments I’ve ever seen from you. Have you paid no attention at all to who is teaching in socialist schools, and what they’re teaching? Haven’t you read anything at all that is being reported here and elsewhere about how they’re grooming YOUR grandchildren? Have you completely missed the pro-Hamas riots by propagandized products of our public school system? Texas is, for sure, having problems with DEI infesting our charter schools, but at least people have the choice to move elsewhere. Besides, teachers in private schools are generally there because they want to teach, not indoctrinate. One more thing. If parents were paying directly to the school, more of their tuition payments would be going to paying teachers instead of teachers’ unions.
You claim that “other people paid” for me. You’re right. But the fact that you avoid addressing is that they didn’t have any choice any more than we do – and I didn’t have a choice either. School was mandatory up to 16 years old (That’s when all the farmer kids dropped out to go work on their parents’ farms). There were public schools or parochial schools, and the only parochial schools were Catholic. That was it in the ’40’s and ’50’s.
I love it when all of you libertarian/”conservative” commenters demand smaller government and lower taxes, until it’s your ox’s turn to be gored. Then it’s socialism, all the way.
Really? Son in law and his wife are both public school teachers. Both are thinking of leaving and it’s not the pay as they have little complaint. It’s the increasing woke crap they are being forced to deal with and the out of control kids. Why would you think it’s the pay?
Her point in this post is a good point. When I worked at the “premier” private school in my area I had horrible health insurance, no retirement plan, and had a gross pay of about $26,000 dollars.
A few of the teachers were absolutely excellent. They were retired from the state system and adding to their retirement by working in an easy place to teach. Most of the teachers were horribly incompetent, but the smart kids learned by reading textbooks so it didn’t matter much.
I have taught in public and private (Catholic) high schools, and I would take a 50% pay cut (about what it is) right now to go back to that. The inmates run the asylum in public school, and the admins just cower and fire teachers rather than stand up to students and/or parents as well as the govt. school department.
They whine about “if you think schools are expensive, then try ignorance.” Well, what we are getting now is gross ignorance with a heavy dollup of perversity and child abuse.
SIL and DIL are teachers in a rural school district and they both want out. They say the kids are out of control even there.
Let the money follow the student because we are talking about the best education for the kids, right? Not lining the pockets of teachers unions and the explosion in administrators?
Imagine having children and as a parent wanting the best education for your kids. The nerve.
Heh, nope, I’m an American, but as “maths” is short for “mathematics,” it just feels right to me (and is grammatically correct, though “math” is widely used as well, of course).
This is only a triumph if the alternatives are DEI free.
Anytime funds and power are directed away from govt and back to the Citizens it is a win in the aggregate. Not every Parent will make great choices for how they educate their child but on balance they won’t do a worse job than large district public schools who have far more problems than just DEI. In fact most Parents will do a much better job of tailoring a program to fit their Child’s unique educational needs, interests and goals leading to better outcomes.
A charter school or private school is just as capable of introducing all of the same evils as public schools.
If a child is taught the lefts racial theories, and radical gender theory I don’t care if the source is public or private. You can’t even argue you aren’t paying for it because the state of Florida is sending money with the children.
I didn’t argue the taxpayers ain’t footing the bill nor did I argue that non govt schools ain’t vulnerable to infiltration and takeover by woke, ideological weirdos. What I am in favor of is removing power and $ from a govt bureaucracy already compromised by woke weirdo leftists and returning it to the Citizens/Parents who in the aggregate will make much better use of them to the great benefit of their Children.
You consistently seem to demand an unachievable level of perfection in the performance of any alternative to gov’t bureaucracy. How about apply that standard to gov’t and let the private sector and Parents be empowered with real choice aka funding follows Student to the ED entity/program of their choice. Give this an opportunity in the laboratories of democracy at the State and local level instead of clinging to govt institutions that have long since been taken over by woke leftists bureaucrats who are the only folks who really benefit from you propping up their grift, graft and corruption.
A triumph is when you win.
As txvet2 correctly pointed out in the Texas context this isn’t the end of the fight it is the start of it, a fight we will have to be in total vigilance for, have to actively enforce the things we pass through state houses, and will need to put in a high amount of effort. I think Florida is trying to do that, but just pointing to students going to charter schools in no way proves that they aren’t getting the same miseducation they got previously.
I fully support DeSantis including on school choice. To compare compare getting our education system out of hate indoctrination to getting a person off of alcohol addiction this is the equivalent to step one admitting you have a problem.
It is better to be on step one than claiming you are fine drinking an entire bottle every morning, but it is nowhere near triumph triumph is the last step.
The laws DeSantis passed against the hate indoctrination of Florida students are much more important in my opinion than does the student go to charter or public school because those laws are the tools parents have to fix problems where they find them.
Danny,
Total victory in the long war is achieved by winning individual battles, campaigns and skirmishes along the way. Put another way a team wind the championship by winning regular season games to make the playoffs then by winning the playoff series/games to qualify for the championship game/series.
Shifting power and $ out of the hands of govt bureaucracy and back into the hands of Citizens, Parents and the private sector is a win. The only folks who disagree with this general proposition are big govt enthusiasts who want to over tax, over regulate and otherwise micro manage Citizens b/c they believe that only the credentialed elite, technocrat can be trusted to exercise power responsibly. That’s the bottom line. Either you put trust in ordinary people to exercise individual and collective liberty or you want to curtail individual and collective liberty in favor of handing $ and power to govt bureaucrats.
But the public schools are FORCED to teach that garbage, and no union will protect you or the kids.
True but it will be the parents choice not a forced decision.
That’s a constant battle. Here in Texas there has been a continuing effort by the left to sneak DEI into the charter schools. and a continuing fight to root it out, including in the legislature.
Exactly right.
I am a big fan of Ron DeSantis but I really do not have the information to claim this is is any way a triumph.
The fight is with the rural Republicans unfortunately
You can always be assured the Dems will fight you but the real republicans and our own RINOs ar what continues to defeat us
Given that your argument is in favor of a socialist system, you have no credibility. And don’t forget the fact that I’ve been totally opposed to Phelan (rhymes with felon) and his collaboration with the Texas Democrats.
BTW, our mutual enemy won his runoff today. Two more years of frustration.
TXVET2
gonzotx makes a fair point here re rural areas. The rural public schools still seem to function or at least perform far better than large school districts. IMO this comes down to availability of alternatives. B/C there are few if any almost everyone sense their children to the public schools in rural areas.
Thus the Physician, the Attorney, the business owners, heck the teachers themselves all send their Chicago the same schools as everyone else. So that the public schools in rural areas have a high degree of oversight, scrutiny and the accompanying boost to performance from that. They also benefit form high degree of community support and involvement compared to large school districts.
Add to this the very common theme of the teachers marrying the small business owner, farmer/rancher, attorney, CPA, Insurance salesman. In many cases they use the very generous State provided medical benefit, health insurance plan of the Teacher. Thus there is a two pronged personal economic stake in opposing legislation that could potentially have that spouse lose their current employment from a group of folks who we would, at first blush, put into the less gov’t/more liberty side of the argument.
Not really on Phelan. His cronies took a huge beating and it looks like he will not be elected Speaker again.
Chief, you’re right about some things about rural schools, but they’re still ruled by the same state-imposed curriculum and standards.
Diver64 – you might be right about Phelan, but remember that he was elected Speaker by some Republicans and a lot of Democrats. We’ll have to wait until November to see what the whole lege looks like.
“real republicans and rino’s” plus Dems. So, everybody?
Gov. Desantis is the best Gov in America and I’ll still say it…..a future POTUS. I think he learned a lot from running this time and he will be a very formidable candidate after Trump. How great for those families who can now do better than the local teachers union warehouse of mediocrity to outright lousy outcomes. Good on you Gov Desantis!!!
Good for DeSantis. Too bad he will not be on the Republican Presidential Ballot. Most Americans would vote for him in a heartbeat. Not so much for a future convicted felon who lied and cheated and chose to have sex with a porn star instead of his gorgeous professional fashion model and the mother of his son.
JR, you are so delusional I am surprised that you are not in apadded room with a straightjacket.
Melania is reported to be sleeping in a separate bedroom from Trump, as she did in the White House. So hopefully she hasn’t been infected with any of Trumps STDs that he got with Stormy Daniels. At least with DeSantis this would never be an issue.
How do you know Trump has an STD? Did you get a dose of the clap from him when you were down on your knees?
See how this works, bonehead? You post something stupid, and you get spackled.
There is literally NO WAY you’re in your 70’s. You haven’t yet even hit the legal age to have a frosty brew.
Reported by … you… in a comment section of this website….the Fremdschämen I experience from reading your comments is off the charts…. Seek help.
Weirdos worry about stuff like that.
But are an issue with jr…
Unfortunately…
So Melania would share the bed with DeSantis?
What kind of stupid crap are you reading? There are no credible reports of them sleeping in separate rooms and even if they do so what? As for STD’s, prove Trump has even one and furthermore workers in the Porn industry are rigorously tested monthly or more often if they want since the Aids scare. If they refuse to get tested they do not work. Your comments are getting more and more ridiculous.
Well, there have always been reports on them having separate bedrooms, going all the way back to when they were first married. Yes, I read gossip rags back in the day, and I remember reading about the separate bedrooms thing and thinking she was smart because he seemed so skeevy to me back then. That’s why I wasn’t at all surprised when she elected to remain in NY when he moved to DC, though it was (only later) stated to be about Barron’s school year. They reportedly don’t “live together,” and that’s not really that odd, especially among the rich so not a problem to me.
My God will you give it up. You’re such an insufferable one-trick pony. We get it – you hate Trump.
You need serious help, dude.
Glad to see you are onboard with the Dem kangaroo court findings!
As for Pres. Trump, both parties deny the affair happened. I guess you know better.
But I will agree: his wife is a looker. Funny how the leftist “women’s” magazines never came to that conclusion. They know beauty like Marchand knows the law.
JR is an expert when it comes to STDs, as demonstrated by his projecting.
I get that Trump rents a top floor penthouse in your skull, dingus… but the post’s topic had ABSOLUTELY nothing to do with Trump.
You are utterly worthless. Do better next time.
Hey I answered your question about my service record, then said it was your turn. I noticed you never replied.
You think I sit waiting around for you to respond, dumbass?
Other than spackling you when you say something stupid (which is pretty much all the time), I pay you no attention at all.
And just so you know… I served mid 80’s to early 90’s as an 11-Bush Beater with the Eighty Deuce and the 24th ID. Got out as an E-6.
So can it.
Not paying any attention to JR until he apologizes for repeatedly slandering alaskabob for pointing out the fact that the US State Department sent “condolences” to Iran on the death of Raisi.
Here in the Sunshine State it is immaterial what Democrats, Teacher’s Unions, and media outlets think about education. They don’t matter. These types of stories are not worth the words printed.
If that was true the Democrats wouldn’t have been within a small margin of fraud to take the governorship from DeSantis, fielding a candidate who is a drunkard and a criminal no less. Why the heck do you think the felon voting bill was pushed so hard in Florida? It raises the margin of fraud considerably.
Either you don’t live in Florida or you are not involved in politics here, You remain stuck in the past as to what is currently transpiring here. We see that the GOP has over 923,000 more active voters than democrats, DeSantis won in 2022 by 20% and 57 of 67 counties have more active registered Republicans than Democrats! As for felons, as someone who helps to register voters in my county of Volusia, the ex-felons I speak with and who register to vote register as Republican. Contrary to your silly margin of fraud comment. Nice try but stop mouthing off what you don’t know and educate yourself!
DeSantis did a LOT of work cleaning up blue voting districts, and he should get credit for that. There WAS fraud in those areas, and we all knew it (and yes, I live in Florida and voted for DeSantis twice).
If Politico, the lifeblood of leftism, is panicking, life must be good.
Why do commas confuse me so?
Proctological surgeons make semicolons.
Public schools DEFINITELY WILL close. We are facing a demographic cliff in terms of birth rate. There will be more school seats than students to sit in them.
“The path to communism is through the trade unions”…. V.I. Lenin. The teachers’ unions would make Lenin proud,
Trump and Flynn and company plan on eliminating the DOE
I’m all for abolishing the Dept of Energy (DOE) as well as the Dept of Education (ED).
Me, too!
The secret sauce of America is “creative destruction”. (One can view the taming of the frontier and the legendary American inventiveness and entrepreneurship as aspects of “creative destruction”) This is not without pain but it recognizes that institutions can become so entrenched in a world view that they cannot be reformed or improved to the next level. Thus school choice represents a good means to provide that “creative destruction” spark in public education. Kudos to DeSantis for championing this move.
YOU DO NOTTTT HAVE TO BE PUBLICLY FUNDED TO GET AN EDUCATION
americans have been to weak to force the gop to change the tax supporting laws as even the pbs/npr still get funded by the taxpayers
all b/c the gop is weak and left of what the middle class wants and needs
The way you write, apparently you don’t have to get any sort of education.
Florida has been # 1 in education 2 years in a row
While DIE schools are crashing and burning.
“School choice programs have been wildly successful under DeSantis. Now public schools might close.”
“It’s a good second step.”
Compulsory education was another bad Massachusetts idea. Florida should abolish the requirement. The savings will allow schemes to educate the impoverished, talented and force others into learning a trade.
I kinda agree. I would prefer to see a reformed process for public ED. Begin 1st grade at age five but use a ‘shotgun start’ with year round school consisting of ten week periods. You begin school in the next cohort ten week after you turn five. Grades 1-8 mandatory. Testing out and early advancement optional. Add in some basic ‘adulting’ classes personal finance, basic auto and home maintenance/repair, basic carpentry, gardening, cooking and meal prep, home economics. Use these classes in the 7th and 8th grades to demonstrate how things work in the real world; geometry and math are used in construction trades. Then have an exam pass/fail at 85% of each subject. Basically this becomes the new GED.
Now the graduate can continue in more advanced HS courses or duel credit Community College courses or enter a trade, get a part time job and votech education, homeschool, private school, POD learning or some combination.
I can’t think of much I actually learned grades 1-6 that I didn’t already know, understand how to do or that I didn’t figure out on my own other than cursive writing. I was bored as hell and frustrated. Let the smarter and better prepared students test out and accelerate their education instead of lockstep one size fits all.
Agreed somewhat.
The idea of stopping formal education at 8th grade would result in too many just getting by until they’re 14 so they can bail out and sit at home. I would test at alternating years to see where each student’s strengths and weaknesses fall, then address those strengths and weaknesses by accelerated and remedial courses. If an 8th grader has problems with math (I did and still do), help them. If that same student reads and comprehends well (I did and still do – well, mostly), then fertilize that soil and let them grow. The one-size-fits-all approach simply doesn’t work well but the education system insists on hammering square pegs into round holes.
The memory of poor math instruction at junior high level will be with me until my dying day. I often wonder where I’d be if I adequately understood algebra.
.
Nope, not stopping education at 8th grade. Stopping mandatory HS education as currently constituted. See the list of alternatives I set out. None of them involved sitting at home watching the price is right. Keep those or similar options as the list of alternatives while keeping mandatory ED in place till the student turns 17. At 17 let them hold a full time job, heck if they complete the VoTech post 8th grade (age 13 -16) they should be able to do so upon graduation. If the student can test out early they can get an earlier start on the next cohort 10 week of instruction. Fail a ten week exam and repeat the ten week block. This gives smarter and/or better prepared students an opportunity to advance to level of instruction that challenges them while getting away from the one size fits all, every must be taught at the same pace BS. Keep the instruction geared at the average student but doing this helps let students find the level of challenging instruction.
Lest anyone forget. a study showed that 84% of teachers leave public school not because of the pay, but the violence and lack of discipline in the schools.
So while pay is a factor in the quality of schools, until we get the discipline under control and penalize kids (and parents) who disrupt classes and terrorize schools schools, we are spinning our wheels.
Secondly, one of the criticisms of school choice in Florida (like everywhere else) is that vouchers “take money away from public schools.”
In Florida, vouchers are for less dollars per student than what is spent per student in public schools. In other words, students going to other schools via voucher add to the dollars per student for public schools.
Private schools cost the taxpayer less and are producing better results and that terrifies teacher unions and the bloated bureaucracy of public schools.