Writing for Flagler Live, Colleen Conklin argues that Florida is wasting taxpayer dollars on school vouchers.
If we really care about efficiency and outcomes in education, we should start with the one system–the only system- legally bound to educate every child, open its books, follow Sunshine laws, publish results, and answer to voters—our public schools. They are America’s great equalizer, the engine room of our democracy, where kids of different incomes, races, abilities, and beliefs learn side by side. That’s not “just education.” That’s democracy in motion.
And that’s precisely why the current voucher experiment—built on selective enrollment, hidden finances, and zero public oversight—is the opposite: it fractures the common schoolhouse, privatizes accountability, and poses a real threat to the democratic fabric that public education holds together.
Florida’s voucher/Education Savings Accounts experiment flipped accountability on its head. Billions in taxpayer dollars now flow to private operators who don’t have to:
- Report standardized results publicly,
- take every student (ESE, homeless, disciplinary issues, mid-year transfers),
- follow open records/open meetings rules, or
- undergo the same independent audits that districts must.
If we’re serious about “efficiency,” we have to follow the money—and the data.
- Florida’s voucher tab is exploding with little sunlight.
The voucher expansion (what was known legislatively as House Bill 1) is projected to cost taxpayers about $3.9 to 4 billion just this year. Step Up For Students, the private group that administers almost all of these funds, is legally allowed to keep up to 3 percent of that ($120 million) for “administrative expenses.” Meanwhile, districts must publish audited financials and operate under Florida’s Sunshine and public-records laws. Voucher schools and so-called Scholarship Funding Organizations (SFOs) do not.
- Most “new” voucher dollars are not helping kids leave “failing” public schools.