National educators group offers lobbying tips

The American Association of School Administrators, the national association with which the South Carolina Association of School Administrators is affiliated, has published a helpful note on its website on the topic of gaining greater funding for public education.

It is helpful because it reminds educators in South Carolina of two facts: One, public education and its funding is under attack nationwide; and two, it is always valuable for South Carolina's educators to join with, to consider and to consult the experience and expertise of educators in other states. We are, after all, members of a profession, just like physicians, attorneys, architects, accountants and others.

AASA's Noelle Ellerson writes, "Squeezed by four consecutive years of budget cuts as the nation’s greatest recession wears on, our country’s public schools have found themselves operating under increasingly tighter fiscal constraints while facing ever-changing demands and enrollments."

Reductions in financial support to schools at the federal level have compounded cutbacks at the state and local levels, meaning school leaders must stretch every dollar to go further and school districts are doing as much or more with less.

In such a fiscal climate, advocacy for government appropriations — especially knowing how to make a compelling case for continued and increased education funding — has never been a more crucial skill for school system leaders. In any list of advocacy tips, an understanding of the education appropriations process is a proper starting point.

Certainly so. It's not likely that other states have as obtuse a system of school appropriations as South Carolina -- obtuse because although our Education Finance Act clearly dictates the annual base student cost, the legislature chooses annually whether or not it will fulfill its obligation to appropriate that sum -- but it's likely that strategies that have worked elsewhere may be useful here.

On behalf of K-12 schooling, AASA’s advocacy efforts at the federal level are guided by a member-driven legislative agenda, updated annually, that outlines our organization’s federal priorities. The agenda covers a range of topics, including the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, education technology, the Rural Education Achievement Program and education funding. These policy areas reflect federal legislation, which is grouped into two categories, authorizing language and appropriations language.

Authorizing language is best described as legislation that creates agencies, programs or other government functions. Authorizing language serves the purpose of establishing parameters for government programs and agencies but does not actually fund them.

Appropriations language, on the other hand, is legislative language that actually provides the funding to run the agency or its program. ESEA authorizes federal education programs — Title I, REAP, Ed Tech (officially known as Enhancing Education Through Technology) — that are funded through the federal appropriations process.

Appropriations is an annual process, meaning education leaders and community members have an opportunity each year to make the case for financial support. While federal education dollars represent a small portion of overall education spending in the United States (roughly 8 percent), the funds play a significant role in many school districts, without which the districts would be hard-pressed to maintain programs, services and personnel.

Although, it is worth noting, Congress occasionally appropriates special funding for special purposes, such as last year's funding to protect public education by protecting educators' jobs, and our 49 sister states benefited in that case by our state leaders' stubborn foolishness in refusing to accept those funds -- about $144 million, if memory serves.

The heavy lifting of effective advocacy centers on your ability to build and maintain a viable working relationship with your congressional delegation and their education staffers. Over the years, AASA has developed a few strategies that we see as the foundation to advocacy that works.

Weigh in early, weigh in often. Policy decisions are made whether or not you share your informed voice on a proposal. As public school administrators, you are community and education leaders with direct contact to the community and an important understanding of how federal policy is or is not functioning on a day-to-day basis.

Let's apply that to ourselves. How often have you, as an educator or a parent who supports public education, called and emailed your state representative and state senator to impress upon them the need to support public education funding, and why? Elected lawmakers are fearful of only one thing: Electoral defeat. Telephone calls and emails from large groups of their constituents get their attention; personal visits by groups of their constituents strike fear in their hearts. Don't let them forget that you vote, that they don't permanently own your vote, and that you have opinions and concerns that demand their respect.

Maintain a regular dialogue. While it is good to weigh in when something is urgent or pressing, a more meaningful approach is to maintain an ongoing conversation. It doesn’t have to be daily or weekly. A monthly call or e-mail to your congressional delegation can go a long way.

For maximum impact, I suggest scheduling a weekly five-minute calendar reminder. In the first week, e-mail one of your U.S. senators or their education staffer. In the second week, do the same to your House of Representatives member. During the third week, contact your second senator, and take a break on the fourth week. It is a quick way to point out something that worked well or went wrong relating to a federal initiative. The point is to maintain regular contact with your elected officials in Washington.

Or in Columbia. Even better: Most state legislators have routines -- maybe it's Saturday morning coffee with a gaggle of friends, maybe it's attending church on Sunday. To be most effective, find out their routines, and find out how to become part of them.

Make it real. By building regular conversation with your delegation where you share the ins and outs of how federal policy is functioning at ground level, you and your school district become an anecdote, or the “face” of the policy for your congressional representative. When a policy is proposed or under consideration, the congressional office is inclined to think of the local districts with which they regularly communicate. Why shouldn’t it be your district?

Further, during congressional recesses, invite your representatives and their staff to visit your schools and see firsthand how your district operates.

Here at the state level, our legislators are only in Columbia from January to June, so we've got a full six months to see them in their home districts, and they should have plenty of time to visit schools and classrooms. Isn't it reasonable to ask, since they devise and vote on the budget that funds public schools, that they visit every public school in their district at least once per year? How difficult is that?

And during the legislative session, they all go home on the weekends -- usually they're at home from Friday through Monday -- so we've got plenty to time to find them nearby on the weekends.

Share both the good and the bad. Think about the strongest working relationships you have in your district. Odds are, they are driven largely by open, honest conversation. Certainly, some people share only the most positive, and others speak up whenever they think the sky is falling.

However, the most helpful working relationships balance the developments, and the same can be said of managing your relationships with your congressional delegation. As you reach out to them, don’t hesitate to mix in an example of federal policy with favorable effects (say, emergency dollars that enabled your district to save three teachers’ positions) with something that is not serving your students well (perhaps budgetary pressure from the chronic underfunding of IDEA).

In our case, you might thank lawmakers for not completely zeroing-out the line item for the Education Finance Act. Remember: Think positive!

There's a bit more to the AASA's column, and I encourage readers to check out the rest for themselves, as well as other resources available at the organization's website.

Heroic Mick Zais benefits from "politically weak" educators

When Superintendent Mick Zais appeared before a legislative committee to press his agenda to starve public education, he seemed out-of-place and fumbled for words to answer lawmakers' questions. But in a puff piece published by a right-wing organization online, Zais is absolutely eloquent, even accusatory of "weak-willed Republicans" who support public education and educators.

What distinguishes the Palmetto State’s K-12 reform debate from all the others is that it’s being led by an outspoken, retired Army brigadier general and former college president who is eager to take on the “liberal education establishment.”

State Superintendent of Education Mick Zais, a Republican, won election in 2010 by a huge margin of 108,000 votes. He has been in office for just over a year, but he has rankled lawmakers of both political parties by refusing to accept federal education dollars from President Obama’s Race to the Top initiative that gives states money in exchange for approved school reforms.

While other states are eager for the federal assistance, Zais argues that the one-time handouts come with strings attached and quickly turn into unfunded mandates, ultimately driving up education costs and stripping local communities of control over their schools.

“We don’t have a shortage of dollars in South Carolina’s schools, we have a shortage of accountability, competition and incentives,” Zais told EAG.

It's unclear when Zais took time to talk with EAG, a right-wing political organization, but perhaps it was on his own time rather than on state's clock. Taxpayers want to be sure that their dollars aren't being used to subsidize political activity.

Zais has told EAG that "South Carolina spends $11,700 per student, slightly above the national average," when he, better than anyone, knows that South Carolina spends less than $2,000. He knows it because he said so to the legislative budget committee on education:

Zais asked a Ways and Means panel Wednesday not to cut a key funding stream for classrooms, but he did not ask for an increase. The so-called base student cost primarily pays teacher salaries. The current per-student allocation is about $1,900 because of recession budget cuts. A state funding formula calls for it to be nearly $2,800 this year.

Had Zais accepted the offer of federal dollars from the Obama administration, that figure might have been a bit higher. But he didn't, and in his profile interview with EAG, he ridiculed the offer:

“If South Carolina had accepted its slice of the Race to the Top pie, it would equal $2.22 per student per year, for four years,” Zais said. “The idea that $2.22 would make a big difference is just nonsense. That’s not even a rounding error.”

Then, after delivering a sound smack to the federal government that afforded him a career-long military salary, and that will afford him a tasty retirement package, Zais turned his guns to professional educators.

Such views have drawn the ire of the “education industrial complex,” Zais’ term for those who place the interests of adult school employees ahead of the needs of students, and who claim failing public schools can be fixed with a checkbook.

“Traditional proposals for improving education – more money, better facilities, improved curriculum and smaller classes – will not work. We’ve tried that. We’ve tried that for 40 years,” Zais recently told an audience, according to the IndependentMail.com.

Here again, Zais tells out-of-state interviewers a tale that he knows is untrue. South Carolina's pre-eminent historian, Walter Edgar, could undercut this argument in only a couple of minutes, with an answer spanning three hundred years, and cap it with a "bless your heart" at the end.

See, educators have told lawmakers for generations how much it would cost to provide quality public education to all the state's children. But that figure has always been too high for South Carolina's corporate overlords, and it included too many children -- especially poor ones, and minority ones -- so the legislature has funded what it has chosen to fund, and told educators to make do.

Since the Education Finance Act was adopted in 1977, establishing the base student cost to be appropriated by the legislature annually, that figure has been fully-funded fewer than 10 times. It's all a matter of fact and history. Had Zais lived in South Carolina before coming to take the presidency of a small private college, he might have a better grasp on our state's education history.

And Zais himself has trotted out the old canard "I don't know if the money will be available" when it has suited his agenda to do so.

So to say that spending more money, building better facilities, improving curriculum and reducing class sizes won't work because "We’ve tried that. We’ve tried that for 40 years" is not merely a lie, but what we Southerners like to call a damn lie. That's the opposite of a little white lie.

Know your culture.

No matter. After telling that lie, Zais moved on to a lesser target: Moderate members of his own party.

Zais told EAG that while the nation’s teachers unions – the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers – comprise the heart of the “education industrial complex,” they are enabled by weak-willed Republicans.

“The education industrial complex is bipartisan,” Zais said. “We have RINOs – Republicans in Name Only – who are intimidated by the lobbying groups that get the public and the teachers all excited that we’re trying to destroy public education. In reality, we want to make it better and more accountable.”

Surely he didn't have this conversation from his office in the Rutledge Building, on a state telephone. Such blatant political conversation has no place in our state agencies.

Perhaps Sen. Phil Leventis will file another Freedom of Information Act request and find that out for us.

Then Zais described how he defies his oath of office, the one that made him the chief advocate for South Carolina's 700,000 public schoolchildren.

“Our traditional schools have a monopoly,” Zais said. “And monopolies have little incentive for improving or controlling costs. Accountability, competition and incentives have the power to transform the system.”

Zais’ education reform proposals are designed to break that monopoly.

See, those "traditional schools," the ones that Zais calls a "monopoly," are the ones that the state Constitution creates a state superintendent of education to support. It's plain as the nose on one's face.

ARTICLE XI.
PUBLIC EDUCATION

SECTION 1. State Board of Education.
There shall be a State Board of Education composed of one member from each of the judicial circuits of the State. The members shall be elected by the legislative delegations of the several counties within each circuit for terms and with such powers and duties as may be provided by law and shall be rotated among the several counties. One additional member shall be appointed by the Governor. The members of the Board shall serve such terms and the Board shall have such powers and duties as the General Assembly shall specify by law. (1972 (57) 3193; 1973 (58) 44.)

SECTION 2. State Superintendent of Education.
There shall be a State Superintendent of Education who shall be the chief administrative officer of the public education system of the State and shall have such qualifications as may be prescribed by law. (1972 (57) 3193; 1973 (58) 44.)

SECTION 3. System of free public schools and other public institutions of learning.
The General Assembly shall provide for the maintenance and support of a system of free public schools open to all children in the State and shall establish, organize and support such other public institutions of learning, as may be desirable. (1972 (57) 3193; 1973 (58) 44.)

SECTION 4. Direct aid to religious or other private educational institutions prohibited.
No money shall be paid from public funds nor shall the credit of the State or any of its political subdivisions be used for the direct benefit of any religious or other private educational institution. (1972 (57) 3193; 1973 (58) 44.)

See the words in Section 2: "who shall be the chief administrative officer of the public education system of the State"? That means, if there IS a traditional-schools monopoly in South Carolina, the superintendent is the person who leads the monopoly. The superintendent isn't authorized under the Constitution to lead the state's private schools, or parochial schools, or home schools, or unschools. It's in plain English. Which we still teach in South Carolina, right? Isn't it one of the subjects that's tested eight times a week?

If Zais didn't want to do that job, maybe he shouldn't have run for office.

Nevertheless, EAG swallowed Zais's line whole, then cast Zais as a one-man conservative army against a tide of "politically weak" educators and local leaders.

While state superintendents such as Zais have the power to advocate for education reforms, the decision-making power rests with the state legislators. South Carolina is a politically conservative state, but that doesn’t mean Zais’ reforms will be warmly embraced.

His strongest opposition will likely come from local school officials, who wield a surprising amount of political power in the state.

South Carolina is a “right-to-work” state, which means teachers are not required to join their local union. That renders the South Carolina Education Association and the Palmetto State Teachers Association politically weak.

However, the state’s superintendents all belong to the South Carolina Association of School Administrators, and every school board member belongs to the South Carolina School Boards Association. The SCASA and the SCSBA fill the left-wing power vacuum created by the anemic teacher unions.
...
Given the groups’ unique role in South Carolina’s education system, school districts pay for their school board officials and superintendents to become members of these organizations.

As a result, the two associations have multi-million dollar budgets, which allow them to hire a number of lawyers and lobbyists to represent their interests.

In the end, writes EAG, there's Zais the heroic warrior, blocking these "politically weak" educators from dominating the state as they have... er, from dominating... um, well, actually, from not dominating anything.

But after building him up as a conquering avenger, and making the case that he really doesn't have any strong opponents to conquer, EAG is left to offer a summary that's as weak as Zais's own testimony before legislative committees: "He is popular with the people," and "for the first time, the state superintendent office doesn’t serve as the de facto headquarters of the SCSBA or the SCASA.”

That's funny, I don't recall that Superintendents Jim Rex, Inez Tenenbaum or Barbara Nielsen took their marching orders from SCSBA or SCASA, either.

Zais will likely have this article framed for hanging in the office. It's better than anything The State will do for him.

Greenville's Fisher to retire after career serving students

Here's the resume of a ready-made state superintendent of education:

Knowing early in life that she wanted to build a career in public education, she earned undergraduate and graduate degrees in education.

She built her professional career in the classroom, teaching children, between 1969 and 1986.

She became a principal, then an associate superintendent for a growing metropolitan school district, spending a combined ten years in the two positions.

From there, she became assistant superintendent for middle school education in the state's largest school district, then deputy superintendent and chief of staff, serving in these positions for eight years.

Finally, she was named superintendent of the same district and led successfully there for seven more years.

All the while, she continued to earn graduate and post-graduate degrees and credits.

Along the way, she gained the respect and admiration of her peers, collecting their nominations for various local, regional, state and national awards, and winning many of these honors.

Through serving her community, she promoted various other organizations and garnered their own accolades: the Urban League, the Boys and Girls Club, the state Future Farmers of America.

This, certainly, is the equipment carried by an effective, competent, capable and knowledgeable candidate for State Superintendent of Education.

Unfortunately, Greenville County Superintendent Phinnize Fisher is not running for that office; she is retiring. Greenville's loss is South Carolina's loss.

Greenville County Schools Superintendent Dr. Phinnize J. Fisher announced Wednesday afternoon that she plans to retire within the next year.

“I have deliberated and struggled with when is the best possible time for me to step aside as superintendent,” said Fisher. “Leaders make hard decisions and after careful thought, I have made the very difficult decision to prepare for retirement.”

“I am proud of the work that we have accomplished. We have achieved many great things that will sustain Greenville County Schools for years to come. We have a culture within the District of being open and honest, transparent, collaborative, and inclusive. I am confident that the next superintendent will sustain this momentum and continue to improve our school district through creative and innovative ideas.”

“The many accomplishments that we have achieved during the past seven years would not have been possible without the hard work and expertise of our dedicated teachers, administrators, and support staff. I am honored to have worked with them. The community has also played an integral role in making Greenville County Schools a better place to learn. I also want to thank the Board of Trustees for providing support and leadership during my time as superintendent and for this amazing opportunity to lead Greenville County Schools.”

School Board Chairman Roger Meek said,“The School District of Greenville County has accomplished much during Dr. Fisher’s tenure as district superintendent and she will be greatly missed on both a professional and personal basis. The School Board greatly appreciates her leadership, especially during some of the most difficult financial times in our state and school district. She has had a positive impact on the Greenville County community, and made a difference in the lives of tens of thousands of students, teachers, staff, and parents. She is an extraordinary leader and an even better person.”

Fisher has demonstrated her worth to the educators and parents of Greenville County. She assumed her role at a difficult time in the district's history, and she proved a steady guide.

Accomplishments under her leadership include improvements in student achievement, district-wide national accreditation, completion of the BEST School Construction Program and development of the follow-up Long Range Facilities and Capital Improvement Plan, opening of the state’s first elementary school with a fully integrated engineering curriculum, expansion of choice programs that provide opportunities for learning while recognizing the important role of extracurricular activities in developing an individual’s full potential, and establishment of the Greenville County Schools Foundation.

Congratulations, Dr. Fisher. Yours is a tremendous story. May your retirement be long and productive.

Educators: Zais 'cutting off our nose to spite our face'

Having failed to convince Superintendent Mick Zais and Governor Nikki Haley of the most appropriate course of action, leaders of the state's school boards association and school administrators association are taking their argument to South Carolina's opinion leaders and citizens.

Paul Krohne and Molly Spearman, executive directors of the School Boards Association (SCSBA) and Association of School Administrators (SCASA), respectively, have published a joint opinion-editorial in at least two newspapers today, The State and the Myrtle Beach Sun-News, to argue that Zais should try, at least, to compete for up to $50 million in federal "Race to the Top" funds.

"Race to the Top" is an Obama administration initiative, administered by Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, to target federal resources to states that agree to various education reforms. The recipe of reforms favored by the Obama administration would suggest that South Carolina is an ideal candidate for the funding, if only the superintendent would apply for it. But Zais isn't interested.

The effective result is that federal taxes being paid by South Carolinians will be used by states that do apply for, and win, the funding.

Krohne and Spearman write,

South Carolinians, in the tradition of the late Senator Strom Thurmond, have always recognized the folly in sending our own tax dollars to the federal government only to have them forwarded to other states. The baffling tendencies of today's state leaders to stand rigidly on their ideology, even when federal money can be used for the good of our people, is cutting off our nose to spite our face.

We understood the illogic of this approach two years ago when Gov. Mark Sanford protested the federal stimulus by attempting to leave South Carolina's share on the table, even though our taxpayers would pay the cost.

Unfortunately, our current leaders are following exactly in his footsteps.

I think Ralph Waldo Emerson captured this pattern best when he wrote, in "Self-Reliance," "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines."

The announcement by State Superintendent of Education Mick Zais that he will not pursue up to $50 million in funding under the federal Race to the Top program, quickly noted and celebrated in the eight other states invited to apply, will hamper educational progress here and fuel it elsewhere, for no good reason.

His excuse - that federal money means federal dictates - has little relevance in this case. Unlike many federal initiatives, Race to the Top was designed specifically to encourage state-level ingenuity, and is remarkably hands-off and state-driven.

Our state's application in fact reflects our state's own longstanding needs, priorities identified and wished for long before federal funding made them a possibility. Several of the innovations we have proposed are exactly the kinds of reforms Zais supports, including improving the quality and transparency of education data, encouraging our best teachers to work in schools that need them most, and creating a system of teacher pay that is based less on credentials and more on performance. Many of our priorities are infrastructure needs suitable for one-time funding, not new bureaucracies that impose ongoing costs.

Message: Some people just can't take 'yes' for an answer. To collaborate with educators -- which certainly would be interpreted by Zais's base as buckling to the status quo -- would only encourage educators to expect future collaboration. This defies the command-and-control manner to which Zais is accustomed. (Word from Newberry seems to support this view...)

And it gets worse. If there is little sense in opposing the Race to the Top initiative, there is none at all in rejecting direct assistance to schools to retain teaching positions. South Carolina has the distinct title of being the only state in the nation to leave on the table millions of dollars designed specifically to preserve teaching jobs in the leanest economy any of us can recall, preventing the devastating layoffs and furlough days nearly every district has experienced in recent years.

The $144 million allocated under federal "Edujobs" legislation is enough to save more than 2,500 teaching jobs, or two thirds of the positions lost over the course of the recession. Thanks to last year's massive cuts in higher education spending, South Carolina can't access that badly needed funding without a congressional waiver, sought by our delegation last year at Superintendent Jim Rex's request. Zais has abandoned any such effort, which his staff has described as "a dead issue."

Every point made by Krohne and Spearman here is valid because they are rooted in logic and reason. But we do not function in a system governed by logic and reason; Haley, Zais and their sycophants operate in a parallel, Bizarro universe where the goal is to reduce the number of teachers teaching in public school classrooms, not to increase them; to raise the teacher-student ratio, not to lower it; to weaken the public education system they swore to support, not to strengthen it.

Unfortunately, South Carolina is not our world -- it's theirs. We only live in it.

Of course, until they change the Constitution to exclude us, we get to vote in it.

It's clear that Krohne and Spearman understand this. Their message isn't to the saved but to the uncommitted:

And yet, like Gov. Sanford before him, Zais apparently leaves significant wiggle room in his ideology to support the projects he favors. He has been quick to applaud the millions of dollars in federal funding awarded to South Carolina to establish charter schools, with no talk of bureaucracy, Washington footprints, or "pieces of silver" exchanged for federal "strings."

At best, there is an alarming confusion in the priorities of an administration that won't take federal assistance to sustain the teachers and schools we already have, but is happy to accept it to support a political agenda.

It's an undisputed fact that few states have educational needs as pressing as South Carolina's. Poverty rates, high at the beginning of the recession, are rising every year, creating new challenges for schools even as state funding has declined. We are losing teachers, increasing class sizes, and cutting academic programs, at a time when we urgently need to improve achievement.

Our state and national leaders need to recognize that South Carolina's resources are far too limited and our needs far too great to help fund schools in other places at the expense of our own. There is no acceptable reason not to give our schools and students our strongest support.

Indeed. Educators, unite.

Spearman: Out-of-state interests governing our government

Molly Spearman, executive director of the South Carolina Association of School Administrators, was featured this week in the Orangeburg Times and Democrat, advising South Carolinians of the insidious influence of out-of-state ideologues governing us by proxy.

Public school supporters in communities across South Carolina need to know that the free-flowing funds from out-of-state interests are filtering through the State House and influencing the agenda on K-12 education. House and Senate members are being pressured by millionaires and in some cases, billionaires from across the country to put in place a program to give tax incentives for students to leave SC public schools. They say that the new program would save the state money and improve public education.

Should parents have the right to send their children to private schools with strong religious foundations? Yes. Should private groups and church organizers have the right to set their own school policies, admission requirements and classes for Christian, Jewish, Muslim, or any other religious training? Yes. Should they be able to hire uncertified teachers, give their choice of tests, diplomas, and select students based on whatever criteria they choose? Yes. The urgent question - Should public tax dollars and incentives support and subsidize these schools? No.

Proponents of the tax credit bill say, "Yes, parents have a right to choose and they should be helped with a tax incentive, especially those who can't afford the private school choice." When asked if the accepting private schools should be accredited and be required to adhere to same standards or oversight, the supports answer, "No, there should be no government intrusion, or additional requirements." That is why public tax dollars and incentives should not be given and why this legislation is a bad idea.

Many families want their children to be involved with religious training during the school day and that is fine. However, tax incentives should not support these religious programs. These same schools often evaluate the personal testimony and faith of potential students. That is fine; but, tax incentives and subsidies should not support these K-12 programs!

The legislation being debated in the House Ways and Means and Senate Education Committees this week also sets up scholarship programs that will be funded by businesses or citizens who direct their income and business tax dollars from the state general fund to send needy students to private schools. It is always a nice idea to help needy students; but, there are two major problems with the set-up. First, most needy at-risk students will not be able to meet the admission requirements of these private schools even if there were one located within walking or driving distance (transportation is not included). Secondly, this "scholarship gift" program will allow businesses or citizens to keep their taxes from going into the S.C. General Fund. That means millions of dollars subtracted from the pie to pay for health care, roads, highway patrolmen, and other safety needs. This is at a time that South Carolina is $700 million short in our state budget and cutting jobs, health care, and critical programs.

Similar voucher and tax credits have been in place for a while in Washington, DC, and Florida. Wisconsin just released a report on comparing student achievement after both private and public schools administered the same test. The students receiving the tax credit trailed the regular public school students.

Florida has had a wide-based program for several years and students there are scoring better on standardized tests. Proponents claim that the tax credit program is the reason. It may have had some affect as research has showed that the threat of vouchers and accountability cause school folks to work harder. However, Florida educators in the trenches say that the improvement is based on hard work, more time on task for at-risk students, strong reading intervention programs, after-school sessions, and tremendous professional development training for teachers and school leaders. Those are the "silver bullets" that really make a difference in student achievement.

A strong public education system is important to the future of our county, state, and nation. Everyone has a duty to support public education, whether you have a child in school or not. Shifting tax incentives to encourage students to leave the public system and allowing supporters to transfer their needed tax dollars to private school scholarships is a terrible idea - especially when our charter and regular public schools are struggling financially to exist. If you agree that this pending legislation is a bad idea, please contact your legislators now.