{"id":1581,"date":"2012-06-05T17:00:47","date_gmt":"2012-06-05T21:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.flascience.org\/wp\/?p=1581"},"modified":"2012-06-05T12:10:33","modified_gmt":"2012-06-05T16:10:33","slug":"rotten-apples","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=1581","title":{"rendered":"Rotten apples"},"content":{"rendered":"

Don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t worry if that juicy apple has a rotten spot, folks. Just quickly swallow the mush and move on. There is still plenty of crisp, cool fruit to enjoy once you get past it. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the thrust of an argument posted recently at the redefinED blog: Why science advocates should embrace vouchers, school choice<\/a>. (hat tip to Bridge to Tomorrow<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

The author of that post, Ron Matus, was a reporter for the Tampa Bay Times<\/em> and did an excellent job of covering education issues, including the exhausting 2008 controversy over the teaching of evolution in Florida\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s schools. I had always considered him a member of the reality-based community who did his best to advocate for sound science education even while wearing the fair-and-balanced-reporter hat. He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s no longer at the Times<\/em>, though. He recently scrubbed away the newsprint ink embedded in his fingertips and slipped into a new career as Assistant Director for Policy & Public Affairs at Step Up for Students, the organization that administers Florida\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Tax Credit Scholarship program. Now his job is to promote his employer\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s causes, which are vouchers and school choice.<\/p>\n

In that blog post, Matus tried to do some damage control. A recent New York Times<\/em> article <\/a>took voucher programs to task for funneling public tax dollars to blatantly religious education. Instead of evolution in biology class, students heard about Adam, Eve and Noah. Matus professes his acceptance of evolution as fact, but then he says that creationism isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t something to froth at the mouth about if all the other aspects of private school education are exceptional. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Even if we disagree about creationism, we shouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be so blinded that we forget all the other lessons these children receive in all the other classes they take, in all the years they attend school.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

How about we take a minute to swim around in the deep end of ridiculousness? Let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s pair a phenomenal reading program with a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153science\u00e2\u20ac\u009d book that says the earth is flat. The science lab has an expensive telescope that would be the envy of any college level astronomy program and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s being used to show students that the sun goes around the earth. The history program won a shelf full of awards for its in-depth Civil War section, but then there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s that page later in the textbook that says the moon landings were fake. Oh, and President Obama wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t born in the United States.<\/p>\n

Wave all that stuff away as my overreaction. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m going overboard. No one actually teaches that stuff in school. Be serious, Brandon.<\/p>\n

From the New York Times <\/em>article: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153A commonly used sixth-grade science text retells the creation story contained in Genesis, omitting any other explanation. An economics book used in some high schools holds that the Antichrist \u00e2\u20ac\u201d a world ruler predicted in the New Testament \u00e2\u20ac\u201d will one day control what is bought and sold.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

How do we know, really know, that my made up, ridiculous examples aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t actually being taught in a private school where some students are attending with voucher funds? We don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t. And that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what is so damn scary.<\/p>\n

I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m sorry, Matus, but if any subject being taught in a private school supplants reality with ideology, then the whole barrel of apples is suspect. Sure, parents can choose a private school\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s amazing language arts program, but public tax dollars most certainly should not support the garbage being fed to students a few doors down the hall.<\/p>\n

The issue of vouchers paying for antievolution instruction has come up before here in Florida. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m writing a book about the history of antievolution efforts in Florida. (I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m actually done with the bulk of the writing, more than 82,000 words now, and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m going through the tedious editing, fact checking and citation organizing now. I hope to be all done and ready to shop for a publisher by the end of this month!) I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll leave you with a relevant excerpt from chapter 8.<\/p>\n

\u00c2\u00a0———————————————–<\/p>\n

Education in general has been a major issue in Florida for decades, highlighted in 1998 by the strengthening of the education clause in the state\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s constitution, which starts with: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The education of children is a fundamental value of the people of the State of Florida.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d The following year Gov. Jeb Bush pushed the concept of offering school vouchers through the Opportunity Scholarship Program. The original version of the program allowed students who attended consistently failing public schools to either transfer to a higher performing public school or use state funds to attend a participating private school.<\/p>\n

A separate voucher program, called The McKay Scholarships for Students with Disabilities Program, was created a couple of years later. In this program, the voucher was based on students\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 special needs instead of any school\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s performance. Eligible students could transfer between public schools or choose to attend a private school. A third voucher program, called the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship Program, was also implemented in the early 2000s to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153encourage private, voluntary contributions from corporate donors to non-profit scholarship funding organizations (SFOs) that award scholarships to children from low-income families.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

Public schools were under increasing pressure to abide by state standards and improve their performance under Gov. Bush\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s education reform programs he called the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153A+ Plan.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Students\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 performance on state-mandated annual exams, combined with other factors, resulted in letter grades being given to each public school, essentially marking schools in a very public manner as passing or failing. Private schools were not subjected to any of these requirements, which critics of the voucher programs frequently pointed out. Additionally, the private schools taking in voucher students had very little in the way of academic oversight or tracking by the state.<\/p>\n

In all three voucher programs, the participating private schools could be sectarian or nonsectarian. However, for a private school to be eligible to participate in the Opportunity Scholarship Program it had to meet a short list of requirements, including: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Agree not to compel any student attending the private school on an opportunity scholarship to profess a specific ideological belief, to pray, or to worship.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

However, this wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t on the list of private school requirements in the other two voucher programs. As a matter of fact, the majority of the schools accepting them were religious. For instance, of all the private schools accepting McKay Scholarship students in the 2010-2011 school year, 64 percent were religious and 36 percent were non-religious. In the same school year, the Tax Credit Scholarship private schools were 79 percent religious and 21 percent non-religious.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Many of the parents bring their kids here because they want a Christian education,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d a voucher-accepting private school principal told the Palm Beach Post<\/em> in 2005. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153And a Christian education does not include evolution.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d The newspaper noted that the state did not track what curricula were used at private schools and so reporters investigated the issue to find out. A survey found that 43 percent of religious schools that accept voucher students used curricula from distinctively conservative Christian companies. According to the Palm Beach Post<\/em>, this equated to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153about 375 voucher-taking schools, educating about 8,700 students\u00e2\u20ac\u009d statewide.<\/p>\n

One such company is A Beka Book, which is based in Pensacola and affiliated with Pensacola Christian College. Its science textbooks are based on Biblical literalist and young earth creationist beliefs. The Post <\/em>pointed out that a sixth-grade science textbook sold by the company was advertised as: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153This teachable, readable, and memorable book presents the universe as the direct creation of God and refutes the man-made idea of evolution.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d The same book and description is still offered on the A Beka Book website in 2012. An eighth-grade textbook contains a chapter on \u00e2\u20ac\u0153science versus the false philosophy of evolution.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

As soon as the Opportunity Scholarship Program became a reality, opponents, including the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Education Association, sued to have the program stopped. They claimed that the voucher program violated both the federal and the state constitutions in multiple ways. One complaint was that when voucher money went to private religious schools the program violated the Florida Constitution, Article I, Section 3, which states: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153No revenue of the state or any political subdivision or agency thereof shall ever be taken from the public treasury directly or indirectly in aid of any church, sect, or religious denomination or in aid of any sectarian institution.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

The case, Holmes v. Bush<\/em>, was bounced back and forth among the Florida courts. In 2004 an eight-judge majority of the whole Florida Court of Appeals determined that the Opportunity Scholarship Program did violate that state constitutional provision. It was also determined that the program violated another, separate provision that requires the state to provide a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153uniform, high quality education.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d An appeal kicked the case up to the Florida Supreme Court where it was determined in 2006 that the vouchers were unconstitutional under the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153uniform\u00e2\u20ac\u009d education provision. However, the justices declined to offer an opinion on the aid to sectarian institution provision.<\/p>\n

The end result, though, was that Opportunity Scholarship vouchers could no longer be used at private schools. The other two voucher programs \u00e2\u20ac\u201c McKay and Corporate Tax Credit \u00e2\u20ac\u201c were not affected, and there has yet to be any legal challenges to them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t worry if that juicy apple has a rotten spot, folks. Just quickly swallow the mush and move on. There is still plenty of crisp, cool fruit to enjoy once you get past it. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the thrust of an argument … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pcZNLl-pv","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1957,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=1957","url_meta":{"origin":1581,"position":0},"title":"O Science, O Science! Wherefore art thou science?","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"October 29, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Florida Citizens for Science vice president Jonathan Smith has a letter to the editor in the Lakeland Ledger. The statewide meetings on Common Core Standards that Gov. Rick Scott attended recently has proven to be the fancy icing on the rotten cake that has become the Florida state education system.\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 3 comments","block_context":{"text":"With 3 comments","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=1957#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2927,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=2927","url_meta":{"origin":1581,"position":1},"title":"Another barrel of rotten apples","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"October 18, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"The Orlando Sentinel is publishing a three part series about Florida private schools raking in voucher money from the state despite some incredibly ugly problems at those schools. The first part ran today:\u00c2\u00a0Schools Without Rules: An Orlando Sentinel Investigation (Florida private schools rake in nearly $1 billion in state scholarships\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Antiscience nonsense"","block_context":{"text":"Antiscience nonsense","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?cat=21"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":338,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=338","url_meta":{"origin":1581,"position":2},"title":"Miami Herald article","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"December 8, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"The Miami Herald jumps into the fray over evolution in the Florida public schools science standards. The reporter writes a comprehensive piece on what is going on, the history of attacks on evolution education, and interviews quite a few people to try to display everyone's views on the subject. In\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "In the News"","block_context":{"text":"In the News","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?cat=3"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":293,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=293","url_meta":{"origin":1581,"position":3},"title":"News article about draft science standards","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"October 21, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Florida Citizens for Science president, Joe Wolf, had an excellent quote in an Orlando Sentinel story this weekend about the new draft of the state science standards. He did a great job of playing down this \"controversy\" over evolution by putting it into realistic perspective. Thanks, Joe! On the other\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "In the News"","block_context":{"text":"In the News","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?cat=3"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1292,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=1292","url_meta":{"origin":1581,"position":4},"title":"Evolution newspaper story a confusing mess","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"April 8, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"I'm feeling mighty confused by an article that recently appeared in Hernando Today (a Tampa Tribune paper): Educators: Bill that criticizes evolution won't hurt students. Read the following excerpt and ponder what is being stated for a moment: Dr. Stacey Thomson, chairwoman of the science department at Pasco-Hernando Community College,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "\"Critical Analysis\" bills '11"","block_context":{"text":"\"Critical Analysis\" bills '11","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?cat=29"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1088,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=1088","url_meta":{"origin":1581,"position":5},"title":"Tampa Tribune article about workshop","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"July 12, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"The Tampa Tribune published a story today about this week's upcoming Controversial Issues Workshop. Among the groups participating are the National Center for Science Education, Florida Citizens for Science and the Coalition for Science Literacy. Debra Walker, a Monroe County School Board member who served on the committee that rewrote\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1581"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1581"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1581\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1583,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1581\/revisions\/1583"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1581"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1581"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1581"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}