George Will aren't we a little late?

The Washington Post columnist wrote today about the Florida State Supreme Court and its decision on school vouchers aka The Opportunity Scholarship Program.

The Opportunity Scholarship Program (OSP) serves just 733 children statewide, 62 of whom are at this school of 416 students. The OSP provides vouchers, redeemable at private as well as public schools, to students at schools the state says are failing. Archbishop Curley, which in 1960 -- just its seventh year -- became the first Florida secondary school to be racially integrated, has grades nine through 12 and sends more than 98 percent of its graduates to college.

But Florida's Supreme Court fulfilled the desires of the teachers unions, and disrupted the lives of the 733 children and their parents, by declaring, in a 5 to 2 ruling, that the voucher program is incompatible with the state constitution. Specifically, and incredibly, the court held that the OSP violates the stipulation, which voters put into the constitution in 1998, that the state shall provide a "uniform, efficient, safe, secure, and high quality system of free public schools that allows students to obtain a high quality education."

The court wielded the first adjective as a scythe to cut down the OSP. It argued that the word "uniform" means that the state must utilize only public schools in providing "high quality education."

This even though many public schools are providing nothing of the sort; the public school that Octavia would have to attend were she not at Archbishop Curley has been rated a failing school for three consecutive years by the state . And even though the state can continue to utilize private schools for educating some disabled students. And even though, by the court's reasoning, it is unconstitutional for the state to use the OSP to help Octavia receive a fine education at Archbishop Curley, the constitutional mandate about "high quality education" requires consigning her to a failing school. And even though there is no evidence that the drafters of the constitution's language or the public that ratified it thought it meant what the Supreme Court now says it means -- that in providing quality education, the state must enforce a public school monopoly on state funds. Actually, the legislature's committee that drafted the "uniform" language rejected a proposal to prohibit vouchers.

I agree with what Will is saying. It's sad that politics and teacher's unions take precedence over a child's education. How many children are there in Florida like Octavia Lopez but not as fortunate to be in this program? Thousands and its absurd in this blogger's mind that the Democrats and liberals thought this was a victory. I blogged about it here.

That was last January, as was this Supreme Court decision. So why is Will suddenly writing about it now? His byline says Miami. He appears to be a little behind the curve to me, and there is something odder about this too. NYT columnist John Tierney wrote a very similiar column, using another Miami Private school and one of its students as an example. When was that column written? January 7th.

Democrats once went to court to desegregate schools. But in Florida they've been fighting to kick black students out of integrated schools, and they've succeeded, thanks to the Democratic majority on the State Supreme Court.

The court's decision on Thursday was a legally incoherent but politically creative solution to a delicate problem. Ever since Florida's pioneering statewide voucher program began, Democrats have been struggling to deal with the program's success.

Most of recipients have been black students like Adrian Bushell, whom I wrote about last year. Without a voucher, he would have attended Miami Edison, a big public high school in a poor area with a 94 percent black student body and a total of six non-Hispanic white students.

I'm not accusing Will of anything but being tardy in writing on this topic. Maybe its just another reason he isn't my favorite WPO columnist. That designation goes to Charles Krauthammer.

Hat tip- Outside the Beltway
Open Post- TMH's Bacon Bits, Right Wing Nation, Blue Star, Customer Servant, Bright & Early,

Cross posted to Bullwinkle Blog


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