Our Observation

Throughout history we’ve found that when the government takes over a social service, a vocal portion of the population grabs their torches and pitchforks. It doesn’t matter how innocuous that social program may be in retrospect. It doesn’t matter how successful that program becomes — even when the private sector counterpart to that social program is disastrous.

Remember the scene from the movie “Gangs of New York,” when a fire broke out in a building and two rival firefighting companies showed up and instead of fighting the fire, fought each other in the street? That was what happened when capitalism and the profit motive interfered directly with the public good. Money became more important than the public welfare. After fire departments were taken out of the private sector, fighting the fires became the priority, not profit.

There used to be a profit motive in American schools as well. Until the mid 1800s, school was largely only available to the wealthy. But when the idea of public schooling was pushed heavily in the 1840s, it was seen as that horrifying word — redistribution — because taxes would fund the schools, which by the 1850s were becoming mandatory. Public education, it was seen, was socialism — an attempt at educational equality for rich and poor.

Few would now disagree with the idea that public education is an American right, not a privilege for the rich. Few would disagree with the notion that universal public education is a good thing. But Florida Gov. Rick Scott seems to think otherwise, continuing to push for more charter and private schools, while slashing public educational funding. In essence, he wants to put the profit motive back into education.

Though in his final budget proposal he desperately conceded that some money should be put back into public education, he slashed $1.35 billion from the public education budget. Much of that money is coming out of public school teacher jobs, which are being eliminated.

And as he signed that budget in The Villages at the end of May, he was surrounded by children from a charter school bused in from more than 100 miles away.

He was making a statement for a cause he’s championed since before he was elected: That private and charter schools are the wave of the future, even if that idea is 160 years past its prime in this country. Even if that idea has already been proven wrong, or at least uncertain, by numerous research studies of performance from public, private and charter schools.

In 2009 a Stanford University study of charter school test scores showed that 37 percent of charter school students do worse than public school students.

The study concluded that “We’ve got a 2-to-1 margin of bad charters to good charters.”

In a U.S. Department of Education study released in 2010, the study showed negligible improvements in test scores or even attendance when students were selected to go to charter schools, compared to those in public schools, studied over the course of two years.

And a study commissioned by the Florida Legislature to gauge the efficacy of vouchers to send public school students to private schools in 2009 showed no improvement in performance.

Education Week this week released an analysis of approval ratings of governors who cut education budgets, ostensibly to reform the system. It showed that the most prominent education-reform governors, including Rick Scott, have seen their approval ratings tumble, as low as 29 percent for Scott.

If history isn’t a strong enough lesson, maybe having the worst approval rating in the country will be.