No degree? Checkered history?

You can still teach in Fla. — and hide your past from parents

Let’s say you want to be a teacher, but unfortunately for you, you don’t know the first thing about teaching.

You have no college degree. Maybe you didn’t even finish high school. You lack any kind of certification. Heck, maybe your only experience comes from working at a day care center … which fired you. What should you do? Move to Florida!

Here, lawmakers will not only let you teach in the state’s billion-dollar voucher school industry, they’ll let you hide your lack of qualifications or shady background from parents and the public.

Taxpayers will help pay your salary at these private schools, but they won’t be able to see whether you’re qualified or doing a good job.

This is the disturbing world of “Schools without Rules” — Florida’s school-voucher industry that Sentinel reporters have been studying for four years.

In their most recent investigation, reporters Annie Martin and Leslie Postal detailed more troubling revelations at a voucher school in west Orange County that employed multiple teachers without college degrees.

One was fired from her last job at a day care center. (Her reference check came back: “Terminated would not rehire.”) Another was arrested a few months ago, accused of soliciting sexually explicit videos from a boy in his class.

The school, which doesn’t even have a website, had a teacher turnover rate of 83% from in 2019 and 2020. One former teacher told the Sentinel that vacancies were so problematic that the school went three months without offering any language arts classes.

“The kids should’ve been in public schools,” the teacher said. “All of the public schools around here are leagues better than that place.”

The school, Winners Primary, received more than $5 million in tax money in recent years.

And here’s the bigger point: Winners is just one of about 2,000 state-approved voucher schools in Florida operating with little oversight. You have no way of knowing what’s going on at most of the rest. We only know about this school because Sentinel reporters rolled up their sleeves and started asking questions and demanding records available largely because a criminal arrest prompted a state inquiry.

Florida doesn’t require voucher schools to let parents or taxpayers know what kind of qualifications teachers have or even what the schools are teaching. That should change.

See, this column isn’t a call to end school choice. I’ve seen some charter schools — which operate differently than vouchers with more public regulation — and specialized private schools fill a valuable role. Instead, it’s a call for transparency and accountability. Taxpayers deserve to know how their money is being spent. And whether children are actually learning.

We’ll talk about specific ways to make that happen in a moment. But first, you might wonder: Why would anyone stay at a voucher school that’s clearly a mess? Well, many don’t. Both students and teachers leave.

And, believe it or not, most Florida legislators consider that revolving door to be the state’s version of accountability. They say that’s how “school choice” is supposed to work. You send your kids to a school. And if you later find out that school’s a mess, you simply choose to take your kids elsewhere.

They don’t care about any tax dollars wasted or children who fall behind.

What little evidence the state has tracked suggests many kids in the voucher system — funded with more than $1 billion worth of taxes and tax credits each year — lose academic ground and that most students stay in the voucher programs for two years or less.

Public schools are often left to clean up the mess.

Now, some voucher schools do splendid jobs. In fact, an Urban Institute study found that students who stayed in voucher schools were more likely to get into college and graduate than their public-school counterparts.

Splendid. Then let’s make sure every school taking taxpayer money serves students and taxpayers well.

With rare exceptions, every teacher should be required to have a college degree, just like in public school. (Current Florida law allows voucher schools to hire anyone, including high school dropouts, as long as the school claims the new hire has “special skills” or “knowledge.”)

Florida should require every school to publicly disclose their teachers’ credentials. Parents deserve to know.

And require schools to disclose curriculum and standardized test scores.

Right now, Florida requires none of that.

And while we’re at it: End the discrimination. No school that takes tax dollars should be allowed to refuse service to students just because they’re gay. Want public money? Serve all the public.

Republican lawmakers have driven the push to privatize education. But few members from either party seem interested in accountability.

On Wednesday — just three days after the Sentinel revealed the latest round of troubling details — a legislative committee voted to put pump even more tax dollars into the voucher system. Their plan? More tax dollars without any additional transparency.

The 18-3 vote was bipartisan. Local members who supported the voucher expansion included Democrat Kristen Arrington and Republicans Randy Fine and Fred Hawkins. The only local rep who voted no was Democrat Daisy Morales.

Taxpayers deserve better. So do students.

Good schools should welcome standards and accountability. The only people who don’t are those running shoddy schools and the politicians who don’t want you to see what’s going on.