Step Up takes lead on vouchers Nonprofit fills several roles related to state scholarships

Step Up for Students is not well known outside the school choice world, but for parents and private school administrators the nonprofit is so synonymous with the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship that they often refer to it as the “Step Up scholarship.”

In fact, Step Up approves 99 percent of scholarships for more than 100,000 children as one of two state contractors that determines whether kids are eligible based on family income. It also solicits corporations to apply for the tax credits from the state — this year expected to be worth $630 million — that pay for the program. In all, Florida has a nearly $1 billion scholarship system that allows certain children to leave public schools for private ones.

Step Up, which will earn about $18.4 million off the scholarships this year, is more than just a state contractor hired to do a job. It also is a chief advocate for school choice whose leaders help write the laws that govern Florida’s scholarships, the biggest such system in the nation.

Critics of the scholarships, some-

times called vouchers, say those laws — which by design don’t require private schools to have certified teachers, curriculum that follows Florida’s academic standards or facilities with modern technology or textbooks — allow such schools to flourish at the expense of public education.

“Their ultimate goal is universal vouchers, and that means the privatization of public education,” said Sue Woltanski, a mother, public school advocate and founder of the grass-roots group Minimize Testing Maximize Learning. “The agenda for public education policy should be quality education, and they’re not doing that.”

But the man who founded Step Up says the group’s mission is to promote choice and then let parents decide whether a school meets their child’s needs.

Tampa venture capitalist John Kirtley, who also helped then-Gov. Jeb Bush start the tax credit scholarship program for children from low-income families in 2001, said he has no issue with public schools. He said he simply believes parents should have alternatives.

“I do not worry about those parents who have enough money to find the right learning environment for their children — whether it be by buying a house in what they consider to be the

right public school zone or paying for a private alternative,” Kirtley said in an email. “I work every day to help those who don’t have the means to make a choice.”

The income limit for families using the scholarship has increased in recent years, though state reports say the children using the tax credit scholarship are generally among the poorest in the state and kids who are struggling the most in public schools. About 70 percent of the children on scholarships are African American or Latino.

But that choice doesn’t come with a guarantee of quality.

The Orlando Sentinel’s recent “Schools Without Rules” series examined how scant state oversight of private scholarship schools leads to cases of teachers with criminal records or without college degrees, falsified fire and health inspection documents and schools that leave students worse off academically without consequences.

Schools that receive the public money range from top-performing Catholic schools or others that offer small classes and rigorous programs to startups in tiny storefronts without modern textbooks or technology.

“Private schools serving kids in the tax credit program have less regulatory accountability than the district schools, but they have the maximum amount of market accountability,” Kirtley said.

“Parents can immediately take their children elsewhere. This combination doesn’t guarantee excellence either.”

Legislators and bureaucrats often turn to Step Up and a coalition of other choice advocates such as the education foundation started by Bush to suggest any necessary changes in the scholarship program.

Every significant recent change to the scholarship law was either initiated or supported by Step Up. Kirtley, who has contributed more than $1.6 million to political candidates and committees over two decades, points to a list of changes that he says Step Up asked for or endorsed to help guard the safety of students or protect the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on the program.

But those changes sometimes lacked enforcement teeth or resources as the scholarships exploded in size from about 41,000 children a decade ago to more than 140,000 today using three scholarships at 2,000 private schools across the state.

For example, the state required teachers and other staff to pass criminal background checks before they are hired at the private schools as part of a major overhaul of the scholarships in 2006 after a Senate study of the program found it “lacked any real meaningful state oversight.” But the law lets school owners operate on what amounts to an honor system, requiring they sign a

form attesting to having completed the background screenings.

The state checks a school’s records if it happens to be one of the small number inspected each year — just 22 out of 2,000 in 2016 — or if it receives a complaint about the school. But many school personnel records go unchecked by the state. As a result, schools can continue to hire criminals.

Orlando’s Agape Christian Academy, now suspended from the scholarship program, hired two people with criminal records, the Sentinel found. Records show the Florida Department of Education found at least eight schools with staff with criminal records in recent years as it was looking into other matters.

Step Up has 210 full-time employees mostly at offices in Jacksonville and St. Petersburg. But it does not regulate the private schools and doesn’t have the power to remove them from the program. That task falls to the state’s school choice office, which has about 20 employees, inside the education department.

Whether that’s enough to oversee 2,000 schools came up at a House education subcommittee meeting earlier this month held in response to the Sentinel’s stories.

At the meeting, Step Up President Doug Tuthill proposed changes that would prevent schools from falsifying fire and health inspection documents as well as require

more schools to submit financial reports and allow the state to inspect more schools.

But there was little discussion about enhancing checks on the quality of education children are receiving from the private schools. There was no talk about requiring teachers to have college degrees or training in education, nor discussion about whether private schools should be accredited or report statistics such as graduation rates.

No one brought up whether the state should look at curriculum the schools use. About 80 percent of students attend religious schools, including some that teach creationism as science rather than evolution or that the spread of AIDS is the result of “man’s corruption of God’s perfect plan.”

Yet many scholarship students are considered at-risk and in need of the most intense academic interventions.

Sen. Randolph Bracy, whose district includes areas such as Pine Hills where there are many scholarship schools, says students don’t always get what they need.

“What I’ve seen is sometimes students will leave public schools and go to one of these schools, sometimes they maintain the level of academic intensity as in the public schools, but there are other times where they don’t,” said Bracy, D-Orlando. “And when those students come back to public

schools they are farther behind.’’

Step Up has helped to win legislative approval of major expansions of the scholarships — the cap on the tax credit program grew from $118 million in 2010 to about $700 million this year and is set to continue to grow. The income limit for eligible families to receive at least a partial scholarship jumped from 200 percent of the federal poverty level to 260 percent, or about $64,000 for a family of four.

New types of business taxes — such as levies on oil and gas production and alcoholic beverages — were added in addition to the corporate income tax. A proposal before the Legislature asks for a tax on car sales to be included for a new scholarship for children who have been bullied.

Step Up is paid an administrative fee of up to 3 percent for its role. This year that amounts to about $16.4 million for the tax credit scholarship and $2 million for the Gardiner Scholarship for children with special needs, which comes directly out of the state budget.

“Operating the tax credit and Gardiner programs is very labor intensive,” Kirtley said. “We are extremely proud that we can perform at this level of excellence with an administrative expense allowance that is the lowest in the U.S.”