School choice scholarships serve Florida’s most vulnerable children

A few weeks ago, the highly respected Urban Institute released the findings of a groundbreaking study that should be of interest to all of us who care about public education in Florida.

It found the low-income, mostly minority students who use the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship are up to 43 percent more like to attend four-year colleges than their peers who attend public schools, and up to 20 percent more likely to earn bachelor’s degrees. The outcomes are even stronger for students who use the scholarship four or more years.

This is good news – and no surprise to those of us familiar with the scholarship, which now serves 100,000 students and has 13,000 more on a waiting list. But it is another inconvenient truth for opponents, including the Sun-Sentinel.

In its Feb. 25 editorial, the Sun-Sentinel criticized a proposal by Gov. DeSantis to create a new state scholarship to ease the waiting list.

In the very first sentence, it said the governor and lawmakers “know little about the quality of the private schools which they’re eager to shovel more public money.”

Yet nowhere does it mention the Urban Institute findings. Instead, it perpetuates myths about choice scholarships that were long ago laid to rest by the facts.

The Sun-Sentinel makes it sound as if the proposed scholarship would be the first in Florida that could be used at private and faith-based schools.

Yet the state has spent billions of dollars in recent years on scholarships that are used at private and faith-based schools. Bright Futures scholarships are used at private and faith-based colleges.

The vast majority of VPK dollars are spent at private pre-schools, many of them faith-based. The state spends more than $200 million a year on scholarships for students with disabilities to attend private and faith-based schools.

If it is okay for the state to spend billions on private school tuition for college students, 4-year-olds and students with disabilities, why is it not okay for the state to spend a fraction of that on students disadvantaged by poverty?

As the founder of a private school, I know why this scholarship is so desperately needed. It is responding to massive demand from low-income parents, and it is putting thousands upon thousands of students on the path to a better life.

That combination of demand and success is why Gov. DeSantis proposed the new scholarship. That’s why Black and Hispanic parents and pastors stood side by side with him when he announced it.

This isn’t about politics or privatization. This is about saving lives. This is about giving disadvantaged and povertystricken students an opportunity to receive a quality education.

We founded Mount Bethel Christian Academy 29 years ago to provide a quality education to students from all walks of life. We saw so many children failing in their neighborhood schools. Therefore we wanted to offer a nurturing alternative.

Thanks to the scholarship, we’re now serving even more of those students – this year, 119 of them.

The demand continues to grow because parents know we are delivering a high-quality education. And we know if we don’t, our savvy parents will take the scholarship to a school that does. This is the kind of accountability that many of our public schools never face.

Mount Bethel and some 2,000 other schools around the state are serving the most disadvantaged students. Two-thirds are black or Hispanic. Their average family income is $25,000 a year. Their test scores make clear they were the students who struggled the most in their public schools.

And contrary to myth, expanding opportunities for them via the scholarship does not come at the expense of public schools.

The value of a scholarship is barely half what taxpayers would spend to educate the same student in a public school. And there’s ample evidence from test scores and graduation rates that our public schools have never performed better.

For far too many of our students, better still isn’t good enough. That’s where the scholarship comes in.

All schools, public and private, have a vital role to play in lifting our students out of poverty. The more hands on deck, the better.

Bishop C.E. Glover is senior pastor and CEO of Mount Bethel Ministries and co-founder of Mount Bethel Christian Academy in Fort Lauderdale.