Separate and Unequal Uniformity

One of the reasons why my posting is so slow and sporadic right now is because I am working my fanny off and I also have a research paper due. I thought, however, that I would take the time to let you see what I've written so far. I shed a little tear when I finished the intro.

This is the first draft but it is the gist of what I'll be turning in.

Enjoy!

I. Introduction

On January 5, 2006, mostly Black and Hispanic children living in Florida suffered the worst legal blow since Plessy v. Ferguson. In Bush v. Holmes, the Florida Supreme Court, struck down the Florida Opportunity Scholarship Program which allowed parents to use vouchers to send their children to a public or private school of their choice if their children’s assigned school was underperforming. A school voucher or education voucher is a means by which parents are given the ability to pay for the education of their children at a school of their choice, rather than the public school to which they were assigned. But on January 5, 2006, the Florida Supreme Court dashed the hopes of more than 700 students of obtaining a “high quality education” much to the delight of the teacher’s unions, the National School Board Association (NSBA), and other anti-voucher groups. Consequently, these approximately 700 children are resigned to finding a way to pay their own tuition or returning to the segregated, over-crowded, academically complacent schools that failed them in the first place.

Florida, however, is not the first state to deal with the voucher issue on the legal front. There have been several challenges to vouchers in other states with varied results. Early cases challenging the constitutionality of school vouchers have addressed issues such as the Establishment Clause. Other cases have referred to the infamous Blaine Amendments.

Despite the fact that research has shown that the Florida Opportunity Scholarship Program provided an educational boost for academically disadvantaged students, particularly non-white students, traditional civil and human rights advocates have rejected the voucher system as a means to give all students access to equal educational opportunities. This unholy alliance by mainstream civil rights organizations and high powered teachers unions has left many other Black and Hispanic people to wonder, “What in the world are these groups thinking? Even Malcolm X understood that “Education is the passport to the future.” If non-white students are not adequately prepared to compete in a society where the educated have most of the advantages, then what kind of future do they have? It would be interesting to know how many of the Florida Supreme Court justices, political leaders, teachers and others who oppose vouchers would continue to send their own children to an underperforming public school in the name of “uniformity.” Most of them would exercise their choice to move their children to a better school, public or private because they have the economic means to do so. But what about the parents who don’t? What hope remains for them?