November could end voucher battle

By Jim Stergios
July 8th, 2008

If McCain wins? No, I don’t think so. He cannot win the debate given the numbers in Congress. Obama? No, I don’t think so. As this space has noted many times, he is the person best positioned to do the Nixon in China routine, but he has changed his position on the issue, well, effectively. Before the Wisconsin primary he was for vouchers. The day after his campaign “clarified” his position. A pity, but that is also political reality.

What I am referring to is that, as Joe Follick of School Reform News reports,

A commission agreed to give voters an opportunity to reverse a 2006 Florida Supreme Court decision that found then-Gov. Jeb Bush’s prized voucher program unconstitutional.

It is going to be really hard to defeat this referendum item. Why? After all, voucher initiatives were defeated in California and Utah. Well, try this on for size:

To help sweeten the measure for voters, the proposal was abruptly joined with an unrelated plan that requires school districts to spend at least 65 percent of their revenue on “classroom instruction rather than on administration.”

Expect no movement at the federal level. The action is all at the state level.