“This bill sends out the message, ‘the public schools have failed and nothing can fix them,'” said Jack Lieberman, president of the American Jewish Congress Southeast Region, one of the organizations that has sued to halt Florida’s voucher program. “How can those schools ever be repaired if their best students are removed and sent to private and religious institutions?”
Lieberman’s “cream-skimming” argument was shattered within six months of the program’s approval. After examining the first group of 134 students participating in the state’s voucher program, officials in Escambia County School District reported voucher students were hardly the “cream” of the schools, differing little in terms of test scores from the average students in the public schools they had previously attended.
