Florida’s tax credit scholarships (which critics and some supporters call “vouchers”) are just one part of a modern public education system that is like “a cafeteria with nearly limitless entrees” and with no single one “categorically better or worse than the other,” John Kirtley writes in this op-ed, on the heels of this study.

"The low-income children who receive them “are the very children for whom public education promises equal opportunity, and the scholarships are part of that commitment,” writes Kirtley, who chairs Step Up For Students, the nonprofit that administers the program. “These children are not siphoning off resources from the public system. They are in fact an integral part of public education, in its modern form – just like privately run charter schools, private prekindergarten providers, private schools serving disabled students with McKay Scholarships, and community colleges that teach high schoolers.”

- Ron Matus, state education reporter