You, on your way somewhere
You! Yes, you, in your flip-flops, with sunscreen and tan,
on your way to the polls with a half-finished plan.
But what is that smell, sort of smoky and sour?
And why hasn’t the school bus come by in an hour?
Under one Pencil Palm, on Crandon Park sand,
sits the Pointy-Headed Professor, book in his hand.
Ask him what’s burning. He’ll squint at the sky.
“Pull up a stump, you,” he’ll say. “Here is why.”
(The Pitch in K.C. once gave him that name.
He kept it. He’s pointy. The point’s still the same.)
When the Pencil Palms grew
“Way back, when the voters wrote down, plain as day,
that each kid got good schools, and the state had to pay:
Uniform! Safe! And Secure! High in Quality!
They carved it in law. It was no mere frivolity.
“And the Pencil Palms grew, tall and yellow, in rows,
with a school under each, down the coast, as it goes.
There were teachers and nurses, a bus and a band.
Not the best, not the worst, in the whole of the land.
“Right around in the middle. A little bit meh.
But the kids read just fine, and the teachers got pay.”
Receipts: Florida update · No Alabama Miracle
Then along came the Whittler
“Then along came the Whittler, all grin and all snout,
a gator in sash, with his whittling knife out.
(His uncle had whittled, and his uncle before.
This Whittler just whittled it faster, and more.)
“‘What a LOT of good pencil!’ he said with a yawn.
‘Just a shaving. A sliver. You won’t know it’s gone.’
And each year just a curl, just a tax cut or two,
and the pencil got shorter, as pencils will do.
“Could we pay? Yes, we could. We had plenty of dough.
It was not that we couldn’t. He just told us no.”
Receipts: Worst States · Florida report (PDF) · SFID, 8th ed. · Data
What a stub can’t write
“So the paychecks slid down, down to fiftieth place,
and the kids in each class filled up each bit of space.
And the teachers who stayed? They did more with their less.
They were, by the math, quite efficient, I’d guess.
“But a stub is a stub. There’s a limit. And yet:
sixty-four of the sixty-sev’n aren’t there yet.
Mississippi spends more, in the dollars that count.
Yay for Florida! Look at that shrinking amount!
“Some folks took it to court. And the judges said, ‘Well,
what’s “high quality” mean? It’s so hard to tell!’
And they handed the pencil right back, with a bow,
to the Whittler, who said, ‘Thank you. Watch me work now.’”
Receipts: No Alabama Miracle · Conservative Approach · WUSF (NEA pay data) · SFID data
The Automatic Axe-Hacker
“But whittling is slow. Chip by chip is a bore.
So he wheeled up a Thing through the Capitol door:
the Voucher-and-Charter Automatic Axe-Hacker,
a clanker, a whacker, a budget-attacker.
“‘Choice!’ went the axes. ‘Choice! Freedom! Choice! Whack!’
At twelve cents on the dollar, it started to hack.
Twenty-four cents on the dollar, four years down the road.
Five billion a year is the size of the load.
“And who got the chunks? Well, for seven in ten,
they were already private. They’d been there since when.
The auditors came, and they scratched at their chins:
‘Two hundred and seventy million? Who wins?’”
Receipts: Conservative Approach · FPI budget analysis · Audit coverage
The Company Store Vacuum
“Now some of those chunks rolled to Charter School Row,
where a Pelican stood in a top hat, just so,
with a hose and a motor, a bag and a grin,
and a sign: Company Store. Please, do come in.
“See, a charter’s a school when the money flows in.
But it’s private (he winked) when you ask where it’s been.
So the school paid the Store for its payroll, its chairs,
its teachers, its headsets, its builders, repairs.
“And who owned the Store? ‘Why, a firm, don’t you see?
Which is owned by a company, which (cough) is me.’
‘One million! Now two! Now it’s fifteen-point-seven!’
He counted, his pouch rising upward toward heaven.
“‘Is it legal?’ you ask. Oh, it’s legal, all right.
That’s the trouble. It’s done in the broadest of light.
And who guards the Store? Now, you’ve found the real catch:
there’s a chair at the Capitol. Keys in a batch.”
Receipts: The Company Store Goes to Tallahassee · Company Store, Revisited · Times/Herald · CBS News
So look at it, you
“So look at it, you. Here’s what’s left of the grove.
From the Panhandle down, past the Keys and the cove:
there’s Hamilton, Putnam, DeSoto and Dixie,
where budgets are thin and the air-con is tricksy.
“There’s Bradford and Gadsden, Suwannee, Madison too,
at sixty-five cents of what it takes to get through.
And the eighth graders’ reading, it fell, and it fell,
further down than almost anywhere. Oh, well.
“And the Whittler’s now eyeing, from up on his stump,
the big property tax, that last tree-sized lump.
That’s the race to the bottom. We’re nearly there, friend.
But the bottom,” he said, “doesn’t have to be the end.”
Receipts: Red State Miracle · No Alabama Miracle · Un-Florida · NAEP · SFID data
Now that you’re here
“Now you’ve come. I’ve got charts. But there’s one thing to show:
this last stub of a pencil. It’s yours. Off you go.
It’s not much. But it writes. It can mark up a bill.
It can circle a name. It can stand on a hill.
“It can ask, at the forum, in front of them all:
‘Will you raise what this state gives its schools, or let fall?
Will new money go first where the need is most dire?
Will you pay for tax cuts with more schools on fire?
“‘And will anyone keeping the rules own the Store?’
You just ask it. Then ask it again. Then once more.
Go back to the share that we paid in oh-six:
nearly thirty cents more on the dollar. No tricks.
“Now a palm won’t come back in a week or a year.
But it won’t grow at all if there’s nobody here.
And look,” said the Professor, and closed up his book.
“You’re here.”
Fine print
- The gator and the pelican are invented, and their lines are not quotes from anyone. Reported facts appear on the receipts, with their sources.
- Florida is in the bottom five, 46th on effort, and not literally last. North Carolina, Arizona and Nevada put in a smaller share.
- The pencils use K-12 spending as a share of gross state product. The rank uses state and local revenue, which is why Florida’s 2.19 percent appears as 2.2 here.
- These are trends and associations, not proof that any one officeholder caused any one result. Legislatures and courts share the pen.
Read the real thing
Reports and data
- Financing a High-Quality System of Free Public Schools for Florida’s Children
- The full Florida report (PDF)
- The Adequacy and Fairness of State School Finance Systems, 8th ed. (PDF)
- School Finance Indicators Database: download the data, including the National Education Cost Model
- NAEP, the Nation’s Report Card
- Florida Policy Institute on voucher growth
- Education Law Center on Florida voucher costs
- Florida Phoenix on the state voucher audit
Florida’s funding and outcomes
- Florida School Finance Update: Here’s your manageable standard, now fund it!
- Short term plan to Un-Florida Florida’s Public Schools
- America’s Worst States for Education (2026 Edition)
- The Red State Miracle That Wasn’t
- Red State, Blue State, Round Two
- There Is No Alabama Miracle (But There Is a Lesson)
- Money Matters. And the Evidence Keeps Piling Up.
Vouchers
- An Economically Conservative Approach to Deciding Whether to Adopt or Expand Vouchers
- Experimenting With Our Children
- Time to Rein in Vouchers
- The Post-Espinoza End Game
Charters and the company store
- The Company Store Goes to Tallahassee
- The Charter School Company Store, Revisited
- The Charter Money Trail
- Edu-Grift Top 5
- We Bought It Twice, But We No Longer Own It
- The Business of Charter Schooling (with Gary Miron)
- Are Charter Schools the Second Coming of Enron? (with Preston Green and Joseph Oluwole)
- Florida Bulldog’s reporting
