Despite last minute efforts to derail vouchers, the North Carolina House appropriations committee approved a budget with $50 million for vouchers. The money would be taken away from the state’s underfunded public schools. North Carolina presently ranks 48th in the nation in supporting its public schools. Some Republican legislators from rural districts pointed out that there are no private schools in their districts, but their concerns were dismissed.
As usual, the vouchers are euphemistically called “opportunity scholarships.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
‘Some Republican legislators from rural districts pointed out that there are no private schools in their districts” Prefab buildings sprout like mushrooms after a rainy weekend. Those private schools will be there on the next eighteen wheeler, “wide load’ signs and all.
And they wonder why Moral Mondays continue?
Coincidence that Obama chose NC as a stop just days ago?
That was a carefully orchestrated visit.
There is still some action before this is a done deal. there is an amendment coming to the floor by one of the bill’s Democratic co-sponsors to remove HB944 from the budget. If that does not happen the two Dems they managed to get on board during negotiations have signaled that they are parachuting off.
http://www.camelcitydispatch.com/w-s-legislator-may-withdraw-support-from-controversial-voucher-bill/
By Obama’s governing he is a right wing corporate privatizer at his base.
Hooray!!!
Of course, Dr. Diane Ravitch can go around reserving “special plac[es] in Hell” for people she doesn’t like, like old Ben Austin; but she doesn’t like it when people point out the flagrant contradictions, inconsistencies, and failures of courage that she has exhibited in her bold and tumultuous journey from the NEA to Brookings and back.
The absurd flop she issued with Death and Life of the “Great” American School System is not, and cannot be understood as, a simple conversion, or a simple matter of changing one’s opinion in a fair acknowledgement of new evidence. The authors of Left Back and Death and Life alike are polemicists. Both books oversimplify issues. Both shied away from any criticism that had real teeth and gave every possible benefit of every possible doubt to every possible party who might otherwise have come across as obviously corrupted or otherwise malign. Both were distinct mostly for their buttery politeness, but partially for the way they seized upon easy targets and easy solutions.
I don’t necessarily pass too much judgement. Ravitch has been between politics and polemics now for the better part of thirty years (at least). In that world, you have to be very polite, you have to keep it simple, you have to compromise and willing to push for solutions that are “on the table” regardless of their flaws and to sell them, pretty much as is and ask questions later. I mean sure, if someone’s just some lowly local activist, you can just dish out imaginary nooks of Hell for them, but you have to at least be courteous to the Big Players and accommodate yourself to their sweeping solutions. It’s all about accommodation. That’s how all that is Unholy one week can be The Great American Somethingorother the next.
Perhaps it was the typo. I promise that it was a typo. I had absolutely no intention of any unfortunate misspelling of the name of Dr. Diane Ravitch.