Some of the nation’s wealthiest men are building a campaign chest to promote tax credits for private and religious schools. If the legislature acts on their request, it would transfer $250 million in education funds to nonpublic schools.
5,000 students packed the Westchester County Convention Center in White Plains, New York,last November to cheer the proposal.
“The rally in White Plains, and another one in Buffalo in April that drew 10,000, are the public face of a multifaceted strategy financed, in part, by some of the richest people in America. A Tax Watch investigation into the advocacy effort, which has close links to the New York Archdiocese, found that it is fueled by:
• A political action committee bankrolled by $347,000 from seven people, including two of America’s 100 richest individuals.
• A foundation with $4 million in donations, with 60 percent from just five individual donors.
• Five lobbying firms on retainer, at a cost of $360,000 in 2013.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This back door voucher scheme in NY must be stopped. It is hard to believe that New Yorkers will allow religious and private schools to siphon money away from their neighborhood public schools. Of course, if the religious schools were Madrassas, we would already be reading about a s**t storm of backlash.
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The taxpayers already provide sped services, transportation and nurses to religious schools. At least we do for the elementary schools here in CT.
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Sorta like the post office, right?
Doesn’t the PO provide expensive services to the “free market” carriers, like delivery to the out of the way places, etc.
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In NY, too! AND – we even provide transportation from NY INTO CT to support your private schools up to 15 miles away.
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I’m on the fence about this. Since, in the US corporations are people, why can’t real people tax a deduction for all their real expenses? At age 62 no children to send to school but I would love to deduct my fuel, food and rent.
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Hard to know how to combat this takeover of public education. Thinking now about the probabilities of a Hillary Clinton run for president, if and how she will address this issue, and who she might select to lead USDE. I get the sinking feeling that she will not be a strong defender of teachers or public schools. There is also the prospect that there is a limited pool of talent willing and able to take on the job of reversing several decades of destructive policies.
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I don’t believe that Hillary will be any better than Bill on issues of labor and protecting public interests, including public education. She is one of the “New Way” Democrats from the 90s.
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@Jerry
I don’t have kids. Even before I was a teacher I had no problem paying into the public school system. You benefit daily from public schools. You should therefore pay your fair share of taxes. We would all like our food subsidized but I can barely afford my food after I pay my student loan, car payment and mortgage on my teacher’s salary. I paid into social security for years which I will now not get back due to being a teacher. That was 17 years of social security btw. You are part of a democracy and you should pay your share of taxes to keep that going.
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I hope you can recognize a joke when you see one.
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I wish I could figure out the joke because I paid into SS for over twenty years and can’t touch a penny of it.
Oh, I know the joke’s on me for being such a fool as to earn my own retirement-you know, deferred compensation as a teacher.
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Teachers in NYS can get their pension and social security. If you paid into social security, why can’t you collect it?
I agree on the school taxes. As my grandfather used to say, “Somebody paid for you!”
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Knowing that it funded by a few wealthy individuals, you know it’s about weakening public teacher unions and pensions. They are looking for ways to get into the NY suburbs and try to divide the middle class in suburbs of NY.
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Billionaire Kochs, Broad, Gates and the like use their checkbooks to fund the groups and campaigns that keep their agenda moving briskly along. Ad campaigns attacking unions and promoting corporate-friendly, charter-friendly politicians do major propaganda work. At certain moments, they also must produce the appearance of a mass support, like Eva Moskowitz did in NYC when she closed her charters and bused her teachers, parents and students to a demo at City Hall. A mass of bodies gathered in public is an indispensable “show of force” in power struggles all over the world. Public advocates also need such shows of force. Because our side has no billionaires, public shows of force are even more important than they are for the Kochs and their ilk, who have so many insider levers of power at their disposal. The hostile reception parents in NY gave State Commissioner he went from mtg to mtg were very strong shows of force. More are needed.
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Money doesn’t buy happiness or love, but it does get reformers what they want and why they are able to destroy public ed.
I agree that mass demonstration is what is needed from our side, since we don’t have money to buy air time. However, I still don’t think there is enough of the public (especially parents) who are informed on both sides to want to get involved.
1. What if teachers nation-wide agreed to walk out for 1 week?
2. What if parents nation-wide opted their kids out testing at the end of the year?
3. What if teens and young adults demonstrated like they did in the Vietnam War against corp exploitation today?
4. What if parents nation-wide held their kids back from kindergarten until they are seven?
The answer is:
1. Some teachers are still afraid of losing their jobs.
2. Parents are not well informed.
3. Our kids are subdued by technology which makes them passive agressive as compared to those in the Vietnam era.
4. I don’t see why this can’t be done, as I know of several parents who redshirt their kids so they can be bigger and stronger to compete in sports.
Yes, money might be part of the answer, however we need more participation in giving time to the cause. We act in passive agressive ways by writing to our congressman (as one example) when we should be at their doorstep in massive numbers.
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Hi Jon,
How do you propose to organize a nationwide job action? Our unions will be of no assistance.
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NJ Teacher: I wish there was an easy answer. I have mentioned a strike, but teachers are opposed. They would rather wait to file a law suit, when the effects of VAM start becoming apparent. I truly believe that parents can make change faster. I have also put a bug in a few parents’ ear, so at least they have options and where to seek more knowledge about this “movement”. I also believe that we must not give up the fight or become complacent. Change will happen, but I’m just a little bit impatient. I’m intrigued though with Defending the Early Years organization (deyproject.org).
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What we have are the wealthiest people in the country promoting charters and vouchers, half of our political leaders promoting charters and vouchers, and the other half of our political leaders who are “agnostics” and have just completely relinquished any responsibility for publicly-run schools.
Is it any wonder public schools have taken hit after hit after hit under ed reform leadership at the local, state and federal level? No one is acting as an advocate for the 90% of kids who attend publicly-run schools. We have the charter/voucher advocates and the agnostics and relinquishers.
As the parent of a public school kid, I resent paying state actors who have turned their back on my kids school. I resent paying Republicans to damage my kids school by their actions, and I resent paying Democrats to abandon my kids school by their inaction and cowardice.
Why do public school kids always lose under these ed reform schemes? Who speaks for them? How are the public school kids doing under ed reform in Chicago, in Philadelphia, in Tennessee in Ohio in Indiana in Michigan in Florida in NJ? It’s like they don’t exist. It’s outrageous, and adults who run around aclling themselves “advocates for children” should be ashamed of themselves. Judging by the results for publicly-run schools like mine they suck at their jobs OR they never intended to strengthen public schools. Which is it?
Next week when they all line up at the microphone to celebrate charters and vouchers and bash local publicly-run schools during “school choice week” every public school parent in the country should look at their local public school under ed reform leadership and ask who among these celebrities and pundits and politicians is making their local public school better. We didn’t hire these people to close our public schools and replace them with privately-run schools. We hired them to improve them. After a decade, have they kept that promise?
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I think public school parents need to realize that if we’re hiring charter and voucher proponents and we’re also hiring the passive relinquizers and agnostics who turn governance of schools over to private foundations and privately-run management organizations, we’re leaving our kids without an advocate in government.
Our schools are taking hit after hit after hit under ed reform for a reason. Maybe we should start hiring people who value public schools to run public schools. The active hostility to public schools on one side of the reform spectrum and the Zen-like “relinquishers” and “agnostics” on the other leaves our kids effectively abandoned.
People who value something take good care of it. Are ed reformers taking good care of our public schools? Isn’t that the bare minimum we should expect from the people we’re paying to RUN our schools? Why am I paying these people?
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Agree. See my comment to ira shor just above yours. We know the problems, but we need solutions.
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I read this ridiculous media language, the NYDaily New says charters need to “bloom” and the NJ papers says charters should be “encouraged” and I all I can think is, they get the carrot and my kids school gets the stick? What the hell? When did we all reach consensus on this? I don’t want a charter school. I want to keep my local publicly-run school. I PREFER experienced teachers. I don’t know one parent here who says “please, give me the person who has never done this before! They’ll be fresh!”
Who is representing me? The charter and voucher advocates are not, and the agnostics and relinquishers aren’t either. If my mayor announced he was “relinquishing” public schools I think I’d have to insist he re-think that and commit to actually doing his job, no matter how much personal disdain he has for our (currently) unfashionable olde-timey public schools. I read the Philadelphia mayor and he sounds bitter and powerless. What did he think was going to happen? He turned his public schools over to people who don’t value public schools. I mean, really. Cry me a river buddy.
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Also read Diane’s blog called “Defending the Early Years Against Adult Demands” that came just before this one. I just read it and it refers to taking action.
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This is what is the end result of thirty-plus years of D.C. policies that created this outrages transfer of wealth to a tiny number of financial elites. Now their greed knows no bounds; they are willing to usurp the very institutions of democracy itself for private gain.
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“outrageous”
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Can some one show me a different in results between the ideological charter and voucher advocates and the Zen-like “agnostics” and “relinquishers” in the reform camp?
Under both approaches I end up with the same thing, right? Privately-run, publicly-funded schools? I can have active, ideologically-based hostility towards my school or passive relinquishment of my school? That’s my two choices?
I think I know how this story ends. I think I know how public schools do when I have passionate charter and voucher advocates and then a group of people in government who are “agnostics” just waiting for markets to work their magic and absolutely no one in power who advocates for my existing public school. We’re the designated losers.
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I’d also like to drop the deceptive language in honor of school choice week, excuse me, “bash publicly-run schools week”.
There are two groups of publicly-funded schools. There are public schools and private schools and charter schools. Public schools are publicly-run and private schools and charters are privately-run. If ed reformers want to defend publicly-funded privately-run schools they may do that, but there’s a difference between the two systems and it is “publicly-run”. Judges recognize this essential difference in opinion after opinion as do the lawyers charter schools and private schools hire, so maybe the rest of us should drop the misleading language. Do we want a privately-run, publicly funded school system? Because that’s what we’re getting.
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Chiara – I think this topic has really touched a nerve with you. I appreciate your passion and agree with your comments.
I would laugh at your “bash public ed” line if it wasn’t so true.
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” … close links to the New York Archdiocese…” That points us to Timothy Dolan, does it not? And all he wants is our tax money?
The church certainly is in need of new revenue streams, due in large part to his leadership. He should be in jail.
The Milwaukee Diocese, which he led before his transfer to New York, is in bankruptcy because of his actions there to cover up sexual abuse by paying Catholic priests to leave Milwaukee, and go molest children someplace else.
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/milwaukee-priest-sex-abuse-records-be-released
Headline should read, “Some of America’s Filthiest and Most Corrupt…”
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Headline should read, “Some of America’s Filthiest and Most Corrupt…”
I don’t think we should give them that much positive attention. I’d turn it around with a billboard that reads like a wanted poster.
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Chiara Duggan: someone else on this blog pointed out that when people make a desperate choice in politics between what is touted as the “lesser evil” and the “greater evil,” in choosing the former they often end up in practice with the “more effective evil.”
Word games to conceal and mislead are part of the charterite/privatizer playbook.
For example, the LAUSD $1 billion iPad fiasco will be cynically and shamelessly laid at the doorstep of the supporters of and advocates for public education. Charters and vouchers will be proclaimed to be the solution to this ill-begotten debacle.
Rheeally!
Except, of course, there will be a rather inconvenient obstacle: this blog and many others like it and the work of increasing numbers of activists across the country.
Note that just 2 weeks ago this blog celebrated 9 million views.
Link: https://dianeravitch.net/2014/01/12/blog-passes-9-million-page-views-thank-you-readers/
It has added almost a half million more since then!
So a leading charterite/privatizer like Secretary of Education Arne Duncan can claim all he wants that he is not deeply and personally responsible for the promotion of CC and high-stakes standardized testing and the rest of the corporate reform agenda. Yet he and other edubullies, for all their billions and malanthropies and powerful political allies and celebrity enablers—
Are slowly losing control of the discussion around education.
Of that I have a better than 98% “satisfactory” [thank you, Bill Gates!] chance of certainty that we won’t have to wait ten years [thank you again, Bill Gates!] to see their mad dog pursuit of $tudent $ucce$$ end in failure.
😎
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All I keep thinking is “they were careless people, Tom and Daisy, they smashed up people and things and retreated back into their wealth..”
Not an exact F Scott quote, but you see my point.
Tell me we’re not careless and reckless to the point where we discard a 150 year old publicly-run school system and privatize it. We can’t be that stupid. Can we?
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Love the Gatsby reference.
I think of that book often while reading this blog, watching the news, etc.
I am afraid we have become that stupid….or we are so in the thrall of the wealthy we cannot see our own interests.
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Oh, dear, a reference to literature. You know that is strictly forbidden. I’m afraid we’ll have to take you to the Ministry of Truth for some re-education….
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When publicly-run schools are gone, will “liberal” ed reformers accept responsibility for their role in taking us from a public system to a private system?
Because “agnostic” isn’t going to cut it when we end up with a public education system that looks like our health care system.
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The rally last April in Buffalo was at the Arena where the Sabers play. The audience was 10,000 students bused in from the area Catholic Schools (for a government participation lesson) with the Bishop speaking (as well as a couple of politicians and Jim Kelly).
Children used as pawns. Of course their parents want vouchers. They have a vested interest in the outcome. They want to “have their cake and eat it, too”. The Catholic schools in Buffalo have been closing down to low enrollment numbers. Perhaps parents are using charter schools instead of parochial schools to avoid public education. I’m not sure. Perhaps it’s the economy. In either case, families might seek out private/religious schools if the costs were matched dollar for dollar.
In addition to charter schools, vouchers would just be another nail in public education’s coffin.
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