Kathleen McGrory of the Miami Herald shows how parents and teachers stopped the voucher bill in Florida.
““We really saw this as an attack on public education,” said Mindy Gould legislative affairs for the PTA.
“The testing issue had become a sticking point.
“John Kirtley, who helped craft the original voucher legislation in 2001 and is chair of the Step Up board, said it would have been “a very difficult task to quickly remake the academic accountability for this program.”
The sticking point was the lack of accountability for voucher schools.
The legislation would have transferred $874 million in public funds to nonpublic schools.
The organization overseeing it (Step Up) was very disappointed, as it collects a commission, which would have grown from $8 million to $24 million.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Here’s an ed reform lobbyist explaining how they parachute into states and buy elections:
“One of the primary reasons we’ve been so successful we spend about $1 million every other cycle in local political races, which in Florida is a lot of money,” Tuthill told a group at the University of California, Berkeley. “In House races and Senate races, we’re probably the biggest spender in local races.”
California, Ohio, Florida, doesn’t matter. You’re all getting the same boilerplate ed reform voucher bill that they’re selling all over the country.
In Ohio, our “lawmakers” (we may need a new word for them-“lawmakers” seems elaborate for people who are copying and pasting canned text into documents they call “bills”) didn’t even bother to change the title of the bill that they pulled off a voucher lobby website.
http://www.tampabay.com/blogs/gradebook/voucher-advocates-take-heat-over-2011-video/2170798
Chiara,
Doug Tuthill is not just an ed reform lobbyist. He happens to be the President of Step Up For Students, Florida’s sole agency appointed to dole out approx $300M (today) in voucher money to primarily religious institutions. (Middleman is required because Florida’s courts ruled it unconstitutional to give public tax dollars to religious institutions.)
Ergo, this revealing video where he describes using $1 million dollars (of our tax dollars) to donate to candidates who would favor voucher legislation was a turning point in our battle to defeat this legislation.
He also makes some repulsive remarks about demographics, political strategy. Basically, he hung himself. And still doesn’t get that he did.
Some parents defeated other (poorer and more disadvantaged) parents, yes.
Kickbacks are now called “commissions.” “Non-profit” (a term I use very loosely) is a misnomer.
It’s not about poorer and more disadvantaged parents. It’s all about the kids, remember?
I have come to the realization that when you deformers say it’s “all about the kids” you are not lying. It’s just that it’s YOUR kids you are talking about.
WT,
Vouchers have their place. They were not meant to REPLACE the public school system.
That is what FL was doing. Against our constitution and against voter’s wishes,lawmakers and their sole agency handling vouchers became piggish. What was originally supposed to be a program for special needs students (called McKay Scholarships) capped at $47 million, they circumvented the law and grew this via legislation like this year’s to $300 million. They did this under the radar many times while parents and educators were focused on other issues.
This year, they were going for a whopping billion dollar bonanza. And we all woke up to see how wrong this was. That billion is drained from the public schools. It weakens public schools that have already been weakened by years of de-funding.
They sell this by saying “all parents want this choice.” In my opinion, all parents first want the choice of a strong neighborhood public school that is regulated and accountable to the community for safety, academic performance. And they want a school that is financially solvent.
When foundations and lobbyists are writing state law, that means lawmakers are not doing their jobs.
While it’s certainly easier to write checks and outsource education to private actors, we should probably insist that they not completely relinquish responsibility for public schools and ask them nicely to DO THEIR JOBS.
If they spent half the time doing their own work that they do monitoring every public school teacher in the country, we wouldn’t have these lobbyist-written laws in every state in the country.
http://www.nola.com/education/index.ssf/2014/03/orleans_parish_school_board_co_10.html
Why don’t superintendents want to work in the New Orleans Miracle district? Do they really have to go to Bermuda to find a superintendent?
“The School Board asked for additional candidates last week, but no more applicants have emerged, lead search consultant Bill Attea said Thursday. He stepped up outreach on board members’ behest after they learned some popular local officials hadn’t been approached.
Attea said his team had since made contact with “at least a dozen” people and left messages for others. “They knew why we’re calling,” he said, and “my phone is not ringing off the hook.”
Initial interest in the position was lower than initially stated. Attea said last week there were 60 completed applications. But when he revisited them, he found that though 80 people began the online process, only 44 completed it and asked to be considered.
Questions have already arisen about Darden and Heatley, who were not known to the School Board members. When Darden was a finalist for Indianapolis superintendent last year, he was rambling with the public and defensive with the media when asked about why he lost his Philadelphia school district job, according to the Indianapolis Star.
Heatley’s candidacy has kicked up a scandal in Bermuda, where he started working only last August. An Island education official said parents now doubted Heatley’s focus; a member of Parliament called on him to commit to Bermuda or “get cracking,” according to the Bermuda Sun and Bernews.com.”
Orleans Parish School Board is not the Miracle District deformers tout. It is not the Recovery School District, it is the district whose schools were taken over by the state to become the RSD. Two separate entities.