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Peter Greene: Will Mississippi Ditch Its “Miracle” by Endorsing Vouchers?

By dianeravitch
January 23, 2026 //
4

We have all heard the stories of the “Mississippi Miracle,” the dramatic rise in test scores in the midst of underfunding and poverty. Whether or not there has actually been a miracle, some Mississippi legislators are eager to help kids escape those miraculous schools. Specifically, by giving them vouchers for private schools.

The legislature is split, however. The key senator opposes vouchers, which always end up subsidizing kids in private schools. The key members in the House are all in to pay the tuition for affluent families.

Why in the world would legislators want to help students “escape” good schools?

Peter Greene writes:

Mississippi legislators are fiddling with school choice. Some of their fiddling is very limited, and some is just kind of odd, given the context of Mississippi education these days. 

In the senate, SB 2002  is a bill for public school choice, called open enrollment in some states and portability in others. It would give students the chance to pick a public school outside of their own attendance area. Education Committee Chairman Dennie DeBar said that’s as far as he’s willing to go. As J.T. Mitchell reports for Supertalk:

“This is as far as we’re willing to go. I’m not in favor of vouchers,” DeBar said in regard to universal school choice that includes using public funds to help parents pay for private school tuition. “This creates competition amongst our schools to make them better.”

The house, however, is willing to go quite a bit further. They’ve launched HB 2, the Mississippi Education Freedom Act, which would establish Magnolia Student Accounts, an education savings account style voucher.

The bill proposes most of the usual features. A few notable quirks:

* Half of the vouchers are designated for students currently in public school, half for those already in private school.

* Vouchers will be awarded in a first come, first served priority order. Families with under 100% of area median income. Next those between 100% and 200%, then 200% to 300%. Then “all other eligible students.” 

* Each of those eligible groups has a different voucher amount limits. It’s the total funding formula, not to exceed– $4,000 for the under-100% crowd, $2,000 for the next group, and so on. There are also limits on the total that can go to one household.

The voucher dollars can be spent on the usual stuff– tuition, fees, supplies, equipment, uniforms, testing. Plus a whole category for “technological devices” including television, videogame console or accessory, home theater or related audio equipment, and virtual reality products. 

House Speaker Jason White authored HB 2. He explains his support:

White is a longtime advocate for school choice, the idea of giving parents more of a say in where their children are educated without being restricted by their neighborhoods. In a statement, he pointed to Mississippi’s recent gains in education, including a No. 16 overall ranking and nation-leading improvements in reading. He said the Mississippi Education Freedom Act “builds on that success.”

I am not going to get into the Mississippi “miracle” at this point, other than to say that something certainly seems to have happened, but as always with education, it appears to have more to do with hard work, teacher efforts, school resources, and maybe some tweaking of the data, none of which is miraculous.

But whatever “that success” was, I’m not clear on how you build on it by letting parents pull their kids away from it while simultaneously taking resources away from those successful schools. “Our schools are finally improving,” declares White. “So let’s give families more ways to pull their kids out of them.” This does not seem like a recipe for success. 

For the sake of Mississippi students, let’s hope the senate shuts down HB 2. 

Categories Education Industry, Funding, Mississippi, School Choice, Vouchers

How Florida Cheats Public School Students By Lavishly Funding Kids in Non-Public Schools

By dianeravitch
January 12, 2026 //
4

The Network for Public Education reposted this analysis of school funding in Florida by Sue Kingery Woltanski. She was not surprised to discover that the state provides much more aid to students in non-public schools than to those in public schools. Imagine what a difference that money would make if it were directed to public schools, where it belongs. Florida now subsidizes the tuition of every student in private schools, religious schools, and home schools. Most of that state money goes to students who never attended public schools. Florida is underwriting the

In this post, Sue Kingery Woltanski breaks down the finances in just one Florida district to show how taxpayer-funded vouchers are actually resulting in more taxpayer dollars going to private schools than to public ones. Reposted with permission. 

What Monroe County’s numbers reveal about Florida’s broken school funding priorities
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1UT3ALNtP1/

I saw this image today, and it prompted me to take a closer look at the numbers for my Florida school district: Monroe County.

SURPRISE! Here is the state funding breakdown for Monroe:

  • Monroe’s 8,457 Public School students (district and charter) receive $181.86 each from the state (for a total of  $1,537,924).
  • While Monroe’s 743 Family Empowerment Scholarship voucher recipients receive $6,786.03 each from the state (for a total of $5,040,326).

What if that $5,040,326 was used to fund Monroe’s public school students instead? Per pupil funding would be nearly $600 more per pupil, which could translate into teacher raises of $8,000/year or a reduction in class sizes, expanded electives,  richer learning experiences, or some combination of all of the above – all of which could directly improve classrooms and student learning

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, DeSantis, Education Industry, Florida, Funding, Inequity, Privatization, Vouchers

ProPublica: The Zealots Who Hate Public Schools Now Work in the U.S. Department of Education

By dianeravitch
January 8, 2026 //
2

ProPublica published this article by Megan O’Matz and Jennifer Smith Richards in October, but I somehow missed it. It’s still relevant because it nails the personnel that Trump and wrestling entrepreneur Linda MacMahon installed at the U.S. Department of Education. The common thread among them: they want to privatize public schools, and they want to emphasize the Christian mission of schools.

It starts:

The department is not behaving like an agency that is simply winding down. Even as McMahon has shrunk the Department of Education, she’s operated in what she calls “a parallel universe” to radically shift how children will learn for years to come. The department’s actions and policies reflect a disdain for public schools and a desire to dismantle that system in favor of a range of other options — private, Christian and virtual schools or homeschooling.

Over just eight months, department officials have opened a $500 million tap for charter schools, a huge outlay for an option that often draws children from traditional public schools. They have repeatedly urged states to spend federal money for poor and at-risk students at private schools and businesses. And they have threatened penalties for public schools that offer programs to address historic inequities for Black or Hispanic students….

To carry out her vision, McMahon has brought on at least 20 political appointees from ultraconservative think tanks and advocacy groups eager to de-emphasize public schools, which have educated students for roughly 200 years.

Among them is top adviser Lindsey Burke, a longtime policy director at The Heritage Foundation and the lead author of the education section in Project 2025’s controversial agenda for the Trump administration.

In analyzing dozens of hours of audio and video footage of public and private speaking events for McMahon’s appointees, as well as their writings, ProPublica found that a recurring theme is the desire to enable more families to leave public schools. This includes expanding programs that provide payment — in the form of debit cards, which Burke has likened to an “Amazon gift card” — to parents to cobble together customized educational plans for their children. Instead of relying on public schools, parents would use their allotted tax dollars on a range of costs: private school tuition, online learning, tutors, transportation and music lessons.

Although more than 80% of American students attend public schools, Burke predicted that within five years, a majority would be enrolled in private choice options. The impact of their policies, she believes, will lead to the closure of many public schools.

Accountability, once a watchword for conservatives, won’t be needed in the future that McMahon and Burke are building.

As tax dollars are reallocated from public school districts and families abandon those schools to learn at home or in private settings, the new department officials see little need for oversight. Instead, they would let the marketplace determine what’s working using tools such as Yelp-like reviews from parents. Burke has said she is against “any sort of regulation….

Advocates for public schools consider them fundamental to American democracy. Providing public schools is a requirement in every state constitution.

Families in small and rural communities tend to rely more heavily on public education. They are less likely than families in cities to have private and charter schools nearby. And unlike private schools, public school districts don’t charge tuition. Public schools enroll local students regardless of academic or physical ability, race, gender or family income; private schools can selectively admit students.

Karma Quick-Panwala, a leader at the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund, which advocates for disabled students, said she wants to be optimistic. “But,” she added, “I’m very fearful that we are headed towards a less inclusive, less diverse and more segregated public school setting.”

McMahon has welcomedeaders of extremist rightwing groups into the Department, like Moms for Liberty and Parents Defending Education.

Little attention was paid to the conservative education activists in the front row [at McMahon’s confirmation hearings] from Moms for Liberty, which has protested school curricula and orchestrated book bans nationwide; Defending Education (formerly Parents Defending Education), which has sued districts to fight what it calls liberal indoctrination; and the America First Policy Institute, co-founded by McMahon after the first Trump administration.

Now two people who once served at Defending Education have been named to posts in the Education Department, and leaders from Moms for Liberty have joined McMahon for roundtables and other official events. In addition, at least nine people from the America First Policy Institute have been hired in the department.

AFPI’s sweeping education priorities include advocating for school vouchers and embedding biblical principles in schools. It released a policy paper in 2023, titled “Biblical Foundations,” that sets out the organization’s objective to end the separation of church and state and “plant Jesus in every space.”

The paper rejects the idea that society has a collective responsibility to educate all children equally and argues that “the Bible makes it clear that it is parents alone who shoulder the responsibility for their children.” It frames public schooling as failing, with low test scores and “far-left social experiments, such as gender fluidity…”

AFPI and the other two nonprofit groups sprang up only after the 2020 election. Together they drew in tens of millions of dollars through a well-coordinated right-wing network that had spent decades advocating for school choice and injecting Christianity into schools.

Ultrawealthy supporters include right-wing billionaire Richard Uihlein, who, through a super PAC, gave $336,000 to Moms for Liberty’s super PAC from October 2023 through July 2024.

Defending Education and AFPI received backing from some of the same prominent conservative foundations and trusts, including ones linked to libertarian-minded billionaire Charles Koch and to conservative legal activist Leonard Leo, an architect of the effort to strip liberal influence from the courts, politics and schools.

Maurice T. Cunningham, a now-retired associate professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts, studied the origins and connections of parents’ rights groups, finding in 2023 that the funders — a small set of billionaires and Christian nationalists — had similar goals.

The groups want “to undermine teachers unions, protect their wealthy donors from having to contribute their fair share in taxes to strengthen public schools, and provide profit opportunities through school privatization,” he concluded. The groups say they are merely trying to advocate for parents and for school choice. They didn’t discuss their relationship with donors when contacted by ProPublica.

These groups and their supporters now have access to the top levers of government, either through official roles in the agency or through the administration’s adoption of their views.

Tiffany Justice, one of the co-founders of Moms for Liberty, is optimistic about the plans of MacMahon:

Asked what percentage of children she imagines should be in public schools going forward, Justice, who is now with The Heritage Foundation’s political advocacy arm, told ProPublica: “I hope zero. I hope to get to zero….”

McMahon’s tenure also has been marked by an embrace of religion in schools. She signaled that priority when she appointed Meg Kilgannon to a top post in her office.

Kilgannon had worked in the department as director of a faith initiative during the first Trump term and once was part of the Family Research Council, an evangelical think tank that opposes abortion and LGBTQ+ rights.

She has encouraged conservative Christians to become involved in what she’s described as “a spiritual war” over children and what they’re being taught in public schools.

Open the link to read the article in full.

Categories Bigotry, Charter Schools, Civil Rights, Curriculum, Disruption, Education Industry, Extremism, For-Profit, Freedom to Learn, Freedom to Read, Privatization, Religion, Vouchers

The War on Public Education Hurts the Most Vulnerable Students

By dianeravitch
December 15, 2025 //
4

Garry Rayno, veteran journalist in New Hampshire, understands the war on public education. He knows that privatization is meant to diminish public education. He knows that it is sold by its propagandists as a way to help the neediest students. He knows this is a lie intended to fool people. He knows that the children who are hurt most by the war on public education are the most vulnerable students.

You might rightly conclude that the war on public education is a clever hoax.

Rayno writes:

“The true measure of any society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members.” 

The quote is often attributed to Mahatma Gandhi, but is also similar to words from British UN Ambassador Matthew Rycroft.

What better measure of treating the most vulnerable than the public education system open to all, not just those with the resources to send their children to private or religious schools.

Public education is often called the great equalizer providing the same learning  opportunities to a community’s poorest children to the richest in stark contrast with today’s political climate driven by culture wars and fear of diversity, equality and inclusion.

Public education has provided an educated citizenry for businesses, government and political decision making for several hundred years.

Public education is the embodiment of “the public good,” as it provides a foundation for a well-lived life that is both rewarding and useful to others.

But for the last few decades there has been a war on public education driven by propaganda, ideology and greed.

While the war has intensified in the last decade, it began with the US Supreme Court’s landmark Brown vs. the Board of Education of Topeka decision in 1954 declaring racial segregation in public schools a violation of the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause.

The decision overturned the court’s earlier Plessy vs. Ferguson decision which established the separate-but-equal provision for public education.

The Brown decision required the desegregation of public schools sending a tidal wave through the south reaching north to Boston.

The southern oligarchs who never really believed the South lost the Civil War soon colluded with others like them to develop a system to bypass their obligation to pay to educate black kids. Instead they established “segregation academies” where their children could learn in a homogeneous setting.

The system was created with the help of libertarian economist James Buchanan who touted the belief that the most efficient government is one run by the wealthy and educated (the oligarchs) because the regular folks are driven by self interest which makes government inefficient, and most importantly, costly through higher taxes.

This philosophy continues today as libertarians and other far right ideologues want to privatize public education because it takes too much of their money in taxes, and a humanities-based public education induces children to develop beliefs different from their parents, which once was the norm for American families.

It is not by happenstance we see parental bills of rights, opt outs, open enrollment and greater and greater restrictions on what may be taught, along with increased administrative work loads piled onto public education by politicians in Concord as they double down on refusing to do the one simple thing the state Supreme Court told them to do 30 years ago, provide each child with an adequate education and pay for it.

Instead they have pushed a voucher system costing state taxpayers well over $100 million this biennium, with 90 percent of it paying for private and religious school tuition and homeschooling for kids who were not in public schools when their parents applied for grants if they ever were in public schools.

Most of the voucher system expansion occurred under the Chris Sununu administration with his back-room-deal appointed Education Commissioner Frank Edelblut.

Edelblut nearly beat Sununu in the 2016 Republican primary for governor for those with short memories.

Sununu sent his children to private schools while he was governor and Edelblut homeschooled his children.

Public education during the eight years of the Sununu administration was not a priority although 90 percent of the state’s children attend public schools.

And it is not coincidence that after the Republican House resurrected House Bill 675 which would impose a statewide school budget cap, that Gov. Kelly Ayotte’s small DOGE team — led by two “successful businessmen” — issued its long awaited report and one category targeted schools following the legislature’s Free State agenda of greater transparency and efficiencies, seeking Medicaid and insurance reimbursements and reforming school audit requirements. 

HB 675 failed to find enough support last session because it violates the once sacred “local control ideal” often touted for local government.

House Majority Leader Jason Osborne, R-Auburn, issued a press release linking the report and the bill.

“HB 675 applies the findings of the report where they matter most. When dollars are committed and taxpayers are on the hook, HB 675 puts power back into the hands of the voter by requiring a higher threshold of consent,” he said.

Yes a higher threshold which means the will of the majority is nullified by a minority.

State lawmakers fail to acknowledge they provide the least state aid to public education of any state in the country. Instead local property taxpayers pay 70 percent of public education costs and should be able to set their school budget and various other realms usurped by state lawmakers without a “higher threshold of consent.”

The battlefield in the war on public education shifts over time. It began with religious and political ideology; moved into gender and sexual identification; parental rights, including who decides whether school materials and books are appropriate; school choice such as open enrollment, which will exacerbate the already great divide between property poor and wealthy school districts; and is now positioned to impact the most vulnerable of public school children, those with disabilities.

Last week special education administrators gathered for their annual meeting and to celebrate 50 years of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) to improve access to education and to integrate classrooms to include those with disabilities.

Today’s special education services and supports are lights overcoming the darkness of institutionalization or stay-at-home kids separated from their peers in public schools.

Many children with disabilities were told to stay home and not to attend school as there were no specialized services or therapies for them.

But services are expensive as federal lawmakers knew they would be, promising to pay 40 percent of the cost, but reneging on that promise and paying only about 13 percent.

In New Hampshire, most of the remainder is paid by local property taxpayers.

The state pays little until a student’s costs reach three-and-a-half times the state’s per-pupil average or about $70,000.

But state lawmakers have also failed to live up to their  obligation to pay their state of the catastrophic costs, so local school districts are reimbursed at less than 100 percent.

Last session lawmakers approved an 80 percent threshold as the low end of the reimbursement scale.

Special education costs are difficult to predict and a budget can be blown quickly if a couple students needing costly special education services move into a district.

The federal government is potentially moving the Office of Special Education from the Department of Education to the Department of Health and Human Services which local special education administrators said would change the goal from education to a health model which would imply there is a remedy or an illness.

And they said it is the first step back down the road they began traveling 50 years ago when students with disabilities were institutionalized or warehoused in one facility.

Several bills to come before the legislature this session will explore going back to centralized facilities to provide services and supports and explore if the private sector can better provide the services, which is consistent with the libertarian ideal of private education.

Great strides have been made in the last 50 years allowing people with disabilities to lead productive and rewarding lives independently, but that could change as lawmakers focus on costs and greater efficiencies, and the political climate seeks a homogenous environment without minorities, disabilities or vulnerable people.

Garry Rayno may be reached at garry.rayno@yahoo.com.

Distant Dome by veteran journalist Garry Rayno explores a broader perspective on the State House and state happenings for InDepthNH.org. Over his three-decade career, Rayno covered the NH State House for the New Hampshire Union Leader and Foster’s Daily Democrat. During his career, his coverage spanned the news spectrum, from local planning, school and select boards, to national issues such as electric industry deregulation and Presidential primaries. Rayno lives with his wife Carolyn in New London.

Categories Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Ethics, Extremism, Fake, Fraud, Funding, Lies, New Hampshire, Privatization, Propaganda, School Choice, Supporting public schools, Vouchers

Andy Spears: Florida “Lost” 30,000 Students Who Took Voucher Money

By dianeravitch
December 11, 2025 //
4

Andy Spears is a veteran education journalist who tracks policy and finances across the South, but most often in Tennessee, where he lives. He has recently been following waste, fraud, and abuse in voucher programs in Arizona and Florida, learning lessons that Tennessee could learn from.

Spears wrote on his Substack blog The Education Report that Arizona passed the $1 Billion mark in annual spending on vouchers, most of which pays tuition for students already enrolled in nonpublic schools, and some of which is collected by very rich kids. Voucher money is spent on all sorts of things, not just tuition, including vacations, diamonds, lingerie, home appliances, television sets, vacations, and gift cards.

Arizona State Attorney General Kris Mayes announced that she is opening a review of voucher spending, especially the State Department of Education’s policy of rubber-stamping expenses under $2,000.

Spears also reported on Florida’s slipshod accounting of voucher students:

Where are Florida kids in school? Are they being counted as voucher students on a private school’s roster while actually attending a public school? Is the money following the student, or is it making a stop in the bank account of a private operator with little accountability?
In this story about a private school that accepted voucher funds for 80 students it never saw or educated, there’s an even bigger revelation.

In this story about a private school that accepted voucher funds for 80 students it never saw or educated, there’s an even bigger revelation.

Sen. Don Gaetz, R-Crestview, said that at any given moment the state does not know where 30,000 students are in terms of school categories — traditional public or voucher-supported private or home schools — together worth $270 million in education support.

30,000 kids. $270 million. And a state audit says the Florida Department of Education doesn’t seem to know what’s going on.

State legislators last week reviewed a state audit that found the school choice scholarship program in Florida exhibited “a myriad of accountability problems.”

Oh, and that original story – also pretty alarming. Apparently, a school claimed 80 students who lived 130 miles away – students they’d never seen or educated.

According to the decision, during the 2023-2024 school year, Little Wings submitted invoices to Step Up for Students, an organization administering state vouchers, for students previously enrolled at Touched by an Angel school, 130 miles away in Lake City.

The owner of the school that took voucher funds while not providing education to kids said she was not aware that is illegal.

Harris testified that during the 2023-2024 school year, her school received state scholarship funds for students that did not physically attend the school and that she did not know it was illegal to do so.

Florida’s school voucher scheme has private school operators billing for students who do not attend their school. It can’t keep track of as many as 30,000 students at a time. Hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars are not properly tracked or accounted for

This is what proponents of “school choice” want – unlimited “choice” options, which means unlimited ways for unaccountable private operators to get their hands on loads of taxpayer cash.

Categories Arizona, Education Reform, Funding, Vouchers

Jeff Yass, the Billionaire Who Funds Vouchers

By dianeravitch
December 11, 2025 //
7

Jeff Yass is one of the richest people in the world. He is the richest person in Pennsylvania. He is #25 or #27 on Bloomberg’s Billionaires’ Index, depending on which day you check. His net worth is about $65 billion. He co-founded the Susquehanna International Group, which is based in Pennsylvania. He is also a major investor in TikTok and is widely believed to have persuaded Trump not to ban it. In the last decade, he has given hundreds of millions to political campaigns, including the 2024 Trump campaign.

Yass was recently interviewed by The Washington Post, where he talked about his passion: Vouchers. The writers of the article were Laura Meckler, Beth Reinhard, and Clara Ence Morse.

Yass thinks the public should pay for students to go wherever their parents want them to go: to private schools, religious schools, charter schools, any kind of school, including public schools. He thinks all students should get vouchers, regardless of family income.

He believes the public schools are failing and that universal vouchers will turn American education into a great success.

Yass provided $6 million to Texas Governor Greg Abbott to run pro-voucher Republicans against moderate Republicans who supported public schools. Abbott ran a campaign of lies against the moderate Republicans, asserting that they opposed more funding for public schools and that they supported open borders.

With Yass’s money and Abbott’s lies, they managed to knock off enough moderate Republicans to finally pass a voucher bill. The voucher program is currently costing nearly $1 billion, and most of the voucher money pays the tuition of students previously enrolled in private and religious schools.

The strange part of Yass’s devotion to charter schools and vouchers for religious and private schools is that Jeff is a graduate of the New York City public schools. He graduated from Bayside High School in Queens. He then attended Binghamton University in New York, where he spent most of his time playing poker, betting on horse races, and honing a keen ability to calculate the odds and winning.

As a young man, he read Milton Friedan’s Capitalism and Freedom and became a Friedman devotee. He met Friedman several times; when he asked the great conservative economist which philanthropy he should support, Friedman said “school vouchers.”

Yass jumped in to support school choice. His ideological commitment to them is so strong that he ignores that show that most vouchers are taken by kids already enrolled in non-public schools. He thinks all students should get vouchers, including those whose families are wealthy.

Yass confidently told The Post that studies of voucher programs show “overwhelmingly” positive results. Several early studies of targeted voucher programs have indeed shown positive results on standardized tests, and some research shows positive impacts on other metrics such as college enrollment.

But most research over the past decade or so shows either no effect or a negative impact on test scores for larger-scale programs. Some charter schools struggle with low test scores just like traditional public schools do. That’s at least partly because educating children with many needs and few advantages is a challenging task

Yass maintains that these programs help children. But he also says he doesn’t really care what the studies say or how children perform on tests. He takes the libertarian point of view that all parents should be empowered to choose the school — public or private — that they want for their children, no matter what.

“If the mother or the parent wants the kid to go from one school to another, who the hell is anyone to tell them not to?” he told The Post. “I don’t care what the studies say.”

Yass has spent many millions in his home state of Pennsylvania, but thus far has failed to get sweeping voucher legislation passed.

He has a a starry-eyed and warped view of the U.S. economy.

In a 2021 conversation sponsored by the Adam Smith Society, part of a free-market think tank, he said that the U.S. is almost to the point where “no one” is hungry, cold or lacks basic health insurance.

“What’s the difference between a billionaire and a guy who’s making $100,000 a year? They’re both at home watching Netflix. And they’re both on their iPhones,” he said then. “The disparity between how rich people live and how poor people live in America has never been smaller.”

Government data shows that in 2024, there were 27 million uninsured Americans and in 2023, 18 million households were uncertain if they would have enough food. Wealth inequality has been rising for decades, with the richest families increasing their wealth at a faster rate than everyone else.

Despite Yass’s multi-million dollar contributions to candidates in Pennsylvania, his candidates have frequently lost. Yass has been singled out by protest groups who resent his efforts to buy elections and determine the future of the state.

Critics say his giving represents an absurd amount of influence for one person, who can press his political agenda simply because he is rich….

“Hey hey! Ho ho! Billionaires have got to go!” chanted about 50 protesters marching to Susquehanna’s front door. The group outside Yass’s office in late September wasn’t an unusual sight. All Eyes on Yass, a coalition of education, labor and civil rights groups, has worked to turn Yass into the state’s prime villain, creating an online “Yass tracker” that allows voters to look up whether their state elected officials have received money from Yass-funded PACs.

The protestors organized in response to Yass’s efforts to change the composition of the State Supreme Court.

In the last election, he supported three Republican candidates trying to defeat three Democratic judges on the State Supreme Court. All three of his candidates lost.

It was the 12th demonstration since 2022 organized by All Eyes on Yass. In a year when Musk’s role at the White House prompted intense criticism of billionaires in politics, this group stands out in its singular and persistent focus on Pennsylvania’s richest man.


“We’re here with a simple message: Billionaires like Jeff Yass can’t steal our elections,” said Raquel Jackson-Stone, 32, who works for a civil rights group called One Pennsylvania. “They don’t care about the same things we care about, like housing affordability and making our public schools better…”

Yass rarely if ever interacts with people he disagrees with on this subject. He volunteered to The Post that in business, he advises his employees to seek out alternative points of view. “I always say, ‘Go find the smartest person who disagrees with you,’” he said.

But he said he has never had a personal conversation with a public education advocate to try to understand their point of view. “I would love to do that,” he said….

In the interview with The Post, Yass stood by his comments. He said the divide in America is not about money but about how much satisfaction people get from their work. “That’s the inequality. Wealthy, educated people enjoy their jobs. Lower-income people don’t enjoy their jobs.”

His confidence feeds his opponents but also his conviction to keep spending. If the criticism bothers him, he doesn’t let it show. He sees no problem with one man using money made on Wall Street to press a personal agenda. And he compares his influence not against that of other individuals but to teachers unions and other large interest groups that represent thousands of people each.

As Yass sees it, he’s the one fighting for the underdog — a billionaire speaking up for those who don’t have billions.

“It’s David versus Goliath,” he said. “I represent David.”

So Jeff Yass has never talked to a public education advocate to test his views. I volunteer.

Categories Billionaires, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Pennsylvania, School Choice, Texas, Vouchers

Carol Burris Interviews Me About My New Book

By dianeravitch
December 10, 2025 //
2

The Network for Public Education sponsored a conversation between me and Carol Burris about my new book: AN EDUCATION: HOW I CHANGED MY MIND ABOUT SCHOOLS AND ALMOST EVERYTHING ELSE.

I think you will enjoy it!

https://vimeo.com/1137499967

https://share.google/OUhluBgNodmED08UF

Categories Charter Schools, Disruption, Education Industry, Education Reform, Personal, Privatization, Supporting public schools, Vouchers

New Hampshire: Vouchers Are Robin Hood in Reverse

By dianeravitch
December 9, 2025 //
2

Garry Rayno of InDepthNH keeps a close watch over the legislature in New Hampshire. He is particularly interested in the state’s relatively new voucher plan. It was sold, as usual, as a plan to help poor kids “escape failing schools.”

That wasn’t what happened.

Predictably, the legislature removed income limits and the program now subsidizes affluent families whose children never went to public school.

The program this year will cost $51.6 million. Almost $50 million goes to students already enrolled in private or religious schools.

Meanwhile, the funding for vouchers is drawn from the state’s Education Trust Fund, which was intended for public schools. That means the subsidy for nonpublic schools comes right out of the public schools’ budget, with no tax increases to compensate public schools. The vast majority of New Hampshire’s students are now subsidizing the nonpublic schools.

There is a new regime at the Department of Education that has released more than the most basic information about the Education Freedom Account program.

For the program’s first four years, the department released spreadsheets detailing the numbers of students, where they live and how much each student received in grants with a total cost of the program and the quarterly state distributions to cover those grants.

The money does not really go to the parents, its goes to the Children’s Scholarship Fund NH, which takes its cut and sends the rest in the child’s name to ClassWallet, a company that received early stage investments twice from the Chinese-based venture capital firm Sinovation Ventures.

A 2018 Defense Department report flagged the company as participating in China’s “technology transfer strategy,” a state initiative to acquire foreign innovation.

Several states that also use ClassWallet for voucher money distribution have raised concerns about data security and foreign influence like Arizona and Missouri, but not New Hampshire, although Gov. Kelly Ayotte issued Executive Order 2025-04 which would appear to prohibit doing  business with a company with investors like ClassWallet.

ClassWallet does not technically work for the state, but it was hired by a state contractor, Children’s Scholarship Fund of NH, which administers the EFA program.

How many parents of EFA students would want their education spending data potentially accessed by a foreign country like China?

That information is not what was released late last month by the Department of Education, but is easily found with a Google Search, which ironically also brings up that Sinovation Ventures was co-founded by former China Google President Kai-Fu Lee.

The information released last month provides far greater detail than released under former DOE Commissioner Frank Edelblut, who kept the program’s details out of the public’s eye, such as where the money went and if the children’s foundation was carefully vetting income levels and other requirements to access additional grant money.

A small sample compliance report by the now long gone DOE overseer of the EFA program, indicated it was not following guidelines.

The 100 applications sampled for the report over the first two years of the program had a 25 percent error rate that resulted in a rebate to the state for only those applications improperly approved not for 25 percent of the program’s costs.

One of the biggest criticisms of the program is that very few of the students using the state’s money are actually leaving public schools to join the program. Instead the vast majority of the students using EFAs were already in religious or private schools or homeschooled when their parents applied to participate in the state-funded program that draws its funding from the Education Trust Fund, which also pays for the bulk of state aid to public schools, no matter how meager compared to every other state in the country.

This year the program is projected to cost $51.6 million and will cost an additional $61.9 million next year, totaling $113.5 million for biennium, which makes it $26.7 million over budget.

And if you read the fine print of the data released last month, only $1.68 million on the low end, to $4.42 million on the high end for this school year, and $2.52 million if you use the four-year average is going to kids who were not in public schools when they joined the program out of the $51.6 million for this school year.

The data from the DOE notes that for the current school year only 343 students left public schools to join the program whose enrollment is now 10,510 students, which is nearly double what it was last year before the Republican-controlled legislature removed any earnings cap for the program.

That 3.26 percent of the students is the low end of the estimate above, and if you use the number of new students this year compared to last school year, which is 4,745, the new students from public schools is 7 percent and the high figure.

If you add the kids leaving public schools for the last four years, the number is 1,162 which compared to enrollment over those four years of 23,937 and the number is the four-year average.

That means state taxpayer money going to support students who were not in public schools when they joined the EFA program for this school year would be between $49.92 million and $47.18 million.

That is money the state was not paying to educate these kids because they were in religious or private schools or homeschooled and not supported by state dollars.

In essence that is a new education cost for the state, but no new taxes, or fees or anything was created to pay for it.

Instead, it is money drawn from the Education Trust Fund which was established after the Claremont education decisions to support public education.

As Rayno writes: For those receiving the money on the upper end of the income scale, the little less than $5,000 grant average is a subsidy that allows another ski trip to Aspen or Tahoe this winter.

So when lawmakers say the state doesn’t have the money to increase its share of public education costs, it really means “we do not want to increase the state’s share, but we are OK subsidizing religious and private schools and homeschooling.”

For those receiving the money on the upper end of the income scale, the little less than $5,000 grant average is a subsidy that allows another ski trip to Aspen or Tahoe this winter.

But the above figures are probably a little generous because they do not account for the kids who joined the EFA program from public schools and then returned to public schools either before or after one year.

Data released by the department indicates that last school year, 101 of the former public school students who switched to the EFA program, re-enrolled in public schools.

For the 2023-2024 school year, 75 EFA students returned to public schools, and for the 2022-2023 school year, 38 re-enrolled in public schools.

But those are not the only ones leaving the EFA program every year.

It also does not include EFA students who either graduated or completed their course of instruction that school year or left for unexplained reasons.

For the 2024-2025 school year, 151 EFA students left the EFA program because they graduated or completed their course of study along with the 101 who returned to public schools, and the 887 who left for unexplained reasons.

The total number of students leaving the program that school year was 1,139 or 21 percent of the total EFA enrollment for the year. 

For the 2023-2024 school year, 108 students either graduated or completed their course of study, with the 75 who returned to public schools, and 525 who left for unexplained reasons.

The total number of students leaving the EFA program that school year were 708, or 19 percent of the total EFA enrollment.

For the 2022-2023 school year, 76 students graduated or completed their course of studies, along with the 38 who re-enrolled in public schools and the 344 who left for unexplained reasons.

The total number of students leaving the program was 458 students or 15 percent of the enrollment that year.

Total students leaving over the three-year period was 2,305 from a total three-year enrollment of 12,557 or 18.4 percent.

What would we say about a dropout rate of nearly 20 percent if it were a public school? 

This is not the widely successful program its advocates tout on the floor of the House and Senate and does not save school districts the amount of money Edelblut used to claim because more than 90 percent of the students in the program were not in public schools, but he counted them as savings to school districts.

This program is not serving the children of low-income parents who want an alternative to public schools, but those parents who can already afford to pay for their children to attend those alternatives without the state’s taxpayers’ help.

That is not government helping the most vulnerable, it is Robin Hood in reverse, a system New Hampshire knows very well.

Garry Rayno may be reached at garry.rayno@yahoo.com.

Categories Education Industry, Ethics, Funding, Hoax, New Hampshire, Religion, Separation of church and state, Vouchers

Why an Advocate of High-Stakes Testing and School Choice Did a 180

By dianeravitch
December 5, 2025 //
22

I was interviewed by Brian Lehrer of WNYC, public radio about my latest book, probably my last. He is a great interviewer. He asks good questions, followed by people who called in to disagree with me.

It’s an excellent interview.

I apologize if I’m browbeating you with stuff about my book, but the book is really good; I worked on it for two years; the mainstream media has ignored it; and I think you will enjoy reading it.

In case you haven’t noticed, the title is:

An Education: How I Changed My Mind About Schools And Almost Everything Else (Columbia University Press). You can buy it from Columbia University Press, your local independent bookstore, or Amazon.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Ravitch, Diane, School Choice, Standardized Testing, Vouchers

New Hampshire: Parents Complain that Voucher Program is a Scam

By dianeravitch
December 2, 2025 //
2

Parents in New Hampshire are outraged by the state’s new voucher law. It is siphoning money from public schools, which are attended by 90% of the state’s students, and 95% of those with disabilities. When the state legislature debated vouchers, parents overwhelmingly opposed them. But the legislature ignored the public and parent opposition and approved a modest voucher plan. The original plan was based on the claim that vouchers would “save poor kids from failing schools,”

That plan has since expanded dramatically; no longer modest, it now supplies vouchers to any student, regardless of family income. Currently, 80% of the vouchers are claimed by kids who never attended public schools. Now that the legislature has lifted income limits for those who seek vouchers, the program has become a subsidy for families that can afford to pay the tuition.

Garry Rayno of InDepthNH has the story:

CONCORD — Public education advocates said the state’s universal voucher program is putting students, taxpayers and education professionals at risk as more and more taxpayer money is diverted to the unaccountable program.

At a press conference celebrating American Education Week, Megan Tuttle, president NEA — NH, said the program takes money away from public schools as the state now funds two school systems, one public and the other private.

“As we celebrate American Education Week, let’s recommit to strengthening, not destabilizing public schools,” Tuttle said. “Public dollars belong in public schools. Our students deserve fully funded public schools, not policies that erode them. And our state’s future depends on getting this right.”

She noted private schools do not have to follow the same guidelines as public schools who have to accept all children no matter how expensive their education or their educational needs.

Nor are private schools bound by federal civil rights provisions, she said, such as the Disabilities Education Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Every Student Succeeds Act.

“The only choice in a voucher system,” Tuttle said, “is that private and religious schools get to pick their students, not the other way around.”

The state voucher program, Education Freedom Account, was initially sold as providing opportunities to low-income parents to find the best educational environment for their students if they do not do well in the public school environment.

Initially the program was limited to students whose parents earned 300 percent of the federal poverty level or less, but earlier this year the program was opened to any parent whose child is eligible to attend public school in the state regardless of earnings.

The change doubled the number of students in the program from 5,204 last school year to 10,510 this school year and the cost increased from $28 million to $52 million this year to date.

While the program was sold as an alternative to public education, more than 80 percent of the students to date were in religious or private schools, or homeschooled when they joined the EFA program as is the case in other states with universal vouchers.

Public schools in New Hampshire educate 90 percent of the state’s students and 95 percent of those with disabilities.

Rep. Hope Damon, D-Croydon, who is the deputy ranking member of the House Education Funding Committee, said her party is fighting every day to ensure every child regardless of income or zip code has access to a high quality education, while the governor and Republican lawmakers have doubled down on their reckless school voucher scheme.

“A few years ago, we were promised that vouchers, these so-called EFAs, would serve families in need,” Damon said,  “but it’s clear that was just a ploy for Republican lawmakers in Concord to open up the floodgates and push through an over-budget, universal school voucher program.” 

Now some of the wealthiest families receive taxpayer-funded handouts that pay for private schools, she said, while just 19 percent of the students in the EFA program are from low-income families.

“Our most vulnerable families are being left behind,” Damon said. “Our public schools are already punching above their weight, scoring very well nationally despite extremely limited resources from the state. Vouchers just make their job harder.”

She said the program strains taxpayer dollars and increases property taxes, while it is already $12.3 million over budget at a time when the Republican controlled legislature voted to significantly cut funding for University of New Hampshire.

“This universal voucher scheme is expensive. It flies in the face of fiscal responsibility,” she said. “There’s very little accountability and oversight on how vouchers are used.”

New Hampshire’s future depends on its students having a high quality public education, she said.

Republicans have long argued parents should decide how best to educate their children and are in the best position to determine whether their child is receiving an adequate education.

Longtime school choice advocate, former Rep. Glenn Cordelli, R-Tuftonboro, argued repeatedly that if parents do not like the education their child receives in one EFA educational setting, they are free to move their child to a new one.

“Education freedom is not theory. It is accountability that begins at the kitchen table, where a mother or father can say this is not working and choose what does,” Cordelli said after he received an award earlier this year from the Children’s Fund of NH, the organization that administers the program for the state. 

During the press conference David Trumble of Weare, a business owner, educator and former State Senate candidate, said the state has to invest more in its students just as a business has to invest to grow. 

Republicans focus their efforts on diverting tens of millions of taxpayer dollars to fund private school education, he said, expanding the voucher program to cover wealthy families who can use these funds to pay for tuition or skiing lessons.

“The Republican voucher scheme is dangerous because public schools continue to go underfunded and students lose out on the resources they need to ensure long-term success,” Trumble said. “The state is long overdue in living up to its constitutional mandate to fund the public schools.”
He noted the current situation in Claremont where the school district faces a $5 million deficit building up over the past three school years due to fiscal mismanagement at the Supervisory Administrative Unit level.

He said the city would probably not be in this situation if the state had been meeting its constitutional obligation to fund public education.

Earlier this week, the Senate Education Committee approved a revolving loan program for the city to meet its cash flow needs this school year and into the future by allowing early borrowing from the state adequacy grants it will receive in the future.

That plan included a provision allowing the parents of students to apply for EFA grants mid year to remove their children from the school district, due to the uncertainty.

The plan also requires the city to place a school budget cap warrant article on its next annual school district meeting, both pet projects of GOP lawmakers.

“Claremont’s the canary in the coal mine,” Damon said. “It is not the only district that is in significant financial distress, but attaching even more unlimited vouchers to that bill is a further way to defund public schools. It’s a very, I think, inappropriate attachment.”

When asked what lawmakers could do to bring more transparency, accountability and fiscal constraints to the program, Damon said “the Free State-influenced Republican Party does not want vouchers to be diminished at all, but we’re not going to stop trying.”

Tuttle suggested voters make a change in the composition of the legislature. 

“We know the majority of voters in New Hampshire, they believe public funds belong in public schools,” Tuttle said. “And looking ahead to 2026, we need to be electing leaders in the state of New Hampshire who are going to . . . put in some new policies.” 

Garry Rayno may be reached at garry.rayno@yahoo.com.

Categories Budget Cuts, Education Industry, Ethics, Failure, Funding, New Hampshire, Privatization, Vouchers
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