When I was in Texas last week, several people–including state legislators–told me that they believe that rural Republicans will join Democrats in voting down vouchers. The rural Republicans know that vouchers would kill their local public schools, and they don’t believe that would be right.
Something similar may be happening in Wisconsin. Governor Scott Walker is eager to expand vouchers to new parts of the state, and Republican Senators are less than enthusiastic. Some say they want any voucher program to be subject to a local referendum, but Walker stoutly refuses. He must know that voters have never approved a voucher program. Other Republicans are undoubtedly concerned about how vouchers will affect their community schools. Of coure, Governor Walker wants vouchers for children with disabilities, which is an ALEC bill. The reality is that children with disabilities have better programs and more constitutional protections in public schools than in private and religious schools.
The fact that Republicans are pushing back against vouchers is good news.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
In Wisconsin we are trying very hard to inform people and especially parents of special needs how this will effect them and their children. It is very hard to fight the propaganda machine of ALEC, but we are trying. Thanks, for support.
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From a Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel article: State senate president Michael Ellis (R-Neenah) “said he was ‘totally opposed’ to the proposal on special needs students because private schools could agree to take certain special needs students while leaving the costliest and most difficult students to educate in public schools.”
Also from that article: “In the Senate, skeptical Republican senators who blocked some of Walker’s voucher proposals two years ago also raised concerns of their own about these latest expansion plans.
“This is phase one of a wide-open school voucher program for the state,” Senate President Mike Ellis (R-Neenah) said. “The governor didn’t respect the thoughts of about eight or 10 Republican senators who didn’t want it in the budget.”
The Appleton Post-Crescent, in Ellis’ district, has joined the struggle against the special needs vouchers with an editorial: Voucher plan bad deal for special needs students (http://www.postcrescent.com/article/20130222/APC0602/302220152 )
The upcoming fight is that both parts of the voucher expansion — both the special needs voucher program and the metastasizing of the Milwaukee/Racine vouchers — are proposed in the Governor’s budget, where they are not subject to separate public hearings nor a separate vote. We need to get them OUT of the budget where we can debate them separately and they can fail on their own shortcomings.
Yes, thank you for your support, and helping to spread the word!
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In Wisconsin, vouchers were easily pass in the Assembly. The battle will be in the Senate where there are enough anti-voucher moderate Republicans to stop voucher expansion. A big challenge, however, is the fact that Gov. Walker put the voucher expansion in the budget, which means if the voucher pass the Assembly and fail in the Senate, it will be a long hot summer as then it must go to conference committee and back to each chamber.
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