On a vote of 27-21, the North Carolina House Education Committee passed a voucher bill (called, euphemistically, “opportunity scholarships”).
As the article linked above notes, private school vouchers will siphon a minimum of $100 million from the public schools over the next three years.
In her summary, Lindsay Wagner of NC Policy Watch reports that one supporter of the bill likened school choice to buying a carton of milk.
Readers may recall that Jeb Bush used the same metaphor when he spoke at last year’s Republican national convention.
Wagner wrote:
Rep. Bert Jones (R-Caswell, Rockingham) compared offering parents their “God-given right” to school choice to selecting which kind of milk they prefer.
“Just because you support HB 944 would not mean, as the opponents would make it seem, that you are against public education,” said Jones. “That basically means that … just because you purchase 2% milk means that something is wrong with whole milk, or 1%, or chocolate milk, or fat free milk, or all the milks out there now that aren’t even milk.”
The school voucher bill should now move on to the House Appropriations committee; however, the possibility remains that it could be inserted into the budget, without further debate.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Diane. While I usually agree with you, I disagree with you on this one. Lots of parents who benefit from these programs are good people. I have one child in public school and one on a scholarship.
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Why is it called scholarship? Just because they don’t want to say voucher?
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I’m happy that you and other parents are reaping the benefits of these voucher programs — I’m always happy when children are given opportunities and families find a way to succeed. I mean that sincerely. It is bittersweet for those of us committed to public education for all comers, however.
Let me tell you about the cost to public schools of giving a few children these opportunities. Here in Florida, where Jeb Bush pioneered this program, it is just a few students– very small percentages of eligible families participate in the program so far but the monetary effects are huge. If all eligible families participated the public school system would be bankrupted immediately. That has been well-known for years and many of us think that is the ultimate goal.
My school district is on an austerity budget. We just laid off 282 teachers, about 10% of our teaching force. Teachers and staff have not had a raise for 7 years now. We are getting a one-time $2,500 bonus next year sometime from the legislature. That is $250/month. Of course our insurance and pension payments went up about $375/month in the last 2 years so we are still underwater and Florida ranks in the bottom quartile of teacher pay nationally compared to a higher cost of living, at least near both coasts. I live on the Gulf Coast. Some of my colleagues’ children are eligible for Medicare and Free/Reduced Lunches because their pay is so low.
We are losing our librarian and our tech specialist next year due to budget cuts — those positions are no longer supported. We shared our librarian with another school this year. We share a family ESOL liaison, a psychologist, a physical therapist, a speech/language specialist, and a social worker with fiver other schools despite being a designated ESOL and special education hub school for our district.
We will set our thermostats at 77 next year because we can no longer afford the electricity to keep the buildings cool enough in our subtropical climate. We already have a severe mold problem in our building and it is made worse by mandatory turning off of the air conditioning every night and weekend to save money.
Our roofs are failing and we have a huge mold problem from the leaks. Teachers and children are developing many respiratory illnesses. Because our Tea Party controlled legislature and our Tea Party governor decided to divert ALL of the state funding for building maintenance and repair to charter schools in the latest budget, we have been told that our roof will be spot repaired and dealt with on a case-by-case basis. In other words, when the mold becomes severe enough and clearly visible (and it is in several classrooms) someone will come and patch the roof leak and replace the moldy ceiling tile.
The budget for our library has been cut so deeply that most of the new books we get are bonuses earned from 2 yearly book fairs (see the Tampa school that is begging for books in a post below — not unusual for Title I schools here at all).
We are no longer allowed to schedule field trips unless the children and their families pay for the bus and any other costs associated with the trip despite the fact of volumes of research that show the high learning impact of “being there” experiences, especially for poor children whose families rarely leave the neighborhood.
We share teaching materials between several teachers because we can no longer afford to purchase materials for every classroom within the allocated budget provided by the state. Teachers must provide copy paper and pay for most supplies they want or need themselves or ask poor families to buy them, creating resentment and often refusals.
What little money we do get from the state each year is automatically stripped of a percentage to pay to transport any eligible child whose family chooses the vouchers. They may choose any school and take the per-pupil funding along with them and we must pay for their transportation to that school. All children in “failing” or “struggling” schools are eligible and that is, thanks to the school grading scheme Bush put in place, quickly becoming the majority of schools. It is already a vast majority of Title I schools. Few thankfully use the vouchers now but if many chose to we would be forced to close altogether.
Many of our students who take a voucher and attend a religious or charter school end up returning mid-year when the parents realize that they must participate more, pay more, and be directly involved in the day-to-day operations of these schools. We have also had some parents bring their children back when they realized that the problems we had with their children traveled with them to the new school. The money does not come back for that student until the next year, however, so we have to stretch what little we have to cover even more.
One of the 2 “successful” (read: A graded) schools in our district is voting next week to become a charter and leave the district because the parents of that school raise over $240,000 a year to maintain their special focus on the Arts and the district had to seize their money to be able to afford district expenses for the rest of the school year.
Some of our financial problems come from mismanagement by our former superintendent because he did not budget properly for the last 2 years and the board has been on a property buying/school building spree due to very old (75+ years for most) and dilapidated school buildings needing to be replaced. A budget shortfall of several million dollars in an emergency fund combined with state cuts to the tune of tens of millions over the last 3 years has completely hobbled us. The state of Florida has cut and cut and cut our budget and we lose thousands and thousands of dollars more every year to the religious and charter schools that have begun to pop up all around us. We can’t continue as we are; that’s obvious.
This is public education in the United States of America in the Year of Our Lord 2013, the richest nation in the world with one of the highest child poverty rates in the world.
How we, a public and free school system open to all children who enter our doors no matter their testing potential and history, their ESOL or ESE status, or the parental involvement (or lack thereof), are supposed to compete with shiny new multimillion dollar charter and religious schools with seemingly endless funding from billionaires and hedge funders is beyond me. We are told constantly that the “free” market solution is the best. Choice is where it’s at!
The laws are stacked against public schools and the playing field is tilted to favor the religious and charter schools, who can and do skim our best and brightest and take the public funding for their education gladly while they ship the children with behavioral, language, and learning problems back to us and keep the money. That’s the reality of School Choice here in Florida. Is this the answer to the problems we face? If it is then I think we have lost the meaning of what it means to be a democratic republic. Some get all, most get none. That’s the situation here, anyway.
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Chris,
Such a quality of life is nearly inconceivable in western or northern Europe or Australia.
This is the consequence of a no-tax/low-tax individualist spirit that pervades our political system and even too much of our citizenry.
What next?
Most of your overpasses and bridges collapse? Your sewer system goes bust? Your water becomes privatized.
What you articulately so well in your report is a reflection of a much bigger picture of the shift of power and wealth in the United States. This ALL about taking the power away from the middle and working classes and giving it to the already uber rich, all in the name of “protecting taxpayers and their money (what money????) and fulfiling people’s civil rights to an education” . . . . .
When the people fully wake up (right now, they are just being roused) and organize and unite, only then will there be real hope for change. Imagine how every state is experiencing what your state is in varying degrees.
So much for the word “united” in “United States”.
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Chris,
I loved your post because it really spelled out first hand the mechanisms of how the voucher program and defunding is affecting your school district.
And we can’t blame Obama only, but certainly, he is not only intentional about charters and vouchers, but he really has an abject disdain for education as a public trust. He is one of this market choice transformation’s masterminds.
Each year, as schools get more and more defunded as a result of “choice” (such a specious term!), then the core of public schooling across the United States will have collapsed, and we will find ourselves all over again fighting for a basic civil right.
And with all of your state’s intentional financial woes (starving the budgets), it is not at all ironic that our federal and state governments crave and implement a tax code that coddles the rich and whips the middle class, that allows about 1.2 trillion dollars to be hidden in off shore havens for American corporations, that spends so much of OUR tax money to maintain occupations in other countries, that we give Facebook and Apple hundreds of milions of dollars in tax breaks, taxes they simply don’t have to pay, and that we give any real credence to the Tea Party and other like minded duped people.
So, you’re right, Chris. We are among the richest nations on earh, but the question is, “What becomes of those riches and how do they trickle down to maintain a true democracy the way they do in Finland, Sweden, Germany, France, Spain, Australia (the latter of which whose banks are far more regulated and whose economy is booming from iron ore).
Americans should realize a simple formula: cost of college + cost of healthcare + cost of housing + cost of an absence of a real robust mass transite system = NO MORE MIDDLE CLASS.
Chris, your report is a textbook PERFECT exemplar of the tectonic shifting of wealth and power in the United States. Our government in both parties has turned against its people in the guise of helping people. Our elected officials have counted on us being dumbed down over the decades. They have counted on us being distracted by mindless consumerism that has driven the economy (although more recently, for whom?).
I wonder often if they have counted on us for our anger?
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Hi Chris,
Thank you for a wonderful post.
Yep, free market is where it is at alright.
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What is the difference between a better education for all and a better education for each?
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You can only get a better education for each if you ensure a better education for all.
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If all get a better education then each will be better educated..
.All equals the group of eaches.
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Is that different from a better education for each?
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What’s your point? Explain yourself . . . .
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1) The USA has become one of the least economically mobile of any of the OECD countries, if you want to change that then you would want better education for all.
2) Vouchers don’t improve the educational outcome of those that get them while the cost of the policy is felt in every public school that loses money to the policy. Sure as an economist you would agree that’s not a good use of resources.
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But is there a difference between a better education for each and a better education for all?
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What’s your point?
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It seems to me that Rep. Jones could be understod as arguing for a system of education which has as its goal providing each student with the best education for that individual student. Given th
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Given the opposition to this position on a blog dedicated to the discussion of a better education for all, I am speculating that many people want to make a distinction between an educational system that creates a better education for each individual student and one that creates the best education for all. What I have in mind is the sort of distinction between the general will and the will of all made by Rousseau.
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You seem to think that it’s supporters of public education who want a standardized, one-size-fits-all, no excuses sort of approach to education. Sorry, but you have to look to the rheephormers/privatizers for that. In case you haven’t noticed, it is public school teachers and supporters who are desperately fighting for the right to approach each student as an individual and teach in ways that are beneficial for that student.
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I think posters here hold a variety of opinions. Certainly most are in favor of allowing at least older students to choose classes, some are in favor of allowing students to choose schools, but others support the sort of public school system used in my town where all and only those students who live in a predetermined catchment area are allowed to attend any school. It is this latter system I have been criticizing in my posts.
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I’m pretty fuzzy on the Rousseau, but using my unsophisticated caveman analysis, I think you’re right, although I don’t know what use to make of the observation. On a surface level, “each” and “all” can seem co-extensive — e.g., “all students” cannot be receiving a good education unless “each student” is receiving a good education. But in practice, “each” student is an individual with unique needs that may not be satisfied if the student lumped in with the undifferentiated “all.”
If resources were unlimited, maybe “each” and “all” wouldn’t be distinct concepts: choices and options to accommodate “each” student’s needs would abound, at no cost to anyone else. But obviously resources aren’t unlimited. That’s really what all of this fighting about education policy is about, right? How resources should be allocated?
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Maybe I can illustrate the difference between the two by referring to one of Dr. Ravitch’s blog entries from last fall. She said
“The more charters open, the more the public schools decline, especially when they lose their most motivated families and students. This is not simply a matter of transferring money from Peter to Paul, but crippling Peter to enrich Paul.”
I take her to mean that enriching Paul is a separate harm to society, created by the positive “peer effects” that occur when students who are admitted to charter schools have each other as fellow students. Suppose the positive peer effects existed, but there was no harm to the students who remained in private school. The educational gap would increase, some individual students would gain, no individual students would be worse off, so I would say that we have a better education for each (in economics this is referred to as a Pareto improvement). I am not sure that folks here would say this is a better education for all because the enrichment of Paul is seen as a problem, not something positive.
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” Suppose the positive peer effects existed, but there was no harm to the students who remained in private school. The educational gap would increase, some individual students would gain, no individual students would be worse off, so I would say that we have a better education for each (in economics this is referred to as a Pareto improvement). I am not sure that folks here would say this is a better education for all because the enrichment of Paul is seen as a problem, not something positive.”
I assume you meant “the students who remained in *public* school.”
Yes, in that hypothetical, you’d have created (or increased) an “educational gap” in the sense that some students’ education would have improved while others’ merely stayed the same. I don’t know how many people here would argue that’s an inequitable result. I might. If I did, the argument would presumably be that gaps are inherently bad, perhaps because education gaps, like wealth gaps, worsen class divisions and divide power unevenly, thus upsetting an optimal balance that a well-functioning democracy requires. I certainly haven’t thought that through. In any event, the hypothetical’s premise (that one group could benefit from peer effects without causing any negative peer effect on the other group) seems very debatable. And I don’t think Diane would say that negative peer effects are the only bad consequence of school choice.
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Let me relax the hypothetical. Dr. Ravitch’s statement made no reference to how many Peters were harmed, how many Paul’s were enriched. If you were interested in the best education for each, you might want to allow for the possibility that advantaging enough Pauls might be justified if very few Peters were harmed. The disinterest in addressing this issue suggests that providing the best education to as many as possible is not the goal we should be pursuing.
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I sent my kids to Catholic school when they were younger so I could be sure the received their religious education. I paid for that! I also believed it was my responsibility as a citizen to pay my taxes to support my local public school system, my public roadways, my sanitation services, etc….
The legislature in Indiana has decided families can get public dollars to send their kids to private schools for any reason. Family of 4 can make around $80,000 to qualify. Most voucher money has gone to religious schools & our state Supreme Court said there was no problem.
This is nothing but the dismantling of public schools through privatization. Wait until they start privatizing our water supply. I suppose people will want vouchers for that, too.
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“This is nothing but the dismantling of public schools through privatization”
Agreed.
“Most voucher money has gone to religious schools & our state Supreme Court said there was no problem.”
And this is the part I just cannot wrap my head around. How can tax payers be forced to pay for the religious indoctrination of other peoples children?
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Here is a good example of why an argument by analogy is always weak…
Shall we list all the reasons why a child going to school is nothing like a shopper choosing milk?
However, argument by analogy is often persuasive.
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In one way, though, it’s a perfect analogy. As we learned when Bush spouted it, there are only a very small number of milk suppliers, so “choice” is all an illusion anyway.
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“there are only a very small number of milk suppliers so “choice” is all an illusion anyway:
Excellent point.
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I am so conflicted by this because I take advantage of a $6k tax credit in NC to send one of my sons to a $22k a year special education school while my other goes to public. It goes to one answer not being right for everything and every circumstance. I can understand why parents want choice when the system is so broken and we can’t sacrifice our kids while we wait around for someone to fix it. I can also say, though that the legislature should be enacting these types of costs as an incremental cost to properly funding the public schools and to not fund public schools properly or to take funding away from public schools to support private options is perhaps even unconstitutional in NC (not a constitutional law expert, but NC Leandro case spirit seems violated by the way this bill offers more rights to some students – smaller class sizes, etc. vs. others.
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Vouchers paid for by tax credits are merely a way to buy political influence and curry favor on the cheap.
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If public money is funding private schools, do taxpayers now have a say in how private schools are run?
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Yes, and then they should be taking the same standardized assessments and signing their life away through InBloom data mining.
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The kids that get the money should be the only ones that have to take the tests..Please leave these private schools alone.
they are real schools…..and they can tell the state to stay outta their business!
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Here’s a explanation on who is behind all this and how key NC legislators are influenced/lobbied…
http://www.ncpolicywatch.com/2013/05/21/large-out-of-state-donors-fuel-north-carolinas-school-choice-movement/
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A God given right?I don’t know of any scripture referring to school choice. I hope people understand this is the party that doesn’t want people to have the basic need of affordable health care and now they tell us God wants us to choose our schools? Shame on any democrats who voted for this bill.
http://sgrtoday.com/categories/state-government/3664-gov-pat-mccrory-signs-medicaid-bill-preventing-expansion-under-obamacare.html
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It was so close….
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And one more thing: milk is really bad for you. Mainstream milk has bovine hormones and antibiotics in it and it will poison you over time and link itself to other health complications. So if one is shopping for milk as they are for education, let’s use a better anaology.
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It depends on whose cows you milk.
Not all cows are full of whatever drugs you mentioned..
There are good, healthy, beautiful, and drug-free cows!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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