A sharp-eyed reader noticed that the Wikipedia description of vouchers has been revised to put vouchers in a favorable light.
The entry somehow slides past the fact that voters have turned down vouchers whenever they were put on the ballot.
Every voucher program in the U.S. was enacted by a state legislature–or in the case of D.C.–by Congress. Not one of them was adopted or approved by voters. The last voucher vote (“opportunity scholarship”) was rejected by Florida voters last November 2012.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Welcome to History Rewriting 101 …
Trying to correct bias, errors, and outright lies on Wikipedia is a pretty good way to waste your days away, so I cannot recommend anyone even bothering with that.
There used to be a couple of independent forums for bewailing the foibles and dysfunctions of Wikipediot cult-ure, but I haven’t really kept up enough to know how independent they are anymore.
FWIW, I’ll post a couple of links anyway. Here’s one —
• Wikipediocracy ☠ The Wikipedia Forum
Wikipediocracy ☠ Blog
Wikipediocracy ☠ Online Forum
Glad you caught this POST about Vouchers revised to favor vouchers. Horrors.
I added information to Wikipedia regarding Louisiana’s voucher situation and shaved the slant off of a couple of other areas, as well.
That is what crowd sourcing is all about.
Welcome to the rest of your life …
or until you get tired of fixing it …
You all DO know that anyone can edit a Wikipedia entry, right? So anyone armed with knowledge and the research to back it up can do a little clean-up work on that page.
And anyone armed with an army of astro-turfers can come right back and change it again.
Moral of the Story. The biggest army of astro-turfers always wins on Wikipedia.
Have to disagree. Yes, it can be challenging but there are a variety of avenues for addressing issues of accuracy on Wikipedia.
For example, someone changed David Coleman’s page and listed him as an “educator” instead of as a “consultant”.as was originally indicated, because there are several people with that name so it has to be disambiguated. It took awhile and some discussions to get it back to “consultant,” because he has no formal training or experience as an educator, but it has stuck so far.
If you notice the language of editorials, articles and political statements lately, when they describe reforms, the adjectives are positive. Then when they describe the opposition, the adjectives are negative. This is a way of using bias in a subversive manner. And it must be called out.
Agree…and it is imperative that we all monitor Wiki and consistently enter our own comments and facts. This is also why we must keep writing letters to editors of our print media. Even the biased LA Times prints educators letters on occasion. Our own Linda Johnson gets published often.
If you click on the footnote at the end (1) it shows that the information comes from someone associated with NCSL, which is a group comparable to ALEC.
NCSL is the National Conference of State Legislatures, based in Denver. While they traditionally are right of center, being dominated by Republican legislators from across the nation, they’re by no means comparable to ALEC. And some of their task forces have produced quite “liberal” findings and policy recommendations. In the past, they’ve even delved into attempting to educate legislators about school finance issues, including how education adequacy cost studies can help inform improvements in state aid formulas.
I guess we need to keep monitoring the Wickipedia page on vouchers and correcting as needed. It is too easy for the wrong information to land in the hand of parents. Then, they unknowlngly become part of the problem.
That’s why I don’t let my students use Wikipedia as a source. The kids want to immediately use the first thing that comes up, and anyone can write a Wikipedia article. I want my students to learn to use multiple, legitimate sources. As they get older (I have 8th graders) they may be able to determine if a Wikipedia entry is good or not, but they don’t have that capability just yet.
Disgustingly Orwellian. Concerned readers might check my monograph “The Great School Voucher Fraud” at arlinc.org. — Edd Doerr
Good on for the woman who shaved off the slant using Louisiana examples. Makes one think of PRAVDA because their master plan requires a propaganda organ and any available will do just fine. Oops, until citizen-teachers go in and give it a reality check.
I encourage all readers here who contribute to wikipedia to track changes on articles having to do with edreform – via rss – you know within minutes of any changes. I’ve been tracking changes to Arne Duncan’s page for a couple of years now. Nothing outrageous, but it is amazing how folks will quibble over a word here or there – because it DOES make a difference.
Student’s First’s page is also highly biased. I have changed it in the past, mildly, and it is always back to the same corporate advertisement.