Right-wingers in Texas want vouchers, but they have been stymied again and again by a coalition of rural Republicans who support their community public schools and urban Democrats who don’t want to destroy public education.
So now the right-wingers want “education savings accounts,” so parents can use public money to pay for other options, such as private school.
Advocates of the so-called school choice movement want the state to give each Texas student who no longer wants to attend public school an education savings account. The student would use the account to pay for other education options, such as private schools, tutors, curriculum for home schooling or college credit courses, giving students more choice in their education, according to proponents.
Public school supporters aren’t buying it. They say education savings accounts are masquerading as private school vouchers, diverting money from cash-strapped school districts to private schools without holding them to the same standard of accountability.
“You can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig. You can call a voucher something else, but it’s still a voucher,” said Charles Luke of the Coalition for Public Schools, which opposes using public funds to support private and religious schools. “We need to invest in our community schools rather than create a completely separate, parallel system and expand government.”
What the Republican right fringe doesn’t realize is that when everyone has his or her own choice, no one is responsible any more to support all children. Taxpayers won’t pass bond issues. Why should Mr. Brown pay for Ms. Jones’ son to go to private or religious school?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This is being pushed by Jay P Greene (U. Arkansas) I have been trying to leave comments on his articles but they banned me about a year ago (like Education Next/Fordham Institute banned me two years ago)….
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“This is being pushed by Jay P Greene (U. Arkansas)”
No wonder there is talk of putting lipstick on hogs!!
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What a horrible idea and an insult to pigs everywhere. Pigs aren’t this mean spirited, as a rule. It’s more like trying to put lipstick on a cobra. Health Savings Accounts are also a bad idea that benefit rich people but not working class Americans and especially the poor and struggling. We should protect and nurture our tuition free K-12 education system not destroy it with charter schools, vouchers and education savings accounts.
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I have found pigs to be fairly intelligent. Perhaps they should run for office in these GOP controlled states.
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Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education and commented:
The movement is lead by the lead pig farmer, Lt. Governor Dan Patrick.
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I wonder if these “right wingers” understand that, by privatizing education in the short run, they are shooting themselves in the feet in the long run? Education for all is good for all; and it’s the best chance we have of maintaining the democratic (small d) principles that these very “right wingers” depend on ALREADY–we can call it our political infrastructure like, for instance, their U.S. Constitution, their First Amendment and other rights, their basic freedoms, equality, justice and their rule of law–all are the political air all right-wingers ALREADY breathe every day, all day–and that stand to be “divorced” from THEM with the loss of public education.
The best way for that basic infrastructure to remain vibrant is for everyone to have an education that is ALREADY wedded to those ideals from the get-go: public education; and NOT separated, divorced, and remarried to some private and ideological concern; and especially not to the “ideals” of predatory and zero-sum game capitalism as we practice it today. When that happens, we will have entered another “dark” age.
Education must be funded in a capitalist system, but it’s not mainly a capitalist venture. Neither Trump nor these “right-wingers” seem to understand the difference between predatory capitalism (branding, selling, marketing, etc.) and the material, social, political, and cultural institutions that underpin and support our ability to “do business.” Without that web of infrastructure, capitalism has little or no chance of surviving, however we define or redefine it, and whatever form it takes.
Let’s support good civics and history classes in our K-12 so that adults in the next generation won’t be so prone to listen to Fox News and follow the pied-piper opportunists that seem to rear their ugly heads in every generation.
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I do not think the legislators are thinking that far ahead.
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How dare you suggest that they think at all?
Now on a serious note, they only think about their wallets. How can they get richer while in office?
The idea that they are there to speak for they people of their district or state is a long gone idea.
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Privatization fails to see the bigger picture, Privatization is a disinvestment in the common good, and we will all pay a price for it, especially our young people. It is also a suppression of democratic principles.
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Great post, Diane. It says it all.
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