Lindsay Wagner: When Will Voucher Schools in North Carolina be as Accountable and Transparent as Public Schools

January 8, 2017 //

Lindsay Wagner has been covering education issues in North Carolina for several years. Now that the state has vouchers, politicians say that parents will surely make the right choices. But since voucher schools are exempt from providing the same information as public schools, how can parents make informed choices?

Categories North Carolina, Parents, Vouchers

12 Comments Post your own or leave a trackback: Trackback URL

Snyder, Tom says:

January 8, 2017 at 11:02 am

Just have Emma stop by the band room on the way to home room first thing in the morning to give me the application. Thanks for asking!

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Linda Giffin says:

January 8, 2017 at 11:15 am

Schools will become ACCOUNTABLE and TRANSPARENT when the administration ENFORCES it. This has not occurred under Obama, let us hope it DOES happen and happen quickly, under Trump.

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- dianeravitch says:
  
  January 8, 2017 at 11:57 am
  
  Billionaire Betsy doesn’t believe in accountability or transparency. Maybe for public schools. Never for charter or religious schools. They can take our money and run.
  
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Laura H. Chapman says:

January 8, 2017 at 12:29 pm

The GreatSchools.org website was set up to solve this problem for parents and also to engage in pushing some schools and not others. It is also a tool for real estate agents, keeping the practice of red-lining alive.

The website does not have much to offer North Carolina parents. Only 24 schools are listed for the entire state. Of these, only five have a “great school” rating, These ratings range from a high of 9 (the maximum is 10) to a low of 2. Users of the website have provided additional reviews for 10 schools. These narrative reviews are reduced to stars, from none to five.

If you go to the website, take some time to find out who pays for it and notice how it automatically puts you in the orbit of real estate values for the surrounding neighborhood, usually with a direct link to Zillow. Zillow pays a fee to receive information from the website, as do other vendors who want to sell “educational” products and services to parents and caregivers of school-age children and young people.

Great schools has a scheme wherein, for a fee, the website will steer users to one or more specific schools. The site scoops all state-level published test data on schools then converts this into a (dubious) ten-point stack rating scheme. In other words, most schools get a poor rating unless they are test-driven.

Vouchers and voucher-like schemes (already present in 15 states) are likely to spawn many more school-rating schemes, some obviously seeking profit from “partners” who are eager to sell goodies to well-defined groups of customers. Charter schools and voucher-like schemes have forced many public schools to divert funds from instructional and student support services to pay for advertising. Marketing budgets for all schools are certain to increase is vouchers become more widespread.

So far,Trump’s wish to have $20 billion in federal funds go to parental choice is hot air. Here is a recent brief on some of the issues.
http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/campaign-k-12/2016/12/beyond_vouchers_trump_devos_school_choice.html.

http://www.greatschools.org/search/search.page?q=north%20carolinA&state=NC

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ciedie aech says:

January 8, 2017 at 12:45 pm

How mind-boggling that we have reached this moment in history where an education reporter ends her article with the summation: “North Carolina should require private voucher schools to employ a minimum number of licensed teachers…”

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- Duane Swacker says:
  
  January 9, 2017 at 3:29 pm
  
  “minimum number” ha ha ha ha ha ha ha !!
  
  How about provide 100% licensed teachers?
  
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Edd Doerr says:

January 8, 2017 at 5:09 pm

The largest recipient of voucher $$ in NC is the Greensboro Islamic Academy — but we hear no protests. Why?

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- Duane Swacker says:
  
  January 9, 2017 at 3:30 pm
  
  Because Obama is a Muslim and Putin is siphoning off monies through the back door.
  
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  - Edd Doerr says:
    
    January 9, 2017 at 3:54 pm
    
    Swacker must be joking — but it ain’t funny.
  - Duane Swacker says:
    
    January 9, 2017 at 4:32 pm
    
    Just a little spoof on both sides of the political spectrum, y0u know equal opportunity shitgiving!
Secondary_Math_Teacher says:

January 9, 2017 at 2:27 pm

The differing standards between teachers in public schools and teachers in voucher schools is enough for a court to invalidate the entire program. Again, we [public school teachers] need to put together a way to get the law involved.

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Duane Swacker says:

January 9, 2017 at 3:26 pm

Never!

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