Sara Stevenson is the librarian at the O. Henry Middle School in Austin, Texas. She is a prolific writer and is published in the letters column of the Wall Street Journal more than anyone in the world, always refuting their free-market claims about schools. In this post, she attempts to debunk the case for choice, specifically, vouchers.
Stevenson writes:
One must ask about the motive for the school choice movement. Public education in this nation is an operation costing about $600 billion annually. Do these private, charter, cyber and home schools want to open their arms to public school students in a gesture of inclusion, or are they after the money? The amount allotted for private vouchers is almost always less than the private school tuition, so which families will be able to make up the difference? Will private schools relax admission requirements that make their schools exclusive, or will they drop them to be accessible for all? Furthermore, home schools currently run under zero accountability. What is to prevent a home-schooling parent from taking the voucher money and using it to buy a new computer for the family?
And then there are the repercussions. Every dollar taken from public schools and given to a charter, private, home or cyber school burdens the operational costs for public schools. In addition, with government money comes government accountability. Do all these private and religious schools, hoping for vouchers, want to submit their students to the battery of STAAR tests as well as the A-F grading scores that public schools must undergo? When the state is still spending $339 less per pupil than before the draconian budget cuts in 2011, won’t public schools suffer further from siphoned funds?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education.
The real reason DeVos hates public schools is because most teachers are trained to teach children to be critical thinkers and problems solvers in addition to being literate, readers, and life-long learners.
Of course no country on the planet has or will achieve this with 100-percent of their children, but the U.S. has done a good job of shrinking the gap, at least before the private sector, greed-is-great, corporate-education reform (hostile corporate take-over) industry launched its war on the public sector’s schools a few decades back with the release of the misleading and lying “A Nation at Risk” report by the Dark Prince, President Reagan.
Back to the real reason DeVos hates public schools.
Literate, lifelong learners, who are critical thinkers and problem solvers, are not easy to fool and control with the misleading theory that God created everything in six-days six-thousand years ago and science is all wrong.
And those ever so frustrating non-dominant-culture, non-welathy kids moving into social circles previously denied them…
Sadly, I think the Best and Brightest have already decided to go to an all-privatized system.
This is Obama’s ed policy director:
https://edexcellence.net/articles/school-choice-that-puts-families-first
There is not a dime’s worth of difference between her and DeVos. What’s she promoting are “backpack vouchers”.
They’re just working out the details- how quickly to privatize, whether to regulate or not, etc. All the big decisions have already been made and they were made a long time ago.
Remember one of Georgie the Least’s minion’s comment about how “We make the reality and everyone else just reported it”. It shows a complete disdain for democratic processes and for their elitist attitude of knowing what’s supposedly best for all?
Same shit with former Obama Administration official Joanne Weiss, the author of the writing to which you refer. As you say, the big decisions have been made and us peeons need to get on board on that trainwreck on the byway to the hell they create for everyone else so that they can roll in the profits.
Stevenson makes the case for of all the various “choice” schemes, vouchers of the dumbest and most reckless of all The only evidence we know about vouchers is that they will drain public school budgets without improving outcomes for students. Vouchers just throw money at people so the state can off load its responsibility to educate its young. Vouchers can be used for students to attend schools that teach misinformation like creationism and other religious beliefs. My favorite argument against vouchers in Texas is about Friday night lights. Vouchers will undermine the ability of Texas to produce quality football players. The next Heisman trophy winner might be stuck in the Intelligent Design Day School and never get a chance to play football.
Here’s another Obama alum:
http://educationpost.org/the-fight-that-should-matter-most-to-progressive-advocates-for-children-is-accountability/
They only thing he offers public schools? Testing.
The powers that be have already decided that it’s vouchers for all.
There’s no “debate” in DC about any of this. They’re bickering over the details of privatization. I’ll just cut to the chase and tell you how this story ends.
Democrats will get standardized testing and data collection and Republicans will get unlimited funding for charters and private schools. That will be the “bipartisan” agreement they work out. Another deal where public schools get absolutely nothing of value.
I’d also like to thank DC ed reformers for graciously allowing public schools to continue to exist. It’s super generous of them to grudgingly admit they probably can’t close every public school in the country immediately.
What’s their timeline for eradicating our schools? I’d like to plan ahead.
I’m going to have my 8th grader listen to tonight’s hearing.
I want him to witness the absolutely ridiculous spectacle of US Senators along with the US Department of Education and the President-elect launching a war on public schools because these hugely powerful and wealthy adults have decided that public schools are some “enemy within” they have to vanquish. I want him to hear these clowns patting themselves on the back for their “bravery” in “opposing the status quo” by which they mean the public school a mile from where I’m sitting.
It’s ludicrous. I’m ashamed of all of them. They’re too cowed and corrupt to go after anyone with any actual power, so they’ve all decided using public schools as a punching bag is politically convenient. When the brave warriors storm Washington Elementary School and the local public school surrenders they can all give each other medals.
Within the current crop of policymakers are many that are no better than prostitutes that are being paid to provide a service. The public did not send them to Washington to eradicate public education. They are being paid to deliver pubic funds to corporations. This will continue until the complicit parties start getting voted out.
BOTH the DEMs and the REPs like charter schools. DOWN with both parties. The DNC and the GOP = HUBRIS to the max.
Hey, I thought bipartisanship was a good thing, especially for education.
You know NCLB, RTTT, NCLB, etc. . . and now Senate Dimocraps for THEBetsy-sure to fawn and fall, oooh and aahhh over such an education leader as THEDonald, oops I mean THEPenzter has proffered up for our wanton adulation.
Let’s not forget that one could be for choice amongst public schools. If well designed it can be useful for advancing innovation. It has some downsides too. But let’s not let “then” have the word choice. This is primarily about church/state and privatization. Let’s call it by that name.
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