A federal evaluation of the D.C. voucher program came up with negative results. Students in elementary schools who participated saw their scores drop, a finding similar to recent studies in Louisiana, Indiana, and Ohio.
What did Betsy DeVos say?
“DeVos defended the D.C. program, saying it is part of an expansive school-choice market in the nation’s capital that includes a robust public charter school sector. “When school choice policies are fully implemented, there should not be differences in achievement among the various types of schools,” she said in a statement. She added that the study found that parents “overwhelmingly support” the voucher program “and that, at the same time, these schools need to improve upon how they serve some of D.C.’s most vulnerable students.”
So her assumption is that voucher programs are not likely to have better outcomes than public schools. Students who are performing poorly in public schools will perform poorly in voucher or charter schools. As long as parents are satisfied, that’s it. Reform.
That’s quite a theory of action. Or inaction.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“When school choice policies are fully implemented, there should not be differences in achievement among the various types of schools,” ……because when all schools are charters there are no other “various types” with which to compare so QED.
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I just heard Chris Matthews say to Gov. Kasich, “I went to Catholic school. I support school choice.” Clueless??
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His parents didn’t use public funds to pay for his religious schooling. He is probably “clueless” about the consequences of charters and/or vouchers and the harmful impact of reduced funding on public schools.
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Welcome to contemporary liberalism: privatization at home, endless war abroad.
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But that’s part of the plan:
1. Allow “private enterprise” make their money from the public.
2. Keep the “parents happy” – no matter what the “scores” or benefits.
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As always “choice” has an intrinsic value in and of itself, even though the evidence points to the contrary. DeVos wants to free students from the “Godless, union loving” public schools, and turn young people over to religious schools of questionable value and minimally trained staff. She wants to use our tax dollars to do it
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Vouchers=vehicle for expanded evangelical religious initiation. Public schools used to initiate us all into a shared American culture and shared body of knowledge. The education schools have helped dismantle that project, making defense of public schooling harder. If school is all about skills, not particular knowledge, then religious schools that teach skills meet our new content-free shared standards. Close reading of the Psalms in lieu of Howard Zinn –what does it matter? Both kids are getting “21st Century skills”. One kid designs experiments to test creationism; the other, evolution. What does it matter? They’re both “thinking like a scientist”. In California, the war on content has entered a new phase. Not only do the new science standards war against teacher talk and fact learning; the new history frameworks tell us to abandon most of the standards in lieu of “focus questions” that students will “inquire” about, without the meddlesome influence of a sage on the stage. Less teacher telling, more “wrestling” with primary texts. Now kids can spend a year learning about how several cultures impacted the environment (or some other arbitrarily teacher-selected focus) in lieu of learning about the Middle Ages, Renaissance, Reformation, Scientific Revolution and Enlightenment. Yes, the new frameworks say it’s OK to skip all that. The new tests will, perforce, test skills and not any particular content, thus driving teachers further away from teaching important history. If content doesn’t really matter –if content is valuable only insofar as it provides grist for skills exercises –why not let evangelical schools train America’s youth? Or maybe knowledge really does matter?
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Me gusta.
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That has been my biggest problem with the “choice” movement. Traditional public schools have all of these data points to show the public if they are doing their jobs well, but when it comes to charters and private schools, the only thing that matters is the parents’ opinions.
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The entire voucher/charter movement for many on the right,unfortunately, is an ideological commitment to choice. There is this insane idea of a infinitely educated consumer for those true believers of the free market. Of course if this were true. then cyber schools would be out of business because of their abysmal results.
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“When school choice policies are fully implemented, there should not be differences in achievement among the various types of schools,”
This really is the goal, though. They’re outsourcing “public” education.
Politicians hope that if they hand out vouchers they never have to bother with a school issue ever again. Schools are hard. All those messy children and contentious employees. Just pay contractors – problem solved.
You could replace Betsy DeVos with an automated system that transfers public funds electronically directly to contractors.
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So much for last week’s ed reform argument, which was kids were “trapped” in failing public schools and that’s why we had to privatize.
Now we have to privatize because…well, we just do.
This decision has already been made. You can stack studies up to the ceiling and they won’t move an inch. It’s an ideological belief and beliefs aren’t wrong or right, they just are.
We spent the entire Obama Administration focusing on charter schools and we’ll now spend the entire Trump Administration focusing on private schools.
We employ a huge group of public employees who supposedly work on “public education” yet completely ignore public schools. They simply aren’t interested in public schools or the children who attend them. It’s as if the system is privatized already.
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“It’s an ideological belief and beliefs aren’t wrong or right, they just are.”
I can’t agree at all with that statement Chiara unless it is said with tongue firmly planted in cheek.
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Public schools are really amazingly resilient. Thirty years of a coordinated political campaign at the highest levels of government and among some of the wealthiest people in the country to eradicate them and they still manage to educate tens of millions of children and they still do it better (on the whole) than private schools.
That’s a tough system. Knock em down and they get right back up 🙂
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I wouldn’t trust Betsy to give me a recipe for fresh squeezed juice. She is like sugar free jello; a big bowl of zero.
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Good one, Therlo.
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Giving choices, as a basic, makes people feel like they have a degree of control. I’ve used the technique of offering choices very effectively throughout my career as a teacher of special education. Most of my kids don’t like to be told what to do.
The reform movement has portrayed our public schools as being colossal failures from which only those with money for private schools can escape. Regardless of the merit of these charges, the campaign has been well financed and continuous for almost two decades.
Parents remember their most hated teachers. They focus on the slackers that their children have/had to endure (my daughter had three during her entire K-12 experience). They see images of inner city schools in turmoil. They buy in.
Enter the well advertised “School CHOICE” movement. As with so many other large scale changes, few people want to think beyond the immediate. “Choice” is “good” because it signifies individual control. What’s left out of the equation by so many are the negative ramifications:
https://gadflyonthewallblog.wordpress.com/2016/11/28/the-essential-selfishness-of-school-choice/
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Giving choices, as a basic, makes people feel like they have a degree of control. I’ve used the technique of offering choices very effectively throughout my career as a teacher of special education.
The reform movement has portrayed our public schools as being colossal failures from which only those with money for private schools can escape. Regardless of the merit of these charges, the campaign has been well financed and continuous for almost two decades.
Parents remember their most hated teachers. They focus on the slackers that their children have/had to endure (my daughter had three during her entire K-12 experience). They see images of inner city schools in turmoil. They buy in.
Enter the well advertised “School CHOICE” movement. As with so many other large scale changes, few people want to think beyond the immediate. “Choice” is “good” because it signifies individual control. What’s left out of the equation by so many are the negative ramifications:
https://gadflyonthewallblog.wordpress.com/2016/11/28/the-essential-selfishness-of-school-choice/
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“What’s left out of the equation by so many are the negative ramifications:”
Absolutely. It’s presented as risk-free and cost-free.
It’s a fairy tale. Nothing is free. There will be consequences and downsides later but the objective seems to be to flood the zone with happy talk so privatization is a done deal and there won’t be any way to get a public system back.
Every once in a while a privatization scheme is undone. Germany WENT BACK to public utilities because privatization was a disaster but boy, that is RARE.
It would never happen in the US because of the extent of capture by our elected representatives.
If they succeed in selling vouchers to better-off parents and that means a subsidy for the schools their children already attend the voucher program will grow every year because the higher the income the more clout the constiuency has.
Public schools will be designated the disfavored default system, akin to how Medicaid is now.
It’s a shame. We’ll regret this decision.
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Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education and commented:
This is amazing logic from an unqualified person.
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Choice is a seductive term. It makes people feel as if they have options. But, if DeVos has seemingly suggested, all choices are incredibly similar, then it’s a false choice. Reformers don’t care. Choice makes people feel good and it makes people feel a sense of control or voice.
And no parent will ever say they made a poor choice for their kid because its admitting rearing malpractice. (My neighbors sent their kids to a charter for three years. Their kids hated it after year one. The parents still stuck it out because they were loathe to admit that their choice was misguided. The kids are now back in their district school and far happier and high-achieving.) So the combination of FEELING empowered and insisting that one is a good parent makes choice hard to resist.
As noted by Teacher 111, reformers insist that “voting with their feet” is the only thing that matters. When I read comments sections to heinous Detroit News editorials, charter proponents / defenders always say things like “waiting lists” and “half of DPS kids don’t go to DPS.” They always cite the CREDO study from 2013 and no other studies.
Public schools must prove that their good institutions. Charter schools can simply say they are good institutions. This is what’s so frustrating. I teach in an inner ring suburb outside Detroit. We have a long track record of sending kids to quality universities as well as a link to strong vocational program. But a charter can pop up within five miles, flood their marketing through our district and make unproven claims, with everyone so willing to believe it. (A nearby charter claimed to have an awesome language program. Turns out that they just use Rosetta Stone. So innovative!) Yet once people commit to their choice, they refuse to back away because then they’d be wrong. And no one wants to admit that in such a high-staked decision.
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.@RepLukeMesser tells @mstratford that Congress is trying to “figure out what school choice options are achievable,”
Great to see Congress is continuing their unbroken record of pretending public schools, and the children in those schools, no longer exist.
I know very few of these people attended public schools or send their children to them but surely they pass by public schools in their districts during campaign swings, right?
Maybe they think they’re post offices or something.
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The congress knows how bad public schools are, especially in WashDC. See
https://www.publicschoolreview.com/blog/how-many-politicians-send-their-kids-to-public-schools
Congress does not have to pretend that public schools do not exist, because they send their kids to private/parochial schools.
Congress has persistently refused to provide for school choice, for the rest of America. Take a look, at what they are doing with the Obamacare repeal, Congress is exempting itself from the repeal.
Congress is filled with hypocrites. This is why for many years, I have pushed for a “slumlord” law, to force politicians who say they are for public schools, to send their children to the schools which they say they love. If public schools are so wonderful, Congress should be first in line to send their children to them.
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A law like that (I like the name, btw) would magically produce additional funding for public schools. Enhanced curriculum. Smaller classes. The whole 9 yards, so to speak.
Serve your term and then go home to live with the laws you’ve helped to create.
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It’s the FRAMING that has been done to make unthinking people think private is better. It’s like that word FREE on TV, when in actually nothing is FREE. SICK.
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Jeez, she really is an imbecile….
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A very smart imbecile, unfortunately
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Smart? Maybe. Clever or shrewd are probably better adjectives.
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Or even conniving, for that matter.
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True. Definitely not in my camp.
But her ignorance about education doesn’t necessarily extend to other fields.
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I remain agnostic about her overall intelligence while at the same time acknowledging her blinkered Calvinist ideology.
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DeVos says, “When school choice policies are fully implemented, there should not be differences in achievement among the various types of schools,”
This key prediction of the DeVosian agenda is unfortunately true and follows perfectly from DeVos’s plans. In her mind, she believes that choice private and religious schools will raise their achievement to match and perhaps exceed public schools that all studies currently show to be academically superior. What will happen, however, is the opposite: public schools will be so damaged and debilitated from the loss of much of their public funding diverted to feed the maw of the right-wing’s latest false idol–school choice–that eventually their students’ achievement will sink to the level of those choice schools, a collection of educational scams, for-profit businesses, and religious indoctrination centers, thus achieving true equality in “achievement among the the various types of schools.” Mission Accomplished.
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DeVos says, “When school choice policies are fully implemented, there should not be differences in achievement among the various types of schools,”
This key prediction of the DeVosian agenda is unfortunately true and follows perfectly from DeVos’s plans. In her mind, she believes that choice private and religious schools will raise their achievement to match and perhaps exceed public schools that all studies currently show to be academically superior. What will happen, however, is the opposite: public schools will be so damaged and debilitated from the loss of much of their public funding diverted to feed the maw of the right-wing’s latest false idol–school choice–that eventually their students’ achievement will sink to the level of those choice schools, a collection of educational scams, for-profit fraudulent businesses, and religious indoctrination centers, thus achieving true equality in “achievement among the the various types of schools.” Mission Accomplished.
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