The Missouri legislature ended their legislative session without passing legislation that would authorize “education savings accounts,” a form of voucher that parents could use to spend anywhere for anything. It is a path to allowing parents to spend public money on anything regardless of quality. Where ESAs exist, many children are getting a subpar education or none at all.
Other countries must think we have gone crazy or turned against educating our young.
Good work, Missouri!
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I believe it died in ILL-Annoy, as well.
But–all is not lost! Several odious bills to restructure school funding formula will take away state special ed. reimbursement &, also, most likely is being pushed so that the money can be had to establish more charter schools.
One step forward, two steps back.
This is odd, because Indianapolis is specifically touted as a privatization model the country should follow:
“Of the Indianapolis public high schools that saw the lowest ISTEP passing rates this year, most were charter schools, including some that were taken over by the state years ago for consistently low test scores.”
A lot of these schools are managed by Charter Schools USA which is a huge for-profit.
If you’re told charters are “non profits” look beyond the charter- a charter is just a kind of contract.
Look for the contract that charter enters into to run the school. That’s where the profit will be. A “charter school” is really layers of contracts. “The charter” (contract between state and school entity) is just one of them.
http://www.chalkbeat.org/posts/in/2016/11/22/indianapolis-charter-high-schools-rank-near-the-bottom-on-the-2016-istep/
Good piece on how Google is dominating public school markets:
The reporters missed a big part though- they missed how ed reform is aggressively pushing ed tech into public schools to the point that they are basically selling product.
Next they should do a piece on how both the Obama and Trump education departments sell product to public schools under the guise of offering “advice”
Question this. Ask what your school is getting and what Google is getting. Make sure your school is getting something of value out of this deal. If it isn’t, resist the hard sell and take a pass on the products.
Ed tech is selling TO SCHOOLS. You’re the buyer and public schools are a HUGE market. Schools should be in the driver’s seat, not Google. Make them earn your business. Don’t just hand over your students to be used as “beta testers”- insist they pay for that privilege.
Saddest and, to me, most frightening picture of a classroom: kid upon kid with head bent obliviously over a computer screen. Human teachers in those areas of study where Silicon Valley writes the curricula really will become a thing of the past.
And, also, Ciedie, ILL-Annoy legislature has a bill for un-mandating Physical Ed. (language, of course, buried inside pages & pages of acts, sections, codes, etc.).
Not only will our kids be bent over computers, but they will also become obese w/inactivity.
And their parents will have no health insurance to cover them.
Tragic.
The TRUE sickness: abusive anti-student anti- public school legislating now getting stuck deep into state budgets across the nation; support for charters just got passed in our state when the language was added in at the last minute.
Other countries that are democracies are waking up to the fact that each vote is very important to keep out thugs/frauds like Agent Orange and Betsy the Dumb-Dumb Bullet.
That’s why the Netherlands and France both rejected Agent Orange clones in their 2017 elections. Will Germany also reject these clones of hate and fraud?
Lloyd,
You MADE ME laugh with your names for the dump and DeVoodoo.
Thanks for my morning entertainment.
DeVoodoo is pretty darn good, Yvonne!
Voodoo works. How about Besty De Dumb-Dumb Voodoo?
Minimum of details provided regarding the defeat of education savings accounts. But we did learn yes or no…that is something. as reported on public radio where my comments are automatically greeted in red by × We are unable to post your comment because you have been banned by St. Louis Public Radio. Find out more.
A reader in Missouri sent me the link. When I learn more (Duane?), I will post it.
And we’re off! (Literally.)
It is one of T-Rex Sinquefeld’s (the Gates/Walton/Broad of the Show Me State-his “institute” bears that name, unfortunately) major projects. It will be re-introduced in the next session. And if it goes down then I’m sure he’ll pay someone (Missouri is about last in ethics when it comes to our lawmakers) to put it in the budget in some form. Missouri’s rural legislators have a tendency support their local community public schools so I don’t see it passing the next time around either, but we know that T-Rex will not be satisfied with that outcome again.
I need to contact a former student (he claims I convinced him of becoming a liberal after being a staunch conservative-ha ha! How that happened in Spanish class I don’t know-lol) who is a legislative aide for more information as to details of this past legislative session.
I had been told that the foundation formula which supports all Missouri public schools would not be in the budget unless the general assembly voted for the vouchers. A lot of bluffing goes on, made possible by the media which has no love for providing information which is clear, instead of unsure.
I hope you can discern my sarcasm about the pd report….
7 hours ago, Kurt Erickson explained what happened:
Greitens also did not get his way on establishing a tax credit program benefiting disabled school students, which opponents viewed as a precursor to school vouchers. Mainly, Missouri seems to be trying to mistreat disabled students…..the voucher part is a minor? detail. http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/govt … 64f83.html
If you need to keep in mind the danger of disabled students being precursors to what could happen….this is so much better than somebody with her little blog spouting off:
Great News! Missouri Does Not Pass Voucher Plan
By dianeravitch
That is entirely too clear.
Sunday morning roundup of legislative failures….no mention of vouchers, but a bill to allow more charters to open failed. I don’t know for sure, but maybe the rural school districts are not crazy about outsiders coming in to reform them.
Slay was mayor during 16 years of educational destruction in St. Louis. This morning his sister? (not his wife) had a letter published in the Post Dispatch. She has been introduced as the great communicator for Rex and Jeanne Sinquefield…….Rex has at least 3 billion dollars and spends a few on messing up public education in Missouri as much as he can…..
The editorial “Vouchers under the microscope” (May 8) admonished school reform supporters to “trust the data, not loosely grounded ideology.” But trusting the data means trusting all of the data.
The Institute of Education Sciences study of the Washington, D.C., Opportunity Scholarship Program referenced in the editorial is just one of many studies on the program, and a failed one at that.
The study’s failings include: comparing OSP participants to students also attending charter and private schools; only focusing on test scores from the first year after students moved to a new school and all of the social and academic stress that such a move entails; and not taking into account the funding, and consequentially the access to quality education, provided through the OSP, where vouchers only provide one-third to one-half of the funding per student paid to other area charter and district schools.
Additionally the study failed to take into consideration factors like the impact of vouchers on graduation rates and school safety. Previous studies showed that participating students increased their chance of graduating from high school by 12 percent.
When you take all of that data together, you end up with a vastly different picture of how voucher programs can transform education.
Giving parents and students greater choice in schools, spurring the growth of new educational opportunities, all through a minimally funded program, sounds almost exactly like what that “loosely grounded ideology” has been promising would happen.
Laura Slay • St. Louis
Executive director, Children’s Education Alliance of Missouri http://www.stltoday.com/news/opinion/mailbag/failed-study-gives-wrong-picture-about-school-vouchers/article_ef9392a2-01e5-56dc-be03-8be9e73c3bc9.html
Joe, that graduation rate figure is very dubious. Watch for the first post tomorrow morning.
At present, five (5) states have enacted some form of educational savings account programs. Arizona, Nevada, Tennessee, Florida, and Mississippi. see
http://www.excelined.org/education-savings-accounts/
Arizona has extended this program to virtually all families that wish to participate.
Regulations vary from state to state. Currently, most states require the families to put their funds towards legitimate educational expenses: These include (but are not limited to) tuition, books, fees, online courses, college entrance exam prep courses, special courses for special-needs and handicapped children, etc.
Families who participate in these programs, are not permitted to spend the funds on “anything and everything”, but only on legitimate educational expenses for their children. (This is not to say, that there have been abuses, and improper spending). Families contribute their own money into the ESA, and no public money is involved.