The NEA posted a handy explanation of the differences among current voucher programs.
Learn to understand Betsy DeVos’s euphemisms.
School vouchers are actually unpopular, which is why their advocates call them by another term.
“Voucher devotees like DeVos know this, which is why the term “school voucher” has been ditched in favor of more appealing terms.
“Take for example this line from DeVos’ speech to the AFC. Praising Indiana’s large-scale voucher program, she promised to “empower states and give leaders like Eric Holcomb the flexibility and opportunity to enhance choices Indiana provides its students.”
“In that one sentence alone, DeVos offers up four favorite euphemisms used to rebrand voucher legislation: “empower,” “flexibility,” “opportunity” and, of course, “choice.”
Confused about the difference between a “tax credit” voucher program and an “education savings account”? Read about it in this brief post.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
grant money under Devos is being targeted to “vouchers”. …. http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/inside-school-research/2017/01/what_i3s_successes_and_failure.html
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this article in Governing Magazine (a Brookings author). touts the program that DOE instituted; under Devos there are ramifications and serious consequences; I wrote to the main author at Brookings to ask why they are pushing something like this ….”The tiered-evidence approach is already being used by some innovative federal agencies. Over the last decade, five of them have launched tiered-evidence grant programs, also known as innovation funds. An example is the Education Innovation and Research Program at the Department of Education, designed to support and evaluate field-initiated innovations to improve achievement for high-needs students.” whatever the intentions I know how the distortion will arise when Devos’ department awards any grant funds….
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http://www.socialinnovationcenter.org/?p=2482. the auditor in MA (Suzanne Bump). reported no evidence of “innovation” in the charter schools in MA…. Bill Phillis of OH E&A said pretty much the same thing…. Today, “innovation” will be defined by Devos ‘ vouchers (and there is quite a bit of money set aside in the trump budget for Devos’ vouchers that are “innovative “)
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The only thing innovative about choice is who gets the money
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Good one, Diane. TRUE..who gets the $$$$$.
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Seemingly unencumbered.
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Diane One example of double-speak came through on another post this morning: Personalized Learning joins “freedom** and “choice” as key double-speak terms.
Code for “personalized learning” is “screen time,” “good riddance to real teachers,” and “a new money-train for the 1%.”
Code for “freedom”: Free corporations–to develop new forms of Jim Crow and class bias, not to mention for DeVos, it’s paving the way for her own brand of religious zealotry and a collapse of the state-to-religion distinction. Class bias is itself an oxymoron because having money while remaining arrogant and ignorant has nothing to do with either the blood-relations of imperial kingship or with excellence of any kind.
Code for “choice”: Choose to eliminate your neighborhood schools and all that they do to foster a democratic culture. Choose to put yourself and your children under the “guidance” of a corporation and/or an oligarch rather than a democratic set of institutions.
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In the upside down world of ed reform, words mean the opposite.
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Really, it does seem very Orwellian, doesn’t it?
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ADDENDUM: “Return power to the states” is CODE for: Wrench the power of the U.S. Constitution and its Bill of Rights away from those whose rights it protects. Return power to the states so that the oligarchs (like the Koch brothers) and corporations can influence legislators and local elections at will without those pesky regulations that “the government” imposes on the “freedom” of stupid and evil people to do harm to others.
As an aside, there was an article in this morning’s Washington Post that NPR tweeted the entire Declaration of Independence and was at once hit with the accusations that it was anti-Trump propaganda.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/07/05/some-trump-supporters-thought-npr-tweeted-propaganda-it-was-the-declaration-of-independence/?pwa=true&utm_term=.d5759079632f
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Budget: $370 million for Education Innovation and Research to expand support for evidence-based initiatives to develop, validate, and scale up effective education interventions that help States and LEAs meet ESEA requirements (includes the $250 million private school choice initiative highlighted above).” Devos has already decided the “innovation”. is “voucher”. (or the other euphemisms here exposed)
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Click to access 201351533c.pdf
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I do not ever want to hear the word ‘flexibility’ spoken at school again. Same goes for ‘transformative’. You’d think we were all playing with Gumby and Transformers toys instead of teaching and learning.
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We don’t need no stinkin teachin and learnin!
Jus sum o dat edumakashion stuf!
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If vouchers had any real inherent value, voucher supporters would not have to hide behind a litany of voucher euphemisms and schemes. Vouchers enable looting of public school budgets under the guise of education, and they produce worse results. All the tax credit schemes for the wealthy shift more taxation to the middle class, and vouchers go to many schools that discriminate and teach creationism, They may also be used by the wealthy to underwrite tuition they would have easily paid for anyway. Vouchers serve the perverse goals of people like Trump and DeVos, and they drain public schools of much needed funds. Vouchers are a form of taxation without representation.
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Q Vouchers are a form of taxation without representation. END Q
I do not get it. Why do you say this? I have studied this issue for many years, and I do not agree. Providing funding to parents, to enable them to control their educational spending, is not a form of “taxation”. Taxation takes money from people. Vouchers GIVE money to people. Vouchers are, therefore the reverse of taxation.
When a person receives food stamps(SNAP), and goes to a store, and buys food, this is not a form of taxation.
Please explain to me, how providing money and choices to parents is a form of taxation without representation.
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I’lll stick with Curmudgucation. … Nope, Nope, Nopity Nope
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Hmmm…. I wonder why it so very rare that when anyone disagrees and poses the other POV, that there’s either no response…
or …
if a response is returned it’s one that is relatively meaningless …or adversarial… Yet if you give the same toned response back to them, then you’re the one that’s wrong and viewed as disrespectful….
and you are subsequently put in moderation, where you no longer have the ability to respond nor defend your pov?
PS- Charles I’ll be shocked to see many here that support your response or bother to have a meaningful discussion in response to the question you posed…
But as one in constant moderation here and considered a “troll”, I’m glad to see others occassionally bring up another alternative POV!
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M You have to get into the “weeds” of the discussion. Statements similar to “you are involved in a war,” “you get no response when we disagree,” or “I’ll be shocked to see many here that support your response or bother to have a meaningful discussion in response to the question you posed… ” say nothing about intentions, motivations, political foundations, or other relevant content. You and your convenient cover of generalization are like a wife-beater–whose wife is so beat-up she finally leaves him–then the wife-beater claims with a convenient generalization: But SHE left ME!
It seems to me that it’s not a real give-and-take dialogue but rather fending off one red herring after another (like this note is also fending off) continually shot from an impenetrable ideological fortress. Too much like trolls who like to just take up space and exhaust those who are trying to actually improve things and move the discussion forward.
Charles’ probably-feigned ignorance is tiresome. If it’s real ignorance, then he needs to go back to school or at least do some of the readings that are posted here–with an attitude of openness to understanding.
If it’s feigned, you and he have won. I’m so tired of it I could throw up every time I see his name or some others here. If so, you are poison and betrayers of the mother democracy you probably were raised in.
It’s the weeds, stupid.
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Why doesn’t everyone, on both sides of the issue, realize that marketing is important in politics? Many people never considered buying life insurance, until some insurance firms started selling it as “estate planning”.
Proponents of school choice/vouchers are using the marketing tools, that have shown to work in the past. Most people are in favor of “choice”, even if they do not understand the results of choice.
The left uses similar tactics. Abortion is marketed as “choice” or “reproductive rights”.
“Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.”- Sun-Tzu
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Buying a life insurance policy is not estate planning. Hence the lie of the insurance industry is exposed!
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My daughter got a degree in marketing. I told her it was a degree in lying. She replied in that oh so common daughter-like fashion “Oooh daaad!” But she understood.
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Again, another POV posed again 😉
And pretty much once again… nothing but crickets….
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M,
Your hostility to teachers and public schools will keep you in moderation forever. You had a bad experience and you blame everyone. If you are not fair, just, and reasonable, I will continue to review your comments before posting.
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Suing DeVos on Student Loans. Let’s keep the lawsuits flowing in her direction.
Looting of Public School Budgets would be a great place to begin.
Or unconstitutional tax credit schemes, another no-brainer.
“Eighteen states and the District of Columbia are suing Education Secretary Betsy DeVos over her decision to suspend a rule that helps student loan borrowers who were defrauded by for-profit colleges.
The lawsuit, filed Thursday in federal district court in Washington, D.C., was led by Massachusetts and joined by 18 other attorneys general. It takes aim at DeVos’ decision to freeze an Obama-era rule known as the “borrower defense to repayment,” which helped forgive student loan debt for people whose for-profit colleges closed amid fraud accusations, leaving students without degrees and with piles of debt.”
HuffingtonPost
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The deceptive call for vouchers and “choice” was the first racist response to the 1954 Supreme Court ruling on Brown v. Board of Education in which the Court declared that “separate but equal” public schools are inherently unequal and ordered racial integration of the public schools. That ruling triggered “white flight” from public schools to private schools — but parents quickly realized that the tuition cost of private schools was more than they wanted to pay out-of-pocket. That realization led political and private resegregationists to the concoct the “reform” of vouchers, and to sell it to eager parents by deceptively marketing it then —and still today — as merely giving parents a “choice.”
Reports from the NAACP and ACLU have revealed the facts about just how charter schools are resegregating our nation’s schools, as well as discriminating racially and socioeconomically against American children, and last year the NAACP Board of Directors passed a resolution calling for a moratorium on charter school expansion and for the strengthening of oversight in governance and practice. Moreover, a very detailed nationwide research by The Center for Civil Rights Remedies at UCLA shows in clear terms that private charter schools suspend extraordinary numbers of black students. The ACLU has called for a complete freeze on the formation of any more charter schools because of the racism in charter schools.
The 1950’s voucher crusade faded away when it became clear that because of school attendance boundaries no more than a few token blacks would be attending formerly all-white public schools. In 1972 when the Supreme Court finally ordered busing to end the ongoing de facto segregation, the reform movement rose from its grave and has been alive ever since then trying new tactics to restore racial segregation because it’s unlikely that the Court’s racial integration order can ever be reversed. So, the segregationists tried many other routes to restore racial segregation, and the most successful has been charter schools because charter schools can be sold to blithely unaware do-gooder billionaires as well as to unscrupulous profiteers who recognized charter schools as a way to divert vast amounts of tax money into their own pockets and into the pockets of supportive politicians at every level of government.
An essential part of the strategy to mask their underlying motives has been for segregationists to sell the public on the necessity for charter schools because public schools are allegedly “failing.” With all manner of “research” that essentially compares apples to oranges against foreign nations’ students, and with the self-fulfilling prophecy of dismal public school performance generated by drastic underfunding of public schools, and with condemnation of public school teachers based on statistically invalid student test scores, the segregationists are succeeding in resegregating education in America via what are basically private charter schools that are funded with public money.
The Office of Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Education has issued a warning that charter schools posed a risk to the Department of Education’s own goals. The report says: “Charter schools and their management organizations pose a potential risk to federal funds even as they threaten to fall short of meeting the goals” because of the financial fraud, the skimming of tax money into private pockets that is the reason why hedge funds are the main backers of charter schools.
The Washington State Supreme Court, the New York State Supreme Courts, and the National Labor Relations Board have ruled that charter schools are not public schools because they aren’t accountable to the public since they aren’t governed by publicly-elected boards and aren’t subdivisions of public government entities, in spite of the fact that some state laws enabling charter schools say they are government subdivisions. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A “PUBLIC CHARTER SCHOOL” because no charter school fulfills the basic public accountability requirement of being responsible to and directed by a school board that is elected by We the People. Charter schools are clearly private schools, owned and operated by private entities. Nevertheless, they get public tax money.
Even the staunchly pro-charter school Los Angeles Times (which acknowledges that its “reporting” on charter schools is paid for by a billionaire charter school advocate) complained in an editorial that “the only serious scrutiny that charter operators typically get is when they are issued their right to operate, and then five years later when they apply for renewal.” Without needed oversight of what charter schools are actually doing with the public’s tax dollars, hundreds of millions of tax money that is supposed to be spent on educating the public’s children is being siphoned away into private pockets.
Charter schools should (1) be required by law to be governed by school boards elected by the voters so that they are accountable to the public; (2) a charter school entity must legally be a subdivision of a publicly-elected governmental body; (3) charter schools should be required to file the same detailed public-domain audited annual financial reports under penalty of perjury that genuine public schools file; and, (4) anything a charter school buys with the public’s money should be the public’s property. These aren’t onerous burdens on charter schools; these are only common sense requirements to assure taxpayers that their money is being properly and effectively spent to educate children and isn’t simply ending up in private pockets or on the bottom line of hedge funds.
These aren’t “burdensome” requirements for charter schools — they are simply common sense safeguards that public tax money is actually being used to maximum effect to teach our nation’s children.
The result of full, detailed financial reporting will cause most charter school operators to fade away because once what they’re doing with public money comes to light, the game is over.
NO PUBLIC TAX MONEY SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO GO TO CHARTER SCHOOLS THAT FAIL TO MEET THESE MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS OF ACCOUNTABILITY TO THE PUBLIC.
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School boards are rarely accountable to the public.
It’s typically just another clique with outside wannabee’s trying to find a way in….
and when they do find a way in (on), they either cave to the pressure of the original clique…
or they are leveraged out….
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Liars lie and cons disseminate. Betsy DeVos is both.
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Wait, I thought we’ve always been at war with EastAsia.
I’m so confused, I guess I’ll just have to drink some more Victory Gin…
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Michael Fiorillo What was that? Where ? . . . ?
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