For the umpteenth time, the Texas state senate passed a voucher bill for students with disabilities. It is heading now for the House. Up until now, the House (also Republican controlled) has turned down the senate’s voucher bill. The House of Representatives believes in local control. The state senate believes in Betsy DeVos and ALEC.
The senate bill is the camel’s nose under the tent. First, vouchers for students with disabilities (although the students abandon their federally-protected rights when they leave the public schools), then will come a parade of other small groups, then everyone.
It is so transparent.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Except people don’t know what it all means! I have had principals not know what the Hughes Bill was and that it was dismantled. The rights aren’t being respected as it has been and now the families are giving up those rights!
LikeLike
Has forward-thinking America lost its “We don’t want to set precedence” MIND? Let’s not help anybody because we don’t want to have to help everybody? Corporate Capitalists certainly have no trouble creating special interest loopholes (and calling them something else).
Most of the parents of kids with disabilities need and deserve education voucher help. Many of these kids can’t get a decent education in the crowded, under-funded public school system ill-equipped to handle special needs. If you must, put a cap on it to exclude the uber-wealthy (who can easily afford to send their kids to private schools and usually DO), but let’s not throw out the baby with DeVoss’s germy bathwater.
I almost always follow your reasoning nodding my head in agreement, Diane. Your thinking this time reminds me of my parent’s explanation for why I, as the oldest of five, was forced (at 14) to follow rules and hours set to keep the little kids in the family in line, safe and healthy.
WHY? “Because if we let you, then everyone will want to.”
The obvious answer, then and now: TELL THEM NO. Tell them when they are in my circumstance, they will get the same privileges, and not until. Duh!
xx,
mgh
(Madelyn Griffith-Haynie – ADDandSoMuchMORE dot com)
ADD/EFD Coach Training Field founder; ADD Coaching co-founder
“It takes a village to transform a world!”
LikeLike
Are you kidding me? You think kids with disabilities get better service in private schools? And a $5,000 voucher does anything to cover the cost? Few private schools have the means to educate kids with disabilities and those that do can’t do it on the measly amount a voucher covers.
Assuming it’s true that public schools are underfunded, crowded and ill-equipped (and many are, I realize), the solution is to fix the public schools. After all, they’re the ones mandated to provide services for kids with disabilities.
LikeLiked by 1 person
HUGE supporter of FAPE here – but what about “vouchers” for kids with disabilities in public schools, rethinking the concept – i.e., a way to put additional funding into IDEA & 504 programming, and Reasonable Accommodations mandated by the ADA?
We need to totally revamp how we fund our Public Schools (and I do not mean selling out to corporations – we already know what happens there).
We’re not talking about a small problem here, as you know, and both mental, physical and learning disabilities are found in statistically larger proportions as we work out way DOWN the economic scale.
We cannot have an educated populace without Public Education – and America will probably never be “great again” until we actually DO educate the huge majority of our populace.
I simply do not want to see the entire country metaphorically “put to bed at 8pm” to avoid exception management.
xx,
mgh
LikeLike
Madelyn,
Students with disabilities have rights guaranteed by federal law in public schools. They abandon them when they take their $5,000 voucher to a private school.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I’m not suggesting they leave – but that the benefits are rethought/restructured to make it a financial win-win for them to stay.
xx,
mgh
LikeLike
The way it becomes a “win-win” for the students is to properly fund all public education to the level that it needs to be to do the job that it is constitutionally mandated to do. Anything less is not only unconstitutional but unconscionable.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I totally agree with the importance of increasing funding for public education, Duane (and supplying resources for public school teachers). We desperately need an EDUCATOR in de Voss’s role – somebody who actually gets it – ideally, someone with classroom experience in a public school.
All key to “making America great again” IMHO.
xx,
mgh
LikeLike
Not into MAGA, I’m into providing proper resources and good teaching and learning processes for the students.
MAGA for me is a trite (and I’m being nice with that) political slogan, nothing more, that is meant to deceive those whose ignorance of American history is appalling. MAGA certainly lacks “fidelity to truth” as a concept/thought.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Have you noticed that the Republican party frequently coopts language to mean whatever they want it to mean? “Great” is a matter of perspective.
xx,
mgh
LikeLike
Oh, it’s not just the Rethugs, the Dimocraps do that also! But you are correct that “great” is a matter of perspective.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Good GRIEF! What is WRONG with people. Answer: Uninformed and/or SELFISH.
Yesterday, I had to go to the bank. While there, I spoke with one of the bankers. He attended Public Schools and related to me (all on his own accord) that he had a great education and ONLY attended Public Schools and Universities.
He also didn’t know that Charter Schools could hire NON-CERTIFIED teachers. He also had NO CLUE that Charter Schools and Vouchers took money away from Public Schools. He was horrified by the information I passed on to him.
Folks, I often feel as though we are talking to ourselves.
Thus, at every opportunity we have, we really need to INFORM others about the travesties of Charter Schools and Vouchers and the billionaires and politicians who are involved in DISSING Public Education.
Public Education ROCKS!
LikeLike
“Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” – Sun-Tzu
Proponents of school choice/vouchers have taken this lesson from Sun-Tzu. They are willing to play the “long game”. First, introduce choice, as a means to assist special-needs and disabled children. This tugs at the “heart strings”. Then use choice as a means to help poor/impoverished children to “escape” from “failing” inner-city schools. Once the camel’s nose is in the tent, just keep on expanding and expanding.
No state, which has brought in school choice/vouchers has ever cancelled or even reduced their programs. Every state, which has brought in choice, has expanded the program.
““The general who wins the battle makes many calculations in his temple before the battle is fought. The general who loses makes but few calculations beforehand.” Sun-Tzu
LikeLike