If you were a billionaire and you wanted to make the American people totally gullible, you would dream up ways to keep them far removed from schools and teachers that teach them how to think critically.
You would embrace “education savings accounts,” which are vouchers by another name, which remove from the state any responsibility to educate any child. Just give every student a debit card, to be used at will.
Carol Burris explains the hoax here.
Parents pledge not to enroll their son or daughter in a public school or a charter school. In exchange, they get nearly all of what the school would have spent (usually 90 percent) placed on a debit card or in an account. The remaining 10 percent is used to fund program administration.
Parents can use the money for private or religious school tuition, online learning, books, hippotherapy (horseback riding for therapeutic purposes) and home schooling — or they can choose to spend minimal dollars on K-12 education and save for college.
There is no obligation that the curriculum that is used to teach students who use ESAs to attend private schools be developmentally appropriate, challenging or even accurate. Although a few states require parents to promise that their children receive instruction in reading, grammar, mathematics, science and social studies, what content is taught and what is learned is immaterial.
If at this point you are thinking that most taxpayers would view such an unaccountable and unregulated system as one in which families could easily be victimized by misinformation, false claims, profiteering and fraud, you would be right. This is not lost on the proponents of ESAs. That is why they have developed all kinds of language to make ESAs seem hip and cutting edge, when they are really advocating a return to a time before the 1830s when schooling was a haphazard event for all but the wealthy.
See how cool it is? Parents pledge not to enroll their children in a public school or a charter school. The family gets a debit card and goes shopping. Destroy public education. Just like Uber or Amazon, except this is education. This is our future. These are our children.
The people behind this are the super-rich. What do you think they have in mind? They send their own children to elite private schools. The ESA won’t cover that. Are they mad? Are they stupid? Are they vicious? What gives?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Good to see this in the Washington Post.
ESAs are one step closer to what Jeb and DeVos want: backpack vouchers. It is another device to chisel away at public school budgets. Just as charters opened the door for vouchers, ESAs provides a model of the money following the child. After the public accepts this design, they will be using it to justify draining more money from budgets for a variety of specialized needs or wants. If enough of these vouchers are used, school districts would have shrink and perhaps collapse, and the ultimate goal of decentralizing and privatizing education could be achieved.
DeVos, along with the rest of the echo chamber, are pushing Indianapolis as the new miracle city. I think it replaces DC. It’s another coordinated marketing campaign. Charters are catching some pushback so they re-named charters “innovation schools” .
Ed reformers are upset because they don’t want to be tied to Trump:
“Sullivan, who previously served as a Democratic representative in the Indiana House, said DeVos is part of an administration that supports policies that will “deeply hurt” children. Sullivan said she is reserving judgment on what to make of the visit to Cold Spring until she learns more, but she is concerned that the TV story that DeVos was filming could potentially spark backlash.
“My biggest fear is — I don’t want the school or the strategy to be criticized because she’s choosing to uplift it,” Sullivan added.”
But why shouldn’t they be tied to Trump? Their policy is identical. They’re afraid the public will figure that out?
One of them gave a speech in Cleveland the other day pushing Indianapolis.
Cleveland was Indianapolis in 2012. It’s a “portfolio” city. Apparently they don’t know that.
They’re pushing portfolio cities in cities that already ARE portfolio cities. This gets more and more ridiculous with each passing day.
https://www.chalkbeat.org/posts/in/2018/02/12/betsy-devos-made-a-covert-visit-to-indianapolis-last-week-heres-why/
Diane don’t tell the public that the echo chamber all support vouchers.
If they figure that out they might realize they’re all identical to DeVos.
Ohio ed reformers have drafted a “backpack voucher” funding plan for the whole state.
People in Ohio were specifically told ed reform would not lead to backpack voucher funding, but of course they were misled. Charters led to vouchers and now they want to voucherize the whole state.
I hope the public in this state soundly rejects this latest move to the radical Right. Ed reform has lost it’s sheen in this state. The marketing isn’t swallowed whole anymore.
In my experience, it is the marketing which is key to why nothing actually changes: big money is spent as often as necessary to simply re-vamp, re-name and re-organize Big Money interests. What Big Money understands so very well is that the public tends to swallow whatever “new” idea is prettily packaged up and presented to them.
The sum total of what the Trump Administration are offering public school families is 43 million to be spent on anti-drug programs.
Shows you what they think of public school students, huh? What do our kids get from the federal government? Lectures on how they shouldn’t do drugs.
Not art or music or after school programs or gifted classes. They get a Just Say No Campaign because as everyone knows they’re in these “government schools” and not going anywhere good. The best the snobs in DC can hope for is they don’t all become heroin addicts.
It’s contempt for our kids and our families. Over and over and over. And we’re paying for this!
I wonder if ESAs will become like HSAs (Healthcare Savings Accounts). HSAs are generally all your own money (some “generous” employers kick in a bit too), just that it’s tax free. No government money involved – if you want your kid to get an education, you pay for it. That would completely take care of the problem of anyone having to pay for anyone else’s kid. On the other hand, it would cut off that lucrative gravy train pouring government money into private hands. I wonder which impulse will win out in the end?
The Orwellian language this administration and its minions so blithely employ is what scares me most about the world at the moment.
Also worth noting:
Trump’s budget proposal calls for drastically reducing the funding prior to eliminating funding for the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Institute of Museum and Library Services and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The four agencies would share $109 million in 2019, a overall cut of $917 million.
In addition, the budget calls for privatizing most of NASA’s operations by 2025, and total elimination of the NASA Learning Center.
NASA’s Digital Learning Network has already been cut —no longer available since Sept 29, 2017. NASA says it is “restructuring its education-related activities in order to streamline and maximize the services it can offer within allocated fiscal resources. As a result, many activities are being restructured or eliminated as they complete their natural period of performance.”
NASA’s Education Program is on the chopping block—a source of grants and scholarship programs for students.
I was unable to determine if cuts were planned for NASA’s MODIS operations (Terra, Aqua) the source of data ”with sufficient predictive potential to inform and help policymakers as they address global environmental change.”
https://ladsweb.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/missions-and-measurements/modis/
The Trump budget calls for $150 million for NASA to “focus on sending astronauts back to the Moon by the mid-2020’s.” Trump also wants to eliminate direct funding for the International Space Station, allowing commercial companies to expand their activities in managing and determining projects.
https://www.nasa.gov
Besides being inane, it is a system ripe for abuse.
What’s to stop a parent from pocketing the money? Even if they agree to home instruction, what kind of guarantee is there to be sure the children are truly being taught?
While I know some parents who diligently instruct their children, sometimes in small groups, that does not mean everyone will be as dedicated.
I had the capacity to teach my son at home when he was having anxiety attacks in the public schools, but I had three other children and worked full time. How many people have the financial support (not to mention the academic background) to be able to home school their children?
It’s a recipe for disaster.
Posted at : https://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/Carol-Burris-on-Education-in-General_News-Burris_Diane-Ravitch_Education-Funding_Education-Vouchers-180214-259.html