Sasha Pudelski of the School Superintendents Association warns conservatives about the unintended consequences of their latest effort to turn a long-established federal program into a sneak voucher initiative.
Curiously her warning was posted by an inflential conservative website, the Thomas B. Fordham Institute’s “Flypaper.”
She begins:
”It may seem counterintuitive, but conservative organizations from the Heritage Foundation, to FreedomWorks, to the Club for Growth are pushing an education bill this year that would significantly enlarge the bureaucracy at the U.S. Department of Education. That’s right, the same organizations that have decried the “bloated education bureaucracy” and that give awards to members of Congress who are “fighting daily to shrink government and the federal bureaucracy” are urging Congress to significantly increase secretarial authority over K–12 and higher education.
“Why are they doing this? To create a new federal education voucher program that would allow dollars to flow out of public schools and into private schools and businesses. As Congress draws to a close without a signature school voucher victory, these organizations are pounding the pavement to try and garner a big win while both chambers still remain under Republican control. The piggybank for this voucher bill is the Impact Aid program, which is the oldest K–12 federal education program and was created to support school districts impacted by a federal presence, such as military installations, Indian treaty or trust land, and other federal facilities.
“The specific voucher legislation, the Military Education Savings Account Act, targets the children of active duty military personnel. However, not all active duty servicemembers’ children are eligible. Only children with a parent on active military duty and residing within a “heavily impacted” local education agency (LEA), as defined in the Impact Aid program, or children with parents on active military duty who reside on a military installation would be eligible for vouchers. These vouchers can be used for a variety of education related expenses, including private schools, online schools and curriculum, afterschool programs, summer camps, computers, and therapists. The families are responsible for reporting how they use the money, and the U.S. Department of Education has to be able to monitor the use of funds, allocate resources on a rolling basis, and monitor for fraud and noncompliance by both families and educational providers.
“Currently, close to sixty Republicans in the House of Representatives support this proposal. What’s not clear is whether these Republicans and the aforementioned conservative organizations have considered the many ways in which this legislation would require the beastly bureaucracy of the U.S. Department of Education to further ensnarl its big federal paws into the hands of individual families’ bank accounts, private K–12 educational businesses, and private schools.
“In addition to drafting a new set of regulations (which clearly will go against the Trump Administration’s bold regulatory rollback process and provisions), at a bare minimum this will require the education department to draft, seek public input on, and finalize new regulations on how the new federal school choice program would operate.
“It would also require the agency to create and set up a completely new data system to collect, review, and monitor the following: a written contract signifying parents will abide by the terms of the statute vis-à-vis use of federal dollars; verification of parents’ active duty status; and verification that the family’s home address is located on a military installation or within the boundaries of a heavily impacted school district. For example, if a family moves off base and is no longer eligible for funding, then the U.S. Department of Education would need to track their change of address and make sure they no longer receive federal dollars. Keeping the agency informed of this changing information would be challenging for military families, who are incredibly mobile.
“In addition, the education department would have unprecedented oversight into the finances of military families. It would need to develop a process to deposit sums into parents’ bank accounts, and parents would have to submit a quarterly expense report to the agency detailing how they will use the money in accordance with federal law. And the department would need a system to recoup the money from parents who later violate those usage restrictions.”
Talk about a bloated bureaucracy!
It gets much worse. Read on.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Boy, now we have Right wingers turning against the more extreme right wingers. The Dems are eating themselves from the inside out and now the “Repugs”. VOTE THEM OUT!! It is time that we elect a whole new establishment to get us out of this mess.
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I live in a military community. Most of the people that live on the base are generally the lower ranks of the military around here. Servicemen with dependents generally opt to take the housing allowance and live off base. Their rank, years of service and region assigned will determine the amount of their housing voucher. We have lots of military and retired military living in this part of Florida, and most of the children attend the public schools. I am sure in certain areas like San Diego it may be difficult to stretch the housing voucher to cover the costs. so there may be more families on the base than here in north Florida where the cost of living is lower. It sounds as though this proposal is aimed at getting those with a lower rank and a dependent family on the base to use a voucher for their children. It would be interesting to know how many military children could be impacted by this. Does it also mean that the offspring of the lower ranked service members would be unable to attend the local public schools? How many eligible minority students will be eligible for this voucher? It may be more “separate and unequal” for which deform is famous.
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The military voucher is about $2500. How many service members would be able to supplement private school tuition with their own $5,000-10,000 per child?
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I doubt many families here will use it unless they are very religious and have the means to supplement the voucher.
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@retired teacher: Where do you live? And what information do you have, to base your response on? Some military families may choose to home-school. With the frequent moves, dependent wives usually do not have the ability to have a career, and work outside the home for wages (other than lower-wage jobs). No one gets rich in military service.
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The proposal will be dead in the water without a corresponding change in FERPA… and that may be in the works, aided by researchers who not only want personally identifyable information (PII) for data mining in connection with –“personalized learning” and mobile tracking of students for “flipped learning” and anywhere-anytime” learning– but also so states and districts can authorize access to PII for community agencies and free-lancers who need to track “student outcomes” including tutors,United Way overseers of preschool programs and auditors of performance for Social Impact Bonds for some of those preschool programs.
The voucher system for military personnel is likely to be a special issue debit card of the kind recently trademarked for use in Florida as MyScholarShop, with online delivery of products (per Amazon) or verifications of services from “approved providers.” Who gets to decide on approved providers? I do not know, but clearly there will be a hustle for eligibility and con-artists in abundance.
In a separate and long post I described the FERPA law not yet reauthorized but targeted for lobby work by researchers in education who want to make PII available to “community partners.” I think the Voucher legislation could fly with minimal attention to the paperwork and reporting burden for recipients of the meager funds. The losers will be the public schools in the military impact zones and families who think that they can get something wonderful with a minimalist voucher.
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They are reckless. And, as we know, don’t care. Nor do their constituents.
They have figured out that to get what they want they either declare: “fake news” or “this is about the military.”
NFL players kneel in protest and gop says it’s “anti-military.”
pres needs to Wag the Dog and take away Comey/Cohen news cycle so he bombs Syria – one building – and uses the military to do his bidding (how dare we discuss those other issues when our military are putting their lives at risk”
Vouchers – benefits military
Increase the deficit? We have to build the military
Rallies work – let’s have a military parade march through DC
Only hope these hundreds of thousands of 18+ year olds now getting active and registering to vote see these machinations… and the defunding of the very public education that is benefitting them
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Conservatives have always been in favor of expanding federal power if it hurts their opponents or if it helps their interests. They can excite their voting base with various protections and prohibitions, so these things they support. Many conservatives would slice babies into wafers and sell them for food if they thought it made a dollar, yet they support the federal prohibition of abortion because it plays well among their base. They behave as though Jesus never cared for people, but claim Christianity.
There are many conservatives who do not behave this way. I know one family that adopted ten children of a variety of ethnicities and raised them with love they needed. I guess they were too busy to notice that twenty families in their church did little more than pray for them, putting nothing into the promulgation of their personal philosophy. Liberals are hardly better, padding their stock options and giving lip service instead of real service through their vote and their money.
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