According to Politico Morning Education, the pro-voucher forces are throwing in the towel before the November referendum on Prop 305.
Prop 305 would overturn a law passed last year to offer unlimited vouchers.
Parents and educators gathered over 100,000 signatures to get it on the ballot. The Koch brothers sent in their legal team to try to knock it off the ballot but failed.
The voucher forces anticipate defeat so they are quitting ahead of the vote. They surely have polled and the numbers look bad for vouchers.
Vouchers have been overwhelmingly defeated in every state referendum.
Politico writes:
SCHOOL CHOICE GROUP TAKES SURPRISE STANCE IN ARIZONA: The prominent school choice group once chaired by DeVos is on the same side as public school advocates on a key ballot question in the state this fall.
— The American Federation for Children has decided it supports a “no” vote on a ballot question that lets voters decide if they want to keep a law passed last year that expands eligibility for a school choice-friendly program in the state.
— The decision places AFC in the unusual position of being aligned with public school supporters who had opposed the law. Previously, AFC was among the school choice-friendly groups that pushed for its passage.
— The AFC’s reasoning is complicated, but ultimately it argues that more children could be eligible for the program moving forward if an older law remains on the books.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education.
While this sounds like good news, do not forget how the Koch brothers operate. For almost five decades they have been systematically chipping away at the fabric of the US Constitution and state constitutions through legislation churned out by ALEC.
With David Koch allegedly dying of pancreatic cancer, Charles Koch continues on alone and he has never demonstrated once that he gives up when he loses. What he does is to reboot and try another method to achieve his ultimate goal of turning the US into a Alt-Right billionaires paradise with the rest of us no better than voiceless wage slaves.
If Charles and his ALEC machine can’t achieve his goals legally and morally, ALEC writes legislation that makes it legal to hide bribes and keep them secrete from the public in addition to turning white collar fraud legal too.
To Charles and the members of ALEC it is okay to steal as long as you are already rich and powerful.
A possibility- vouchers are seen as a threat to the for-profit schools-in-a-box that the rich want…but, not for their kids.
No, they really want unlimited vouchers.
But they knew they would get whupped, and they backed off.
When will they ever understand that the public doesn’t want vouchers?
Actually, they do get it, and know that it’s easier to buy legislators than to get beaten by democracy
In other words, we cant win if there is actual voting involved.
A correction: Arizona does not have a school voucher program. Vouchers were ruled unconstitutional by the state Supreme Court in the case of Niehaus v. Huppenthal.
Arizona has Empowerment Scholarships, which enable parents to direct the spending of their state education dollars. Here is an explanation:
“ESAs are much more comprehensive than a voucher program and they allow parents to control their child’s state-funded education dollars.”[
see:
https://ballotpedia.org/Arizona_Proposition_305,Expansion_of_Empowerment_Scholarship_Accounts_Referendum(2018)
The so-called “Empowerment Scholarships” are vouchers by another name.
Proponents of vouchers know that they are unpopular.
So they come up with deceptive nomenclature to disguise them. Empowerment scholarships. Opportunity scholarships. Tuition tax credits.
A rose by any other name is still a rose.
A voucher is a voucher is a voucher, no matter what you call it. Its purpose is to divert public funding to nonpublic schools, usually in direct violation of the state constitution.
So much for “originalist” interpretations of the State or Federal Constitution.
“A rose by any other name is still a rose.”
I like this one:
The fetid stench of a polecat by any other name is still the fetid stench of a polecat.
Arizona’s ESAs come in the form of tax dollars loaded onto a debit card and have been used to purchase things like TVs. So I guess you’re right…they’re not really school vouchers, but more like a generous gift card.