Jeb Bush wrote a congratulatory post to his buddy Chris Sununu (whose father was chief of staff to President George H.W. Bush). Chris Sununu just was re-elected Governor of New Hampshire. During his first term, he pushed for vouchers, but they got stalled when the Republican-controlled House voted them down.
Jeb urges Sununu to keep going with the fight for public funding of religious and private schools.
But, sorry, too late. The Democrats in New Hampshire swept both houses of the Legislature. No vouchers this year!
New Hampshire voters are independent. They don’t take marching orders from Betsy DeVos or Jeb Bush or the Koch brothers.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The goal in ed reform now is universal vouchers:
“But thousands of children are on the waiting list. And we can’t afford to wait. That’s why Gov. Sununu and many other lawmakers are pushing for a revolutionary solution: Education Freedom Savings Accounts, which will make families the ultimate decision-makers. Instead of funding government which in turn tells families what school they should attend and what classes they should take, the Freedom Account funds families directly.”
It started with charters and then vouchers and now they want to switch to a low-value voucher system where we’ll be given a small stipend to purchase educational services.
As usual in ed reform I’m struck by how Bush completely ignores students in public schools.
Public school students simply don’t exist in this “movement”- they offer absolutely nothing of value to public school families.
Thousands of paid lobbyists and policy people and university departments and NO ONE puts any investment or effort into the huge group of children who attend the unfashionable public sector schools.
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There are still legitimate researchers toiling away at institutions of higher education, but some schools like Tulane have gone to the dark side of fake reform. We can still expect to find truth from NEPC or Tufts University. The problem is facts no longer seem to matter as “reforming” billionaires continue their march to “backpack vouchers,” despite evidence of their meaningless educational value. I am thankful that the people of New Hampshire caught on to the fraudulent plot against their schools and fought back.
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Facts don’t mean anything to billionaires like Koch and Gates.
They have moved beyond facts to a land where only dollars matter.
I laugh every time Bill Gates says he is data driven. He has no clue what it means. He should have stayed in college. Might have learned how to think like a real scientist instead of the hack that he is.
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Here’s the sum total of what ed reform offers the 85% of families in public schools:
“For most students, their current K-12 school does a great job”
Our kids merit only a throw away line jammed into lobbying for charters and vouchers.
They take public school families completely for granted. I guess the assumption is we’ll continue to hire them although they offer no added value to any public school, anywhere.
I think that’s an arrogant assumption. I wouldn’t bet on that continuing. At some point public school families will start asking why they’re paying public employees who offer absolutely nothing to their schools.
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“Unfortunately, naysayers, chiefly the teachers unions and their allies, have purposefully misled people into thinking this is an attack on public schools”
We’re now supposed to pay these people for not “attacking” our schools. That’s the absolute best we can hope for- these public employees won’t deliberately destroy our schools.
They admit they offer nothing of value to public schools, but they assure us they won’t deliberately destroy our schools. For this we’re supposed to pay them.
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Here’s a crazy idea. What if we hired some public employees who not only promised not to destroy our schools, but actually had some positive contribution to make to our schools?
Expectations too high? Too much to ask? Do we have to settle for people who are ideologically opposed to our schools but grudgingly allow them to exist? I don’t think we do. We can do better.
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