Mercedes Schneider wrote a history of vouchers and school choice called School Choice: The End of Public Education? She is aware that libertarians like to credit the origins of vouchers to Thomas Paine and John Stuart Mill. But, their ideas never took root in American soil.
Schneider writes:
The history of school vouchers in American K12 education is rooted in racism.
This fact is indisputable.
Libertarian economist Milton Friedman wrote his famous proposal for vouchers in 1955. Southern governors loved the idea of using public money to escape federal court orders.
She writes:
When it comes to racial integration, school vouchers have yet to “show promise.” Moreover, even though over 60 years has passed since vouchers were first used in K12 education to stymie the federal desegregation mandate, school voucher usage has yet to redeem its reputation as a catalyst for racial resegregation.
In the face of this reality, crediting Paine, or Mill, or Friedman with “the” idea for school vouchers matters little, for it is an idea that only fares well on paper.
Vouchers have also fared poorly in studies of academic achievement.
They seem to be best at reinforcing Inequity.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Re “The history of school vouchers in American K12 education is rooted in racism.” Yep! And the emergence of evangelical Christians into Republican politics was fueled by the same motive (evangelicals were not anti-abortion until a smokescreen for the racism involved was needed). This makes their support of Trump and vouchers and DeVose clear.
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Those that choose not to send their children to public schools have one other choice, pay for private schools. No funds diverted from public schools!
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Mercedes also has a Nov. 30 post at her blog about the the disaster capitalism in Puerto Rico which targets public schools for privatization. Based on states in the U.S., presumably, the intent is either profiteering or to create segregation schools. (In Mich. 80% of charters are for-profit, in Ohio, citizens were bilked out of $1 bil. by charter operators. The charter school churn in Detroit has been labeled as brutal on Black families.)
The Director of the Puerto Rico Relief and Economic Policy Initiative, a program developed by the self-appointed American Progress (a branch of the Gates-funded Center for American Progress) was formerly a VP with Kaplan Inc, and was a deputy director of Aspira of Illinois, a “network of charter schools”. Wikipedia describes the history of Aspira, from its Pennsylvania operation that the “NLRB ruled threatened teachers in 2013” to its Illinois operation that “in 2012 fired the CEO because, for years, Aspira student scores were lower than Chicago Public School scores”.
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Would someone more erudite than I please refer me to writings of Paine or Mill that say anything approaching the idea of Friedman? I have read Paine and Mill and find nothing suggesting such things. Indeed Mill’s suggestion that laws exist to fight the tyranny of a majority over a minority are perfect support for a support of a common education.
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From Britannicadotcom: In 1975 [Milton] Friedman traveled to Chile, where he delivered a series of lectures and public talks and met with the country’s then military dictator, Augusto Pinochet. Friedman advised Pinochet in a subsequent letter to administer a “shock treatment” to the Chilean economy to cure it of runaway inflation. His prescriptions, eventually implemented under the direction of a group of Chilean economists who had trained at the University of Chicago in the 1950s and ’60s (the “Chicago boys”), included drastic cuts in public spending, the privatization of state-operated enterprises, the elimination of wage and price controls, and the deregulation of financial markets and foreign trade. The consequences of those measures have been intensely debated in numerous studies. Friedman was widely criticized for apparently lending support to the dictatorship, a charge that he and his supporters regarded as unfair. End quote.
The libertarians have hissy fits, stomp their feet and claim that Uncle Miltie only met with Pinochet for 30 minutes and tried to impress upon Pinochet the value of freedom. Baloney. Pinochet is the true face of libertarianism as far as I’m concerned.
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Nancy MacLean documents the connection between Pinochet and Friedman in her book “Democracy in Chains.” Libertarians, especially those funded by the Koch brothers, loathe that book and take every opportunity to defame and smear MacLean.
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Reign of Idiots: https://www.truthdig.com/articles/reign-of-idiots/
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“The history of school vouchers in American K12 education is rooted in racism.” Clickbait. When vouchers were actually implemented in the 1990s, it was done in Cleveland and Milwaukee and predominantly served low-income minorities.
“school voucher usage has yet to redeem its reputation as a catalyst for racial resegregation” The primary purpose of school choice is to simply to produce more educational choices, not resegregation. You are choosing to graft that secondary purpose on top of it.
Not everything has to be about race.
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Can I assume, based on your comment, that you also believe the chicken and egg have no prior knowledge of each other?
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Matt is self-serving so he sees what he wants to see. “Served low income students in Cleveland”, apparently Matt missed the recent Figlio research about the failure of Ohio vouchers. BTW, evidently, Fordham was unhappy about the findings they funded, so when they wrote the research foreword, a claim about competition and success was included which wasn’t in the attached research paper… should have been embarrassing for all involved but, if you have no shame….
There’s nothing “simple” about billionaires spending to destroy America’s most important common good. What is simple is that
either privatization is about profiteering or creating segregation schools (and, for some of the door class, it’s both.)
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Linda,
You have distorted what I said. I did not say the vouchers worked in Cleveland. I did not say vouchers/school choice couldn’t be used unethically in the pursuit of profit or segregation.
I said the ORIGINAL INTENT when these programs were implemented in the 1990s was to give low-income minorities another option. The article is essentially saying these pilot programs were set up for racist purposes – this is ridiculous.
Let me ask you a question – did you ever talk with the people who set up vouchers in Cleveland in the 1990s? I did, as part of my research at that time. Did you ever talk with the voucher people in Milwaukee in the 1990s? I did.
So please self-serve and go back and read about the original programs a bit.
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Please be careful in using the term “original intent” (especially in all caps). This is the wrong place to spew that line. We know the history of vouchers and, more importantly, Diane was a witness to what the founding father of the concept of charters, Al Shanker, intended for his idea.
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“We know the history of vouchers”. It does not appear you know the history of the Cleveland or Milwaukee programs, which is what I’m referring to. Not Al Shanker, Milton Friedman, the southern governors, or whoever else you want to bring up.
The ORIGINAL INTENT of the first voucher programs ACTUALLY IMPLEMENTED in the US was to give low-income minorities in those cities another educational option.
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Vouchers failed.
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Choice was born in the 1950s and 1960s with segregationist whites. For years, the very term “school choice” was stigmatized. The Milwaukee and Cleveland chiice programs were funded by rightwing foundations, using blacks as their public spokespersons.
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I’m saying when they were actually implemented, it was done to give inner-city minorities other school options.
Can school choice be misused to create more segregation? Undoubtedly.
But all the racism mudslinging has nothing to do with the original intent in Cleveland and Milwaukee.
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Other worse options according to Figlio.
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No one knew if they would be better or worse at the time, as these were the first voucher programs implemented in the US.
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You are right on one point. No one know in 1990 How vouchers would work, whether they would “save poor kids from failing schools,” as then claimed.
Chubb and Moe wrote in 1989 that school choice was a “panacea.”
Now we know. They were wrong. There are many recent studies showing that vouchers lead to lower academic achievement.most Voucher schools have uncertified teachers and use the Bible as their science textbook.
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The original intent of vouchers was a hoax. They were funded by the rightwing Bradley Foundation of Milwaukee, with the intent of hoaxing the media and liberals into accepting privatization of public funding. They succeeded, but vouchers didn’t.
Howard Fuller, who led the voucher battle in Milwaukee, received millions from Bradley and Walton to create a pro-choice organization called the Black Alliance for Educational Options. It worked for him.
Prolly Williams, the other Milwaukee advocate, lived to regret her role. She saw the scams and frauds.
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I disagree. At first, the Milwaukee program didn’t even include religious schools. Yes, the Bradley Foundation helped to change that. And once things were rolling, many groups saw the dollar signs and the scams began.
But the point is the schools in Milwaukee and particularly in Cleveland (which I have knowledge of) were terrible. And many families that took the vouchers were happy with the move, even if the students didn’t perform any better.
Just because an idea gets monetized doesn’t mean the original idea was immoral.
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The entire voucher program in Milwaukee was funded by the rightwing Bradley Foundation.
Michael Joyce, it’s exec director, cynically used Polly Williams and Howard Fuller.
I was there.
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And I was there in Ohio.
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Good for you.
The voucher movement was completely funded by rightwing foundations.
Milwaukee, Cleveland, Florida.
Bradley, the Koch brothers, the DeVos Family, the Waltons.
Wherever vouchers took off, the money came from the far-right. They used or duped African Americans.
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How did Vouchers work out for Cleveland?
Cleveland has had vouchers since 1995. Its now the longest running voucher program in the nation.
Tell us how the District was revived and all the children were saved.
I’m all ears.
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“Bradley Files”, the Center for Media and Democracy has a tab devoted to Koch’s conjoined twin.
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I knew Mike Joyce, the exec director of Bradley, as he funded vouchers inMilwaukee and kept the idea alive until the courts gave their ok
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In terms of academic outcomes, they had no real impact. I am not debating that.
The original article you cited said school vouchers are “rooted in racism”. This is what I am debating.
To say that the program that was started in Cleveland was done so for racist purposes is absurd. I stand behind what I said.
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I stand behind Diane Ravitch’s truth instead of Matt’s “alternative facts”.
Everything is immoral about marketplace choice when it is applied to goods and services that are held in common for valuable reasons.
One example is the choice of private prisons, where exploitation by profiteers makes the misery of the incarcerated more miserable. Is Matt going to blather about the bad luck that Black people receive longer jail sentences than White people for the same crimes, and claim it has no root in racism? Is he going to tell us that the Koch’s ALEC didn’t intend its harsher sentencing guidelines and stand your ground law to have disproportionate adverse effect on Black people? Is he going to tell us that a discriminatory judicial system and enforcement that made Black people felons, who couldn’t vote, was happenstance? Is he going to tell us that policies haven’t been enacted to enlarge the population of prisoners so that private prisons can profit i.e. immigrants?
(The U.S. is the most imprisoned population in the world.)
Or, is Matt going to lie and tell us that the preceding had altruistic intent?
The Bradley Foundation is conjoined with the Koch’s.
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Billionaires weaponized choice in order to destroy democracy.
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