Governor Bill Lee has proposed a voucher program. Teachers and parents are outraged. —but not enough of them.
When the bill moved from the House to the Senate, the number of vouchers were doubled to 30,000.
The money for vouchers will be subtracted from public schools, which educate 90% of the children of Tennessee. Expect more segregation, more bigotry, more children taught by uncertified teachers, more state-sponsored ignorance of science and history. Expect budget cuts in public schools, larger classes, no money for higher salaries, layoffs for teachers, school nurses, librarians, counselors, the arts.
Betsy DeVos visited Tennessee last week to promote vouchers, and she flatly lied about Florida’s test scores, which are mediocre. She claimed that achievement in Florida had gone up because of the $3 billion that the state spends each year on vouchers and charters. Not true. Surely she is well aware of the voucher studies in D.C., Milwaukee, Ohio, Louisiana, and Indiana showing that students who use vouchers do no better or much worse in school than their peers who remain in public schools.
Florida’s performance on NAEP is mediocre, except for fourth grade, where scores are artificially inflated by the state policy of holding back low-scoring third graders.
Quote of the day:
“‘We don’t have the luxury of worrying about a handful of children,” said Knox County teacher Lauren Hobson, speaking to another crowd assembled by the Tennessee Democratic Party. “We have to worry about the 90% of the children across the country left in schools with us.”
“Hobson and other critics believe underfunding is the real battle in public schools.
“‘Our legislators actually have a constitutional duty in Tennessee to maintain and support a public education,” she said. “They have no duty to support private education.’”
Read that last line again. She is right. Republican legislators in Tennessee, Florida, Indiana, and other states are ignoring their constitutional duty “to maintain and support public education,” not private schools.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Nullification of the church/state wall is behind this, long-term goal to transfer public tax levies into religious schools. Disgraceful. Any move towards a statewide strike by TN teachers?
Yeah, Governor Lee mentions God left and right. This is Bible-belt, so appealing to God is a perfectly acceptable way of justifying policy.
Yeah, I do see some organization of the teachers, but I have no idea how far it reaches. Teachers did get some raises in the past few years, so I think they are not as feisty to strike as in other states. (Actually, the cannot strike since this is a right to work state.)
But we have an enormous teachers shortage, outrageous problems with the state standardized tests called TNReady, and the teacher evaluations are nothing less than insane.
If MAGA man heard Governor Lee mention God, MM (alias DT) will think Lee is talking about him … not Him.
Chalk one up for Chalkbeat and its reporter, Marta B. Aldrich, in the following video, as her question leads to a possibly classic moment of corporate ed. reform dumbfoundedness.
It’s a cell phone video, posted on Twitter, of Betsy and TN Governor Bill Lee touring a Tennessee charter school. As Dr. Ravitch relates above, Betsy has just flat-out lied about Florida’s performance years after a voucher program was instituted, and after a program of mass characterization of schools in Florida. Academic achievement dropped like a rock as a result, and the state lost hundreds of millions of dollars to charter scams.
Chalkbeat reporter Aldrich then follows up a description of TN’s proposed new law creating a system of a state authorizer of charter schools, and which will also allow unaccountable private schools the be funded by a new voucher program. Even if voucher funding of private schools in that district — as well as the opening of a new charter school(s) — is opposed by the local school district board, and population, the local population and elected school board cannot stop it.
Like it or not, if this passes, that district has to accept and fund that charter school. That will be the law.
(at around 15:00 )
Chalkbeat’s Marta W. Aldrich then asks the $60,000 Question:
“This is Marta at Chalkbeat. Isn’t that really contrary to the idea of ‘local control’ when it comes to education?”*
Both Betsy and Guv Lee look momentarily stunned, with only the sound of clicking cameras heard.
In Betsy case, t’s because she would have to answer “Yes”, as it most certainly does remove the “local control” that Betsy otherwise touts.
Rather than answer it, she breaks the silence and then dumps it in TN Governor Bill Lee’s lap, who then blathers incoherently, using Betsy’s talking point (SEE her 60 Minutes interview for one such example) about we need to focus on “students, and not systems.”
He ends his stumbling reply by referencing another idiotic Devos talking point (also used during the 60 Minutes interview), and claims that taking money from existing, struggling public schools and giving it to newly opened charters and voucher-funded private schools — schools that, unlike those public schools, can cherry-pick its student body — will “ultimately strengthen the public schools in those districts as well.”
(Late night talk show host Stephen Colbert memorably said, “This is a policy called .. ‘Stupid.’ ” in one of his sarcastic monologues.
“Don’t ya see?
“If we take medicine away from sick people, and give it to healthy people, this will incentivize those now-deprived sick people to get well on their own, with less medicine. Ya see how that works?”)
Here’s the full back-and-forth: (with ellipses for every pause that Governor Lee makes)
(at around 15:00 )
MARTA : “This is Marta at Chalkbeat. Isn’t that really contrary to the idea of ‘local control’ when it comes to education?”
(Deer-in-headlights expressions. CLICKING CAMERAS. Betsy ends the awkwardness.)
BETSY: “Governor, do you want to … to comment on that?”
GOV. LEE: (fumbling) “What the .. what the … what goal is … is to … provide a plan … that … allows access to children … and this is about … children … annnnd … not about … systems … and the goals is to provide … children .. in all systems … that have … these … low-performing schools … five of which exist in this state … and will allow children to access a higher quality education … which will ultimately strengthen the public schools in those districts as well.”
BEST question: ““If we take medicine away from sick people, and give it to healthy people, this will incentivize those now-deprived sick people to get well on their own…”
Here’s the Colbert clip referenced above:
(The “system called ‘Stupid’ ” quite is at about 1:08
The “take medicine from sick people quote comes in about 3:05)
Colbert’s reaction it that of any rational person when presented with this.
Anyone who is not blinded by ideology, and who hears this line of argument sees it for the baloney that it is.
Hopefully, millions will have the same reaction as Colbert.
Colbert for president! And who is the woman interviewing Betsy?
“They have no duty to support private education.” Of course, that sounds sensible, but then you have state governors like Florida’s who said, “If it’s public (taxpayer) money going to private schools, it’s still public education.” How we’ll ever return to the ideals of public education when you have elected leaders who live in a comic book Bizarro world, I just don’t know. What a country we’ve become with government officials removing regulations that keep our air, water, and soil safe; when totally unqualified people are in positions of power; and when a governor says that since it’s public monies going to private schools (with no oversight), that makes it public education. Woe is us!
In Florida, even home schooling is “public education,” if they get public money. That makes every defense contractor a public entity because they depend on public funding.
MIT, Harvard, Princeton, John Hopkins get more public funding (NIH and NSF) then other universities, including any public ones, so they are public universities—they are certainly much more public than my university whose total funding pales to the Federal grant funds these universities receive.
The US Department of Education now EXCLUDES public schools from their campaign press releases.
Here’s how they describe education in Georgia:
“Georgia is home to 110 charter schools, 20 magnet schools and 633 private schools”
It’s remarkable to watch. They completely ignore public school students and families.
They really could not make it more clear that they have no intention on working on our behalf and instead intend to serve as a kind of publicly-funded campaign arm for the schools they prefer.
Ed reform is such an echo chamber no one even notices. DeVos regularly plans and hosts events where public schools are never mentioned.
They offer absolutely nothing positive to the 90% of children in public schools. They add zero value, and tens of thousands of ed reformers are on the public payroll.
Has anyone in the ed reform echo chamber offered any positive benefit or plan to any child or family who attends a public school this year?
Can they point to a single positive contribution they made to the vast, vast majority of students and schools?
They’re either completely irrelevant to public school students and families (best case) or actively harmful to public school students and families, and not only does no one in the “movement” make any attempt to fix this, they don’t even notice it.
“US Dept of Education
Three cheers for assistant & vice principals! 🎉 In a leadership role that requires you to wear many hats, your ability to respond to the various needs of a school community means a lot. Thanks for all you do to support students and their success!”
We do nothing to support or assist public schools or public school students, and instead spend every work day promoting private school vouchers and charter schools and deliberately exclude public schools, but we are good at spouting meaningless drivel “in thanks” to people who work in public schools.
Here’s what the US Department of Education offers 90% of students and families in the US:
They promise their voucher plan will not strip funding from existing public schools.
They assure us that their plan will not HARM our students or schools. That’s the best they have to offer. DeVos trumpets this as if it’s a reason to employ her.
Imagine ed reform in another sector. You hire them to renovate your house. They do absolutely no work on your house, and instead build a different house across the street.
Then they say you should continue to pay their salaries because they didn’t demolish your house.
At long last, my Tennessee is going to be completely Koched. Private is public. Rich is poor. Potatoes are farm animals.
Do you think Betsy the Brainless is in a contest to see if she can lie more than MAGA man? If true, BB is going to lose to MM.
This afternoon I had a talk to a person who watched this legislation come out of committe. She was sure that the nays had more, but it was passed anyway and no one questioned it. Are we ruled by a tyrannical minority who ignores the rules? Is this the local control we hear about? Government by and for DeVos?
At the bottom is a link to a blog of a teacher from Florida comparing the teacher certification required at traditional public schools VS. that in voucher-funded private schools.
SPOILER ALERT: the latter have ZERO teacher certification requirements; you can teach without even obtaining a Bachelor’s Degree.
There’s also a comparison of testing: in the voucher-funded private schools, students don’t have to take a single state-mandated test, while in the public schools, they are tested to a fair-the-well, and those results are then used to shut down those schools, fire all the teachers, and re-open them as privately-managed, unaccountable charter schools.
Heck, voucher-funded religious schools — Devos openly calls for demolishing the wall between church at state, and funding them — use taxpayer money to teach that the world is 5,000 years old, and that when the Rapture comes, only good Christians will fly up into the sky, and into Heaven, and, in Science classes, kids’ learn that pre-historic people rode dinosaurs the way Fred Flintstone did. Again, taxpayers will foot the bill for this idiocy.
Folks in Tennessee, this is what’s coming of this bill passes.
http://jaxkidsmatter.blogspot.com/2019/04/florida-gives-up-game-admits-its-school.html