Mercedes Schneider conducted a search to find the voucher legislation just passed by both houses of the Tennessee Legislature. You will not be surprised to learn that the legislation was written by ALEC (the rightwing bill mill funded by DeVos, the Koch brothers, and corporations).
I had a hard time plowing through the dreary legislative language, but if you skip to the end of that section, you will find vitriolic comments directed at the bill’s co-sponsor, Brian Kelsey, by his constituents on his Facebook page. They express outrage and a sense of betrayal.
Let’s hope they remember when Kelsey runs again.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Here’s a link to ALEC’s model education legislation pages: https://www.alec.org/issue/education/model-policy/
These include the model legislation that ALEC has prepared dealing with charters and voucher programs, which are variously named, these days, as scholarship programs, tuition credit programs, and education savings accounts.
Florida’s stupidity is spreading like the measles in other red states.
And here is the actual ESA as an actual ALEC bill https://www.alec.org/model-policy/the-education-savings-account-act-2/
No surprise here. Tennessee has been imitating for a long time.
The Koch’s legislator in Tennessee can be contacted at Sen.Brian.Kelsey@capitol.tn.gov
I’m not sure where to post this but I’m appalled at the comments Gov. Bevin is making against teachers. How sweet that he “cares about children” as long as it doesn’t cost money. How about funding schools properly so teachers don’t have to strike? What a novel idea!
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Gov. Matt Bevin of Kentucky Is Criticized for Blaming Teacher Strikes for Girl’s Shooting
The remarks were the latest to ignite controversy for the governor, who had previously linked the teachers’ strikes with a rise in crimes committed against or by children.
Kentucky’s Republican governor, Matt Bevin, came under criticism from state Democrats on Friday for suggesting that teachers on strike were to blame for the shooting of a 7-year-old girl who had stayed home because of school closures. The remarks were the latest to ignite controversy for the governor, who faces low approval ratings ahead of an election in November.
“One thing you almost didn’t hear anything about while we had people pretending to be sick when they weren’t sick and leaving kids unattended to or in situations that they should not have been in — a little girl was shot, 7 years old, by another kid,” he said in a speech before the Rotary Club of Louisville on Thursday.
“Because they were somewhere that they weren’t intended to be, because the parent didn’t have any option,” he added….
The party and others also pointed to previous remarks by Mr. Bevinconnecting teachers’ strikes with a rise in crimes committed against or by children.
In April 2018, when teachers were protesting at the State Capitol, Mr. Bevin said they were exposing children to danger. “Children were harmed — some physically, some sexually, some were introduced to drugs for the first time — because they were vulnerable and left alone,” he had said, according to The Courier-Journal.
The Kentucky Democrats said on Friday: “First it was sexual assault; now it’s an accidental shooting. This is disgusting and unforgivable.”
I read a lot of ed reformers and when I read them I look for if/when they mention, refer to or advocate on behalf of public school students.
Two things stick out when one reads a lot of them- how little time and effort they put towards “education”- things like instruction or curriculum- and how public schools are consistently completely omitted from their advocacy campaigns.
You can read the Tennessee governors twitter and see the whole high profile echo chamber congratulating him on vouchers- Betsy DeVos is there, President Trump is there, Jeb Bush is there- they all check in to promote private schools.
You won’t find a single reference to a public school or public school student that doesn’t have “failing” in front of it. It’s not just unfair to public schools. It’s unfair to public school students. They should have advocates in government.
If you arrived from another planet and read only the echo chamber on education you would reasonably conclude there are no public schools or public school students in the United States. Try it yourself. Many times they write entire opinion pieces where the only reference to public schools is “teachers unions”. It’s the craziest thing. A “movement” that say they are “student centered” never actually talk about students in public schools, other than to lobby them to switch to a charter school or private school or to tell them they’re all failing.
Mary Landrieu started her editorial promoting charter schools like this “Democrats have always supported charter schools and teachers unions”. What? Mary Landrieu sees a public school or public school student and says “labor unions”. I don’t know a single public school parent who looks at public schools this way, and I’ve been a public school school parent for 25 years.
UPS is unionized, FedEx is not. It’s as if I presented myself as an expert on package delivery and said “there are two large parcel delivery services which I will now analyze- one is the Teamsters and the other is FedEx” What?
Mary Landrieu is the sister of Third Way’s Mitch Landrieu. His confederate statue publicity stunt reflects the hackneyed strategy of establishment Dems.- sidle up next to the oppressed, look like them or do something for window dressing and, then advance corporations instead of the 99%.
Chiara,
I try to avoid reading tripe. Thanks for doing it for me.
Did anyone tell Mary Landrieu that 90% of charters are non-union? Since she works for the anti-union Waltons, she knows this. That means she is lying.
Landrieu goes on to “thank” public school teachers for (finally) going on strike after a decade of complete and utter neglect and disinterest (and often open hostility) from lawmakers towards public schools. This former Senator is hugely grateful that someone (but not her) stepped up to call attention to public schools.
Apparently Landrieu, as a zealous ed reform lawmaker, never considered that she might have some role in advocating on behalf of public schools or the students who attend them. That’s unimaginable in ed reform. Incredibly, she then demands public school advocates “join her” in promoting charter schools. I don’t know- if I join her in promoting charter schools won’t that leave public schools without any advocates at all?
TELLING statement, underscoring so much political manipulation in days of teacher action: “This former Senator is hugely grateful that someone (BUT NOT HER) stepped up to call attention to public schools.”
The next time a state passes a new funding formula for public schools or additional funding for public schools or anything that benefits public schools, look to the ed reform echo chamber and see if anyone is cheering the way they do when charter funding/ a voucher law passes.
You won’t find any mention of it at all and they will have had no involvement in it. Often it will have passed over their organized opposition.
Yet, they demand I “join them” in promoting their schools and programs, none of which benefit any public school or any student in a public school. They are all zealous and single-minded charter and voucher advocates, but PUBLIC school advocates are not permitted. Why not? If they’re not going to work for our schools and students (and they’re not and they don’t) shouldn’t someone else outside government do it? Or are they just “the status quo” who can be safely written off for another year?