When I first started writing this blog in 2012, Louisiana’s then Governor Bobby Jindal was crowing about his new voucher plan. He and his state commissioner John White insisted that vouchers were a wonderful innovation. They would save poor children from failing public schools. They would give poor children the same choices that rich children have. All the DeVos baloney was served up.
We now know that none of this was true. Most of the voucher money went to backwoods evangelical church schools that did not have certified teachers or a real curriculum. Some of the voucher schools relied on the state money to keep their doors open. The “opportunity” was not for the students, but for the schools, which were glad to have the money from the state.
Now an organization called The Center for Investigative Reporting reveals what we anticipated: most students who use vouchers attend schools that are rated D or F by the State Education Department that funds them. The state is subsidizing no-quality education.
The vouchers are an expensive hoax. They are not saving poor children from failing schools. Most of them ARE failing schools.
This story was produced by FOX8 WVUE, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune and WWNO New Orleans Public Radio as part of Reveal’s Local Labs initiative, which supports lasting investigative reporting collaborations in communities across the United States.
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal beamed with pride in April 2012, as he signed into law one of the most sweeping school choice expansions in the nation.
The law was lauded by the American Federation for Children, then chaired by future Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, and other school choice advocates. Like Jindal, they said it would free countless lower-income children from the worst public schools by allowing them to use state tax dollars in the form of vouchers to pay tuition at private schools, where they would ostensibly receive a better education.
“Our children do not have time to wait,” Jindal had said as he spent some of his waning political capital on what he felt would become a major part of his political legacy in Louisiana. “They only grow up once, and they have one shot to receive a quality education.”
Seven years later, however, the $40 million-a-year Louisiana Scholarship Program has failed to live up to its billing. The nearly 6,900 students who’ve left public schools have instead been placed into a system with numerous failing private schools that receive little oversight, a monthslong examination by a coalition of local and national media organizations has found.
Two-thirds of all students in the voucher system attended schools where they performed at a D or F level last school year, according to a data analysis by NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune, WVUE Fox 8 News, WWNO and Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting.
Vouchers represent the interests of those that promote segregation. New Orleans has a long history of segregation. I remember meeting a woman in 1970 that taught French in a private academy that catered to a white clientele. She told me that the city was determined to keep the racial divide in the city. This attitude existed long before vouchers. Vouchers give them a way to fund their persistent segregation. These “scholarships” lure in poor minority students with false claims and glossy marketing. Vouchers allow a city like New Orleans to abrogate its responsibility to educate all its students. If poor, minority students can only get into a D or F school, they are not providing students with an opportunity, they are placing them in a failing school where there is little to no accountability because these students are not valued. Vouchers are an elaborate ruse that enables and enhances segregation.
I would hope that someone undertakes a study of Florida vouchers. I know that about 97% of private schools are not accredited. Wealthy individuals receive tax credits for donating to “Opportunity Scholarships.” Once again these scholarships seem to be a way to off load the government’s responsibility to educate poor, minority students. However, with the raised income levels on these scholarships, they are looking to move more students into these unaccredited schools.
This question has nothing to do with Louisiana.
What examples are there, if any, of new “reform” methods being used for children who are blind?
Bart
Bart D. Zehren Evanston, IL
bz@your-research-resource.com
On Mon, Aug 26, 2019 at 8:02 AM Diane Ravitch’s blog wrote:
> dianeravitch posted: “When I first started writing this blog in 2012, > Louisiana’s then Governor Bobby Jindal was crowing about his new voucher > plan. He and his state commissioner John White insisted that vouchers were > a wonderful innovation. They would save poor children from ” >
“All 4 of my grandparents were deeply devout members of a Christian sect that believed that if you get sick it must be because you did something to deserve it. My grandfather when he got sick (finding no blame within himself), blamed his wife. He died thinking she had caused his illness by committing some unknown sin.” (Bill Gates interview,
5-24-2018, Relevant magazine.)
In 2014, Gates said he “participates in” a Catholic Church attended by his wife and children.
“The Catholic Church has a long history of promoting capitalism and property rights with the dismissal of harsh results as God’s will working out.” (from an article about the 1,000,000 Irish who died of starvation)
So interesting; hard to connect this with the Gates who feels to be anything but superstitious or religious, yet it explains so much
Fast forward to 2018, from the Koch-linked Manhattan Institute in an article about charter schools, “To be sure, we are all fallen creatures.”(“Catholic Schools and Truth Decay”, July 3, 2018)
These people shouldn’t be anywhere near public education policy.
Correction- the 5-24 article was 2014.
Bobby Jindal sort of “vanished” after 2016. I just checked Wiki and it seems in 2017, “Jindal took a position as an operating advisor for Ares Management, a global investment firm based in Los Angeles.”
What is an operating advisor?
I also cannot find much about Ares Management.