A new movie will be released in a few days, telling the story of the D.C. voucher program.
The movie is called Miss Virginia, and the purpose of the movie is to persuade movie goers to love the idea of vouchers as a way to escape their”failing” public schools.
This is a bit reminiscent of the movie called “Won’t Back Down,” that was supposed to sell the miracle of charter schools. It had two Hollywood stars, it opened in 2,500 movie theaters, and within a month it had disappeared. Gone and forgotten. No one wanted to see it.
Mercedes Schneider doesn’t review the movie. Instead she reviews the dismal failure of the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program [sic].
She guesses that movie won’t mention any of the abysmal evaluations of the D.C. voucher program.
Surely, Miss Virginia thought she was helping her children by encouraging Vouchers. She made the mistake of trusting the rich white men like the Koch brothers, the Waltons, and Milton Friedman.
As Schneider shows, the D.C. voucher program is regularly evaluated, and the results are not pretty.
DC VOUCHERS HAD NO IMPACT ON STUDENT ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT
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There were no statistically significant impacts on either reading or mathematics achievement for students who received vouchers or used vouchers three years after applying to the program.
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The lack of impact on student academic achievement applied to each of the study’s eight subgroups of students: (1) students attending schools in need of improvement when they applied, (2) students not attending schools in need of improvement when they applied, (3) students entering elementary grades when they applied, (4) students entering secondary grades when they applied, (5) students scoring above the median in reading at the time of application, (6) students below the median in reading at the time of application, (7) students scoring above the median in mathematics at the time of application, and (8) students below the median in mathematics at the time of application.
DC VOUCHERS DO NOT PROVIDE GREATER PARENTAL SATISFACTION
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The program had no statistically significant impact on parents’ satisfaction with the school their child attended after three years.
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The program had a statistically significant impact on students’ satisfaction with their school only for one subgroup of students (those with reading scores above the median), and no statistically significant impact for any other subgroup.
DC VOUCHERS DO NOT PROVIDE A GREATER SENSE OF SCHOOL SAFETY FOR PARENTS
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The program had no statistically significant impact on parents’ perceptions of safety for the school their child attended after three years.
DC VOUCHERS DO NOT INCREASE PARENTAL INVOLVEMENT
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The program had no statistically significant impact on parents’ involvement with their child’s education at school or at home after three years.
DC VOUCHERS DO NOT PROVIDE MORE CLASSROOM INSTRUCTION TIME OR SCHOOL-WIDE RESOURCES
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The study found that students who received a voucher on average were provided 1.7 hours less of instruction time a week in both reading and math than students who did not receive vouchers.
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The study found that students who received a voucher had less access to programming for students with learning disabilities and for students who are English Language Learners than students who did not receive vouchers.
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The study also found that students who received vouchers had fewer school safety measures in place at their schools than students who did not receive vouchers.
DC VOUCHER SCHOOLS ARE PREDOMINANTLY RELIGIOUS AND THE VAST MAJORITY CHARGE TUITION ABOVE THE VOUCHER AMOUNT
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The study found that 62% of the schools participating in the voucher program from 2013-2016, were religiously affiliated.
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The study found that 70% of the schools participating in the voucher program from 2013-2016 had published tuition rates above the maximum amount of the voucher. Among those schools, the average difference between the maximum voucher amount and the tuition was $13,310.
MANY STUDENTS REJECT THE VOUCHER OR LEAVE THE PROGRAM
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The study found that three years after applying to the voucher program, less than half (49%) of the students who received vouchers used them to attend a private school for the full three years.
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The study also found that 20% of students stopped using the voucher after one year and returned to public school, and 22% of students who received vouchers did not use them at all.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
To be more specific, “Won’t Back Down” was designed to sell the parent trigger, a magical miracle promoted by saints with which parents were supposedly able to take over the school their kids attended and hand it over to a private charter operator. It was part of the massive billionaire-funded hype for the parent trigger, which disrupted a tiny number of schools in Southern California but basically died just like the movie.
it disrupts and then often dies, but it is being moved as a “reform” action across the nation to do just that over and over
I think that’s in the past. The parent trigger folks went all around the country about 2011 or 2012, including paid people posing as parent or grandparent volunteers, persuading state legislatures to pass parent trigger laws — I’ve lost track of how many ever did (Texas, Florida, maybe Ohio, who knows how many more…).
The hype and gushing, including in the MSM, were to the skies. The number of parent triggers resulting from that legislation? A big fat ZERO.
Parents actually don’t want to turn their kids’ schools over to private charter operators, and the parent triggers that have happened (basically two and a couple of partials, long story, all in Southern Calif.) involved operators lying to parents about what they were signing — “sign here to beautify our school”; “sign here to improve parking around our school.” There’s only so many times they can get away with sh*t that brazen — the MSM spots it and gets it and the gushing turns to aggressive skepticism; you get the idea.
Also, there really are potential legal snags involved. Sooner or later, those would kick in, and do the parent trigger con artists want to pay those legal costs? Probably not…
So it appears none have even gotten started in any of those other states.
In 1981 DC voters rejected a tax-credit voucher plan by 89% to 11%. The vouchers were foisted on DC by Bush and the GOP.
And there is this backgrounder on the movie Miss Virginia, who financed it, and what the real Miss Virginia is doing now.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/dcs-controversial-school-vouchers-get-the-star-treatment-in-a-new-movie/2019/10/13/4240fed4-eac4-11e9-9306-47cb0324fd44_story.html
She wants to be a “movie” star … HELP!
“Won’t Back Down” took in $5.3 million at the box office and is ranked 5,704 for all-time domestic. The film was never released in another country.
Rotten Tomatoes reported the consensus of the critics:
“Despite the best efforts of its talented leads, Won’t Back Down fails to lend sufficient dramatic heft or sophistication to the hot-button issue of education reform.”
Listed as a top critic, The London Evening Standard’s review said, “More anti-union propaganda masquerading as entertainment.”
When the movie critic for my own employer, the San Francisco Chronicle, reviewed it, he had zero background on WTF was going on, but he basically just sounded baffled, like what was that about again?
There are books movies that change the world because they touch people about feelings, relationships, and events that are universal and sometimes even timeless. Privatizing schools is not an issue that strikes such deep chords. This is another flop put on by eccentric ideologues. Looking forward to not seeing it or hearing anyone talk about it.