Republican Mike Turzai, Speaker of the House in Pennsylvania, is encouraging the state to adopt the Betsy DeVos agenda for diverting public funds to religious and private schools.
Turzai’s agenda is described here by Lawrence Feinberg, a school board member in Haverford Township and director of the Keystone State Education Coalition.
Feinberg writes:
The 2022 race for governor’s race has begun, and Pennsylvania House Speaker Mike Turzai wants to make it clear that he shares Betsy DeVos’ vision for privatization of public education.
In a recent Philadelphia Inquirer opinion piece, Turzai, R-Allegheny, touted our state “as a gold standard with respect to funding public school districts”, completely ignoring the fact that Pennsylvania is home to the widest per pupil funding gap between wealth and poor districts in the country.
Under his leadership, the Pennsylvania Legislature has been negligent, willfully and deliberately ignoring the state’s historic gross inequity in the distribution of school funding and locking students in poorer districts into their underfunded and under resourced predicament. A school funding lawsuit is pending, with the trial tentatively set to begin in summer 2020.
In fiscal 2015-16, only 36.8 percent of aggregate education funding came from the state while 57.2 percent came from local sources, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Education’s “Annual Financial Reports.”
The U.S. Census’ “Annual Survey of School System Finances” data from fiscal year 2015 ranks Pennsylvania 47th out of the 50 states in state support for public schools.
Instead of addressing the funding issue, he has consistently and aggressively promoted anything but democratically governed public schools that are accountable to taxpayers. While he supported the Financial Recovery Act of 2012 setting in motion a plan for distressed school districts to get back on track, he is thwarting that effort by ensuring that such districts remain in financial distress.
His signature tax credit program, which diverts public tax dollars to private and religious schools, skirts the Pennsylvania Constitution which explicitly says that “no money raised for the support of the public schools of the Commonwealth shall be appropriated to or used for the support of any sectarian school.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Turzai is in the pocket of the privatizers. His goal is to divert as much money as he can from public education to hasten their demise. The proposed tax credits will send public money to private religious schools in violation of the constitution. Maybe it is time to file a lawsuit?
The governor has already proposed regulations for charter schools. However, he cannot make the changes on his own. There is already a lawsuit on inequitable funding scheduled for 2020. The people of Pennsylvania should work on a scorecard for legislators similar to what Wisconsin has done. It would help voters easily identify the pro-charter members of the legislature.
From a Feb. 2019, CatholicPhilly article- “Pa. Lawmakers Seek Higher Funding for Private Tuition…the bill is sponsored by a state senator who attended Catholic schools.”
Theocracy is a clear and present danger. The Koch’s Paul Weyrich, founder of the religious right, called for parallel schools to destroy public schools. The plot includes both secular charter schools and Catholic schools. Gates-funded Bellwether advised that churches were a way to achieve the ed reform plan (privatization and corporatization). A Catholic school chain in Milwaukee that receives vouchers posted, at its website, “Faith, prayer and religious instruction are the foundation of classroom learning”.
Research found some parishes receive more money from vouchers than from worshippers. A trend shows people of free will are leaving churches but, the churches won’t let citizens stop paying for them-they get their legislators to force taxes to support the religion while those same churches demand the government, based on their religious beliefs, stop funding Planned Parenthood.
Theocracy inseparable from oligarchy destroys American freedom.
OMG. I call this “rape.”
Republican Mike Turzai, Speaker of the House in Pennsylvania, is encouraging the state to adopt the Betsy DeVos agenda for diverting public funds to religious and private schools.
Ms DeVious is also using the money for her own situations .
My comment was there, then it disappeared after I refreshed the page. Hmm. I basically wrote that we must insist on “higher salaries”, not “pay teachers more”.
And, no public money for private schools.
After receiving hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars for their schools, neither the US Conference of Catholic Bishops nor the state Catholic conferences will make, the following statement, “We want the people working in our schools to unionize”.
Pope Francis might say it but, America’s prosperity Catholics won’t.