Jan Resseger describes here the ideology and shamelessness behind the expansion of vouchers for religious schools in Ohio.
She shows how the plan was cooked up by legislators who are contemptuous of public schools and public school teachers.
They don’t care that nearly 90 percent of the parents in Ohio send their children to public schools.
This action will drain resources from the public schools that enroll the vast majority of students.
Let’s hope it comes back to bite the representatives who refuse to represent the public schools and students in their home districts.
Senator Matt Huffman told O’Donnell that one reason he is such a devoted supporter of vouchers is that many private schools spend less per pupil than public school districts spend once state and local dollars are combined. A high school EdChoice voucher costs the school district $6,000. Huffman explained: “The $6,000 is a better deal to the taxpayers than $12,000.” What Huffman ignores is that the vast majority of the students taking a voucher never intended to enroll in the public schools; their parents have chosen religious education. Now, however, Ohio’s public school districts are being required by the state to absorb the full cost of educating a whole group of additional students whose families always intended to enroll their children in private schools.
Let’s hope Senator Huffman’s constituents remember him when they go to the polls next November and remember that he transferred money away from their public schools to pay for students who never attended public schools.
Remember in November!
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The discredit their own measurement system by manipulating it to expand vouchers.
Sylvania Schools has three elementary schools who did not meet certain standards on the state test. And now they are on the EDCHOICE list, including Hill View.
“I want parents to know that we received a C on our state report card, so we are not a failing school, we have a great education that we are giving. Our third graders scored so well, it’s difficult to keep that progress up.
“We had over 68 percent of our students last year are at accelerated or advanced in the third grade. We set the bar high and that’s the hard measure with value added, just trying to explain that to people.”
The echo chamber want the public to believe this is a “failing” school system. It’s nonsense. Pure ideological politics. They designated a whole bunch of solid public schools as “failing” to increase funding for the only program they care about, which is the voucher program.
Now the public schools get a double whammy thanks to Fordham, et al. They are unfairly designated as “failing” AND they lose funding.
Meanwhile, the ed reform crowd who utterly control our state government got nothing accomplished for the 90% of students in this state who attend public schools.
Nothing. Another legislative session where we poured money into charters and vouchers and public school students got a funding cut. Public school students screwed. Again.
Diane, thanks. Matt Huffman and his friends in the Ohio Senate are so reprehensible. Thanks for lifting up their rotten attitudes as part of your comment. That’s great!
Jan Resseger
https://janresseger.wordpress.com/
“That all citizens will be given an equal start through a sound education is one of the most basic, promised rights of our democracy. Our chronic refusal as a nation to guarantee that right for all children…. is rooted in a kind of moral blindness, or at least a failure of moral imagination…. It is a failure which threatens our future as a nation of citizens called to a common purpose… tied to one another by a common bond.” —Senator Paul Wellstone, March 31, 2000
Just in case you weren’t convinced this is 100% ideological, they exempted the private schools they prefer from the testing requirements they mandate for public school students.
So if you have a child in Ohio public schools, the ed reform lobby in this state mandates YOUR child take their garbage tests, but voucher students don’t have to.
They have Ohio public school students sitting for 2 weeks of tests, and those tests are ONLY used to increase funding for private schools.
“Student centered” my foot. They’re using every public school student as a tool to promote their ideological goals. Our kids? They get NOTHING out of the scheme.
Can anyone point to one thing Fordham has accomplished this year that benefits any public school student in this state?
Is there some reason my state’s public education system is run by a DC charter and voucher lobbying group? How is this supposed to benefit public school students?
Ed reformers are now taking solid public schools and actively working to weaken them.
That’s what we’re paying these people for.
We really, really could do better. It’s just nuts to pay a huge bunch of state employees to harm your schools. We could fire this group and hire better people. That’s possible.
Raise your expectations, Ohio. Hiring and paying state employees who return no value to 90% of students is just not a good use of public funds.
I know Fordham has completely captured state government in Ohio, so I went over to their website to see if I could identify a single thing they have accomplished that might benefit the 90% of students in this state who do NOT attend the charter and private schools they promote.
They don’t even pretend to work for public school students. In fact, the BEST they offer is a promise to not actively harm public school students in Ohio.
That’s the ed reform offer to 90% of parents and students in this state. They won’t perform any actual work on behalf of our students, but they assure us they won’t deliberately make our schools worse. The bar for this “movement” couldn’t get any lower. It’s at rock bottom. As long as they don’t destroy an existing public school they call that a win and give one another awards.
“Fordham Institute OH
Right here in Columbus, charter school families are still struggling with transportation troubles for their kids. The bottom line: It’s time for those families to get answers…and help.”
No sooner did Fordham get a huge increase in voucher funding than they went right back to the legislature for still more charter funding.
Meanwhile, public schools kids in this state, 90% of students, are once again the dead-last priority. No one has gotten a lick of work done on their behalf in 2018 and now 2019. 2020 isn’t looking much better.
We go from increasing funding for vouchers to increasing funding for charters, and then back again. They don’t have time to do any work for public school students. They’re too busy promoting their ideological agenda.
No one serves the kids in public schools. No one can be bothered.
As we enter high volume politics, don’t forget the people who pushed charters and vouchers on our public schools … and FOR PROFIT, no less.
I for one will NEVER forget.
Let’s pretend that Huffman didn’t attend Lima Central Catholic High School and Notre Dame University, that he wasn’t one of 9 children, that he’s not a member of the Knights of Columbus, that he doesn’t hail from Trump country (Jim Jordan’s neck of the woods), that the Cleveland Catholic diocese didn’t promote Huffman’s voucher expansion, and that the Columbus diocese doesn’t t have a Response Network that “monitors developing public policy issues at the local, state, national and International levels and coordinates responses to be sent to key policy makers”. Let’s pretend that Catholic school employees are unionized at the same rates as those in public schools.
Let’s pretend that Udi Greenberg is wrong that the Catholic Church hasn’t rejected pluralism, modernism and democracy. Let’s assume that the church hasn’t reverted to its prior bent for dominionism.
From the Catholic Conference of Ohio site, “…the unique Catholic identity…parents have a fundamental right to choose the education…including private, public and religious schools…government through such means as tax credits and publicly funded scholarships…should help (them) to exercise the basic right without discrimination.”
I believe in the right of parents to choose a religious education for their children. I don’t believe that government should subsidize their choice with public funding.
Public money should go only to public schools.
I fear that the Supreme Court, thanks to the addition of two religious fanatics by Trump, will eliminate all state prohibitions on public funding of religious schools.
We will soon, if my guess is right, be sending taxpayer dollar to evangelical Christian schools, Catholic schools, Jewish yeshiva, and Muslim madrassas.
So much for “separation of church and state.”
This is a direct result of the 2016 election, which put this tool of evangelicals in the White House.
With friends like Chester Finn, Robert Kraft, Paul Singer and Tom Luna of Idaho, vulnerable minorities don’t need enemies.
Russians sow discord in the U.S. but, steer clear of religion. Speculating the reason- religion’s alliance, white Catholics and evangelicals, elected Trump. A small, religious minority, LDS, makes a strategic error by supporting the theocrats’ party.
The web page, “Ohio House Diocese of Columbus, 2019-2020” is interested in how many representatives and senators are Catholic. They posted a partial list of 13 Senators, 6 are Catholic, all Republican. The President of the Senate is Catholic.
One-third of Ohio’s legislators are ALEC. They and their fellow Republicans are going to pass an ALEC bill in 2020 that makes protest (specifies conditions), a felony.
Since the Catholic church is authoritarian, I speculate the Columbus diocese will “coordinate a response to be sent to key policy makers” in support of the ALEC bill.
The six senators are white men because that’s how the Catholic church rolls.
The Diocese of Cleveland and Columbus have the same format for a page identifying Catholic members of the Ohio House and Senate. Cleveland’s listing shows 5 out of 10 of the Senators are Catholic. Four out of the 5, white men.