Linda Blackford, columnist for the Lexington Herald-Leader, describes the long-standing extremist goal of privatizing public schools and shows how Republican legislators are determined to introduce vouchers, which would harm the community public schools that enroll 90% of the state’s students.
Fortunately, voters in Kentucky threw out DeVos disciple Matt Bevin and replaced him with Andy Beshear, a friend of public schools. I hope the legislature has enough Democrats to prevent the Republicans from overriding a veto.
She writes:
At the macro level, this is an attack on public education, which is foundational to our democracy, and by the way, is actually guaranteed in the Kentucky Constitution. There has always been a basic compact that everyone’s taxes support public school for everyone because they educate the children that private schools reject. (Not to mention many private schools in the South were only started to avoid desegregation.) If people really think more students should go to private schools, then they should help private schools raise more funds for scholarships, not try to game their state taxes. In Kentucky, the bill is being pushed heavily by a widespread network of Catholic schools, which could afford many, many more scholarships if they didn’t have to pay out so much money in clergy sex abuse scandals.
Of course, public schools, like private ones, could do a better job with some of their students, but the answer is not to further starve schools for funding, or siphon off a stream of students to private schools with little accountability or oversight. Public education is a public good that should be supported by the public, not diverted and destroyed by our elected public servants. Although he was himself educated privately, FDR in 1936 noted that his administration’s support of public education throughout the Great Depression “has given to this country a population more literate, more cultured, in the best sense of the word, more aware of the complexities of modern civilized life than ever before in our history.”
Public education is still the linchpin to prosperity for most of Kentucky’s population, but many legislators seem determined to starve it. Sending a few hundred kids to private school won’t make this state great. Supporting our public schools, from kindergarten to college, can.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Is that the Kentucky from whence Mitch McConnell hails? Will wonders never cease. CBK
Mitch McConnell relies on the tribalism of Catholics and evangelicals
to be elected. The Covington Catholic high school (Ky.) in the news last year for the MAGA hat-wearing boys in D.C. was in the news last week on the occasion of the pro-birth march in D.C. because the bus that took the boys to this year’s event was involved in an accident. McConnell is milking the incident for publicity and to shore up his bona fides with Catholics.
The Cov Cath boy who sued the NYT had as his lawyer, according to media, the guy who taught a seminar at the Harvard Kennedy school of government about tribalism, which McConnell attended.
Wow. CBK
The huge ed reform voucher push is national. It’s also lockstep. There’s not a peep of dissent out of any of them.
It’s the single ed reform achievement since Trump took office- a massive voucher expansion.
In Ohio we’re now funding a brand new private school subsidy for upper middle class private school students. The families in the gutted lower and middle income public schools will now be paying part of the private school tuition of families who make 100k a year.
Unbelievable. Public school students got a partial restoration of the funding ed reformers cut in 2010 and they just took that, and much, much more, and directed it to private schools. It’s another net loss for public school students. They got screwed. Again.
It’s ANOTHER BIG RIP OFF re: Tex Payer monies. Sad Ohio.
Right wing extremists” is redundant.
“In Kentucky, that could mean a family of four that makes $95,000 a year. ”
“low income students”. It’s just flat-out deceptive how they sell this stuff!
The median household income in Kentucky is 50,000. They’re pulling funding from the bottom half who remain in public schools, and sending it to the top half, who never attended public schools anyway.
Did they exempt the private school students from the cheap junk standardized tests they mandate every public school student get? That’s a popular add-on to this boilerplate national legislation. They know private schools don’t want their junk tests, so they exempted their own children. Not yours. Just theirs.
The Koch’s ALEC, state Catholic Conferences, USCCB, Republicans – aren’t they synonyms ?
Didn’t Kentucky just have an election where they sent the anti-public school ed reformer packing?
I guess “the movement” rolls on regardless, coming, as it does, from wherever the lobbyists live and work. Kentucky, Ohio, California- doesn’t matter where they touch down.
The next time an ed reformer parachutes into your district to sell vouchers for “low income students” ask them if a student in a household with 95k income is “low income”
There is no definition of low income that includes these households. Are they innumerate or do they really not know what people make? Is 95k low income in the circles they frequent, compared to…250k? I can’t imagine where this nonsense comes from.
Parachute in.
IMO, state Catholic Conferences and diocese bishops prepare the political landscape for ALEC with well-orchestrated operations.
In attendance at the DeVos-Bevin meeting- one representative from religion- the Kentucky Catholic Conference.
Mike Pence
19h
In Madison today with BetsyDeVosED
and RepBryanSteil
at just one of the over 50,000 events celebrating National #SchoolChoice Week across this nation!
Were public school students excluded from another lavish, publicly funded US Department of Education/Trump campaign event? How much did this one cost? If we pay 21 people to put on one Ivanka Trump appearance I can’t imagine what a full week of promoting private and charter schools and bashing public school students costs.
I suppose we’ll have to wait for a FOIA demand before we find out.
Kentucky freed itself from Gov. Bevin, but the legislature remains in the hands of the radical right wing. It is the same problem that Pennsylvania has. The leadership changes, but it hard to make systemic policy changes in such a climate.
Blue Tidal Wave needed
“I hope the legislature has enough Democrats to prevent the Republicans from overriding a veto.”
In Slaying Goliath, I read of some republicans (sorry, I do not have the book in hand to get a reference for what I refer to) who stepped in to arrest some Voucher scheme or another. We used to have republicans whose votes were honest and worthy of consideration. Here in Tennessee, even Lamar Alexander has gone the way of the rest of the party, and he refuses even as he retires to vote with conscience.
Perhaps we can hope for a future day when political leaders will not go about like hounds with their tongues hanging out to lick from the money that lies on the political table.
In my thinking Lamar A was always a regressive reactionary right winger. Nothing new there.
Lamar is a man of civility and decency, he must cringe whenever Trump speaks.
Diane,
I understand your defending a long time friend. I have some lifelong friends who are tRumptrainers. I defend them also as politics is not all there is in life. But from my perspective how Alexander voted today just reinforces my original thoughts expressed above. Very, very few can make the transition that you did in regards to fundamental values and I applaud you for that transition.
RT
The Tennessee Catholic Conference has plans that align with the hounds.
There is one piece of good news out of Ohio for the 90% of students who were ignored in 2019 – I think lawmakers might finally find the courage to admit the ed reform school rating system is junk and scrap it. We spent millions of dollars on it. The consultants have all been paid and are long down the road, though, so it served its purpose. Time to pitch it in the trash.
Complete waste.
Kentucky Neds to. create anignoratn population who will buy the horsepoop that Mitch sells.
I regret reporting that in Kentucky, there are not enough elected Democrats in the state’s legislature to accomplish anything but warm a seat.
State Senate: 29 Republicans vs 9 Democrats
State House: 81 Republicans vs 37 Democrats
The only way Democrats can get anything done in Kentucky is if they have support from enough Republicans.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kentucky_General_Assembly
And FiveThirtyEight explains how the GOP gerrymandered the state making it impossible for the Democrats to ever take back the majority in the state legislature.
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/redistricting-maps/kentucky/
Sad.
Is the journalist of this article the first in the nation to expose the political coming together of the Catholic Church network and legislation drafted by Koch’s ALEC?
For Slaying Goliath to get the household name status for Diane Ravitch that Rachel Carson had last century, a pairing with an exposé reporter like Linda Blackford is necessary, IMO. It will lift the book out of the narrow field of education into muckraker, general audience territory.