The Houston Chronicle reports that Trump will promote Ted Cruz’s school voucher plan, which aligns nicely with the DeVos “Education Freedom” vouchers.
Texas does not have vouchers, thanks to the concerted efforts of Pastors for Texas Children and a large number of local civic groups. Despite the fervent advocacy of top Republicans, a coalition of rural Republicans and urban Democrats have stopped the voucher push for several legislative sessions.
WASHINGTON — U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz visited the White House in December for a public discussion about school choice, and he pitched President Donald Trump face to face on legislation he has pushed for more than a year now with Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.
“If and when we pass this, this will be the most significant federal civil rights victory of modern times,” Cruz said of the Education Freedom Scholarships the bill would create, providing billions of dollars in tax breaks for individuals and companies that donate to private school scholarship funds or help parents home-school their children.
“This is all about millions of kids — millions of inner-city kids, millions of African-American kids, millions of Hispanic kids, trapped right now, desperate for hope — and giving them scholarships,” the Texas Republican told Trump, who nodded in agreement. “There is nothing on the domestic front that I believe will have a longer lasting legacy in your presidency than if and when we get this done together.”
It appears Trump heard him loud and clear.
The president is expected to give the proposal a prime-time shoutout during his State of the Union address Tuesday, as he seeks his second term. Trump is expected to touch on the core planks of his re-election campaign — the economy, immigration and health care among them — with an emphasis on what he has done and wants to do for working families. School choice will be a central piece of that message, as the president plans to urge Congress to expand options for parents and students, administration officials say.
But how that message might be received in Texas is another matter. Despite the GOP majority in Austin, Texas lawmakers spent years battling over various voucher proposals with so little success that advocates gave up in 2019.
Thanks to Pastors for Texas Kids for supporting public schools with certified teachers and adequate resources.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Last week was “National School Choice Week,” and odds are you’re confused. Why was there a week dedicated to something nobody would argue against? Shouldn’t every child be able to attend a great school?
The answers lie in who paid for the bright yellow scarves and signs on display at last week’s thousands of events.
Surely some well-meaning parents and students celebrated. But they were joined by powerful people who, despite what they say, don’t believe that every child deserves a great school.
Instead, these people believe in a certain kind of choice over all others. In their worldview, market choice is more important than democracy, parents are consumers rather than members of a broader community, and education is a competition between students, with winners and losers.
National School Choice Week was founded in 2011 by the Gleason Family Foundation, the philanthropy arm of a machine tool manufacturing company in Rochester, New York. As of 2017—the most recent year data is publicly available, albeit incomplete—the foundation gave at least $688,000 to organize the self-described “nonpartisan, nonpolitical, independent public awareness effort.” The total is likely higher—in 2014, the foundation’s spending on the week topped $4.3 million.
The Gleason Family Foundation has little public presence, not even a website, but much can be gleaned from who it supports. As of 2016, it had given money to the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the Cato Institute, the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice (now called EdChoice), and countless other conservative organizations bent on privatizing public education.
So, the “choice” in National School Choice Week clearly means certain educational options, namely private school vouchers and charter schools, which are publicly funded but privately operated.
But it goes further than that. By recklessly pushing vouchers and charter schools at all costs, the privatizers funding the school choice movement actually aim to eliminate choices for parents, students, and teachers.
Shouldn’t parents have the choice to send their child to a well-funded neighborhood public school? Yet, private school vouchers siphon precious funding from public school districts, many of them already struggling to raise revenue.
Additionally, research has shown that each new charter school that opens diverts money from districts. Charter schools cost Oakland, California’s school district $57.3 million per year, meaning $1,500 less in funding for each student who attends a neighborhood school. Last fall, the struggling district moved forward with a plan to begin closing 24 of its 80 schools. Budget pressure caused by unlimited charter school growth surely contributed to this decision.
Simply put, allowing more and more charter schools to open threatens the existence of by-right, neighborhood public schools.
Polling shows that parents prefer neighborhood public schools, as long as those schools receive adequate investment. A majority of Americans also agree that public schools need more money. Yet, the well-funded, conservative members of the school choice movement don’t agree with these choices.
ALEC and think tanks like Cato are staunch advocates for lower taxes on corporations and the wealthy, which has slowly drained money from America’s public education system, especially in the wake of the 2008 recession.
The majority of states continue to spend less on education than they did ten years ago. More than half of the country’s public schools are in need of repairs. In 2018, more than 60 percent of schools didn’t employ a full- or part-time nurse. Nationally, teacher pay is so low, nearly 1 in 5 teachers works a second job.
This all fits squarely with the school choice movement’s worldview that market competition belongs everywhere, even in public education. Instead of investing in all public schools, and especially those where the needs are greatest, the likes of the Gleason Family Foundation want our communities to leave public education up to private markets.
Simply put, the funders of National School Choice Week don’t share the same values as the many parents who just want a great school for their child.
Here’s what school choice should mean: every family should be able to make their neighborhood school their top choice, and every school should be a first choice for somebody.
Thanks for reading,
Jeremy Mohler
Communications Director
In the Public Interest
School choice seems like a logical concept to me, at least if it is done right. In some cases parents may feel a charter/private school offers a better scholastic fit for their child. Religious parents may feel their public school undermines their religious principles. We had a good public school system when our kids were young, but we (no, we are not “zealots”) saw instances where the school did undermine our values. We stuck with the public schools, though, for a variety of reasons. Still, parents should have a right to not be undermined, and it does not seem fair to make them foot the entire bill for an alternative while they are paying taxes for a system that disputes their values. As a couple, we DO believe in a robust public school system. Perhaps one answer would be do stop the anti-religious attitudes that some schools show. I have studied and taught the First Amendment of our Constitution, and some schools are turning that Amendment on its head while saying their are acting on its behalf.
I agree that parents should send their child to a religious school if it suits their values. I do not believe the government should pay for their private choice.
I do not want my tax dollars ever supporting a religious school.
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education and commented:
Since we were not able to vote him out in 2018, I think the proper response is to remove John Cornyn office. Then in 2022 we remove little teddy.
And let us all remember what Former Speaker of the House, John Boehner said about Ted Cruz back in 2016. It still applies today.
John Boehner, a Cincinnati Catholic, called Cruz, “Lucifer himself”.
There are those in Cincy who speculate that after Boehner’s audience with the Pope he lost his desire to run the Koch agenda in D.C. It’s used to explain his resignation.
As Ted Cruz gets older and grows a beard, he looks more and more like Boehner’s description of him.
I think he looks and has a cadence like Joe McCarthy. Perhaps this is evil reincarnation at work.
“Trump will promote the” Catholic bishops and state Catholic Conferences’ “voucher plan.”
I understand the Catholic church’s intent for tax credits that defund government- the poor then, have to rely on Catholic charity instead of a social safety net provided by their neighbors. But, I don’t understand why a Catholic school chain wants poor students to work for private business and not be paid.
In Texas push the message that money to vouchers and their ilk will reduce the money that will be available for high school football.
That should do it!
I realize from the outside, it looks like there is lots of money spent on football and stadiums. The reality is that it is considered a “revenue sport” . It makes more money than it spends. As for the large stadiums those are approved by bond elections by the community. Pushing vouchers will serve no purpose other than to keep money from schools that need it. The majority of the people in Texas have spoken and they want their public schools funded properly and have zero interest in vouchers or any other plan to take money from public schools.
I have always considered the money spent on school stadium projects and similar basketball venues in the heyday of that sport in Indiana to be evidence of a sort of community orientation of the public school. Ballgames are certainly one point of contact between the community and the school.
It is a reflection of the communities values
These tax credit scholarships are toxic to public schools but beloved by the businesses that reduce their public responsibility to pay their taxes. The same type of vouchers are in Florida, and they are being proposed in Wyoming. Peter Greene has the clearest explanation for how these operate.
“Tax credit fans like to brag that no public tax dollars are spent, and this is technically correct, because the government isn’t used as a pass-through. Instead, donors pay into a scholarship fund instead of paying their taxes. The government never touched the money, so we can’t call it government money with government cooties. However, every dollar given to a scholarship fund is a dollar less that is paid in taxes.”
The reduced corporate taxes become the public’s burden. First, money is deducted from public school budgets. Second, the public either has to make up for the lost revenue by paying more taxes or cutting service. It is a scheme to transfer more tax burden onto working people, and it is a tax avoidance strategy for the corporations and the wealthy.
I agree with the President and Cruz. This is the greatest civil rights issue of our time. Pulling money out of the pockets of the poor and giving it to the wealthy strikes me as a way of robbing the civil rights of the poor.
Please elaborate
Charters and vouchers take money from the poor, creating budget problems for poor kids, often those of color or minority creed. Sounds like a civil rights issue to me. Let’s fund the schools of the poor on par with the rich at least, given that society has already taken its pound of flesh from them.
The smarter Republicans (I know, I know, give me a break, I mean relative to their Repugnican peers) know that the writing is on the wall. They know that on issue after issue after issue, young people oppose them. So, in a generation, they are facing extinction. What’s a rapacious Ayn Randian war monger to do?
Well, since Reagan, the Repugnicans have been able to count on stirring up the Christian fundamentalist rubes using issues like abortion and LGBTQX rights. And what better way to ensure the creation of a whole new generation of Christian fundamentalist rubes to mislead than to use taxpayer money to fund fundamentalist Christian madrasas throughout the country?
The method in the madness.
Espinoza v. Montana is the pivot.
This is an excellent discussion of the way “school choice” really works to narrow choice, specifically by defunding public schools which also have obligations not to discriminate, to accept and provide special education programs, and much more.
https://www.inthepublicinterest.org/?emci=7b6a7b3d-7647-ea11-a1cc-00155d03b1e8&emdi=60867113-7947-ea11-a1cc-00155d03b1e8&ceid=4708824
student with .
Perhaps too late, I realized that this link was to the expert whose post Diane had shared. Thank you Jeremy Mohler
Communications Director
In the Public Interest
Let me put that a little more fully, in a way that can be shared with those who are not hip to current education issues:
ALERT!!!!
Throughout the country, extreme right-wing Republicans are introducing school voucher legislation, usually based on a boilerplate created by the ultra-right-wing American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). And, they’ve pushed a case to the Supreme Court, Espinoza v. Montana, to be decided soon, that deals with whether a state has to use taxpayer money to fund private religious schools as they do public schools or can refuse to do that because of the separation of church and state.
So, why is this happening?
The smarter Republicans (I know, I know, give me a break, I mean relative to their Repugnican peers) know that the writing is on the wall. They know that on issue after issue after issue–climate change, Medicare for all, guns, LGBTQX rights, and so on–young people oppose them. So, in a generation, they are FACING EXTINCTION. What’s a rich, rapacious Ayn Randian war monger to do?
Well, since Reagan, the Repugnicans have been able to count on using issues like abortion and LGBTQX rights to stir up the Christian fundamentalist rubes and get them to the polls. And what better way to ensure the creation of a whole new generation of Christian fundamentalist rubes whom they can continue to lead off the cliff of their own economic powerlessness to use taxpayer money to fund fundamentalist Christian madrasas throughout the country?
This is the method in the madness.
THEY ARE COUNTING ON YOU TO NOT BE PAYING ATTENTION TO ANY OF THIS.
As you can see, Republicans just HATE big government, and big government programs (that aren’t serving the cause of funneling money to the wealthy).
cx: THAN to use taxpayer money
Nice how the President and the Secretary of Education trashed every public school and public school student in the country last night at the State of the Union.
I know they work exclusively on behalf of private and charter school students, but do they have to attack public school students?
We’re paying thousands of public employees who are opposed to our childrens schools.
Ridiculous and shameful behavior.
I ask you to imagine ed reform’s reaction if the President announced all charter school students were “failing”
Yet not one of them will defend public school students from this politically motivated smear. One again public school students come second to the political agenda.