Civil rights groups, led by the Southern Education Foundation, are opposing the voucher legislation proposed by Republicans in Georgia.
SEF leads opposition to education savings account bill introduced in Georgia legislature
One of the first pieces of legislation introduced in the Georgia legislature in 2021 was the Georgia Educational Scholarship Act (HB60), a bill that would divert taxpayer dollars to private schools. In February, SEF and nine other education and equity-focused organizations sent a letter to the Georgia House Committee on Education expressing concerns that HB60 would divert funds from public education at a time when schools can least afford to lose it, and further perpetuate inequities.
SEF prepared analysis of the bill and a backgrounder on academic outcomes and participation requirements for similar tax credit scholarship programs across the country.
SEF’s Legislative and Research Analyst also provided testimony to the Senate Education and Youth Committee on SB47, a proposed expansion of the state’s existing special needs voucher program.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
It’s obviously a national voucher campaign backed by national political groups. Seven states don’t adopt identical laws without coordination.
Just disheartening. We didn’t re-hire Betsy DeVos but we get her education agenda anyway.
Americans are getting privatization of public education whether they like it or not, because the ed reform lobby has decreed it should be so. No analysis, no debate, just full speed ahead privatizing the whole system. Wholly ideological and completely grounded in Right wing economic theory.
If Americans come to regret pitching public education in the trash when they actually find out it’s been replaced with a low value voucher and a list of unregulated service providers, can we petition the ed reform lobby for redress, or are we stuck with their “reinvented” free market shangri la forever?
Right-o. I didn’t realize there were 7 of them [maybe in recent Diane posts, I’m not caught up]– but just GA plus AZ made me think… Koch/ ALEC. Especially introduced in wake of post-holiday worst pandemic spike ever, just as all eyes are diverted to vaccine roll-out.
Republicans won a lot of state races in 2020. Dems forgot to rig those races. State legislators racing to pass vouchers and gerrymander. Their highest priorities.
And don’t forget repressing voter turnout! https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-ron-desantis-legislation-florida-elections-a9737fcc3eab5aedc572fbcc7c19b984
Here’s what comes next. Ed reformers argue that since the voucher is for 5k or 7k then all students should be funded at the lower amount, and EVERY family gets a low value voucher to purchase education product.
They’re already halfway there with the “money follows the child” (mindless) recitation. It’s a backdoor way to cut education funding by half. Their financial backers must be thrilled they managed to dupe Democrats and liberals into gutting public education in the US.
Get ready because that’s the second stage of this political operation. Liberal ed reformers will go along. They get rolled every time.
they get rolled and then start rolling all by themselves
Right now the whole ed reform echo chamber are demanding that every public school student sit for the ordinary battery of standardized tests, along with additional testing.
Will this apply to all the contract educational contractors they’re funding, or are public school students the only students who get stuck with ed reform “accountability”?
At the end of this national privatization political campaign public school students are going to be stuck with all the sticks, while contractors just get the money and no oversight, right?
I think the huge privatization push raises a lot of questions- not that any of them will be asked let alone answered. They’re jamming it thru so fast no one will even know it happened.
When ed reform started a lot of us said it would end with total privatization of K-12 education in the US. Ed reformers vehemently denied this was the goal. Are they willing to admit it now that they’re doing it, or are we still pretending they’re committed to public education? Because that’s deceptive to voters and the public. I don’t mind that they’re ideologically committed to privatization, but I think they have a duty to tell the public they intend to abolish public education.
Chiara-
Fordham (very influential in Ohio education policy) is quoted in an article, “The State of Catholic Schools in the U.S.” (The Catholic World Reports, 5-31-2011), for lauding Notre Dame’s ACE which is a TFA equivalent.
Most of the Ohio voucher money goes to Catholic schools which is not surprising in light of the article’s summary that “Catholic school culture, in general, is thus strongest near the Ohio River, the central Mississippi River and parts of the Gulf Coast”, as measured by highest ratio of Catholic school students to overall Catholic population. Some cities noted in the article for their “success” are New Orleans, Wichita (a Koch colony) and Memphis.
A 2019 Bellwether report about the south avised reformers to reach out to churches to achieve their goals.
Trump supporter, Charlie Kirk, wrote in Newsweek in May 2020, “I’m an evangelical fighting for the Catholic school system”.
Perpetuating inequality is a good way to describe such low value vouchers. These vouchers pretend to be about so-called choice, but they are really a way to transfer public funds into private hands. Students lose the rights that public schools afford them, and they generally receive a subpar education in the process. These “scholarships” provide more separate and unequal education while they also undermine the public schools that most students attend. These “scholarships” are are a ‘lose-lose’ proposition. Civil rights groups understand that vouchers are a bait and switch scheme.
“The priority for 2021 should be to assess every student on the state assessment to determine mastery of the state standards.”
This is “the priority” for public school students in ed reform, not supporting students or helping students or (God forbid) actually assisting a public school in some useful and practical way, but TESTING public school students the moment they return to school.
That’s the value-add of this “movement” for students in public schools. They lobby for testing, this year like every year. So what are they adding to any school’s approach post-pandemic? Public schools are always ordered to test. How is this different than what they lobby for every year?
The ed reform response to the pandemic is 1. testing for public school students and, 2. marketing, promoting, and increased funding for charter and private schools. So it’s exactly what they do every year.
Last month, Texas resident Royce Peirce paid $387.70 to heat his two-story house. This month, he owes $8,162.73 — and counting.
Amid freezing temperatures and another looming winter storm, Texans are facing a second crisis: astronomical power bills.
That’s the magic of markets right there, folks.
That’s the plan for public education, too. Once we lose public education we won’t get it back and if it backfires and these far Right economic theories fail yet again? Tough luck. They never switch from private back to public. These “reforms” only go one way.
These free market utility companies put crazy penalties for excess usage. It is pure profiteering in a crisis brought to you by the state that does not believe in regulation.
The reaction to Brown was for racist whites to put their kids into private schools. These voucher laws will allow backward, racist cretins to pick up where the segregationists of the 1960s and ’70s left off.
What an abomination.
In other news, Trump Mini-Me Governor DeSatan of Flor-uh-duh is ordering flags to half mask to honor Rush Dimbaugh. So, here’s Dimbaugh the racist in his own words:
“Right. So you go into Darfur and you go into South Africa, you get rid of the white government there. You put sanctions on them. You stand behind Nelson Mandela — who was bankrolled by communists for a time, had the support of certain communist leaders. You go to Ethiopia. You do the same thing.”
“Look, let me put it to you this way: the NFL all too often looks like a game between the Bloods and the Crips without any weapons. There, I said it.”
“The NAACP should have riot rehearsal. They should get a liquor store and practice robberies.”
“Have you ever noticed how all composite pictures of wanted criminals resemble Jesse Jackson?”
“Take that bone out of your nose and call me back.”
“I think the media has been very desirous that a black quarterback do well. They’re interested in black coaches and black quarterbacks doing well. I think there’s a little hope invested in McNabb and he got a lot of credit for the performance of his team that he really didn’t deserve.”
This is the racist less-than-a-pig whom DeSatan and his Glorious Leader Who Shines More Orange than Does the Sun, aka The Former Guy, chose to honor.
Disgusting.
Rush deserves no honor. He is responsible for much but not all of today’s racism, misogyny, nativism, etc.
Agreed, Diane. The world seems a lot cleaner with him no longer in it.
cx: half mast
They should hang Rush’s medal of freedom at half mast. What a disgrace, he deserves no honors, only condemnation. For more than 30 years this hate merchant spewed racism, misogny, anti-LGBT rants, xenophobia, chauvinism and far right wing reactionary conspiracy theories. He was one of the originators of birtherism. This scum paved the way for Trump.
Brent Bozell IV was charged in the Capitol riots this week.
Bozell, the III, described Rush and William F. Buckley as thinking the same way. Buckley in his book described, “The Supreme Court ‘s war against religion in the public school.” Brent described Rush as “True North”.
Rush- the True North for some conservative religious said, “You know how to stop abortion? Require that each occur with a gun.”
I wonder if they buried the award Trump gave him or hung it around the gravestone.. Those quotations are exactly the way I remember the hypocrite of talk radio, who before he was caught as a druggie, argued that they should put in jail and the key thrown away.
Disgusting is the nicest word to describe him. Speaking of whom how long do you think it’ll be before Charlie Kirk ascends to the throne of disgusting?
Kirk. Another dirtbag
The following is a quote from the president of a conservative religious organization, “Rush Limbaugh’s voice was a gift from God…His kind remarks about our work is an honor that I will always treasure”. A headline for an article at the same organization’s site, Biden’s nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services, “Becerra is a menace to life and liberty.”
Tax free spewing of political propaganda that feeds the worst inclinations of the American people.