Ethan DeWitt of the New Hampshire Bulletin and NPR reported on the partisan divide surrounding vouchers. Republicans budgeted for 28 students but expect between 1,000-5,000 to enroll. Democrats worry that the cost of vouchers will spin out of control.
Both should worry that the evidence base for the efficacy of vouchers shows high attrition rates and meager or negative academic results. Furthermore, the voucher advocates repeat the big lie that a state grant of $5,000 will give poor kids the same opportunities as rich kids, whose families pay far more for private schools.
During a two-hour event sponsored by the conservative advocacy organization Club for Growth, DeVos and Pompeo applauded New Hampshire’s initiative. And they framed the effort to allow public money to help students attend private schools as essential to closing the country’s achievement gap when compared to other developed countries.
Here is a link to Pompeo’s speech.
“The same chance”? Not so. Saying it doesn’t make it so.
Representative Mel Myers, Democrat and ranking member of the NH House Education Committee, sent me the following comment:
You have to remember that this voucher policy was slipped into the budget with no public hearing on this bill version. Our House Education Committee heard a similar bill which was tabled after a rigorous challenge on the part of the Democratic members of the committee. During the remote hearing, over 1000 signed up and over 800 were in opposition. Our Governor Chris Sununu and Commissioner of Education Frank Edelblut continue their agenda to dismantle NH education which has always ranked in the top five in the nation.
Rep. Mel Myler
Ranking Dem
House Education Committee
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The quality of education with a $5,000 voucher is not equivalent to the education in a private school that costs $30,000. These low value vouchers do not enhance education. They simply undermine the public schools, but, of course, it is all part of the GOP agenda to dismantle public education.
Another point of view is that cheap vouchers are a bait and switch for unsuspecting residents. It is a way for the state to abrogate its responsibility to the young people of the state and turn the obligation over to private contractors.
Y’all kin send yore childern to Bob’s Real Good Flor-uh-duh School for even less than $5,000! An be sure they ain’t bein’ taut to be Socialist, transgendered Dimocrats! All curriculums wrote by Bob’s common law wife Darlene, so you no they’s good. Come on down to Bob’s Real Good Flor-uh-duh School, in the old K-Mart shoppin’ center, right next to Wild Ruthies Adult Novelties!
For those uh you dont no her, Darlene comes from the Darlin fambly, over in Harlen. Right smart, that Darlene Darlin is. An purty as a picture, of coarse.
Now some of y’all might be wonderin’ how’s come we dont name the school Bob n Darlene’s Real Good Flor-uh-duh School, whut with all Darlene does, an I ask you, did Jesus say, Come unto me so when you die you kin sit beside the father AND MOTHER? Well, no. Darlene understands the proper relashunship between a man n a womb-an, which is she is unto him uh servant n help meet. An of coarse this is whut we teech about the famblyand reel fambly values to the little seeds whut gets planted at Bob’s Real Good Flor-uh-duh School!
Now, whut does this have to do with New Hamster? You might be askin yoreself. Way-ul, we Flor-uh-dudians recognizes are brothers in the new Hamster legislature as bein’ as close to kin as you kin get without a little way-ul, you no. Clearly, the good legislatorians of New Hamster is ever bit as smart as Flor-uh-dudians is!
Went over to Harlen to visit right recent n it was a site to see how many little Darlins they wuz running round thar. Nuff to start a hole knew school!
“… the evidence base for the efficacy of vouchers shows high attrition rates and meager or negative academic results.”
I assume the evidence is testing. Nonwithstanding the questionable nature of using testing to evaluate effectiveness of anything, this is still a thing that amazes me. Nothing is so disingenuous as the use of a statistic to argue for something in the face of that statistic showing that you are wrong. This brings me to a point I have recently been considering.
Why is there so much disparity between beliefs and facts surrounding so much of what is happening today? We have large numbers of people, for example, who believe that vaccinations cause harmful results, but statistical suggestions to the contrary. We have large numbers of people who believe that face masks are ineffectual, but studies that suggest the opposite. Why is this?
I believe That it is because news is mostly narrative and science is mostly statistics. Since we learn through narrative, that dominates our thinking. When we depend on narrative to shape our thinking, we become susceptible to propaganda. Of course statistics may also be manipulated, like the test scores of American students, for the purposes of the malign.
“I believe That it is because news is mostly narrative and science is mostly statistics. Since we learn through narrative, that dominates our thinking. When we depend on narrative to shape our thinking, we become susceptible to propaganda. Of course statistics may also be manipulated, like the test scores of American students, for the purposes of the malign.”
A number of different thoughts occur to me on reading this. There’s a lot there in what you say. My thoughts:
Science is a narrative using statistics. Without the narrative, the statistics, the data are just a bunch tables, charts, lists with little to no meaning. In order to make sense of it all, to assign meaning, one must put it in narrative form.
Now the difference between a scientific narrative, whose ultimate goal is the discernment of the truths of reality of the world as assessed, evaluated, many times using mathematical models (which should be quite precise, although they aren’t always) by scientifically guided experiments to either prove or disprove a point.
Now the other narratives, the ones that you say are susceptible to propaganda, do not necessarily entail the search for the truths of a situation, rather many times appeal to an emotional connection with the reader that blocks out that scientific based reality. Those narratives aren’t constrained by truth seeking, although those who use non-science based narratives will many times claim they are. They are mistaken. Many of the discussions here and in other forums fall under that second type of non-scientific narratives.
It is what Andre Comte-Sponville calls philosophizing, i.e., arguments that cannot be based in proofs, maxims and/or axioms. So we have to do our best to write the narrative that connects to people in a way so that they understand and agree with our discourse.
Which brings my thinking around to what I consider THE most important underlying principle in communicating in a pluralistic society like ours: One ought to maintain a fidelity to truth in discourse. Sadly, too many do not use that thought as a basis for their arguments, discussions, persuasive speech. (And no one can do so all the time.) It is the human good of fidelity to truth in discourse that can only help us all better understand not only our own “being” but also others’ and the reality that envelopes us all.
“Why is there so much disparity between beliefs and facts surrounding so much of what is happening today?”
Because beliefs do not have to be based in facts. As a matter of fact, in the US, around 85% of the population has been subjected to faith-beliefs whose proponents claim are facts when they are not. We raise our children to believe on faith alone absurdities, myths and rituals that have no basis in fidelity to truth in discourse as required in the factual, rationo-logical scientific realm. We have conditioned almost everyone to believe absurdities. Some break free of that outmoded, outdated, false way of ascertaining the reality of the world that is outside ourselves.
The major sources of those absurdities in the US stem from the three Abrahamic religions. Until we break the stranglehold that those religious faith beliefs have on many we will continue to have the disparities of which you speak.
Every single voucher program is celebrated and promoted to the exact same extent by the ed reform echo chamber.
Anything with “voucher” in it gets the echo chamber seal of approval, because it’s an ideological position, not an education position.
Ed reformers at the state level could hand out 200 dollar gift cards and call it a voucher and the entire echo chamber would cheer. There’s no criticism or analysis at all- if it meets the ideological requirements of the “movement”, they all back it.
Of course they’re expanding it without evidence. “Evidence” doesn’t matter at all. They had all the beliefs they needed when they put it in.
nicely said: It is an ideological position, not an education position
“Education Next
We see some fluctuation in public assessments over the years, but evaluations of public schools in 2021 are very close to what they were a year ago and just prior to the pandemic.”
Frustration in the ed reform echo chamber that even with 20 years of aggressive lobbying they haven’t succeeded in making the public loathe public schools as much as they do.
They’ll keep trying though. Maybe at some point the public will make the ridiculously bad deal they’re pushing where the public exchanges a universal, comprehensive public school system for a low value voucher and a list of politically connected contractors, but not just yet. Walton needs to put more money behind this anti-public school political campaign. Not quite there yet.
Would it be possible for media to contact someone who works in or uses a public school to get opinions on public schools?
Why does all our public education commentary come from people who are employed full time in privatizing public schools and are members of the ed reform echo chamber?
Are there any pro-public education “experts” or are we limited to the employees of the Walton and Gates foundations and charter/voucher lobbyists?
Would it be possible for media to contact someone who works in or uses a public school to get opinions on public schools?
Beautifully put, Chiara!
CNN chose Arne Duncan to opine on US public schools as their only “expert”.
Why don’t we ever hear from anyone outside this echo chamber? When’s the last time either Arne Duncan or Jeb Bush were even in a public school? Can we possibly get a little viewpoint diversity, or must we hear these same buzz words and slogans for the next twenty years too?
Ed reform runs the gamut all the way from Arne Duncan bashing public schools to Jeb Bush bashing public schools. It’s about an inch wide. Would the world end if a pro-public school voice were permitted to speak?
Chiara, why don’t you write to CNN and complain about their installing Arne Duncan as their education expert? He was a disaster as Secretary.
I agree. Having Arne Duncan as some kind of education “expert,” when he never even worked in a school, is like a fix guarding the henhouse. We have literally millions of teachers who could talk about what’s actually happening in schools. I doubt Arne has been in a public school in at least 10 years.
Arne Duncan and Betsy DeVos share a platform. From today’s Politico Illinois Playbook. “FIRST IN PLAYBOOK: Greg Richmond, the newly named superintendent of the Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago, has long been known as a bridge builder. And today is proof: In an invitation-only reception to welcome him to the job, he’ll be feted by former U.S. Education secretaries Arne Duncan and Betsy DeVos.
Duncan, who served under Barack Obama, and DeVos who worked in the Trump administration, are not collegial. They’ve often sniped at each other in the press over their disagreements, especially on civil rights issues pertaining to LGBTQ students.
But the two are united in supporting Richmond because of his long career in education and charter schools, which Duncan and DeVos support in their own way. So it’s not entirely a surprise that they would both serve as hosts for a welcome event, according to an invitation obtained by Playbook.
Richmond benefits from both their support as Catholic school families are as divided over mask mandates as every other community.
The new superintendent is a familiar name to Playbookers. He got his start analyzing the Illinois State Board of Education budget before working as a Democratic legislative analyst for the Illinois Senate Education Committee. In 1994, he represented legislative interests of the Chicago Board of Education.
Richmond later served as head of the New Schools Office at Chicago Public Schools when Paul Vallas was CEO of CPS. And then he spent 20 years as a leader in the charter schools movement in the United States and other countries.
Along with Duncan, DeVos and Vallas, also slated to attend today’s announcement: Jim Perry, co-founder of Madison Dearborn Partners private equity firm and a major donor to Catholic schools; Noel Moore, a Chicago Board of Trade exec and board chairman of One Chance Illinois scholarship program; former CPS Board President Gery Chico; and Geno Fernandez, president of the archdiocesan school board.”