Max Londberg of the Cincinnati Enquirer conducted an investigation of the academic results of vouchers in Ohio. His findings were appalling. The legislature doesn’t care about results or evidence or facts. It wants more vouchers, more students to fall behind their peers in public schools. Meanwhile, the public schools lose funding to pay for the vouchers. The story was originally published in August 2020, and I missed it. Scores of school districts in Ohio are suing to block the expansion of vouchers, which will undermine the quality of their schools.
He begins:
Since 2018, hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars have been shifted away from Ohio’s public schools and into private, mainly religious ones in the form of vouchers, all to enhance academic success.
Yet those same private schools mostly failed to meet the academic caliber set by their neighboring public school districts, according to a Cincinnati Enquirer analysis of nearly 2.5 million test scores from schools in more than 150 Ohio cities during the 2017-18 and 2018-19 school years.
The analysis found that in 88% of the cities in the analysis, a public district achieved better state testing results than those private schools with an address in the same city. A majority of the eight largest urban districts — including Akron and Canton — were among those that outperformed privates.
So Ohio shifts money from successful public schools to underperforming religious and private schools. This is stupid.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Re “This is stupid.” Seemingly. But if we reframe what they are doing, it is easy to see it is not so stupid. If the goal is to privatize the public schools so as to make profits from schooling our kids, no matter whether the “product” is of equal quality, then from that viewpoint, their performance so far is brilliant!
We need a campaign that shows that profits are being help higher than any goals for educating kids and that those profits are then being used to line the pockets of politicians to make more profits. We need this to vote out the politicians to break that chain. (Or something equivalent to quell the greed of the purveyors of voucher/lousy charter schools.) The game is old and simple and they are winning because we keep whining about quality and they are all about quantity.
Sadly, it seems to me that while some folks may favor vouchers for positive reasons–thinking it might help mitigate racism, etc.–vouchers are a tool to undercut the public, read “government,”–further read, “socialist,” schools. Also, most private schools are non-union and therefore favored by some who oppose unions. Since teachers’ unions became a mainstay of the labor movement–as industrial unions declined–undercutting them served a double purpose for wealthy conservatives. Finally, public schools usually are less sectarian and less likely to propagandize in favor of a dominant religion or economic theory, vouchered private schools can be bent in whatever direction the major funders desire. One could compare it to “fracking” our schools.
fracking our public schools! A great metaphor, Mr. Burgess!
“fracking” to find the money
a public district achieved better test scores…
Sorry George…
Something in the way scores move
Attracts me like no other smother
Something in the way they prove me
I don’t want to leave them now
You know they’re a sacred cow
Somewhere in my smile who knows
That I don’t need no other cover
Something in their style that shows me
I don’t want to leave them now
You know they’re a sacred cow
You’re asking me will their scores grow
I don’t know, I don’t know
You stick around now they may grow
I don’t know, I don’t know
Something in the way I glow
And all I have to do is think I do
Something in the things that proofs me
I don’t want to leave them now
You know I believe in the sacred cow…
Bravo. Somehow I believe that George wouldn’t mind.
One of the wonders of so-called choice is that parents have the right to choose stupid. That is where all the incredulous marketing comes in to convince parents they are making the best choice for their child. To quote P.T. Barnum, there’s a sucker born every minute.
Indeed, retired teacher.
“stupid is as stupid does”
Is the pot calling the kettle black
stupid?
What part of defining success or
achievement with test scores,
isn’t stupid?
When the “proof” is found to be
lies
And all the joy within you dies…
“What part of defining success or achievement with test scores, isn’t stupid?”
No part!
Totally ludicrous and risible.
“So Ohio shifts money from successful public schools to underperforming religious and private schools.”
That would be public money, of course.
Thanks to AU for fighting the religious groups that initiated and passed legislation for school choice. In Indiana, Catholics publicly take credit for the state’s school choice legislation. In Ky., media report the EdChoice VP is also the associate director of the Catholic Conference of Kentucky.
The Lilly Foundation ( the Lilly company is the largest employer in Ind.) backs school choice. A review of their grants show us the bent toward religion.
Given the shared religion of Ohio’s top legislators (and, the executive branch), voters and/or activists should not ignore Catholic mechanizations to get taxpayer money for the religion’s schools in the state.
More broadly, in, some states, state Catholic Conferences cohost school choice rallies with the Koch’s AFP. The Koch network is popular among conservatives and associated people (person) are influential in D.C. Catholic universities like Catholic University of America and Georgetown. The universities’ personnel, in turn, are factors in federal legislation.
The school policy impact of Bill Gates who said he participates in the religion of his wife (now, ex) should not be ignored.
This is nothing new. About 5 decades ago the people promoting money more important than people stated that ALL American schools were terrible, ALL teachers incompetent etc and that if a foreign country wished to destroy us, or words to that effect, they could do no better job that our public schools were doing.
MANY people including our own school board bought this and destroyed the hard, intensive work which we had done for some time.
The misinformation now is going even beyond our public schools, as bad as that is. Our entire democratic process, indeed our planet itself is endangered by the misinformation, lies etc which dominates so many misguided people’s thinking now.
Children have become pawns in the public school debate. Our nation, indeed the world itself have become less or even irrelevant as empowered people seek the “root of all evil, the LOVE OF money. Ignorant, stupid; money is only worth as much as people say it is. Of what worth is a bag of gold in a desert or children who grow up without discovering where real wealth lies, to seek truth wherever it leads, to love learning etc?
“Schools will be fracked,
will be squeezed until
profits ooze out,
but can the imaginations
of childhood be wrung dry
for corporate greed?”
from “No Child Race to the Top”
by Jack Burgess
https://www.nevadacurrent.com/2022/03/17/private-school-vouchers-provide-students-a-better-chance-to-excel-prove-it/?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=660d1da5-647c-4e24-b59f-8d0914c23bc0
We have/had 3 vouchers in Nevada.
We still have one – the Opportunity Scholarship.
This is what we learned.
The extremists who controlled the voucher information lied. They claimed there were tens of thousands who wanted the voucher. They lied. It was the same loud, rich, white few.
There were zero guardrails on the voucheriest of all vouchers. Passing out the tax payer money without any regulation to whomever asked for it. This would have bankrupted the state. That was just fine with extremists.
The other voucher that passed could never get funded because it broke the laws – equity. Money going to the rich white few. There was also a question about separation of church and state because our private schools are mostly religious. The court killed it by choking the money.
The voucher we still do have – the Opportunity Scholarship – goes to churches.
And this is red meat.
And a political football.
CCEA came forward to see if vouchers would work. The majority leader had already promised a voucher to extremists during the TESLA special session – so we had no choice. He is at the top of my evil list.
Here were our thoughts: The voucher would need guardrails. The voucher could not go to religious schools. The voucher would have to go to poor kids.
We tried 3 types. Two were inequitable and extreme – so they died.
The Opportunity Scholarship is the voucher Nevada has now. It violates separation of church and state. We should not be giving taxpayer education money to religions.
Bad Actors and extremists killed their own Nevada vouchers. They didn’t want a voucher; They wanted anarchy. This was never about educating kids anyhow. Just politics. Red Meat.
Nothing had changed.
If people vote for another voucheriest Nevada voucher- it will still be inequitable, go to religious groups, and possibly bankrupt the state.
That will not stop dark money from using it on the ballot to wedge issue votes.
Politics usually harm kids who are the most vulnerable among us.
The Teacher,
Angie
PS. I learned the other day in a Nevada State Board Meeting that CCSD has to give Title One Money to private schools. “Progressives” there are many, many ways that privatizers steal from Vegas Kids – not just vouchers. Write about that.