Stephen Dyer is a former state legislator in Ohio who writes frequently about the perils of school choice. In this post, he warns that the Thomas B. Fordham Institute (nominally based in Dayton but actually in D.C.) wants to expand school choice to 90% of the students in Ohio. It is not because school choice has been a success in Ohio. In fact, it has failed miserably by every metric. It is just because…choice is good even when it fails to improve the education of students.
Dyer writes that Fordham’s
latest call to massively spend on a separate school funding system that has been such a wretched overall failure for our students and led to the greatest taxpayer ripoff in Ohio history while demanding that taxpayers subsidize private school tuitions for nearly 90% of Ohio households and calling that a “middle class” initiative is too much.
Dyer shows that public schools in Ohio consistently have outperformed charter schools.
Why does Fordham want a dramatic expansion of vouchers, given their terrible results?
Dyer writes:
I’ll begin with their mind-numbing call for families making $111,000 a year to get $7,500 in taxpayer money to attend a private school, without any call for public oversight of how those funds get spent.
Vouchers: Worse performing, racially segregating, no fiscal oversight. But, hey. Let’s put more tuition subsidies there.My feelings on Ohio’s voucher program are pretty clear. We know that in nearly 9 in 10 cases, Ohio’s public schools outperform the private schools that get these vouchers. We know that voucher recipients are 54% more likely to be White than the typical student in the district they leave — sometimes far more likely to be White. For example, Princeton City Schools in Hamilton County is 77% minority, yet 92.8% of the 265 students taking vouchers from there are White. We also know that as many as 2 in 3 voucher students never attended the public school that is being punished financially for “failing” them.…
The evidence is clear, and has been for years: Ohio’s vouchers don’t provide better options for students, subsidize private choices parents have already made, lead to greater racial segregation of schools and communities, and toss billions of public tax dollars into a budgetary black hole that has zero accountability or oversight.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Viral parasites aim to propagate viral parasites despite their failure to improve the well-being of their hosts.
Now there’s a shocker …
saddest reality: they know that they ARE parasites but also know that the current political mood refuses to see that they are parasites
You should promote the Alternet story on Community schools in Maryland. .
Great idea!…….BUT……the data (and questionable “success”) still comes from the over testing related to the test prep /common core curriculum.
These guys are no different than the rest of the science deniers, election deniers, and truth-in-history deniers. Even if they accepted the academic research, it wouldn’t matter. This has nothing to do with education.
They are perfectly ok and can sleep at night knowing there are haves and have-nots – – and those who have a whole lot and those who have nothing.
Their world view is a my-world only view.
They never read the Preamble to the Constitution.
They go to church across their fingers behind their backs, they write mission statements to publish once a year in their annual reports, and they think an immigrant who just landed here is going to take their job.
They want “build the wall” to apply to their neighborhoods.
They are ok with the prison pipeline, especially those for-profit. It sounds better than “internment camp.”
And, back to vouchers, they think if their financial contributions to private schools, for profit-charters, and charter networks work – they get what they want: Separate but Equal (?) 2.0
I’ve made this point a few times and it’s more obvious every day: many affluent public school districts in Ohio have administrators who are playing a dangerous game in which they believe they will be able to carve out their districts and survive privatization. They are willing to separate themselves from large urban districts and believe they will somehow coexist with charters. They are blinded by their arrogance, unable to see that they are at as much risk as any public school. Educational Quislings abound in the public schools of Ohio.
That should be: Administrative Quislings. Cynical adminimals.
Sometimes there’s justice- from Axios, “Judges behind, “Kids for Cash” scandal ordered to pay more than $200 mil. (and, they got jail time).
Would the “budgetary black hole” be the church schools that get the bulk of Ohio’s voucher money? When church pedophiles get settlements, any tax dollars there?
I resent paying for schools that segregate girls from boys and that teach patriarchy along with their GOP Jesus (God’s law is over man’s and women are lesser).
Fordham is basically a “house of ill repute” which will produce “white papers” “supporting” (supposedly) any policy advocate by an organization or individual who has given them money.
It has absolutely nothing to do with legitimate research and scholarship.
So…you’re saying all that’s missing is the red light? I agree with that.
Here’s another story that I am sure will be repeated thousands of times throughout the nation.
https://www.beaconjournal.com/story/news/education/2022/08/18/coventry-high-school-teacher-black-lives-matter-sign-removed/65408968007/
Fisk said the signs were not appropriate for a science classroom because teachers have to remain neutral on politics. Any political signage or discussion must show both sides, he said.
But the principal, the superintendent and teacher failed to identify what the “other side” of “Black Lives Matter” would be, Fisk said.
“We all struggled with that,” Fisk said in an interview Wednesday night. “Obviously the opposite side of Black Lives Matter would be something hateful.”
Black lives matter is not political. The topic of humanity has no other side. It’s similar to man made climate change.
Koch paid to manufacture the threat to the planet into a political issue. Public school funding is not a political issue. Organizations like Fordham are paid to manufacture it into something right wing voters can be persuaded to oppose.
School Choice is the weapon fascists are using to destroy this country, turning it into a dystopian nightmare without any Constitutional protections in place. The rule of law would all be in the hands of a fascist leader.