Peter Greene is a retired teacher in Pennsylvania; he stepped down after nearly 40 years in the classroom and has been a prolific writer ever since, stepped in the wisdom of practie.
Shapiro has joined forces with the GOP. How curious that Shapiro has thrown himself in the same boat with Greg Abbot, Ron DeSantis, Doug Ducy, and every other anti-public school governor.
Greene writes that Shapiro’s website touts his support for vouchers:
Josh favors adding choices for parents and educational opportunity for students and funding lifeline scholarships like those approved in other states and introduced in Pennsylvania.
The Lifeline Scholarship bill is a GOP education savings account bill–a super-voucher bill– currently sitting in the appropriations committee in the House; the Senate has passed their version. Not just charters. Not just traditional vouchers. But nice shiny, super vouchers. Take a bunch of money from public schools (based on state average cost-per-pupil, not local numbers, so that many districts will lose more money than they would have spent on the students). Handed as a pile of money/debit card which can be spent on any number of education-adjacent expenses.
The state will audit the families at least once every two years. The bill contains the usual non-interference clause, meaning that the money can be spent at a private discriminatory school, and no one will be checking to see if the school is actually educating the student. The bill is only old-school in that it uses the old foot-in-the-door technique of saying that this is just to rescue students from “failing” public schools (but includes no provisions to determine if the child has been moved to a failing private school).
Choicers are ecstatic…
You know a great way to make sure that zip code, ethnicity, and class don’t determine a child’s educational quality? It’s not to give some of them voucher money that may or may not get a few students to a better education.
It’s to fully fund and support all the schools in all the zip codes.
Boy, would I love to vote for a governor who supported that for a plan.
But no–we now have a choice of two guys who are barely different on education. Mastriano would gut spending completely while implementing vouchers, while Shapiro would just slice open a public education vein.
In fairness to Shapiro, his site says he’s going to fully fund education, too, which would be kind of like putting a hose in one side of your swimming pool while chopping a gaping hole in the base on the other side. It’s not a great plan. If he means it, which now, who’s to say.
Shapiro’s position is awful. It would align him with just about any GOP candidate in any other state, and the only reason it isn’t a disqualifier in this state is because insurrectionist Doug Mastriano is so spectacularly, so uniquely terrible, so ground-breakingly awful. Mastriano is still a terrible, terrible choice.
Voucher fans were sad because they could see their hopes and dreams going down in flames with Mastriano, but now they can rest assured that whoever wins, they will get a governor who supports an education program that any right wing Republican would love. For those of us who support public education, it is brutally disappointing.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Campaign contributions?
Why the question mark?
Well, Dwayne. Apart from the obvious influence of money, it’s not like many Democrats all the way to the top with Clinton and then Obama and Duncan didn’t embrace the ideology of competition and choice to fix what ails public education. So, Shapiro is not exactly plowing new ground here, as contemptible as aligning with today’s Republicans may be.
Your line, Mr. Rains …
Mr. Shapiro is as honest as the day is long.
We have to explain to Josh Shapiro that it all is a scheme to undermine true public education governed by locally elected school boards elected through the process of Democracy. It is just as much an assault on Democracy as the insurrection and voter suppression. Public education is the cornerstone of our Democracy where the vibrant discussion of our ideals and issues are taught and nurtured.
Our state Constitution mandates Public Education, not privatization of schools at taxpayer expense. I do not want to fund the rich at taxpayer expense. I do not want our schools, and our charter schools to just be conduits for slick operators to funnel public money into their very private pockets.
I support Public Education in its truest sense — elected School Boards.
For too many politicians it’s no longer about reasoned explanation. Rather, it’s about organized voter pressure to counter $$ and extant privatization ideology.
It’s is part of the corporate assault on public services. Public education was always intended to be a legitimate expression of democracy in action, not just another financial product for the already wealthy.
While money may be part of this, I also think that the people who are wealthy enough to get elected to office are products of institutions that perceive themselves as elite, above the rest. It is certainly true, there are institutions that are better than others. I sat in classes that were filled with people who had no business being in college. I have taught classes of people who have no business being in those classes. But students of elite programs are made to feel that everybody else is crap. That is wrong.
Given his republican opponent I suspect this is a political calculation. I think that Shapiro can move to appeal to more right leaning voters without risking the left leaning voters not participating in the election.
yes, the word “perceive” matters in how so many legislators think about the public school system. The reformers pull them in so easily with endless ads and speeches containing that favorite word: Failing
Once again the public schools get to be pawns in a political game that could care less about public goods.
What’s the point, Josh Shapiro? Do you imagine you’re changing the minds of school-choicer parents-rights MAGAts? Fat chance. But kick schools to the curb, because you care so little about public ed you’d bet them away on a 100-1 long shot of affecting a few votes..
OK, I see the point, based on Greene’s penultimate para; it’s about Mastriano. But I don’t see where that changes anybody’s vote if the state is that polarized to start with.
“The state will audit the families at least once every two years.”
PA will audit thousands of individual family units every year or two? Hahahahaha. This is a state that doesn’t even collect enough tax revenue from the 2nd-largest broadcasting and cable TV co in the world to shore up Philly public schools. [Comcast has been hdqtred there 50 yrs, apparently unashamed to be surrounded by a ruined pubschsys.] PA barely audits its charter schools, and renews them no matter how poorly they perform, while letting the associated tradl pubschs founder.
Give me a break.
Any choice outside of what the US Constitution protects is designed to create divisiveness in the United States, splitting the people into many tribes that don’t trust each other, a recipe for a dystopian disaster and a collapse of civilization as we know it today.
Civilization exists and thrives when different factions negotiate and compromise instead of waging war with each other and refusing to cooperate.
There are only FIVE freedom that the US Constitution protects.
“The five freedoms it protects: speech, religion, press, assembly, and the right to petition the government.”
There is nothing in the US Constitution that says everyone should be able to have a choice about everything, like running around armed to the teeth with weapons of mass destruction (AR-15s) and threatening people that aren’t like you just because you think you have a choice to do that.
Turning schools into business that are basically the same as fast food franchises means parents will be sending their children to the school of their choice, just like they decide what corporate fast food chain they prefer to eat at. None of those fast food chains offers healthy choices.
Civilizations only exist for a definite period of time. Sometimes that period is long and sometimes short.
Some civilizations of the past (eg, in Egypt) existed for several thousand years.
Western Civilization will be lucky if it lasts anywhere near that long.
We can’t even get along with ourselves, to say nothing of with anyone else.
Shapiro’s super voucher is totally bonkers. It would result in massive waste, fraud and endemic ignorance for most of the recipients.