Florida passed legislation to offer vouchers to every student in the state, regardless of their income. Rich and poor are eligible for state largesse. Florida joins five other states with universal vouchers: West Virginia, Arizona, Arkansas, Iowa and Utah.
The Education Law Center predicted last month that the expansion of vouchers to all students, rich and poor, would cost the state at least $4 billion in the first year. Half of that amount would be a bonanza for students already in private schools.
Perhaps you remember the battle cry for vouchers over the past three decades: “vouchers will save poor children from failing public schools.” We now know that every part of this plea was mistaken. Vouchers do not produce academic gains for the poor children who transfer from public schools to private schools that accept them.
The overwhelming majority of recent, long-term studies report that vouchers have a negative effect on low-income children; most return to their public schools in need of remediation.
In state after state, most vouchers are claimed by students who never attended public schools. 75-80% of voucher recipients were already enrolled in private schools; their families are not poor.
The universal voucher program is a subsidy for the rich, at the expense of public schools.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
And I am sure that they didn’t include the expense of a huge bureaucracy which will ne needed to track those vouchers. The number of just plain mistakes involved is immense and then fraud is also a significant factor in voucher schemes. I thought the GOP was for small government?
Steve,
There is an alternative to a huge bureaucracy to track the vouchers and make sure the state is not being scammed. Just send out the money to anyone who wants it, with no checking, oversight or accountability. What could possibly go wrong?
The way you think, thar, Sister Ravitch, thar’s uh place fer you in the Flor-uh-duh legislature and gun club!
The law will burden the working families and senior citizens in the state by requiring them to contribute to the costs educating children from affluent families from Boca Raton, Naples and Palm Beach, even though the well-to-do families already pay for the tuition costs. It’s another Ron the con GOP scam.
Five other states have universal vouchers and pay to subsidize the elite private school tuition of rich kids. Their own and their campaign donors.
That “plea” wasn’t a mistaken effort in my view, but rather a deliberate effort to lull unsuspecting families into a lie. The usual cast of characters never had any intentions of “saving” poor children (the Waltons, really??), and every intention of sifting and separating these families from the rest of the whiter, wealthier community. It’s ugly and wrong, but it’s Florida.
So where is DeSantis getting this money? Taking it from Seniors services?? Pulling it out of the current public educational system/services?? He seems to have access all of a sudden to millions of dollars and it seems no questions asked. If this is what a State wants to do, then fine…but they should no longer have access to Federal.funds for their educational system.
Yes, yes, and yes.
“We now know that every part of this plea was mistaken. “
I must confess that I consider this a very charitable view of the claim that vouchers were for the poor. You might sooner suggest that the gabelle was a tax that was set up by the Bourbon kings for the good of the poor.
The right never wanted vouchers to benefit the poor. Benefits for the poor are so far from the agenda of the right wing that it barely sees the poor at all.
Advocates for vouchers used “the poor” as a shield for their real goal: vouchers for the wealthy. They still push children of color up front to support their bogus claim that “choice is the civil rights issue of our time.” Hoax. Lie.
It would be accurate to say that voting rights is the civil rights issue of our time.
Civil Rights are still the civil rights issue of our time
Hello Diane and all:
Unfortunately, the National Literacy Association (aaace-NLA Google Group) has just realized (what looks like to me as) dark-money incursions into the
Adult Literacy/Education “market.” I have warned them about such incursions before citing your many references and evidence, and I have posted below most of the remarkable narrative from just today, with my own note at the end . . . the third note came in after I posted my own, but it’s about their programming including preparing adults for military service<–???
. . . but I am also wondering if the people at The Network for Public Education may not know about it (its sendoff online was just this month March 2023) and want to be advised. Here are the notes which are self-explanatory:
NOTE 1: On Mar 26, 2023, at 9:21 AM, David Rosen wrote:
Subject: Re: New national adult education advocacy organization
Hello NLA Colleagues, . . . “Alliance for Adult Education created in February 2023 to unite public and industry leaders to expand career and education pathways for the 36M+ adults who lack a high school diploma” appears to be a new national adult education advocacy organization. Read the article about them linked above for more information.
Is anyone in the NLA Google group aware of, familiar with, or part of this advocacy organization? I wonder if this new group is aware of NCL, COABE, ProLiteracy, and other national organizations that do adult foundational education advocacy? If so, tell us more about this group. . . .
David J. Rosen
NOTE #2: (my emphases)
It seems like this new organization is bringing together people with backgrounds in business (primarily publishing), distance learning, and the military to expand opportunities for adult education. A few reflections:
• Two of the members on the about us page worked with cengage. There must be some knowledge of the existing adult education field in the organizations that advocate for it. On the other hand, I don’t see them at COABE. (Coalition of Adult Basic Education)
• They seem to be saying that the current field of adult education is doing good work, but that they want to expand access. The thing is, that’s also what for-profit private schools often say.
• While the military is an honorable pursuit, and a valuable albeit challenging way to gain transferable skills, it is unusual to see it foregrounded on an adult education website. Not judging, just commenting that the visual was surprising
• I don’t see the phrase “non-profit” anywhere on there website.
NOTE #3
From: aaace-nla@googlegroups.com on behalf of Art Ellison / Sent: Sunday, March 26, 2023 6:39:38 AM/To: David Rosen Cc: AAACE-NLA> Subject: Re: New national adult education advocacy organization
Not a good sign for the advocacy field when something like this happens.
The apparent lack of knowledge on the part of the members of this organization raises questions about their overall understanding of the adult Ed. Field in general and specifically our advocacy work. Art
NOTE #4 (my note)
Hello Art and all: I have some good guesses about what’s going on there, but it’s the first I have read of it, and so I do not yet know.
So I “googled” this group (as you probably have) and found that they only “presented” themselves this month (March, 2023). In the “About” section, however, the people there all seem to be well connected in many crossover programming and “ideas” about corporate/business and education. I could find nothing about funding or corporate support; though I did follow through with googling three names there . . . one is heavy into “restaurant leadership.”
Especially noted, however, in the narratives about the “about” people, are the many references to heavy-hitters, like McDonalds and several other corporations, who are known in public K-12 circles as sometimes not-so-dark contributors/ funders and closet directors of the “anti-public” part of K-12 education in the United States, which means lots of money, bells and whistles, and professional advertisers, but also “lobbyists.”
Art writes: “The apparent lack of knowledge on the part of the members of this organization raises questions about their overall understanding of the adult Ed. Field in general and specifically our advocacy work.”
Yes: questions.
First, the AAACA-NLA link in Google is just a few lines below the “Alliance.” IF no one here has heard from them, they are at least not doing their homework about the adult education that is already “out there” and has been for a very long time; OR the lackies who front the movement have bought something quite foul, hook line and sinker, and REALLY are not politically astute enough to understand the difference between making a career move and complicitly becoming a political hack; or about public and private and/or corporate realities; and so they see the AAAACA-NLA as similar to their own movement, namely, as just another, maybe even well-meaning, but competitive profit-making organization vying for federal money (ahem: public money), if they think about it at all, . . .
OR whether the hacks are aware of it or not, their funders’ political steamroller is just warming up, regardless of what their lackies say, do, and really mean.
My guess is, IF the “Alliance’s” source funding is the same as for the anti-public K-12 crowd, then their fundamental purpose is more about creating front organizations readying for a “corporate takeover” and for killing both all things public, and democracy itself, . . . than it is about education in and for adults or for sustaining a democracy over time (some of the ultra wealthy funders are also about building a “new” theocracy). IF so, then their “about” arrow is pointed in the same direction where it regularly “hits the mark” in the ongoing fight to preserve the whole idea of public education in K-12 and colleges as they regularly bash, defund, threaten, and set fires under teachers and their union/unified voice.
Unfortunately, and not by some sort of mistake, many in our present Congress and many state politicians are mere carrots ready and waiting to go wherever the corporate oligarch/money stick wants them to go. Also, at present, too many obviously do not care what the general public wants.
My other guess is that, in the long game, as soon as those same powers get rid of voting (those tween adults are a huge voting block, if they would actually vote and actually knew what was at stake), corporate and political interest in education will evaporate or change form, along with their present propaganda about helping adults, about how awful real teachers are (those who are not already saturated with the political ignorance that supports corporate rhetoric), and how bad public education is, until the public as a whole forgets the grand difference between democracy and fascism—which I think is the problem for way too many in the United States today anyway.
I did sign up for their newsletter . . . though until and unless we know better, no one who understands the difference between democracy and fascism, and how fascism is mainly about either duping, controlling, or “disappearing” people, or the crucial part that public education plays in a democracy, . . . none should read and automatically believe what the “Alliance” or anyone in the field writes or says, or that they are really interested in forming a real alliance that might not tacitly or openly share their political intentions, or about adult education, for the same reasons most or even all of us are, or in the country as a whole.
Fascists and their propaganda always wear the right clothes and oligarchs always bring the right gifts to whatever party they get invited to.
Catherine Blanche King
The Intercept has published a detailed and horrifying account of two Harvard Grads who figured out how to make Big Bucks in the world of For Profit African Education.
Their Bridge International Academies included the investment crew of Chan Zuckerberg Education, LLC, linked to Mark Zuckerberg; Pearson Education; Gates Frontier LLC, tied to Bill Gates; Imaginable Futures, linked to eBay billionaire Pierre Omidyar, a major funder of The Intercept; and Pershing Square Foundation, tied to billionaire hedge fund mogul Bill Ackman. The United Kingdom’s development bank, the European Investment Bank, and the International Finance Corporation of the World Bank.
Children paid the price for the profits and the privateering.
https://theintercept.com/2023/03/23/bridge-schools-africa-kenya-education/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=The%20Intercept%20Newsletter
I just read that article. If you Google, you will see that I have written about BIA on several occasions. I never thought this story would have a good ending. The profit motive and education do not mix well. The biggest criticism of BIA is that it implicitly discouraged public investment in public schools in Africa by supplying a lie-cost alternative.