The adoption of voucher programs has been a boon for religious schools. Schools that were financially troubled are now thriving with public subsidies for their students as well as an influx of new students.
This article by reporter Holly Meyer on the Associated Press newswire describes the good fortune of religious schools but does not mention the copious research demonstrating the failure of vouchers.
The Miami Archdiocese’s superintendent of schools says Catholic education is increasingly in demand in South Florida, now that all K-12 students regardless of income are allowed to use taxpayer-funded programs to pay for private school tuition.
Against the backdrop of favorable decisions by the conservative-majority U.S. Supreme Court, Florida was among nine states that expanded school voucher programs last year. So many families have signed up for the taxpayer-funded tuition reimbursements, some states are already exceeding their budgets….
The movement gained momentum amid fallout from pandemic-era school restrictions, debates on how transgender students should participate in school life, and wars over books and curriculum related to race and LGBTQ+ issues….
Some long-running religious schools are now planning for a fuller future after the wave of policy wins for the so-called school choice movement. Others hope voucher expansion comes to their state.
“We are moving into growth mode,” said Jim Rigg, superintendent of the Miami Archdiocese’s 64 schools. Accelerated by the state’s private school scholarship program, enrollment has risen for the last four years, reaching its highest peak in over a decade, he said….
Nearly 80% of private school families choose religious ones, according to P. George Tryfiates, public policy and legal affairs vice president for the Association of Christian Schools International. The association represents about 2,200 U.S. schools.
In a statement, he said Christian schools are, among other things, “a refuge from the cultural wars over sexuality.”
Voucher programs do not include accountability measures nor do they ban discrimination. Religious Scholls are not required to comply with federal laws so they may ban students with disabilities and students of religions different from the sponsor.
Most vouchers are used by students already enrolled in religious schools.
The voucher movement is a not subtle way of gutting civil rights protections.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
A religious school is an establishment of religion.
If the government can make no law respecting an establishment of religion then it can neither regulate the operation of religious schools nor hold the funding of religious schools accountable to public oversight.
If the government compels taxation for the support of religious establishments which the government cannot hold responsible to democratic principles then that is the very definition of taxation without representation.
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Providing funding to a faith-based institution to support non-religious programming is perfectly legal. The Salvation Army, and countless other organization do this every day. The Red Cross, while claiming no religious affiliation was originally founded by Christians and their faith played a significant role in its mission.
If public schools provided a worthwhile education, parents would not be running to escape them. In places where public schools are of high quality, there is less demand for alternative choices. It’s nothing new that too many public schools fail the public. The Pandemic only added to that concern by opening a window into what public schools were actually doing, and what they were doing angered and continues to anger parents across the country. To learn more, read this book:
Amazon.com: School Choice and the Impact of COVID-19: 9781032435657: Guo-Brennan, Michael: Books
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”If public schools provided a worthwhile education, parents would not be running to escape them.”
public schools are providing worthwhile education despite having to fight competition from quasi-schools which were created for nefarious reasons. These places employ people based on their declarations of religious preference rather than their academic competence.
people who disparage public education are guilty of lighting the house and then complaining when it burns.
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The house on fire that is public education was set decades a go by bad policy and bad leadership (by those from all political ideologies). As that became more and more apparent, those with resources escaped the fire by sending their children to other schools. They will always do that. Vouchers only level the playing field, creating access to those families whose children continue to attend schools on fire.
If the problem is that the program is too popular, and so many parents want out of public schools, there is not enough funding or space in private schools, what does that say about the demand for public education?
We can debate criteria for eligibility for a voucher, but they are not the cause of bad public schools, they are part of the cure, not the only cure.
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Michael,
You missed the point.
Kids are not “fleeing” public schools to go to private schools.
75-80% of vouchers are grabbed by families whose kids never went to public schools.
As Josh Cowen has demonstrated, the kids who leave public schools with vouchers go to third rate schools, where they fall behind their peers in public schools.
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RT:
!!!!!❤️❤️❤️
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Michael should review the false claims of demand for tax-funded private schools which Diane has exposed at the blog.
People in the south would know about the history of segregation academies. Perhaps a White commenter from one of the Deep South states could provide perspective.
Evidently, Michael hasn’t read Diane’s independent research about the overwhelming use of vouchers by parents whose children were already enrolled in private schools.
Michael’s views strike me as hackneyed retellings from the echo chamber of Koch and libertarian-funded, anti-government stables. School privatization advocates picking up paychecks from state and federal government -funded employers should avoid the well-merited condemnation for throwing stones from glass houses. They should work in the private sector.
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Thank you, LL Bricker. The only rush to vouchers is the parents whose children are already enrolled in religious and private schools.
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Michael is correct. Your average, working parent doesn’t care one bit about the economic/political/religious aspect of vouchers. Parents just don’t like what is happening in public schools and they don’t want their kids to participate…..AND they are offended that their tax dollars support what public schools have become. ALL of the privates in MD are now filled with former public school students (and many teachers!). The homeschool movement here is soaring (I’ve never seen more kids at the grocery store/Costco during the school day). The numbers entering teacher training programs is getting smaller and smaller.
Arne Duncan was allowed to ramp up NCLB into his own destructive RTtT. That was the time to stop the destruction, but it didn’t happen and public education has only gotten worse. The problem is that this blog is populated by lots of retired teachers who don’t understand what has happened in public schools since they have retired. The good old days are long gone and it can’t be turned around…….Pandora’s Box is fully open in regards to public education (same with health care,too).
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Lisa,
You have been a participant on this blog long enough to know that 75-80% of the kids who take vouchers were never enrolled in public schools. And that the kids who leave public school with a voucher enroll in subprime religious schools with uncertified teachers and get subpar education. Many return to public school.
There is also the notable fact that voucher schools can exclude anyone they want: kids of the wrong religion, kids with disabilities, kids who are LGBT.
How do you feel about rolling back civil rights laws?
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Lisa, I think that a lot of people here have an instinctive reaction to defend public schools because a) they know that public schools prior to the test-and-punish regime built the strongest, most powerful, most economically vital country in the history of the world; b) they wish to defend this institution and keep it alive for a time when the evil occupation by the Gates/Coleman forces is ended; they know a lot of teachers, including themselves, who have pushed back, who refused to accede to the pressure from administrators and district offices and continued to teach DESPITE the bullshit. I was one of those teachers. I gave lip service to the moronic crap when I had to. Then I closed my door and actually taught my subjects instead of vague, abstract bs from the Gates/Coleman bullet list.
So, let me tell you of my experience. I had a truly outstanding public education all the way through my undergrad at Indiana University, where I had some of the finest professors in the history of our land. But you are right, ever since the Nation at Risk Report, public schools have gone steadily downhill under the onslaught of unaccountable, idiotic criterion-based approaches to instruction pushed by deformers–from Bill Clinton right on down to Cardona today. Big school districts have been enthusiastic and active partners in this debasement of education and devolution of our curricula–collaborators with the Deformer Occupation of our K-12 schools. If I had a couple of books’ worth of space, I could detail the myriad ways in which this has occurred, through my own experience. I will give but one example to illustrate the point you have been trying to make here, Lisa. My previous department chair was in her early twenties. She had doubtless been chosen to be chair because she was completely docile and too ignorant of her subject and of how to teach to fight back against the test preppy mandates. She said to me, “I do test prep until when the tests are given in April; then I have maybe a month to teach English.”
THAT IS WHAT HAS HAPPENED. It’s undeniable. Given how ridiculous education has become in most places in public schools under the Occupation, it is not shocking at all that parents are pulling their kids out. THIS, AS DIANE HAS SAID ALL ALONG, IS THE PLAN. The Deformers want to make public schools intolerable. Well, like Bushie Jr’s “Brownie,” they are dong a HECKUVA JOB.
Seriously, if I started detailing the INSANE SHIT that my last administrators and district did as a result of the TEST-AND-PUNISH OCCUPATION, it would sound like a cross between Kafka and de Sade and Barthelme and almost as cruel and senseless as the Hostel series of horror films.
Schooling under the test-and-punish OCCUPATION is child abuse, and vast numbers of district- and school-level administrators are Vichy collaborators in this abuse, MANY OF THEM ENTHSIASTICALLY SO.
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I have many of these reservations, Lisa. My response to you is in moderation, alas.
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One thing that just kills me about all this, LisaM, is that the Deformers–people like Gates and Coleman and Campbell Brown and Michael Petrilli, etc., etc., etc. act COMPLETELY CLUELESS about how much damage they have done and are doing. They act as though they literally don’t have any idea how destructive the Coring of U.S. schools has been. Petrilli is a case in point. He claims to be all in on E.D. Hirsch, Jr’s ideas about a knowledge-based curriculum and is entirely clueless that the Common Core and its associated testing pushed out almost all substantive, knowledge-based education in K-12 ELA. HE LITERALLY DOES NOT HAVE ANY IDEA WHAT TF HE WRITES AND TALKS ABOUT. But living in the fact-free bubble of Deformerworld is quite lucrative.
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Sorry Ms Ravitch but I don’t believe those numbers, just as I don’t believe political polls. I think data is cherry picked according to what one wants to believe and I think surveys are intentionally designed to get intended results(the opposite of science!). As I said….parents don’t really care about the economic/political/religious aspect of taking the voucher. They just want their child out of public school. I paid for my child to attend a private school that didn’t accept vouchers because to take a voucher in MD, means that the school must adhere to same mandates of the public school system (testing,CCetc). Many parents will soon figure this out….just like the voucher schools upon taking the $$$ had their students taking “bubble tests” a few times a year.
The question of “WHY” is always ignored on this blog. Maybe if more people listened to the “WHY” more work could be done to repair the damage or solve the problem. Why doesn’t anyone on this blog want to know “why” parents are leaving public education….or do they think parents are too stupid to understand when they know things aren’t “right” in their children’s classrooms/schools?
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lighting the house and then complaining when it burns
Definitely the quotation of the day! Nailed it, Roy.
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School choice is about rich people siphoning more money from the middle class who, unlike the rich, pay their fair share in taxes.
School choice was initiated so that mainly White people could send their kids to Catholic schools (schools that happened to be predominantly White) on the taxpayers’ dime. Akron Beacon Journal, Dec. 14, 1999, “Whose choice? How school choice began in Ohio.”
There are Catholic schools that alter the US Pledge of allegiance to include anti-woman Catholic doctrine. With the SCOTUS decision in Biel v. St. James Catholic school, religious schools were exempted from civil rights employment law. And, some Catholic schools follow Church doctrine in discriminatory admission practices against LGBTQ students.
Paul Weyrich, funded by Koch, was a right wing Catholic and co-founder of the religious right. His training manual calling for parallel schools to destroy public schools is posted at Theocracy Watch.
The Koch alignment with right wing Catholics is described in McConahey’s book, Playing God. The executive director of the Colorado Catholic Conference was formerly with EdChoice and the Koch network.
The legal scholar credited as most influential in advancing religious charter schools is Notre Dame Professor Nicole Stelle Garnet (friend of Koch’s Amy Comey Barrett). Garnet is a (Koch) Manhattan Institute Fellow (so, is anti-CRT Christopher Rufo).
It’s sickening that people like Michael have so little regard for the principles of the nation, separation of church and state and equality of opportunity, that they will betray their fellow citizens. How disgusting that Michael works for a repeat of history in which there was victimization of children in religious schools and, a cover-up of it. National Catholic Reporter posted about priest abuse 17 years before the fall-out from the Boston Globe’s scrutiny of the criminal behavior.
Taxpayers have made Catholic organizations the nation’s 3rd largest employer. That’s a colossal failure to fight for democracy. Acceptance of the travesty of tax-funded Catholic schools will make it substantially worse.
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“There are Catholic schools [plural] that alter the US Pledge of allegiance to include anti-woman Catholic doctrine.”
FALSE
ONE principal at ONE Catholic school in Cleveland altered the Pledge to include the phrase “born and unborn” after “with liberty and justice,” and even in that school, students were not REQUIRED to recite it in that way.
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“Taxpayers have made Catholic organizations the nation’s 3rd largest employer.”
Thanks be to all the gods for those employees, working in thousands of hospitals and schools, to teach and heal. And thanks to the Catholic Church for hiring these noble people to do such essential work.
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As usual, Bob, when you correct others, you are wrong. The NYT wrote about Covington Catholic’s alteration of the pledge. Covington Catholic, all boys school, is in Ky. The students made national news when they went on an anti-abortion trip to D.C.
We can agree to disagree that it is good for religious organizations to usurp government function. IMO, it’s bad for a lot of reasons. I’ll mention one- taxpayers shouldn’t be paying for clinics that lie and tell women that abortions cause breast cancer. Maybe someone else can draw a parallel for you between lack of accountability in religious schools and other service organizations of religious groups.
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Oh my gosh! Two of the 600 Catholic schools in the United States did this. ROFL. Will you alert Batman, or shall I?
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Two of the 6,429 Catholic schools in the U.S. (as of the 2022-23 school year).
Wow. Really sounds like this is RAMPANT in Catholic schools! ROFL. Why, that’s 0.0311%!!!!
Oooooooo. Scary stuff!
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Bob-
I think you conjured up that number “2” because truth is unimportant to you. Decades ago, newspapers wrote about Catholic school pledge alterations. Even the addition of “Under God” to the Pledge was a Catholic effort. The Knights of Columbus put it in the pledge that they said at their meetings.
Have you thought about how your comments might merit criticism? Perhaps you are viewed as flitting from subject to subject with inch deep recitations of info. Your single source info. which proves wrong may be annoying to some. Your superficial evaluations may irritate others, for example, your ready acceptance of a viewpoint that the bishop or his staff decided to post at its site about Juneteenth. Any possibility the young Black woman who wrote it learned that version from her Church? Your repeated, erroneous memory, may aggravate some e.g. you praised retired teacher’s version of the Crusades’ history that omitted the Popes.
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Amen Michael!
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You’re a hoot, Jacqui, and, by that I mean, if there was women’s justice, your right to vote would be taken away.
The GOP presents Sen. Katie Britt in a kitchen acting the part of a tradwife, with a demeanor, breathless and sweet, even while, she jarringly talks trash and describes sad events. Bizarro.
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by the way, my daughter is graduating from a school that has a vocal music program. The school where I taught could not afford a vocal music program. It is all about money.
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Alabama approved a school choice program. Sen. Katie Britt advocates for school choice. Do her kids attend private or public schools?
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I don’t know, but probably private
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Michael, any response to the note above that correctly states that the vast majority of those claiming vouchers are families who NEVER attended public schools. This has ben noted in both Arkansas and Arizona.
There is no mass exodus from public schools.
Public education is only “a house on fire’ due to the willingness of on side’s endless attempts to manufacture crises. I’m not going to get into the evidence that suggests that US schools do quite well. There’s Google for that.
Or you can just listen to commentators who have a vested interest in the perception of poor schools.
If vouchers and schools choice are so popular, why do they never win ballot referenda? Nebraska is trying to keep the removal of vouchers off the ballot. Wonder why?
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Thank you! There have been nearly two dozen state referenda on vouchers. All of them ended up against vouchers, even in Arizona and Florida. The Republicans ignored the vote.
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Katie Britt’s kids attend Montgomery Academy, a private school. Grades 10-12 cost $18,000 per year in tuition.
Does the Alabama voucher cover that full cost?
Demographic profile based on internet search- Montgomery Academy- 86.8% White, 6.6% Black.
Montgomery, Alabama demographic- 29% White and 63% Black.
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Katie Britt is vehemently anti-abortion
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She’s a Republican in the South where wealthy, White women invoke punishments on women in the lower economic strata. Meanwhile, she and her friends have a whole different set of rules for themselves.
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The one thing that these struggling religious K-12 schools have forgotten is what my Dutch ancestors who emigrated to Western Michigan learned in the 19th century learned in the Netherlands and was one of the causes of their immigration; “With State Money Comes State Control.” These vouchers may seem free from state demands right now, but one of the issues that is at the forefront of the MAGA-GOP list is teaching only their version of US history that teaches that our government was founded by Christians and they created a “Christian nation” and secondly that the Civil War was caused by economic reasons and not slavery, because the slaves were happy and well cared for in the South, both of these ideas are grossly incorrect.
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Rhetorically, is there any U.S. K-12 Catholic school that teaches the history of the Catholic church’s involvement in slavery?
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I wonder if public schools currently teach that the democrat party started a Civil War to keep their Precious slavery? I wonder if they k ow that the Republican Party was started as an abolitionist party? I wonder if they teach that the Klan was the militia of the democrat party? I wonder if they know that democrat, Woodrow Wilson screened Birth of a Nation at the White House and these regulated the government? I wonder if they know that Biden gave the eulogy of a Grand Kleagle of the KKK, Senator Robert Byrd? Yes, there is a LOT of history not being taught in our public schools.
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Yeah, what happened to the Republican Party that it totally abandoned its founding principles? Thanks for pointing that out. Such a tragedy.
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Jacqueline, I don’t know if schools are teaching that the Democratic Party in the 19th century was the party of the South. Certainly Southern racists were in positions of power. The segregationists and KKK were Democrats.
However, the same segregationists abandoned the Democratic Party because of the civil rights movement. In the Deep South, all the governors and senators were Democrats until the rise of the civil rights movement.
All the segregationists and racists switched from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party, where they are today.
Blacks used to be prominent in the Republican Party because of Lincoln. However when the parties switched sides, Blacks abandoned the Republican Party en masse, and the Republican party became the party of racism, which it is today.
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It’s so deeply disingenuous that the party that opposes ALL progress in the racial arena would keep digging up this history of a time when it actually stood for something noble, a time before it ABANDONED its values.
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The republican party believes that black people can obtain driver’s licenses. We believe they can succeed on their merit and don’t need party protection. We still believe in MLK’s message that we should be judged on the content of our character and not the color of our SKIN. We noticed that although the latest Supreme Court decision. Was 9/0; the justice most attacked by the democrats for the decision was The first Black Justice on the court! Clarence Thomas! Why does the democrat hate black people?
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haaaaa!!!
Your party’s Glorious Leader, Grand Dragon Donnie:
Racial views of Donald Trump – Wikipedia
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Trump took out full-page ads in NYC newspapers calling for the execution of the Central Park 5. After serving time in prison, they were all exonerated after someone else confessed to the crime. One of them was recently elected to the NYC council.
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Democrats don’t hate Black people. Clarence Thomas votes to take voting rights away from Black people. He votes against the well- being of Black people. The overwhelming majority of Black voters are Democrats. Thomas wanted to be the hero of rich white plutocrats.
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Democrats are racists. Donald Trump won the election. The moon is made of green cheese. George Soros is funding Jewish space lasers. Inject disinfectants. When rich people get big tax breaks, this makes the poor better off. America is the happiest nation. America is a shithole because of the Democrats. Square is round. Blacks are equal and it’s their fault so many of them are living in poverty. Slaves were so happy. All they had to do was eat watermelon and sing about Jebus all day long. America was founded as a Christian nation by all those deist forefathers. Women belong in the kitchen loading buckshot. CRT is rooting around in your flowerbeds. Schools are putting litterboxes in bathrooms for the Furvies. Unborn baby sings like Elvis. Donald Trump is a Christian. Right is left. Putin is a lot more trustworthy than are our intelligence services. Donald barely knew Jeffrey. Night is day. Don’t look up. Don’t take vaccines! Bring back polio and measles! Librarians are Marxist groomers. School libraries are secret centers of Satanism. Hilary runs pedo pizza parlors. I know. I am a Repugnican. There is nothing so batshit crazy that I won’t lap it up from the Maw of Glorious Leader Who Shines More Orange Than Does the Sun. Aka, the second coming of Christ.
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From the Catechism of the Catholic Church:
The Seventh Commandment forbids acts or enterprises that …. lead to the enslavement of human beings, to their being bought, sold and exchanged like merchandise, in disregard for their personal dignity. It is a sin against the dignity of persons and their fundamental rights to reduce them by violence to their productive value or to a source of profit. St. Paul directed a Christian master to treat his Christian slave “no longer as a slave but more than a slave, as a beloved brother . . . both in the flesh and in the Lord.”
Your ridiculous, extremist anti-Catholic crusade needs to stop, Linda. It’s bizarre.
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Bob,
Try to tamp down your drive to control others. A commenter told you it was “unbecoming”
When Diane deletes what I write, you can chalk that up as your win against democracy which is under attack by the American Catholic Church and politicized right wing Catholics.
Your praise for the revisionist history about the Crusades, written by commenter, Retired Teacher (while expected), was an embarrassing entry for a blog that seeks truth. On the other hand, it provides proof of the existence of the narrative that omits the wrong doing of the one and only true church.
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I never praised any revisionist history of the Crusades. I have written often on these pages about the egregious history of the Church in its attacks on indigenous persons worldwide, which left rivers of blood through history, and of the necessity for the Church to confront this terrible legacy.
But you write in complete obliviousness about the vast amount of good work that the Church does today in the hospitals and schools that it runs–literally millions involved in teaching and healing–in walking the walk. Instead, you keep referencing the Church being the nation’s “third largest employer,” suggesting that there is something sinister about that instead of something breathtakingly good–people working to teach and to heal. And that’s typical of your weird obsession that bends every topic, just about, that appears on this pages into a rant contra Catholics.
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Galveston-Houston Archdiocese site, 6-13-2023
“A Black Catholic Texan’s Perspective on Juneteenth”
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You know that you can post URLs to listings that you want people to see, right?
This one, btw, is overwhelmingly positive about Catholic schools and civil rights. In the essay, Cherie Wade Washington, a black Texan, points out that her church, growing up in Texas, was the one place where there was a week-long celebration of Juneteenth and of the joy that this brought her. She also points out that “Throughout our history, be it the experience of slavery, Jim Crow laws, lynchings, segregation and the Civil Rights movement, Black people have relied on their faith to see them forward” and that “Catholic schools in Houston were the first private schools to integrate.”
So, thanks, Linda, for sharing this piece on the wonderful work that Catholics did to fight racism during the early days of the Civil Rights Movement.
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Home – Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston (archgh.org)
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If only the current, White attenders of the Catholic church adhered to Jacqui’s vision of a stagnant political landscape…alas, the demographic that elected FDR now, elects trump..
Jacqui, you’ll like Mark Robinson , the GOP candidate for N.C. Governor, a Black “Christian” man who would like to go back to a time when women didn’t vote.
Me, not so much, I support women’s rights.
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Everyone is entitled to their opinion, Linda. When I worked Construction I had a forman who told me “women don’t belong in the trade”. I responded that “everyone is entitled to their option, but I’m not going anywhere.” Unfortunately, democrats don’t adhere to that opinion anymore. If Donald Trump wins in 2024, and he will, the left will go batshit crazy and do their “plan B” as laid out in the article “ The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election” by Molly Ball.
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Jackie,
What do you admire about a serial sexual predator, a man who lies as easily as other people breathe, a man who invited Putin to invade and destroy our allies?
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Few people today, unless they have studied philosophy, know much, if anything, about the Positivists, but the Positivists’ ideas have had enormous influence. They’ve had a long afterlife. They underlie such common assertions as “That’s just your opinion” and “Everyone has a right to their [sic] opinion.” The former statement suggests that opinions, including ethical claims, not being matters of fact, are not justified or justifiable. The latter statement implies that opinions, not being matters of fact, are all equally justified.
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Who gets to decide which opinions are legitimate? In the history of our country we have always allowed Americans to have their opinions. Right now I can go on YouTube and find communists talking about overthrowing Capitalism in our country, many of them teachers and librarians, they just formed a “Revolutionary Party.” Oh well.
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Opinions are justified to the extent that they are warranted by facts. If you do not grok that, then you have thrown over rationality entirely for “He said, she said,” and that’s not surprising, for in general, that’s what Trumpanzees do.
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Thank God we have the first Amendment!! The Founders anticipated tyrants like those on the left, who think that only certain opinions can be entertained. Theirs.
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So you do not agree that opinions are only worth the facts that support them? You are of the opinion that every opinion is as good as every other one? That’s quite an interesting philosophical position.
OK. Here’s an opinion: The interior of the moon Triton is inhabited by three-headed polyamorous vampires.
Is that opinion as good as any other opinion? Do people have a “right” to hold that opinion?
How about this opinion: We should eat babies because they are so delicious.
Do people have a “right” to that opinion?
After these examples, do you still think that it makes sense to assert that everyone has a right to his or her [not their] opinion IN GENERAL, that is, whatever that opinion is?
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Yes, everyone is entitled to their opinion, IN GENERAL. If you think the Earth is flat, you do you. You think Men can give birth, you do you. If you think Biden doesn’t have dementia, you are entitled to that opinion.
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Well, there you are. You believe that people are entitled to believe any batshit crazy notion, despite the facts. You just said so.
That explains a lot.
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How do you propose to stop people from having batshit crazy opinions? Do you people want to police thoughts now?
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The only person who has mentioned legislating opinions here is you, Ms. Hardt.
If people understand that good opinions are warranted ones–ones supported by facts and values–and that bad opinions are ones that are not, then rational debate, based on facts and values, is possible. Otherwise, it’s just a shouting match.
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Perhaps this escaped your purview, Ms. Hardt, but people enter into legal disputes in court holding differing opinions. Then the court decides which of these make sense and which is entitled to a judgment in his or her favor because the opinion is supported by facts.
This should not be difficult for even a Republican to understand, but clearly, it is. How do you people manage to learn how to tie your shoelaces and open doors?
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In a battle of wits, Repugnicans are at a distinct disadvantage, being unarmed.
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So, just to summarize the discussion so far. You just committed yourself to the position that people have an equal right to holding these two opinions:
Communism is bad.
People should eat babies because they are delicious.
ROFL.
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If you watched the State of the Union speech, you know that Biden does not have dementia.
If you read the newspapers, you know that Trump is a serial sexual predator. That is a fact, not an opinion. He said so himself in the Access Hollywood tape. Remember when he said that when you are a star, you can do anything to women. You can grab them by the p***y.
Did you like that statement?
Do you approve?
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I grew up among union construction workers, so I’ve heard it all. I don’t approve and I don’t care. Biden is a monster as far as I’m concerned.
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What monstrous thing has Biden done? Inquiring minds want to know.
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It is possible for people to emerge from superstition, fear, ignorance, and intolerance, but individuals rarely do this. Most who are born into darkness persist in darkness. They inhabit Galapagos Islands where their ideas, however backward and ludicrous, are always reinforced and never examined. One has to wait for a new generation to break free. Fortunately, the generation coming up has thrown over all major Repugnican articles of blind faith, as the Pew studies of religious and political beliefs show. So, there is hope. Soon, the Greying Old Party, the GOP, will pass from the Earth and there will be a new Renaissance. They will soon go the way of the Know Nothings. And their vile Orange Idiot–one of the most despicable and disgusting lowlife creatures ever to slither across the Earth–will be remembered thusly:
Trump: A Commemoration | Bob Shepherd | Praxis (wordpress.com)
There remains this primary takeaway from the entire Trumpanzee phenomenon: this has shown that there are vast numbers of Americans who are irredeemably stupid and morally bankrupt just like Trump. Is this just a phenomenon that is passing from the Earth? Or will it have to be faced again and again and again–the presence, within a Democratic society, of vast numbers of people who are utterly clueless and as opinionated as they are hidebound and ignorant?
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Trump: A Commemoration | Bob Shepherd | Praxis (wordpress.com)
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Biden is a monster? Please explain.
Was he convicted of sexually assaulting a woman?
Did he refuse to pay workers who did their jobs for him?
Did he cheat widows and vets by opening a fraudulent “university”?
Did he pay a porn actress for sex and bribe her to stay silent?
Did he take hundreds of top-secret documents home, containing the names of secret agents and our nuclear plane, hide them, lie about having them, and refuse to turn them over when repeatedly asked?
I can’t recall anything monstrous that he has done.
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The winner of the 2020 election was Joe Biden.
That is not an opinion.
That is a fact.
That fact was upheld by the U.S. Supteme Court twice.
It was upheld by five dozen state and federal courts.
Biden win the popular vote by 7 million.
Biden win the electoral vote decisively.
Those are facts.
You can believe anything you want.
You can believe the moon is made of green cheese.
You can believe that John Kennedy Jr. is alive and will be Trump’s vice-presidential choice.
Those are your beliefs.
They are not facts.
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Loads of Communist teachers and librarians calling for the overthrow of the country? HAAAAAA!!!! OMG. There is nothing so ridiculous that you are incapable of believing it, clearly.
But do, please share, all those hundreds, thousands, billions, gazillions of Communist Librarian Videos.
ROFL
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Republicans: by their fruitcake notions you will know them.
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The Catholic Church, masters of spin, those who choose self-deception, especially receptive-
“First” to integrate in Texas, note the qualifier, among private schools- the courts were forcing integration in Texas public educational institutions beginning in 1950. Houston Catholic schools, a decade and a year later, 1961, may have seen the handwriting on the wall as many did and made the decision to admit their first Black students.
Fast forward to the bishops’ full court press for vouchers and, read about the vouchers’ significance in Texas history. Lloyd Dogget, U.S, Representative- Texas, “Quorum Report (10-6-2023): Ratliff: The untold history of school vouchers in Texas.” Readers will learn that it was all about racial segregation.
So, why would “integrationists” in the right wing American Catholic church back vouchers from 1985 to present? The church spin is, “It lets poor people have choice.” Yea, that’s what the Church is known for, like self-determination of family size.
There’s a National Black Catholic Seminarians Association. In 2021, they posted that in the same year as Juneteenth, the first openly African-American Catholic seminarian was denied ordination (Baltimore) due to “virulent racism.” They go on to say, “Some have said, Where is the Church? Others haven’t bothered to ask…We feel compelled to say, ‘Here we are.””
The Houston diocese, will they be teaching about, “Confederate Catholics” (Kent State University Press) or, will the sanitized history of Christopher Rufo prevail?
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Does it ever stop with you, Linda? Do you spend EVERY WAKING MOMENT thinking about how evil Catholics and Catholicism are? I am no fan of Christian religion, which I think of as superstition, though there are parts of the teachings of Yeshua of Nazareth that I heartily approve of. I have written extensively on this blog of the long, horrific history of the war on indigenous peoples conducted by Christians. Diane has posted here my no-punches-pulled articles about the ugliness of Columbus Day and of the actions of the Church in the New World and elsewhere worldwide, including my references to the work of Bartolome de las Casas. Here, some relevant selections from my work:
Bob Shepherd Ruminates on the Sad History of Columbus Day | Diane Ravitch’s blog
and here:
Why Is Christianity So Weird? | Bob Shepherd | Praxis (wordpress.com)
All of which is pretty much irrelevant to the Catholic Church of today. It isn’t the Catholic Church working in Uganda to get that country to pass laws leading to the imprisonment or execution of LGBTQX persons. It’s Protestants.
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Bob’s praise for a version of the Crusade history that diminished the role of the Catholic popes-
It was in the thread that followed the, 2-28-2024, 11:31 am, Retired Teacher comment and her/his answer to the question, “Which religious sects fought in the Crusades?”
Post- “Texas monthly…” 2-28-2024.
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I did not praise minimization of horrors of the Crusades. Quite the contrary, I praised mentioning these and added the issue of “the genocide, subjugation, and appropriation of the land and other resources of indigenous peoples worldwide!”
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And no one mentioned the Catholic popes in that interchange.
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cx: Two of the 6,429 Catholic schools in the U.S. (as of the 2022-23 school year).
Wow. Really sounds like this is RAMPANT in Catholic schools! ROFL. Why, that’s 0.0311%!!!!
Oooooooo. Scary stuff!
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And you completely misread it. My answer contained a typo, but it’s clear enough. It is the OPPOSITE OF a dismissal of the egregiousness of the Crusades.
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Bob,
It’s not “2.” You made that number up. it’s similar to what you created about palliative care in a comment thread, when you were wrong.
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I am truly sorry that I made the mistake of engaging you again. No more. Others can address your anti-Catholic rants from here on. Let me just say that if you had given equal time to anti-Muslim ranting over the past few years, you would long since have been booted from this blog.
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Bob
No person should defend an American, well-funded and politically connected, centralized Islamic network that achieves right wing political successes from the legislatures, executive and judicial branches. Women’s rights, their lives and US democracy matter and, the enemy should be identified whoever it is, no special treatment.
If media and influencers refuse to report about the wins of nationwide mosque efforts that elect Republicans, that privatize schools, that deny rights to LGBTQ and, their wins in a pretense absolving them of their role in subjugation of Black people, I fervently hope that the blog host’s conscience would encourage her to allow the comments. You know the host better than I do.
The tragic story at Wikipedia about Charles Uncles, the first African American priest, belongs with the recent exposure of other racism, long hidden. Desegregating the Altar: The Struggle for Black Priests 1871-1960″, by Stephen J Ochs. “Roman Catholic authorities purposefully excluded African-Americans from seminaries.”
I doubt there is any regular reader of the blog who believes you when you say that you can stop using ridicule and baseless characterizations. You are compelled to exert control in shutting down info. about Catholic Church right wing initiatives in the US during recent periods.
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Readers of this blog can judge for themselves. If they go to the proper websites, they will learn that taxpayer dollars are being used to fund almost 80 thousand pumper trucks and another 80 thousand fire suppression vehicles. How long will it take people to awaken to what Fire Trucks really mean? For them to figure out that these can easily be converted to fire spreaders? It is a little-known fact that Amy Conan Barrett’s friend’s son and daughter got a toy Fire Truck for Christmas. And what has made fire departments among the THIRD LARGES municipal employers in the land? How much money was spent on Fire Trucks with the ultimate aim of ending democracy and establishing a scorched Earth regime in Ohio? Bob has repeatedly noted that he approves of Fire Trucks, here and here and here, and when called out on this, he simply denies it because liar, liar pants on fire. But the Truth about the Great Fire Truck conspiracy will not be suppressed! As Ray Bradbury said, in every city, at every time in the modern era, Fire Trucks are the tools of government, i.e., of THE DESPOT!!!!
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And, fellow commenters, there’s the proof. Bob says he’ll stop but, he can’t control himself.
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Sorry, it’s the bishops. Those evil Bishops are holding me and forcing me to write these things!!!! And then there is the great CRT/Catholic Conferences Precious Body Fluid Conspiracy. Make sure to conserve yours!
ME: Oh, no! Bishops!
BISHOPS: BWWWWWWAAAAHHHHHH!!!
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Bob’s patronization of Jacqui, defining for her what constitutes an opinion, that’s rich. Read Bob’s comments to me containing ridicule, gaslighting and false characterizations. A commenter even chastised him for it, with the description, “unbecoming.”
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blah blah blah blah blah bad Catholics blah blah blah Catholic Conferences blah blah blah blah blah Bob blah blah blah blah Bishops blah blah blah blah blah venom blah blah blah
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Linda, it might surprise you to learn that a great deal of work in epistemology concerns just such matters as what constitutes a warranted opinion. If you read more widely in philosophy, you would know this.
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And, let me say once again, if someone else had indulged in the almost daily ranting about the supposed evils done by some other religious group, say about Jews or Muslims, as you have done for years now, here, about Catholics, he or she would have been booted from this blog long, long ago. There was an oil spill somewhere. Let me see. How can I relate this to those terrible Catholics?
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Wow, Quite a dialog. I am not against public schools, I attended public schools in Illinois, including a public university. I am against all bad schools, public or private/ sacred. All schools should be held to the same standards. I strongly agree standardized testing needs to go away. It is an insame way to measure success in schools.
I will push back on the argument that 70-80% of voucher families were already in non-public schools. If that is true, which I can accept as true – SO WHAT?? Prior to 2023, no state had universal vouchers. Relatively few had vouchers at all. In those 15 or 16 states that did have a voucher program had very strong eligibility requirements. These were usually based on income and in some cases living in a poor performing school district. In some places like Florida and Arizona, children with an IEP were eligible for a voucher to attend a special school.
So to argue that all the voucher parents are rich and white and do not need it is a false flag. Why would anyone argue that a low to moderate income family that is trying to provide the best education possible for their child doesn’t deserve every opportunity to help their child? Why should they have to pay for their childs’ education twice? Once in local property taxes, and once in tuition.
If anyone can provide hard data, not rhetoric that the vast majority of voucher parents are white and high income (including based on family size), I’d like to see it.
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50-State Comparison: Private School Choice – Education Commission of the States (ecs.org)
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MGB,
You are not helping to refute the view that many north of the Mason Dixon line hold about White southerners and school reform, just as the billionaires engaged in the American Federation for Children agenda don’t change our opinion about their avarice. Developing flawed arguments is the stock and trade of both.
A majority of American parents in any state are not rich. Full stop. Within the affluent segment, a certain number want to exploit taxpayers through vouchers. Full stop. A certain number of them want the selective admission that is guaranteed by tuition well above the amount of voucher money per student (segregation academies). Full stop.
Whether the majority of Americans want vouchers or not (and, state referendums show they don’t), there are substantial implications to local democracy, to quality of education provided, and, to fiscal responsibility to avoid administrative and staffing costs of duplicated services.
As illustration, a large public park can have its resources drained to many smaller private parks. Some factors to consider (1) The smaller parks will require tax dollars to assure there isn’t fiscal fraud and that quality expectations are met. The effort requires a cadre of government employees spending time on site, compiling evidence and reporting. (2) An economy of scale enables a large park to have high credentialing standards for staff, faculty and administration. Smaller parks are positioned at a price/cost point that necessitates lesser credentialing standards for employees.
In terms of democracy, taxpayers lose their right to elected representation in the situation of private, smaller parks.
In terms of opportunity for graft, Ohio is an example of a pay to play state. The owner of ECOT, a private, tax funded school, contributed to the Republican state party. Evidently, taxpayers will see no return of the money from the billion dollar fleecing. The attorney general is Republican. I presume states’ citizens don’t want to encourage corruption, especially, when it is the students who bear the cost and it is their lack of education that thwarts attempts to make the state prosperous in the future.
It’s always dismaying when a self-appointed public policy advocate chooses to dismiss evidence that doesn’t conform to the echo chamber of the self-serving. It’s especially so, when the taxpayers who foot his salary assume his paycheck reflects reporting independence from those like Charles Koch, Walton heirs and the USCCB. As they say, a special place in hell…
Btw- Jefferson warned, in every age, in every country, the priest aligns with the despot.
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MjGB– I don’t quite get your take on this. One has to decide what voucher programs are for– what you’re trying to accomplish. Is it to provide quality alternatives to those from underfunded publics who otherwise couldn’t afford it? But voucher programs neither vet nor monitor the quality of voucher schools,* so that can’t be it. And those who can afford it are included in the 9 new expanded voucher states, so that’s not it either.
I didn’t hear anyone claiming that all voucher students are rich and white and don’t need it. But surely you’d agree there’s going to be a significant % of parents who pay for private schools on their own dime among those who now qualify for expanded pgms. Some, e.g. would be above middle-middle class, already paying $3k [K] through $10k [high school] for Catholic ed without much/ any difficulty. And a slice of this group are upper class, paying $15k-$25k for selective privates [these are real #’s from FL private schools.] Florida Policy Institute estimated a full 50% of their 1st yr’s cost for expanded vouchers will go to families already paying for private schooling on their own. All now receive up to $8k discount (soon to be $11k) on a price that was already affordable without taxpayer assistance. There should be thorough justification for this increased tax expenditure– what is it?
Please don’t tell me “so they don’t have to pay for their child’s school twice.” Parents of current K-12 age children contribute approximately 23% of the per-pupil cost of public schooling – to educate all society’s kids, not just their own.
—
*true for the programs I’ve researched, FL, AZ, NC. Bob’s link unfortunately doesn’t show whether voucher-receiving schools have any eligibility reqts. Studies on states which have long had voucher pgms e.g. MN show they are 95+% small christian schools, & ed results are poor compared to local publics.
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I posted that link because it provides essential background information on how widespread voucher are AND details the voucher-adjacent or vouchers by other names state programs, such as K-12 “scholarships.”
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Thank you, Ginny.
The state reports on voucher students invariably show that most vouchers are claimed by families who already pay for private schools. Vouchers subsidize the affluent.
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I should have added this to my previous post. A very quick search found examples of voucher eligibiliy. in Maryland for example (hardly part of the bible belt people here love to hate on) eligibility is as follows:
Maryland’s Broadening Options and Opportunities for Students Today (BOOST) voucher program limits participation to students from families earning up to 185 percent of the federal poverty line ($45,510 for a family of four in 2017–18). In 2017–18, voucher amounts ranged from $1,000 to $4,400 depending on the recipient’s household income and whether they had been enrolled in a public school in the previous year. The Department of Education’s report on the 2016–17 BOOST awards found 73.9 percent of the participating students belonged to families earning less than 130 percent of the federal poverty line (i.e., those who qualified for a free lunch under the federal free and reduced-price lunch program, or $31,980 for a family of four in 2017–18).
This is not an outlier. just google it.
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50-State Comparison: Private School Choice – Education Commission of the States (ecs.org)
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MGB
This is 2024.
Try some search words like education voucher income qualification increases.
2022-23, Indiana, “typical voucher student, White, elementary age, girl, family of 4.75 , making $81,800 a year, with no experience in a public school.” (Chalkbeat Indiana, 11.15.2023, “Record number of Indiana students using private school vouchers this year after expansion”)
2023- Ohio, “32% of voucher recipients in 2023 were not low-income qualified.” (Ohio Capitol Journal , 1-3-2024, “Ohio public education supporters look to 2024 lawsuit to hold private voucher system accountable” )
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Maryland has a small voucher program. It is a blue state with a state school board appointed by a moderate GOP governor.
Red states are adopting universal voucher programs where all income limits are removed. See Arizona, Florida, and Ohio.
I have posted many articles about who takes vouchers. The majority are used by kids who NEVER attended public schools. Their parents already can afford private school. The voucher is a subsidy for the affluent. The affluent are more likely to be white than black.
Read this piece by Jan Resseger about Ohio vouchers:
The trend in red
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Let’s see hard data on this. Where is the evidence that the only people taking advantage of vouchers is the affluent? Prior to 2023, when some states created universal vouchers (something I’m not in support of), access to vouchers was limited mostly to low to moderate income families or in some places also to families living in failing school districts. This does not suggest they were used by the affluent. If you argue that only the affluent access vouchers, to rehetorically say that those using vouchers “never” attending public schools is meaningless, even if it is true. SHow data that domonstrates only those with high income (relative to family size) access vouchers. Correlation is not causation.
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The data about affluent kids taking vouchers comes from the states. And all you offer is propaganda from EdChoice.
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https://www.edchoice.org/school-choice/faqs/who-uses-school-choice-programs/
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MjGB,
Why would you send a piece from the voucher lobby organization? EdChoice exists to promote vouchers.
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MjGB
The premise is good government policy vs. bad- a government service intended to aid the poor, what are the ways in which it can be measured.
Take a class on benchmarks.
“ONLY those with high incomes…”,
100% of the wealthy have to be enrolled in a food stamp program before it can be deemed bad government policy, really?
About correlation and causation- racial profiling- no causation proven but, only the duplicitous deny why it occurs.
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MjGB
You choose to be ill informed which reflects adversely on the institution that employs you.
EdChoice, which you linked to, has a page that shows 96% of Ohio families qualify for vouchers (450% of the federal poverty level). Most of the voucher money in Ohio goes to Catholic schools. The average Catholic tuition in Ohio, at the secondary level is $11,240. The voucher is for $5,512.
Diane and her commenters have posted info. about the increase in the amount some Catholic schools charge students, in anticipation of the voucher amount they will receive. Your views feed a theocracy and the transfer of middle income taxes to the wealthy.
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Little know fact, “Under God,” wasn’t added to the Pledge of Allegiance until 1954. “How Did Catholics Get, “Under God,” into the Pledge of Allegiance (Catholic News Agency, 7-5-2021)
First, the Knights of Columbus altered the pledge in their meetings.
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Re: Jacquilenhardt5598 • “How do you propose to stop people from having batshit crazy opinions? Do you people want to police thoughts now?”
Our Founders had a plan for ensuring the People would be wise enough to dispense with Kings and Queens — the whole panoply of self‑appointed Lords and Nobles — that the People would be well‑informed enough to Rule themselves. I’ve always admired that plan.
If the People are to Rule then the People must become Wise
• https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2012/04/14/if-the-people-are-to-rule-then-the-people-must-become-wise/
Our Enlightenment Forerunners had the insight to see the critical flaw in all historical failures at democratic government, to wit, or not — If the People are to Rule then the People must become Wise.
The consequence is that equally distributed education and information are not just commodities you buy so you and yours can get ahead of them and theirs — they are essential to the intelligent functioning of government and the public interest.
That is why we are supposed to have universal free public education. That is why we used to have a government operated postal service that enabled the free‑flow of information at a nominal fee, not whatever price the market would bear.
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Well said, Jon.
That explains why the free market is a poor substitute for public education.
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