Mercedes Schneider takes a close look at Governor Landry’s awful voucher plan. He wants a universal voucher plan, one that every student can apply for, no matter how rich they are, no matter if they ever attended public school. And the cost is staggering: more than $500 million a year.
She begins:
Louisiana governor Jeff Landry wants to expand school vouchers in the state. On May 16, 2024, Landry attended two town halls(both at private schools) to push the idea.
One might think that Landry’s promoting school vouchers at private schools as odd, except that a few years down the road, the legislation Landry is championing could help subsidize private school expenses for Louisiana residents who can already afford to send– and, indeed, are already sending– their children to private school.
And so, the day following Landry’s school voucher speechifying at private schools (and for private schools), on May 17, 2024, the Louisiana senate approved SB 313, “SCHOOLS. Creates the Louisiana Giving All True Opportunity to Rise (LA GATOR) Scholarship Program to provide educational savings accounts for parental choice in K-12 education.” Only weeks earlier, on April 30, 2024, the Louisiana senate had sidelined the bill; it seems that Landry’s multifaceted efforts (Louisiana Illuminator notes Landry’s TV ads, town halls, and discussions with individual senators) paid off for him.
As of this writing, the senate’s version of the GATOR bill has moved to the Louisiana House, thereby potentially setting the stage for a universal school voucher program in Louisiana. The Louisiana House had already passed its own version, HB 745, on April 08, 2024. The two versions are similar.
If it passes in its current form, SB 313 will end Louisiana’s previous school voucher program, the Student Scholarships for Educational Excellence Program, in 2024-25, and begin phasing in the new, eventually-universal, GATOR voucher program. Beginning in 2025-26, all children beginning kindergarten become eligible, as do all students “enrolled in a public school for the previous school year.” Families of students not previously enrolled in public school but “with a total income at or below two hundred fifty percent of the federal poverty guidelines” are also eligible. The major change for year two is the inclusion of students not previously enrolled in public school but “with a total income at or below four hundred percent of the federal poverty guidelines.” After that, the program basically becomes universal.
Universal and expensive.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Universal vouchers are designed to cause maximum damage to the public schools. Defunded public schools will cause more parents to seek out other options, and vouchers for all will provide maximum opportunity to funnel Black and brown students into subpar voucher schools. More affluent families will get to supplement tuition payments with public money at white flight academies and quality private schools. This scheme is a ticket to cementing separate and unequal educational opportunities based on race and class.
that last word reminded me of what I see happening in modern America. While there persists a radical racism in the zeitgeist, it has been supplanted in some ways by a sort of classism that is, in many ways, more vehement and more entrenched.
I heard an interview with a food kitchen person in which she seemed to feel obliged to justify what she was doing. Why would she feel this way unless people had questioned the ethics of free food distribution?
Look to Chile and Sweden when wanting to know the effects of privatization of schooling. Not pretty.
Predictably, when the families receive an entitlement, guess what the private schools do? Raise tuition, of course. Those who could have paid into private school tuition will still pay the same, and the school simply pockets the extra taxpayer money that they don’t need (and taking from others, how Christian of them), while openly discriminating against certain families. It’s government-sanctioned segregation at the taxpayers’ expense.
If the members of the religion won’t support their school, why should the public?
All religions are seeing a decline in organized participation. I think religion-based schools are looking for survival. This happened in Tennessee when I was young. Reacting to the restrictions on prayer in the schools of the early sixties, fundamentalist academies sprung up in many places. The only problem was, everybody knew the public school teachers and went to church with them. So the new academies began to field sports teams(the true religion of the people). Soon people who were not particularly outraged at public school began sending their children to these prayer academies so they could play sports, for population changes were wiping out the tiny schools in the tiny places.
the voucher thing is their latest move.
Also expensive will be City of Houston putting HISD back together after giving Broad Academy Trained Mike Miles the Heave-Ho. Local TV Station just released a film documentary on his scorched earth approach to school reform/deform.
HOUSTON – Join us at the historic DeLUXE Theater for an exclusive screening of “TAKEOVER”, a compelling documentary following KPRC 2 Anchor Candace Burns as she spends the school year documenting the transformative changes under Superintendent Mike Miles and the New Education System (NES).
https://www.click2houston.com/features/2024/05/21/join-us-for-the-premiere-of-takeover-a-documentary-and-open-discussion-on-educational-transformation-clone/
All public school classrooms in LA will now be required to post the Ten Commandments. Minimum size 11” x 14”.
They are proposing legislation that aims to reclassify Mifepristone and Misoprostol as controlled dangerous substances.
Banana Republic much?
in an unrelated matter, one of my former students announced that he has just been hired as the official photographer of the New York City School System.