Yeah, yeah, I know it’s a strange headline, but it’s true.
Here is the story: Politico reporter goes to Arizona to cover the voucher story. Discovers that the chief advocate for vouchers is a beautiful, charming mom who uses state money to home-school her five children.
Writer is wowed by this mom. Writer notes that mom is funded by DeVos and Koch machine. It doesn’t matter. She’s so charming and pretty, who cares that vouchers are busting the state budget?
Writer pays more attention to the adorable mom than to those fighting to stop the damage she is doing to kids, public schools, and communities. Somehow she becomes the hero of the story.
Who cares that vouchers are used mostly by families whose kids never went to public schools? Who cares that vouchers are harming the state’s public schools?
Who cares that Arizona voters overwhelmingly rejected voucher expansion? Who cares that the legislature ignored their vote?
Who cares that less than 5% of the state’s students are undermining the state budget and the schools that educate the other students?
Families, mostly from high-income zip codes, have applied the taxpayer funds for everything from ski lift passes to visits to trampoline parks, a $4,000 grand piano, more than a million dollars in Legos, online ballet lessons, horse therapy and cookie-baking kits. Proponents justify expenditures like these in the name of parents’ prerogative to shape their children’s education or by pointing to wasteful spending by public schools. As a result, ESA costs have ballooned from the legislature’s original estimated price tag of $100 million over two years, to more than $400 million a year — a figure, critics have noted, that would explain more than half of Arizona’s projected budget deficit in 2024 and 2025.
Ain’t it grand?
Love is love, even when it is underwritten by billionaires!
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This politico reporter was seduced by beauty that’s only skin deep. Under the skin is a Hexin Beast.
“A ‘Hexin Beast’ is not a commonly recognized term in folklore or mythology, so it’s likely a fictional creature created in a specific story or universe, potentially referring to a beast with magical or hex-related abilities, implying it can cast curses or manipulate situations through spells.”
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Politico should follow the story with the impact that all the choice options that get deducted from public school budgets have on the students attending actual public school students and their programming. The reporter may also want to ask why should public schools be losing money to subsidize the education of students whose parents are wealthy enough to already pay for an expensive private school. What about the rights of students that attend public schools and the need to have enough funding to provide a thorough and efficient education? While Ms. Clark is happy collecting a $3500 a month bonus from the Kochs to promote so-called “education freedom,” she should realize that her freedom comes at the expense of the children that attend public schools. Her so-called freedom is their tyranny.
Conservatives always espouse about personal responsibility. People that want to make personal choices should personally pay the bill for their choices. The Arizona and Alabama version of choice allows private individuals to treat public school budgets like unlimited ATMs. This system allows private individuals to drain public school budgets without any regard for the needs of the students that attend those public schools. If a parent wants her child to be a pilot, why should public schools have to pay for individual that parent choice, even when the child never attended a public school and flying lessons are not in the curriculum? Wish lists should be the responsibility of parents, not the state. Universal vouchers highlight just how dumb and reckless so many state politicians are, and public schools are left with the bill and wreckage.
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It’s not just st Arizona and Alabama. Utah is also doing this. Utah has larger families than average, and at $8000, the state gives more to homeschooling and private schools than public schools get per student. If a parent wants their student to take advantage of extracurricular activities at the public school, the voucher advocates are telling parents that public schools HAVE to take the student if they are in the zoned boundaries for NO money to the public school.
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TOW,
A parent in Utah could make a decent income homeschooling 5, 6, 7 children.
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I didn’t come away from the article with a positive view of the ESA movement at all. I agree that Jenny Clark, the subject of the story, is a danger to public schools with the unbalanced policies she’s advocating, but didn’t get the impression the reporter remotely “fell in love” with her. The tone of the article seemed, if anything, subtly more supportive of the public school advocates, while skillfully avoiding saying anything explicitly derogatory about Ms. Clark. While the story does feature her charismatic approach, the title introduces her as championing a movement that’s “blowing up Arizona’s budget.” That doesn’t sound like a positive profile is going to follow.
It connects her “education freedom” movement to Betsy DeVos, & states her funding came from an organization her husband had worked for.
There are hints throughout that delicately question the validity & source of Ms. Clark’s message:
The closing paragraph also points out there’s no evidence voters “overwhelmingly” support Clark’s views, & wryly suggests that evidence has been suppressed by her efforts:
I thought the article indicated that public schools were treated unfairly due to Ms. Clark’s effective PR campaign. My main point is I don’t think it’s damaging to public schools as you do. At worst, maybe it’s too subtle. What it does point out is the same thing revealed by the election: the other side is much better at PR than we are.
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Lenny, we perceived the article differently. I thought it was a puff piece for Clark and that it referred in passing to the fact that she is paid by the usual billionaires.
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I see your point; I just didn’t think it was as bad as you painted it.
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I had a more cynical reading of the article. I have heard parents say that vouchers are “free money.” They are more like an unaccountable free for all at the expense of public schools that face defunding and chaos as the result of so many parent choices. The public schools become the leftover schools for the poor and vulnerable whose parents are unable to advocate for them.
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The so thoroughly frustrating elephant in the room? Selfishness, in the extreme. And Jenny Clark profoundly exemplifies it, as do so many other Jenny Clarks. But, why? What did it to them? What turned them into being such selfish human beings? When? Where? How? By whom? For what purpose? Or, is their selfishness innate and they just can’t help it due to having hyper-active “selfish gene?” So, are Darwinian-driven by nature?
“Selfish genes are those that have evolved to maximize their own replication, sometimes at the expense of the organism as a whole. They can influence an organism’s behavior or physiology to increase their chances of being passed on to the next generation.”
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So is there a Mr. Gump, Mrs. Gump?
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Sadly, I fear this is only the beginning.
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I thought the article was pretty fair. The reporter clearly conveyed it was all an astroturf project.
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