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Mothers Against Greg Abbott Celebrates Defeat of Voucher Bill!

By dianeravitch
November 18, 2023 //
2

Mothers Against Greg Abbott is celebrating because Governor Gregg Abbott’s voucher proposal—his highest priority—was defeated for the fifth time this year. Once, in the regular legislative session, then again and again and again and again in four special sessions.

Abbott offered bribes: more funding for public schools, a pay raise for teachers—but the bribes didn’t persuade the rural Republicans who saw vouchers as a threat to their small community public schools.

Abbott threatened to primary Republicans who didn’t vote for vouchers. That didn’t work either. Now the Moms (MAGA!) have to go back to work to get their public schools funded.

This is their message, issued within hours after vouchers went down for the fifth time:

From Mothers Against Greg Abbott:

The Texas House has just voted down school vouchers.

This is a huge victory for Texas public schools… and for mothers, and others, like us. Today’s victory  wouldn’t have been possible without the help you provided over the last several months. We asked you to help us support public schools, and you stepped up time and again.

Our hard work paid off. 

I don’t want to spike the football to celebrate our success. Not least because our public schools might not have a football to spike if the voucher plan had succeeded. (Yes, I know that spiking the football in a high school game is a 15-yard penalty, but let’s go with the metaphor...)

The same people who tried to strip our public schools of funding, and to give that money to rich private schools instead, aren’t going away. They will be back. 

And so will we: We defended our public schools today, and we will defend them again.

At Mothers Against Greg Abbott, we believe in high quality, free public education for our children. We support our public school teachers and our public school children. And we won’t let a handful of anti-school activists steal our children’s futures from us.

We’re here in support of public education, and we aren’t going anywhere. The next time public education is on the legislative table, we’ll be there to defend it. 

We won’t spike the football then either. We’ll celebrate because our public schools will still be there — to educate our children, to help them become our future leaders, to create the civic engagement that we all need.

And, yes, to give our kids a football, a softball, a volleyball, a tennis ball, a baseball, a basketball, arts programs, orchestra, school plays, reading specialists, school counselors, beloved school librarians, and so much more. 

With love for our public schools and our public school educators,

Nancy Thompson, Founder
Mothers Against Greg Abbott

This week, our Mothers For Democracy Institute shares the mic with YOU this week on the newest episode of The Voucher Scam! 

Hosts Claire O’Neal and Nichole Abshire ask listeners this week to share their love of public schools and their worries about vouchers. With today’s VICTORY on school vouchers in the Texas House, there is no better time to start streaming. Tune in to the conversation, here ›››

And, if you like what you hear, shoot over a donation and help support our podcast series.

Mothers for Democracy Institute is a 501(c)(3) and
donations are Tax Deductible. We just launched our podcast series The Voucher Scam, but we more planned for 2024 to further support democracy and civics education. And we
would love your support.
https://bit.ly/voucherscam

Mothers For Democracy / Mothers Against Greg Abbott is the largest coalition dedicated to defeating the extremist MAGA movement in Texas. While we don’t agree on every topic, we all agree the Texas GOP isn’t Texas values.

Since 2021, we’ve been helping lead the Democratic resistance in Texas, we’ve organized thousands of local voters and our public issue campaigns have reached millions of Texans in key battleground areas. Now, we’re backed by thousands of Texas parents who are mobilizing in their own neighborhoods to ensure the Texas we hand over to the next generation is better than the one we’ve inherited. 

We’re sick and tired of being linked to a handful of extremist MAGA spokesmen—divisive politicians like Ken Paxton and Ted Cruz. We know it’s going to take all of us to defeat them this election cycle. The power of mothers and others like us means we know we can do it: It’s time for democracy to prevail. 

100% of our work is powered by individual donations and our average donation is just $23. We can’t stop until our children have the future they deserve. So this election cycle, we’re taking down Ted Cruz and dozens more of his Texas MAGA cronies. With you by our side, we’ll deliver the kind of leadership everyone living in Texas can be proud of. 

Support Our Work

Categories Accountability, Disruption, Education Industry, Funding, Lies, Parents, Privatization, Republicans, Resistance, Rural Schools, School Choice, Supporting public schools, Texas, Vouchers

Hillary Clinton: Hamas Must Go

By dianeravitch
November 17, 2023 //
53

Hillary Clinton wrote in The Atlantic about why Hamas must go. It is a barrier to any future peace, she writes. It is a terrorist organization that has consistently blocked a two-state solution. It shamelessly uses the Palestinians as human shields. As the Washington Post recently documented, the massacre of October 7 was intended by Hamas to provoke an overwhelming Israeli military attack, which was sure to turn public opinion to the Gazans and eclipse any memory of the savage murders, rapes, and brutality of October 7. And for maximum impact, the Hamas terrorists wore body cams to document their atrocities.

She wrote:

One morning in November 2012, I knocked on the door of President Barack Obama’s suite in the Raffles Hotel in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, so early that he was barely out of bed. I had an urgent question that could not wait for the president to finish his morning coffee: Should we try to broker a cease-fire in Gaza? Then, like now, the extreme Islamist terror group Hamas had sparked a crisis by indiscriminately attacking Israeli civilians. Israel had responded with air strikes, and a ground invasion of Gaza appeared imminent.

The president and I debated whether I should leave Asia, fly to the Middle East, and try to negotiate a halt to the fighting before the situation escalated further. The reason to go was clear: Stopping the violence would save lives and prevent the conflict from spiraling into a wider regional war.

The reasons not to go were more nuanced but also compelling. President Obama and I were both wary of suggesting that Israel did not have a right and a responsibility to defend itself against terrorists. If Hamas did not face consequences for its attacks, it would be emboldened to carry out more. We also knew Hamas had a history of breaking agreements and could not be trusted. For that matter, neither side seemed ready to pull back from the brink. Diplomacy is all about leverage and timing. If I tried and failed to negotiate a cease-fire, it would reduce America’s credibility in the region and lower the likelihood that we could reengage successfully later.

In the end, we decided the risks were worth it. I headed to the region and began intense shuttle diplomacy among Israel, Egypt, and the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. Late into the night in Cairo, I went line by line through a proposal I’d worked out with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem. The Egyptians were on the phone with Hamas leaders in Gaza. Finally, I was able to announce that all parties had agreed to a truce.

On the long plane ride home, I asked my aide Jake Sullivan, who is now President Joe Biden’s national security adviser, if Hamas was abiding by the agreement we’d just struck. So far, he told me, the answer was yes. I was relieved that we’d prevented further bloodshed, but I worried that all we’d really managed to do was put a lid on a simmering cauldron that would likely boil over again in the future.

Unfortunately, that fear proved correct. In 2014, Hamas violated the cease-fire and started another war by abducting Israeli hostages and launching rocket attacks against civilians. Israel responded forcefully, but Hamas remained in control of Gaza. The terrorists re-armed, and the pattern repeated itself in 2021, with more civilians killed. This all culminated in the horrific massacre of Israeli civilians last month, the worst mass murder of Jews since the Holocaust.

This history suggests three insights for the current crisis and the future of this complex and volatile region. First, October 7 made clear that this bloody cycle must end and that Hamas cannot be allowed to once again retrench, re-arm, and launch new attacks—while continuing to use people in Gaza as expendable human shields. Second, a full cease-fire that leaves Hamas in power would be a mistake. For now, pursuing more limited humanitarian pauses that allow aid to get in and civilians and hostages to get out is a wiser course. Third, Israel’s long policy of containment has failed—it needs a new strategy and new leadership.

For me, Israel and Gaza are not just names on a map. I have grieved with Israeli families whose loved ones were abducted or killed in terrorist attacks. I have held the hands of the wounded in their hospital beds. In Jerusalem, I visited a bombed-out pizzeria and will never forget it.

I have also been to Gaza. I have talked with Palestinians who have suffered greatly from the conflicts of the past decades and dream of peace and a state of their own. Before Hamas seized power, I met women using microloans from the United States to start new businesses and become breadwinners for their families, including a dressmaker who—because she was finally able to buy a sewing machine—could send her two daughters to school. My decades of experience in the region taught me that Palestinian and Israeli parents may say different prayers at worship but they share the same hopes for their kids—just like Americans, just like parents everywhere.

That is why I am convinced Hamas must go. On October 7, these terrorists killed babies, raped women, and kidnapped innocent civilians. They continue to hold more than 200 hostages. They have proved again and again that they will not abide by cease-fires, will sabotage any efforts to forge a lasting peace, and will never stop attacking Israel.

Hamas does not speak for the Palestinian people. Hamas deliberately places military installations in and below hospitals and refugee camps because it is trying to maximize, not minimize, the impact on Palestinian civilians for its own propaganda purposes. The humanitarian crisis in Gaza is heartbreaking—and every death means more blood on Hamas’s hands.

So the Biden administration is correct not to seek a full cease-fire at this moment, which would give Hamas a chance to re-arm and perpetuate the cycle of violence. Hamas would claim that it had won and it would remain a key part of Iran’s so-called axis of resistance.

Cease-fires freeze conflicts rather than resolve them. In 1999, the Serbian dictator Slobodan Milošević called for a cease-fire in Kosovo, where NATO air strikes were trying to stop his brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing. It was a cynical attempt to preserve Serbia’s control of Kosovo, and the Clinton administration continued bombing until Milošević’s forces withdrew. Today, global allies of Russian President Vladimir Putin call for a cease-fire in Ukraine because they know freezing the conflict will leave Russia in control of large swaths of Ukrainian territory that it seized illegally. Putin could reinforce his troops and then resume the conflict at a time of his choosing.

In 2012, freezing the conflict in Gaza was an outcome we and the Israelis were willing to accept. But Israel’s policy since 2009 of containing rather than destroying Hamas has failed. A cease-fire now that restored the pre–October 7 status quo ante would leave the people of Gaza living in a besieged enclave under the domination of terrorists and leave Israelis vulnerable to continued attacks. It would also consign hundreds of hostages to continued captivity.

Cease-fires can make it possible to pursue negotiations aimed at achieving a lasting peace, but only when the timing and balance of forces are right. Bosnia in the 1990s saw 34 failed cease-fires before the Clinton administration’s military intervention prompted all sides to stop fighting and finally negotiate a peace agreement. It is possible that if Israel dismantles Hamas’s infrastructure and military capacity and demonstrates that terrorism is a dead end, a new peace process could begin in the Middle East. But a cease-fire that leaves Hamas in power and eager to strike Israel will make this harder, if not impossible. For decades, Hamas has undermined every serious attempt at peace by launching new attacks, including the October 7 massacre that seems to have been designed, at least in part, to disrupt progress toward normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia. (Those negotiations also aimed to bring important benefits for Palestinians.)

By contrast, the humanitarian pauses advocated by the Biden administration and tentatively accepted by the Israelis can save lives without rewarding Hamas. There is precedent: During previous wars in Gaza, Israel and Hamas agreed to a number of pauses so that relief could get into the area. Recent conflicts in Yemen and Sudan have also undergone brief humanitarian pauses. Whether for hours or days, breaks in the fighting can provide safety to aid workers and refugees. They could also help facilitate hostage negotiations, which is an urgent priority right now.

Rejecting a premature cease-fire does not mean defending all of Israel’s tactics, nor does it lessen Israel’s responsibility to comply with the laws of war. Minimizing civilian casualties is legally and morally necessary. It is also a strategic imperative. Israel’s long-term security depends on its achieving peaceful coexistence with neighbors who are prepared to accept its existence and its need for security. The disaster of October 7 has discredited the theory that Israel can contain Hamas, ignore the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people, and freeze Israeli control over Palestinians forever.

Going forward, Israel needs a new strategy and new leadership. Instead of the current ultra-right-wing government, it will need a government of national unity that’s rooted in the center of Israeli politics and can make the hard choices ahead. At home, it will have to reaffirm Israeli democracy after a tumultuous period. In Gaza, it should resist the urge to reoccupy the territory after the war, accept an internationally mandated interim administration for governing the Strip, and support regional efforts to reform and revive the Palestinian Authority so it has the credibility and the means to reassume control of Gaza. In the West Bank, it must clamp down on the violence perpetrated by extremist Israeli settlers and stop building new settlements that make it harder to imagine a future Palestinian state. Ultimately, the only way to ensure Israel’s future as a secure, democratic, Jewish state is by achieving two states for two peoples. And in the region, Israel should resume serious negotiations with Saudi Arabia and others to normalize relations and build a broad coalition to counter Iran.

For now, Israel should focus on freeing the hostages, increasing humanitarian aid, protecting civilians, and ensuring that Hamas terrorists can no longer murder families, abduct children, exploit civilians as human shields, or start new wars. But when the guns fall silent, the hard work of peace building must begin. There is no other choice.

Categories Accountability, Cruelty, Evil, Extremism, Hillary Clinton, International

Thom Hartmann: The GOP is the Party of Austerity, Tax Cuts, and Death

By dianeravitch
November 17, 2023 //
12

I don’t know how Thom Hartmann does it. He puts out one brilliantly researched article after another, connecting the dots and explaining why our country and our democracy are in trouble. The Democrats want to build a sturdy safety net; the Republicans want everyone to fend for himself or herself. If you are rich, the Republican formula works; if you are not, you are in trouble. It’s amazing that so many who rely on government programs give their vote to a party pledged to kill those programs.

He writes:

In the 1930s, after FDR rolled out programs to aid the homeless and unemployed across the country, America enjoyed a longer life expectancy — and more healthy years within that life expectancy — than any other wealthy nation.

While some of that was due to the public health crisis echoing across Europe in the wake of World War I, it was largely because FDR’s Democrats in charge of the country were building schools and hospitals like there was no tomorrow. 

Republican President Eisenhower followed in that tradition through the 1950s, and in the 1960s LBJ rolled out Medicare and Medicaid. As a result, we continued to have the world’s best lifespans and quality-of-life.

Then came Reagan’s austerity and neoliberalism campaigns in 1981 and America began to become unraveled.

A new study published by the National Academy of Sciences in the journal PNAS Nexus looked at “excess deaths” (they called them “missing Americans”) in our country versus others around the world. The researchers from Boston University School of Public Health, the University of Pennsylvania, and the Harvard Medical School and TH Chan School of Public Health found:

“The United States had lower mortality rates than peer countries in the 1930s–1950s and similar mortality in the 1960s and 1970s. Beginning in the 1980s, however, the United States began experiencing a steady increase in the number of missing Americans, reaching 622,534 in 2019 alone.”

The excess deaths, it turns out, are almost all entirely the result of Republican policies, both at the federal and state level. 

The researchers found:

“Stagnant minimum wages and losses of collective bargaining protections have contributed to widening economic inequality. A scant safety net for working-age adults and the absence of universal healthcare have privatized risk, tying health more closely to personal wealth and employment.

“Additionally, lax regulation of opioids, firearms, environmental pollutants, unhealthy foods, and workplace safety has contributed to elevated US mortality, particularly among lower-educated and lower-income people.

And it’s worse in Red states:

“Increasingly divergent policies at the state level have resulted in widening health gaps across US states. In those geographic areas of the United States where excess mortality has increased the most, voters have turned towards policy-makers who have further undermined population health, e.g. through refusal to expand Medicaid or to implement firearm regulations.”

While not coming right out and saying that people live longer in Blue states than Red states, that’s largely what the study found. And it’s not a small effect:

“In 2021, there were 26.4 million years of life lost due to excess US mortality relative to peer nations…”

While President Eisenhower ran for re-election in 1956 by bragging about how on his watch millions more Americans had gotten good union jobs or signed up for Social Security, by 1981, when Reagan took office, the 1978 efforts of five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court to legalize political bribery were beginning to seriously take hold.

That’s when everything changed. Since 1981, millions of Americans have died unnecessarily because of neoliberal austerity policies: their lives were sacrificed on the altars of increased corporate profits and lower taxes for billionaires.

— Reagan told us that the “union bosses” were just out for themselves and the best thing American workers could do was to rely on their employers’ good will. He also claimed that the minimum wage actually hurt low-wage workers because, he said, it prevented employers from hiring more people.

Both were lies, as history has vividly shown, and both contributed to our epidemic of early and unnecessary deaths, as Red state minimum wages are still as low as $7.25/hour and Red “Right to Work for Less” states make it nearly impossible to unionize.

“Stagnant minimum wages and losses of collective bargaining protections have contributed to widening economic inequality” that leads to early deaths, reported the researchers.

— The Republican backlash to Obamacare extending Medicaid to everybody in the country wasn’t limited to their lawsuit before the Supreme Court that ended up letting Red states opt out of coverage, or to the Astroturf “Tea Party” movement funded by rightwing billionaires.

— To this day, more than a decade later, there are still a dozen Red states that have taken the five Republican justices up on their offer and refuse to expand the program. Those Republican-controlled states have also thrown hundreds of bureaucratic roadblocks to people getting any kind of state services, from food stamps to unemployment insurance to housing assistance.

“A scant safety net for working-age adults and the absence of universal healthcare have privatized risk, tying health more closely to personal wealth and employment” that leads to early deaths, reported the researchers.

— A collaborative research project between the University of Texas and the University of Toronto published in The Journal of the American Medical Association found that the Red state preference for deregulation and a lack of oversight: 

“…explained 9.2% of an enrollee’s odds of receiving prolonged opioids… The correlation between a county’s Republican presidential vote and the adjusted rate of … prolonged opioid use was 0.42 (P<.001). In the 693 counties with adjusted rates of opioid prescription significantly higher than the mean county rate, the mean Republican presidential vote was 59.96%, vs 38.67% in the 638 counties with significantly lower rates.”

— Cancer alley is alive and well in Texas and Louisiana thanks to Republican governments’ in those states refusal to enforce environmental regulations that would keep carcinogens out of the air and water.

— A child living in Mississippi is ten times more likely to die from gunshot than a child in Massachusetts because Republicans in Mississippi refuse to adopt rational, constitutional gun control regulations like Massachusetts has had for decades.

— Obesity and the diabetes, heart disease, and strokes associated with it are vastly more prevalent and thus deadly in Red states than Blue states because so many more people are living in poverty in Red states and junk food is cheaper than healthy food.

— Twenty-nine states, encompassing virtually all the nation’s Red states, have no state-level workplace safety agencies; those only exist in 21 mostly Blue states. As a result, Red Wyoming has 10.4 workplace deaths per 100,000 workers while Blue Rhode Island only has 1.0 deaths per 100,000 workers.

“Additionally, lax regulation of opioids, firearms, environmental pollutants, unhealthy foods, and workplace safety has contributed to elevated US mortality, particularly among lower-educated and lower-income people” wrote the researchers about unnecessary/early deaths in America.

When The Washington Post looked into the differences between Red and Blue states, what they found was shocking. 

For example, noted the authors:

“Ohio sticks out — for all the wrong reasons. Roughly 1 in 5 Ohioans will die before they turn 65, according to Montez’s analysis using the state’s 2019 death rates. The state, whose legislature has been increasingly dominated by Republicans, has plummeted nationally when it comes to life expectancy rates, moving from middle of the pack to the bottom fifth of states during the last 50 years, The Post found. Ohioans have a similar life expectancy to residents of Slovakia and Ecuador, relatively poor countries.”

While it would be easy and glib to say that Republican politicians want the citizens of their states to die young, the simple truth is that they don’t care: their priority, instead, is the profitability of the companies in their states and keeping the taxes on their oligarchs low.

Author Mark Jacob noted on Xitter: 

“Voting for Republicans is like eating poison.”

In fact, eating poison is a choice. Most people trapped in Red states, though, don’t have the means or ability to move to a Blue state because they’ve been denied a good education, are saddled with medical debt, and/or haven’t made enough at their work to afford the transition.

Blue states, for their part, are fighting back on behalf of their citizens. As Bernie’s poverty advisor Nikhil Goyal wrote for The New York Times:

“Fourteen [Blue] states have adopted a state-level child tax credit, with many featuring a fully refundable provision so that families with little to no income can benefit. This year, New Mexico has expanded free preschool seats and made child care free for families earning up to four times the federal poverty rate — roughly $120,000 for a family of four.

“In the upcoming fiscal year, Minnesota will pour more than $250 million of additional funding into early childhood education to reduce the costs of child care and create thousands of new preschool slots. This includes $10 million to supplement funding of the federal Head Start program, which serves children up to the age of 5 and should be bolstered by states.

“Today, nine [Blue] states have universal free school breakfast and lunch on the books. Just last month, the governor of Illinois, J.B. Pritzker, established a $20 million initiative that will help fund grocery stores in food deserts.”

But every action draws a reaction, as Isaac Newton was quick to point out. Republicans are now trying to do to Blue states — to all of America — the same damage they’ve done to Red states over the past 40 years.

In the eleven months since Republicans have taken control of the US House of Representatives, child poverty in America has doubled. This is because Republicans in the House refused to renew programs Democrats put in place providing health care, food assistance, housing support, the child tax credit, and subsidized child care: all have now expired.

In the past 40 days, 3.2 million children lost access to healthcare, 70,000 childcare and preschool programs have closed, and the child tax credit has expired. So have the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program’s emergency allotments. As of yesterday, 10,046,000 Americans have been kicked off Medicaid, nearly all in Red states.

And it’s all intentional.

Republicans will proudly tell you it’s necessary to keep taxes low on their billionaire donors, and to prevent poor people from becoming “lazy.” Speaker MAGA Mark Johnson will tell you that it’s the Christian way, just like trashing queer people and forcing 10-year-old rape victims to carry their pregnancies to term.

Welcome to the 2023 GOP and their plans to “deconstruct the administrative state” and drag America back to the 19th century.

Mark Jacob was right about the poison part. But instead of Republican voters eating it, their politicians are determined to force it down the throats of all of us, our children, and our grandchildren.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Cruelty, Democrats, Disruption, Elections, Extremism, Funding, Health, Republicans

Swedish Expert: The Market System Is a Disaster for Students and for Sweden

By dianeravitch
November 16, 2023 //
19

Over the years, I have made friends on Twitter with educators and scholars in Sweden, who have generously provided me with analyses of Sweden’s free market of schooling. My friends, not surprisingly, agree that the introduction of “choice” and for-profit providers has been a disaster for schooling in Sweden. The outcome has been more socioeconomic segregation and an impoverishment of public schools. The following post was written by Linnea Lindquist, experienced educator and journalist.

THE SWEDISH SCHOOL SYSTEM

By Linnea Lindquist


I believe many in Sweden choked on their coffee when Lotta Edholm, the school minister from the Liberal Party, critically spoke about the school system in an interview with The Guardian. She stated, “It’s not just a problem that it is a number of schools, but it becomes a system failure of everything.”

I have been a part of the school debate for several years and there has been a change in how politicians talk about the school system itself. I will return to this later in the text.

Sweden has one of the most extreme school systems in the world. Whether schools are run by municipalities, the state, or as independent entities, they are funded entirely by taxpayer money. It is the combination of per-student funding, free school choice, and unlimited profit extraction that makes Sweden’s school system unique (in a bad way) in the world. However, this is not enough. We also have free establishment rights for independent schools, meaning that anyone can apply to start a school. The state School Inspection Authority grants permission, but it is the municipalities that finance the schools. This means that municipalities have no control over the number of schools in their area. As a result, municipalities are forced to maintain many empty school places, diverting funds that could have been used for teaching to finance these empty spots. The problem is not that the municipalities have empty classrooms, the problem is a few empty chairs in each classroom.

Sweden has significant performance disparities between schools. While parents in neighboring Finland feel confident that the nearest school is among the world’s best, Swedish parents lie awake at night wondering which school to choose for their children. When students fail in school, the blame is placed on parents for making the wrong school choice.

Sweden has major problems with its school system, and in this text, I will try to explain the reasons for these issues and what needs to be done to solve them. Let’s start with how the school system is structured.

Market-Driven Schools


In most of Sweden’s 290 municipalities, schools are financed with a per-student funding model. This funding is not the student’s money to shop for education; it is merely a model for distributing money between schools. Legislation states that the funding should be equal for municipal and private schools. Private schools in Sweden are free of charge as they are financed by taxes. This means that if a municipality compensates its own schools with 100,000 SEK per student, it should also compensate independent schools with the same amount per student. One might think this is reasonable since all schools provide education.

However, in Sweden, we have a supply responsibility. What is the problem with that? I’ll try to explain.

We have compulsory schooling, meaning all students in primary education (ages 6-16) must attend school. The state has given municipalities the responsibility to ensure that all students have a school placement. This is known as supply responsibility. In turn, this means that municipalities must always be prepared to accommodate students who do not wish to continue studying in independent schools or if the independent school decides to cease operations. Independent schools are businesses and can shut down whenever they want. Municipalities must also have schools in all geographical areas since all citizens of a municipality do not live in the same geographical location. All this costs money, and since we have a principle of equal treatment, the municipalities receive zero compensation for these additional costs.

When independent schools are established in a municipality, it often results in a budget deficit for the municipality as it creates more empty school places. When they have a deficit, they have to spend more money than budgeted for at the beginning of the year. Then the per-student funding increases as independent schools must receive the same funding as the municipality’s schools. This results in what’s called the “independent school penalty.” Municipalities must compensate independent schools with the same amount per student that they have in deficit for all students attending independent schools. This creates new deficits and the negative spiral begins.

It is the principle of equal treatment in the School ordinance that leads to significant problems in the school market. In Sweden, we pay independent schools for a responsibility they do not have. Yes, I know you won’t believe me, but this is the foolish system we have in Sweden.

For an independent school to make a profit, they must operate at a lower cost per student compared to the municipality’s average. How do you cut costs easily? By employing fewer qualified teachers, serving cheaper food, and providing less teaching resources. Most importantly, one must have students that mainly come from academic homes. When you have students from academic homes, you can have larger group sizes and every additional student in a group, compared to the municipality’s average, is pure profit. It costs the same to educate a group of 20 and 25 students. The income is obviously much higher if you have 25 students per teacher as we have per-student funding. The cost of schools is 90 percent fixed since the largest expenses are rent and salaries. However, revenues are 100 percent variable because each student generates a per-student funding for the principal’s annual budget.

The per-student funding that municipalities pay to independent schools is something that a municipality can not control. It is up to the independent school what they use the money for and if it is a private company there is no demand for publicity due to competition legislation. The Swedish school system is entirely unregulated, meaning there are no requirements on the proportion of teachers, size of groups, or whether a school must have a cafeteria, library, or gymnasium.

I wrote initially that we have free establishment rights in Sweden. This means that schools are started even when there is no need for more schools. The state’s School Inspection Authority overrides the municipalities all the time. Municipalities express their views and describe to the School Inspection Authority that granting permission leads to cuts in the municipal education. The municipalities state that there are no needs for more schools and that school segregation will increase. Unfortunately, the state’s extended arm does not listen to those who are close to the schools runned by municipalities. Those who advocate the current school system argue that it is important for freedom of choice that we have free establishment rights. Anyone who knows anything about schools has by now understood that it’s not about freedom of choice. It has never been about freedom of choice.

The free establishment right, and what we will now come to – the free school choice, has never been about freedom of choice. The so-called freedom of choice reforms, implemented in the early 90s, were meant to legitimize school segregation. It’s not about choosing to – it’s about choosing not to. System-savvy and quick-footed parents were given the opportunity to avoid poor schools. Today, school choice is used to avoid schools where students have less-educated parents. Regardless of where in the school system the students are, a significantly higher proportion of students from academic homes attend independent schools. There are no independent schools that have a student base that matches that of the municipalities. I have not found any examples of this, and I have read 1,400 municipal school budgets and reviewed the statistics of hundreds of schools in cities with vulnerable areas.

Opinion


I initially wrote that public opinion has turned when it comes to market-driven schools. When I entered the school debate over five years ago, I was called a free school hater, an opponent of freedom of choice, and a communist every time I wrote about the problems with the school system. Now, politicians on the right side of the political spectrum have started using the words and concepts that I, and other critics of the school system, use when we describe the system’s flaws. It’s not the politicians who have changed the opinion; they have been forced to change their view of the school system due to public opinion. In Sweden, it is now political suicide to defend the current system. However, I don’t believe the politicians have changed their opinions, but they are forced to make changes in the system if they want to be re-elected in the next parliamentary elections in 2026.

Marcus Larsson and Åsa Plesner, who run the think tank Balans, have mapped the prevalence of lobbying in the welfare sector, especially in education. They have shown many examples of politicians being lobbyists in the independent school sector while holding political positions of trust. Sweden stands out when it comes to allowing politicians to sit on double or triple chairs. Several of those who created the market-driven school in the early 90s now own school corporations with high profitability.

If one wonders why the market-driven school remains, despite the majority of the Swedish population wanting change, one should look at the politician’s school-business. When politicians own school corporations and sit on boards for school companies, it is not hard to understand that they want to maintain the system. Lotta Edholm, the schoolminister, sat on the board of a school corporation until the day she took office as a minister. There are many examples of politicians having fingers in several pies.

The freeschool system is a threat to national security


The Swedish Defence Research Agency, FOI has released a report titled “Foreign Investments and Ownership in Swedish Primary and Secondary Schools – A Study of Risks”. It’s authored by Maria Refors Legge, Alma Dahl, Michal Budryk, Helene Lackenbauer, and Jens Lusua. There are numerous ways an antagonist could influence the democratic education and rights of Swedish students, one being the acquisition of existing school authorities. This allows for rapid establishment across the country. If one aims to influence Sweden, reaching a large number of students is easier, but it also increases the risk of detection. The report offers several examples of how foreign owners or Swedish school owners who do not wish to operate schools based on democratic principles can function. They describe how schools can be used to counteract the integration of students and parents in vulnerable areas, maintaining and reproducing norms and values that are anti-democratic.

The report explains how the free choice of teaching materials can influence student values and support school ownership. The risk of being detected is relatively low, and if detected, one can continue operating a school, even if deemed unsuitable, by having all paperwork in order.

The report outlines various risks and our vulnerability in Sweden to foreign influence through our school system. There are risks in the free school system that could be exploited by a foreign owner with antagonistic intentions, such as influence operations undermining democratic values. The authors emphasize that the security risk is not due to foreign ownership of schools but rather how the Swedish free school system is structured.

Since it’s impossible to trace how school funding is used, authorities can’t intervene against an antagonist. School owners can use the school funding as they wish, and thus neither municipalities nor the state can control whether it’s used for anti-democratic purposes. The authors argue that the School Inspectorate and other supervisory authorities lull us into a false sense of security, having few tools to detect antagonists in the school system. This makes Sweden particularly vulnerable.

I shouldn’t say – I told you so, but I’m saying it anyway.

What’s stated in the report should not be news. We’ve known for many years that the school system is open to corruption and to foreign and anti-democratic forces. It’s astonishing that the security risk doesn’t come from foreign ownership of independent schools but from how we’ve structured the Swedish freeschool system. For 30 years, we’ve had an education system structure that’s a potential threat to national security. Swedish politicians should let this sink in.

Every time an antagonist is exposed, politicians scream for a more powerful School Inspectorate. It doesn’t matter how much the School Inspectorate, the Security Police, and other authorities check the independent schools. When we have a free-school system closed to scrutiny yet wide open to corruption, anti-democratic forces will use it for their own gain.

Believing that free school choice and freedom of choice would protect against corruption and anti-democratic school owners is naively lawful. Parents choose schools that match the values and norms they want to pass on to their children. Parents with children in schools run by anti-democrats think it’s good, otherwise, they wouldn’t have placed their children there. Rather, parents uphold and reproduce anti-democratic values through free school choice.

We have foreign owners of schools in Sweden that we probably don’t know about. Long chains of ownership, subsidiaries, and funds, combined with a lack of transparency, make us extremely vulnerable.

The worst thing in all this is that we have politicians who on one hand say that they are concerned about the terror threat, and on the other hand, they defend a free-school system which itself is a threat to national security.

In conclusion


When the Education Minister expresses herself in The Guardian with the words – “It’s not just a problem that it is a number of schools, but it becomes a system failure of everything,” it is proof that she has been influenced by public opinion.

I don’t have high hopes for any system changing reforms. The government wants to limit profits, but anyone who knows anything about business economics knows there are many ways to circumvent profit restrictions.

The government wants independent schools to be more tightly controlled. Anyone who knows anything about the school system knows that you can’t control systemic errors. It’s the incentives that must be removed. This means that if we want independent schools to compete with quality, we must stop paying them for a responsibility they don’t have. Municipalities must be allowed to decide how many schools there should be in a municipality.

If we want freedom of choice in the school system, we must have admission rules that are common to all schools, regardless of who runs them. Therefore, the queues for charter schools must be abolished.

If the government wants order in the school system, they must open up those schools for scrutiny under the same principles as municipal schools. They must regulate lobbying and forbid politicians from sitting on multiple chairs at the same time.

I have worked as a principal in Sweden’s toughest areas for the past 12 years. Before that, I was a teacher in a particularly vulnerable area. I see segregation with my own eyes daily.

The consequences of the school market for students is clear.

I have a dream.


A dream that politicians will start making decisions based on what’s best for the children. I wish they would do more of what we expect of them, not the least they can get away with in the next election.

Björn Dahlman, a well-known teacher, author and school debater in Sweden, wrote a wise thing on Twitter, currently X ,a while ago. – “In Sweden, municipalities are punished for educating the students that privately owned schools can not make money on.”

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

To address the problems in the Swedish school system, we must:
– Rework the school funding system so that municipal schools are compensated for their supply responsibility.
– Abolish the free establishment right.
– Make school choices collectively. No queues.
– We should not allow foreign owners to Swedish schools. 
….to begin with. 

Why should we make these reforms? The answer is: for the sake of the students. It’s also for the sake of national security, future democracy and freedom of speech. If we want an education with high quality for all children and competence provision in the future, we need a school system without principles of market. 

To politicians in other countries, I have one thing to say to you: Don’t copy our school system. It’s a true disaster and a failure for the nation. Don’t go that way, please!

Thank you for reading this far.


Linnea Lindquist

If you want to read more from me, please visit my blog at www.rektorlinnea.com

Linnea Lindquist: @rektor_linnea

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Ethics, International, Segregation

Sweden: Education Minister Declares For-Profit Schools a Failure

By dianeravitch
November 16, 2023 //
14

Is it possible that we might learn from other countries’ experience of “school reform”? Why not start with Sweden?

The Swedish education minister just called for a major overhaul of Sweden’s all-choice system. Critics of the Education Minister believe that her reforms will have no effect “because it proposes that only when new, privatized schools have proved good effects/results for some years they would be able to take out a profit for owners/shareholders. But no one gets the money back the first years. So what?” (Sara Hjelm)

The consequences of widespread “marketization”have been bad for education and bad for Swedish society.

The Guardian reports:

Sweden has declared a “system failure” in the country’s free schools, pledging the biggest shake-up in 30 years and calling into question a model in which profit-making companies run state education.

Sweden’s friskolor – privately run schools funded by public money – have attracted international acclaim, including from Britain, with the former education secretary Michael Gove using them as a model for hundreds of new British free schools opened under David Cameron’s government.

But in recent years, a drop in Swedish educational standards, rising inequality and growing discontent among teachers and parents has helped fuel political momentum for change.

A report by Sweden’s biggest teachers’ union, Sveriges Lärare, warned in June of the negative consequences of having become one of the world’s most marketised school systems, including the viewing of pupils and students as customers and a lack of resources resulting in increased dissatisfaction.

Now Lotta Edholm, a Liberal who was appointed schools minister last year during the formation of Sweden’s Moderate party-run minority coalition, has launched an investigation into the issue which, she said, would oversee her plans for reform.

“It will not be possible [in the reformed system] to take out profits at the expense of a good education,” she told the Guardian at the ministry of education and research in Stockholm.

Edholm said she planned to “severely limit” schools’ ability to withdraw profits and to introduce fines for free schools that did not comply.

“It can’t be that the state pumps in lots of money so that you can improve your business and at the same time a portion of that money goes out to you as profits. That we will put a stop to,” she said.

The largest profits were made by upper secondary schools, known in Sweden as gymnasieskola, she said. “There it has been easier to make profits through having bad quality.”

There are thousands of friskolor – directly translated as “independent schools” but known as “free schools” – across Sweden, with a higher proportion in cities. About 15% of all primary schoolchildren (six- to 16-year-olds) and 30% of all upper secondary school pupils (16- 19-year-olds) go to a free school.

Edholm said she could not put a number on how many schools were experiencing these issues but said the problem lay in the system itself. “It’s not just a problem that it is a number of schools, but it becomes a system failure of everything.”

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Failure, For-Profit, International, Vouchers

Watch This! Gloria Ladson-Billings Speaks at NPE Conference about Attacks on Public Schools

By dianeravitch
November 15, 2023 //
6

If you missed the 10th annual conference of the Network for Public Education, you missed some of the best presentations in our ten years of holding conferences.

You missed the brilliant Gloria Ladson-Billings, Professor Emerita and formerly the Kellner Family Distinguished Professor of Urban Education in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Ladson-Billings gave an outstanding speech that brought an enthusiastic audience to its feet. She spoke about controversial topics with wit, charm, wisdom, and insight.

Fortunately, her presentation was videotaped. If you were there, you will enjoy watching it again. If you were not there, you have a treat in store.

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Charter Schools, Civil Rights, Corporate Reform, Cruelty, Curriculum, Dark Money, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Equity, Extremism, For-Profit, Fraud, Freedom, Freedom to Read, Funding, Inequity, Injustice, Network for Public Education, Parents, Privatization, Racism, Supporting public schools, Teachers and Teaching

Mideast: Deal to Exchange Some Hostages for Prisoners Seems Near

By dianeravitch
November 14, 2023 //
4

David Ignatius wrote in The Washington Post about a possible release of a significant number of hostages seized on October 7 from Israel. The youngest is a 10-month-old baby.

TEL AVIV — Israel and Hamas are close to a hostage deal that would free most of the Israeli women and children who were kidnapped Oct. 7, according to a high-ranking Israeli official. The agreement could be announced within days if final details are resolved, he said.

“The general outline of the deal is understood,” the Israeli official explained in an interview Monday, requesting anonymity to discuss the sensitive subject. The tentative agreement calls for Israeli women and children to be released in groups, simultaneously with Palestinian women and young people held in Israeli prisons.

Israel wants the release of all 100 women and children taken from Israel, but the initial number is likely to be smaller. Hamas has indicated it is ready to release 70 women and children, according to a statement by one of its officials on the group’s Telegram channel cited by Reuters on Monday. The number of Palestinian women and young people who might be released is unclear, but an Arab official told me last week that there were at least 120 in prison.

A temporary cease-fire of perhaps five days would accompany the exchange of hostages and prisoners, the Israeli official said. This truce would allow safe travel for the Israeli captives. It could also permit more international assistance to Palestinian civilians in Gaza and should ease the humanitarian crisis there, the Israeli official explained.

President Biden voiced strong U.S. support for a hostage deal in a call Sunday expressing personal “appreciation” to the emir of Qatar, Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, whose nation has acted as mediator with Hamas. “The two leaders agreed that all hostages must be released without further delay,” a White House statement said.

A temporary cease-fire of perhaps five days would accompany the exchange of hostages and prisoners, the Israeli official said. This truce would allow safe travel for the Israeli captives. It could also permit more international assistance to Palestinian civilians in Gaza and should ease the humanitarian crisis there, the Israeli official explained.

President Biden voiced strong U.S. support for a hostage deal in a call Sunday expressing personal “appreciation” to the emir of Qatar, Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, whose nation has acted as mediator with Hamas. “The two leaders agreed that all hostages must be released without further delay,” a White House statement said.

U.S. officials hope a hostage-release agreement and temporary truce could reduce the international uproar surrounding the war. Israel won’t agree to end its campaign to destroy Hamas’s military power. But officials here recognize the need to assist Palestinian civilians whose situation has become desperate.

U.S. officials hope a hostage-release agreement and temporary truce could reduce the international uproar surrounding the war. Israel won’t agree to end its campaign to destroy Hamas’s military power. But officials here recognize the need to assist Palestinian civilians whose situation has become desperate.

Israel wants confirmation that its people held captive, each identified by name, are being released as it exchanges the Palestinian prisoners. This process of verification is one of the details that officials were still negotiating Monday.

Israel’s negotiation with Hamas has been conducted indirectly through Qatar, where Hamas’s political leadership is based. Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim al-Thani outlined the mediation effort in an interview with me last Wednesday in Doha. The next day, he met with CIA Director William J. Burns and David Barnea, director of Israeli intelligence service Mossad, to discuss the framework that now appears to be near a final package.

Mossad has worked closely with Qatar and the CIA in shaping the deal. Israeli officials appreciate Qatar’s help, but they want the Qataris to exert their influence on Hamas to release its captives, rather than just mediate. Egypt has also played a helpful role in encouraging the negotiations and pressuring Hamas, Israeli officials believe.

Release of Israeli women and children would be a first step toward what Israel insists must be freedom for all hostages in Gaza. The high-ranking Israeli official said that a total of 240 to 250 hostages are being held. Most of them are Israeli citizens, including some dual nationals who are also citizens of the United States, Germany and other countries. About 35 are non-Israeli foreigners, most of them Thais who were working in Israel, the official said.

The Israeli official said his government is committed to freeing all the hostages, including roughly 90 male civilians and a smaller group of soldiers, whom Hamas probably sees as the most valuable. “We want as many as possible, as quickly as possible, and no one stays behind,” the official stressed.

Hamas has told the Qataris that its operatives seized only Israeli soldiers, but the Israeli official said this claim is false. Hamas holds the “vast majority” of the hostages, including a small number of dead bodies that were taken into Gaza by the terrorists, the Israeli said. Some hostages are kept by other groups, in disparate locations, but Hamas has the power to negotiate for nearly all of them, he argued. One smaller group called Palestinian Islamic Jihad holds about 35 captives, and a militia known as the “shabiha” and other smaller groups hold a few dozen more, the high-ranking Israeli said.

The hostages are a bitter, daily reminder for Israelis of the agony of the Hamas terrorist attack on Oct. 7. The Israel Defense Forces formed a special task force, headed by retired Maj. Gen. Nitzan Alon, to coordinate activities to free them, according to Israeli news reports.

“Bring them home” is a national passion for Israel. Pictures of the captives line the main entry hall at Ben Gurion Airport, to remind arriving passengers of the hostages’ plight. In the border towns and kibbutzim where many of them lived, their names and faces are displayed in vivid banners.

The next few days will be delicate, as Israelis hold their breath waiting for the first group to be freed and united with their families — and worrying about those who will remain captive. After the pause, the brutal reality of the war will resume — and the Biden administration will remain torn between its support for Israel and its growing concern about the plight of Palestinian civilians.

Categories Accountability, International

Ruth Ben-Ghiat: Is Trump Our Mussolini?

By dianeravitch
November 14, 2023 //
24

Ruth Ben-Ghiat is a professor of History at New York University who specializes in European history, especially Italy, and authoritarianism. On her blog Lucid, she has chronicled Trump’s flirtation with authoritarianism, and she now sees him openly endorsing it.

She writes:

Former President Donald Trump REALLY does not want you to call him a Fascist. Being compared to old-school dictators such as Adolf Hitler or Benito Mussolini makes him and his handlers crazy: he even sued CNN for defamation over this issue (a Trump-appointed judge dismissed the lawsuit). So why is he using Fascist rhetoric?

If you’ve read the news lately, you’ll know that Trump went to New Hampshire on Veterans Day and delivered a news-making speech that included a “pledge” to “root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country that lie and steal and cheat on elections.”

As I argued in a recent Lucid essay, violence is now Trump’s brand. To that end, he conjures existential threats to the nation from non-White immigrants and an expanding cast of internal enemies, calls the thugs who are in prison for assaulting the Capitol on Jan. 6 “political prisoners,” and praises autocrats such as Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin who depend on propaganda, corruption, and repression to stay in power.

All of this is part of his effort to re-educate Americans to see violence as justified, patriotic, and even morally righteous.

But to get people to lose their aversion to violence, savvy authoritarians also dehumanize their enemies. That’s what Trump is doing. Hitler used this ploy from the very start, calling Jews the “black parasites of the nation” in a 1920 speech. By the time Hitler got into power in 1933 and translated dehumanizing rhetoric into repressive policies, Germans had heard these messages for over a decade.

As a historian of autocracy with a specialization in Italian Fascism, the use of the “vermin” image got my attention. Mussolini used similar language in his 1927 Ascension Day speech which laid out Fascism’s intention to subject leftists and others to “prophylaxis” measures to defend the Italian state and society from their nefarious influences.

By the time Il Duce delivered this landmark address, the dictatorship had been in place for two years, and opposition politicians and the press were in prison or had gone into exile. That did not stop him from talking about killing “rodents who carry infectious diseases from the East: the East that brings us lovely things, such as yellow fever and Bolshevism.”

Mussolini loved to make jokes in his speeches to Parliament, and this one elicited laughter —or so says the official transcript. He is speaking about actual rats but, as the Bolshevism comment makes clear, also about Communists. “We remove these individuals from circulation just like a doctor does with an infected person,” he concluded chillingly about leftists and other targeted categories of people.

Trump’s recent comment about undocumented immigrants “polluting the blood of our country” is in the same vein, as are the ideas circulating among his 2025 advance team to deport millions of immigrants and “quarantine” others in massive camps.

Typically, Trump and his advisors took exception to being called out for deploying Fascist rhetoric, resorting to threats that simply strengthened the case against them. As the Washington Post reported, Trump’s campaign spokesman Steven Cheung had this to say about those (like me) who make such comparisons: “their entire existence will be crushed when President Trump returns to the White House.”

Only later did Cheung apparently realize that using Fascist language was unhelpful and claimed that he meant to say their “sad, miserable existence” instead of their “entire existence” —whatever that means.

Some will note that Trump includes Fascists as well as Communists among the “vermin” to be “rooted out” of America. This is classic authoritarian doublespeak. He has to set himself up as the bearer of freedom against all forms of tyranny, even as he signals to left and right-wing autocrats that he will be their staunch ally if he manages to win his “final battle” and return to the White House.

“When two irreducible elements are locked in a struggle, the only solution is force,” Mussolini said on Jan. 3, 1925, as he declared the start of dictatorship in Italy. America may never become a one-party state on the classic Fascist model, but Trump and his GOP enablers carry forth this Fascist mentality. We must take their speech seriously as declarations of intent to wreck American democracy and engage in persecution on a large scale as part of that process.

Categories Accountability, Democracy, Disruption, Elections, Fascism, Trump

Politico: House Republicans Want Deep Cuts to Education Funding

By dianeravitch
November 14, 2023 //
4

Political parties show their true colors when they offer a budget. Republicans, who control the House of Representatives just showed that they don’t care about funding education. They especially don’t care about funding schools attended by poor kids. They want to slash Title I—the most important federal funding for poor kids—by 80%. Remember that the next time that Republicans cry crocodile tears for poor kids.

Politico reported:

HOUSE TAKES UP EDUCATION FUNDING AS SHUTDOWN LOOMS: As House leaders wrangle votes for a stopgap measure to head off a shutdown at the end of the week, House Republicans are also turning to longer-term appropriations for education programs. The House is set to consider on the floor this week Republicans’ education funding bill that would make deep cuts to federal education programs, including drastic reductions to aid for low-income schools.

— What’s in the bill: The GOP bill to fund the Education Department for the 2024 fiscal year would provide $67.4 billion of new discretionary funding, a reduction of about 15 percent compared with 2023. But the bill would also rescind more than $10 billion of funding for K-12 education that was already approved by Congress, bringing the overall cut to the Education Department to about 28 percent from fiscal 2023.

— Among the most drastic proposed GOP cuts would be the $14.7 billion reduction to federal spending on low-income school districts under Title I, an 80 percent reduction. Democrats say that funding level would translate into 220,000 fewer teachers in classrooms across the country.

— The bill also includes policy riders that would block a slew of Biden administration education policies, such as its overhaul of Title IX rules and new student loan repayment program known as SAVE. The bill would also end the administration’s safety net program that eliminates most penalties for borrowers who miss their monthly payment for the next year.

— The GOP’s top-line funding levels for education won’t survive negotiations with the Democrat-led Senate and White House. A bipartisan proposal by Senate appropriators calls for keeping overall spending on education at roughly the same level as 2023. Biden’s budget requested a 13.6 percent increase.

— But the vote on making deep cuts to funding for schools could put some moderate House Republicans in a tough spot and hand Democrats some election-year messaging fodder.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Cruelty, Education Reform, Evil, Extremism, Funding, Poverty, U.S. Department of Education

“In Texas, the Only Good Voucher Bill Is a Dead One”

By dianeravitch
November 13, 2023 //
8

The Houston Chronicle published a stunning editorial denouncing the voucher legislation that Governor Abbott demands. Abbott has called four special sessions of the Legislature, and so far rural Republicans have blocked vouchers. Now the Governor threatens to run a candidate in the primary against every Republican who opposes vouchers. Why the pressure? To satisfy two billionaires.

The editorial board writes:

In March, when Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed the state’s new school voucher program into law, she repeated several talking points that advocates use to justify using taxpayer dollars to subsidize private school tuition.

“We’ve seen how the status quo condemns Arkansans to a lifetime of poverty,” said Sanders. “We’re tired of sitting at the bottom of national education rankings.”

Arkansas tried to avoid the pitfalls of some other states’ voucher programs. Participating private schools would have to select a standardized test to use — a small measure of, if not accountability, at least transparency. Likewise, the schools must prove they are accredited or working toward accreditation. And the state set eligibility requirements that should have helped target funds toward the neediest students, including those in foster care, enrolled in failing public schools, experiencing homelessness or living with a disability.

But in the first annual report on the program since its launch, the state found that of the more than 4,700 participants, nearly all were either new students enrolling in kindergarten or existing private school students.

The promise of transforming the lives of poor students trapped in failing public schools hasn’t materialized. Instead, the state has taken on significant new costs to fund both existing public school students and voucher recipients.

SPECIAL SESSION: School vouchers, border bills fall short as Gov. Abbott calls fourth session

From what we can see, Texas lawmakers — whom Gov. Greg Abbott called abruptly back into special session Tuesday for the fourth time this year — have worked to craft school voucher bills that also seek to avoid some of the worst abuses seen in other states. Bills have included some degree of required testing, fraud guardrails, effective enrollment caps and prioritization for lower-income students and those with disabilities. There have also been sweeteners for folks planning to stay in public schools: an increase in the per-student allotment and one-time teacher bonuses, among others. As voucher bills go, the House version proposed last special session was one of the most palatable around.

It still wasn’t good enough for Abbott, who continues to push for a more universal program.

And it isn’t good enough for us, either. Because there is no such thing as a good voucher bill. Not the bill passed by the Senatethat would create $8,000 vouchers nor the one that, for the first time this year, made it through the House committee Friday that would offer students $10,500 annually to attend private schools. Even seemingly benign or narrowly tailored bills have a way of ballooning in cost and generating underwhelming results.

Not only have wide-scale voucher programs largely failed to produce resounding academic improvements for participants, states have consistently seen the programs benefit existing private school students, whose parents most likely could already afford the tuition. They don’t really benefit the struggling public school students often used to sell them.

In Arkansas, restrictions meant to target students with disabilities have been almost meaningless after the state lowered its standards for approval. Investigative reporting there revealed that some of the 44% of students who were granted vouchers based on disabilities had as little as a doctor’s note worth of documentation. Here in Texas, the current House version — an omnnibus school spending bill with education savings accounts wedged inside like a booby trap waiting to spring — makes clear that students who are currently in private schools would still be eligible for the voucher.

TOMLINSON: Texas school vouchers would be financially ruinous, fundamentally unfair or quite likely, both

Then there’s the price tag. The estimated price of the Senate’s voucher program put forward in the previous session was $500 million for the first year.

But buyer beware, that’s just the first year. What voucher advocates want is a foot in the door. And within two or three budget cycles, the number of participants will soar and — more than likely — all those careful (or not so careful) restrictions meant to narrow the program would disappear.

“They’re telling you you’ve got an interest free payment: You can sign up to get vouchers for the next, say, two, three budget cycles. And then the price tag really comes due,” said Josh Cowen, a policy analyst and professor of education policy at Michigan State University. He has been following voucher bills — often nearly identical ones — working their way through state legislatures and sees a cautionary tale in Arkansas.

While some districts may feel the loss of public funding, the real threat, Cowen explains, is that this program will end up helping existing private school families. Meaning the state — and you, dear taxpayer — will be on the hook for two systems.

There are many reasons to oppose vouchers: They don’t guarantee academic improvements; they’ve been shown to increase segregation; they don’t protect the legal rights of students with disabilities in private schools that can discriminate against them; they use public dollars to support private and often religious instruction.

Lawmakers can nip and tuck to address some concerns. But there’s not much they can do to make vouchers less economically disastrous or to slake the thirst of deep-pocketed, pro-voucher advocates pouring in buckets of dollars. Those Wilks and Dunn types aren’t funding this because they want to help low-income students escape failing public schools. They want a universal program that undoes the power of the public school as a secular, accountable, publicly funded institution.

CARTOON EXPLAINER: Austin’s the new Kremlin! A guide to vouchers and puppet masters Wilks and Dunn.

Some want to use carrots to lure lawmakers. Others prefer a stick, threatening to primary out those rural Republicans who have stood up time and again for their communities and against vouchers. There’s a reason this is so hard. It’s clear that, after decades of bipartisan rejection, Texans don’t want this voucher scheme.

So why are we on the verge of passing it, of making the same mistake as Arkansas and other states?

State Rep. James Talarico, D-Austin, said it best amid the marathon testimony that opened the latest special session: “All this for one man and two billionaires.”

Only Abbott, Wilks and Dunn will benefit if bipartisan opposition crumbles. Texas public schoolchildren and taxpayers will lose.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Courage, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Extremism, Failure, Funding, Privatization, Religion, Republicans, Rural Schools, Texas
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