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Arizona: Home-Schoolers Used Voucher Money to Pay for Condoms, Jewelry, Video Games, Dog Training

By dianeravitch
March 9, 2026 //
2

An audit of Arizona voucher funds for home-schools demonstrated that 20% of the purchases by parents were unallowable, spent on consumer items that had nothing to do with education, unless you consider condoms “educational.”

Of some 384,000 transactions from December 2024 to September 2025, about 84,000 were spent on non-educational purposes.

One way to stop this misuse of public funds is to bar those who misspend public funds from participating.

Alexandra Hardle of The Arizona Republic reported:

Audit data shows over 20% of vendor purchases made with Empowerment Scholarship Account dollars could be barred under the program’s guidelines.

The program, run through the Arizona Department of Education allows expenses for homeschooled students under $2,000 to be automatically approved by the department and later audited. But that audit could come months later, a process that Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne has blamed on understaffing.

The program was initially designed primarily for students with disabilities but was expanded to be available for all students in 2022. Many homeschooled students are eligible to receive about $7,000 per year through the program, though money allocated to special needs students can be much higher.

Records released by the Arizona Attorney General’s Office show Arizonans have spent millions of dollars on expenses that appear to fall afoul of the program’s guidelines. A risk-based audit performed by the Department of Education found that 20% of purchases were “unallowed.” A risk-based audit is a financial audit that examines where problems are most likely to happen. In this case, the audit examined a random sample of purchases made through the ESA program.

When the department’s risk-based audit detects “unallowed” purchases, it then performs a full audit of the account to review the account holder’s other purchases. Of the accounts that received a full audit, 46% of the purchases made by those account holders were “unallowable.”

Attorney General Kris Mayes, a Democrat seeking reelection this fall, in a January letter to the Department of Education asked for tighter guardrails on expense approval.

“ADE must do more on the front end to prevent unallowable purchases, and it must do so immediately,” Mayes said in her letter.

Horne declined to comment to The Arizona Republic, saying his office would soon send a letter in response to Mayes.

The Department of Education’s ESA handbook outlines all expenses that cannot be paid for by the program. While many of these expenses slip through the cracks, Horne said in September the department has already recovered about $600,000 during the auditing process.

But Mayes criticized the policy of automatically approving some purchases and auditing them later. That’s given people a “road map for how to game the system,” Mayes said.

What were the ‘unallowable’ ESA purchases discovered in the audit?

One of the heftier purchases was $7,500 in video gaming equipment.

Parents also paid themselves for homeschooling, which is prohibited under the program. One parent paid themselves $5,700, while others kept the payments to below $2,000.

Other expenses forbidden by the ESA handbook included coffee machines, $2,000 in Visa gift cards, a $1,700 diamond necklace and dog training. There were also trips to Mexico, a Kohl’s gift card, scuba diving equipment, swimming pools, condoms and lubrication.

Categories Accountability, Arizona, Ethics, Fraud, Funding, Home Schooling, Vouchers

Nancy Bailey: Will School Choice Kill School Sports?

By dianeravitch
February 10, 2026 //
5

Nancy Bailey is a retired educator and a dedicated ally of public schools. She understands the importance of public schools as the heart of communities, which bring parents together and teach citizenship.

In many communities, Friday night lights are an important civic ritual. Why should they be dimmed?

In this post, she voices a concern that many parents and educators share: Will school choice kill school sports?

Bailey writes:

Americans love sports, but what happens to athletic programs when democratic public schools close? Privatizing public education, so-called school choice, means drastic changes, as school officials grapple with the effects of school choice legislation.

Communities rally behind high school football in the fall, basketball during the winter, and track and field in the spring. Public schools might offer swimming, soccer, and other sports, critical for helping young people obtain college scholarships. Even though they aren’t easy to obtain, about 180,000 NCAA D1 and D2 student-athletes earn athletic scholarships each year.

School choice, including charter schools, vouchers, homeschooling, and open enrollment, alters who plays sports and undermines community pride in public schools. Defunding public schools ruins sports programs. Which students get access? Will only the wealthiest private schools get sports?

In 2023, West Virginia headlined How lawmakers helped ruin high school football in West Virginia reflecting on game “blowouts” in that state. When private schools corral all the best players, it changes the competition. It also makes for boring games. Brooke High Coach Mac McLean, whose team always struggled in the AAA class, said it’s only going to get worse: The rich will get richer and the poor will get poorer.

School choice crusaders seem not to have thought through what happens with sports. Olivia Nutter recently wrote in Athletics Directors 411:

Proponents of school choice argue that parents should be free to choose what’s best for their children, including athletic opportunities. But that freedom raises difficult questions about fairness and competitive balance. If top talent continually migrates to a handful of programs, the very structure of high school sports could change, creating a system where access to success depends less on effort and more on ZIP code flexibility.

Consider that between 2010–11 and 2021–22, 4,000+ public secondary schools closed due to declining enrollment, unaffordable housing, lower birth rates, and an overall defunding of public education by school privatizers seeking to create schools for profit.

Parental school choice is also deceptive. Private schools, not parents, ultimately choose students. Gifted athletes will likely be welcome at a private school that prioritizes sports. Wealthy private school teams will compete with other private schools, but what about students who never got swept up in the choice program, never got identified in their poor charter schools, or in their homeschools?

Undiscovered students who haven’t yet shown their prowess in sports may not have the opportunity to do so, relegated to a fledgling public school that has lost its resources, a charter school, or homeschool, where they remain unrecognized. What if they never get the opportunity to practice sports under the eyes of a good coach?

Charter schools often lack the budget or incentive to offer quality sports programs. Sports facilities, football fields, tracks, or access to swimming pools is costly. Some may rent facilities or partner with community organizations for practice, but this can be expensive.

States like Florida allow charter school and homeschool students (7.d) to participate in traditional public school sports, but this is controversial. It dismisses the community school pride factor, a significant all-American feature of school sports. If parents don’t want their child at that public school, take tax dollars elsewhere; why get the advantage of a public school sports program? What happens when the school ultimately closes?

Missouri is another state that permits homeschool students to participate in public education sports.

Students might also leave public school sports programs for sports clubs, which have become synonymous with college recruitment across areas, though in football, they appear less so.

Athletic organizations see the problems with school choice. Both the Oklahoma Secondary School Activities Association (OSSAA) and the Alabama High School Athletic Association (AHSAA) ran into difficulties with their states choice programs.

As one parent puts it:

Private schools often have access to resources that public schools do not – such as better facilities, more experienced coaches or even the ability to attract top talent through scholarships. This creates an uneven playing field during playoff competitions. According to a study by The Atlantic (2013), private high school students are over twice as likely as public school students to reach Division I college sports.

Some private schools are small and also lack resources, but will be expected to compete against wealthier private schools.

School board members in Hamilton, Tennessee, voiced concern that the state’s Education Freedom Scholarship, allowing students to attend private schools, siphons desirable athletes from public schools. They worry about a drop in public school attendance, likely related to the school choice program. Sports success skews toward wealthier super schools, leaving fewer high school teams for competition.

Texas exemplifies the problems school choice creates for sports. At 2.22 on the video below they discuss how football, basketball, and track, public school sports programs beloved in that state, could be affected. It might mean laying off school coaching staff.

Cultural overemphasis and concernsabout sports injuries leave critics to advocate for the end of school sports altogether. But athletics are an ingrained American tradition, and it’s hard to see public schools successfully survive without vibrant sports and extracurricular programs.

Sports aren’t only about making future successful athletes, of course. Students benefit physically and mentally, and team sports promote positive socialization and all around good health. Students learn how to win gracefully, build confidence, but also how to lose and accept defeat without always quitting.

But if public education is fully privatized, once unimaginable, public school sports could end. Most Americans are not on board for school choice and want to see better and more support of public schooling. The loss of sports might be added in as a reason to reject school choice. It may be time for pushback and Americans rallying around their democratic public schools. Could it be?

Consider Mississippi where football in small towns is called “the fabric of the community.” Parents worried about their public schools, and the Mississippi legislature recently killed the school choice bill which would have sent public school funding to private schools.

Maybe there’s hope, not only for school sports, team building, but for democratic public schools. Perhaps we’ll soon see a public school renaissance and a great refocus on the greatness of our country and its children and their schools, not only with sports but learning. Now that’s truly a winning idea!

Categories Accountability, Charters, Ethics, Home Schooling, Parents, Students, Vouchers

North Carolina: Four “Home Schoolers” Found Dead; Father Arrested

By dianeravitch
October 31, 2025 //
4

The News & Observer reported on a shocking case. A father who claimed to be home-schooling his five children—ages 3, 6, 9, 10, and 18–called the police to report that he found the four older children dead. The youngest was alive. The father was arrested.

T. Keung Hui of the News & Observer reported:

The four Johnston County children allegedly killed by their father appear to have fallen through the cracks in the state’s education system, according to homeschool advocates.

Wellington Dickens III is charged with killing four of his five children, ages 6 to 18, over what authorities believe was a four-month period. Dickens appears to have run an unregistered homeschool at his home in Zebulon, which may have kept his children away from prying eyes.

“In a state like North Carolina, parents with ill intent can exploit those loopholes to essentially disappear their kids, which I think is the case that happened here,” Tess Ulrey, executive director of the Massachusetts-based Coalition For Responsible Home Education, said in an interview Thursday with The News & Observer.

Here’s a look at what The N&O found about state education and homeschool laws.

What is North Carolina’s compulsory school attendance law?

North Carolina law requires parents to make sure their children are regularly attending school between the ages of 7 and 16.

Parents are also required to make sure that younger children enrolled in a public school in kindergarten through second-grade are attending regularly.

Violation of the compulsory school attendance law is a Class 1 misdemeanor.

Operating an unregistered homeschool

None of the Dickens children attended public school in Johnston County, according to a school system spokesperson.

Johnston County Sheriff Steve Bizzell said the children were apparently home-schooled.

But the state Department of Administration’s Division of Non-Public Education says it does not have a record of a homeschool at Dickens’ address or registered under his name.

Dickens would not have been required to register the 6-year-old and the 18-year-old he’s accused of murdering. But he would have had to register the 9-year-old and 10-year-old he’s charged with killing.

“It appears that people who are not caring for their kids would want to remove them from school settings,” Matthew McDill, president of North Carolinians for Home Education, told ABC11, The N&O’s newsgathering partner. “And so you know, it’s interesting that these aren’t actually, you know, normal homeschool families. There are people who are trying to hide something.”

What are North Carolina’s homeschool requirements?

North Carolina has several requirements for people to begin and maintain a homeschool.

*Homeschool administrators must have at least a high school diploma.

*A notice of intent to start a homeschool must be sent to the Division of Non-Public Education.

*Maintain immunization and annual attendance records for each student.

*Administer a nationally standardized achievement test each school year.

The Division of Non-Public Education is also responsible for overseeing the states’ private schools. The division is so understaffed that it has historically asked home-school families to come to its office in Raleigh to help its staff with paperwork for other families.

Ulrey of the Coalition for Responsible Home Education said North Carolina has better home schooling laws than some states. But Ulrey said there other states, such as Pennsylvania, which do a better job of keeping track of where all their children are being educated.

“We depend on the larger social fabric and network to help us find these kids so they don’t disappear,” said Ulrey, who was a home-schooler. “A lot of those resources come from either a school system or they come from more robust oversight. That’s how we can make sure we’re keeping track of kids and that kids are safe.”

Nearly 200 homeschool deaths since 2000

The Coalition for Responsible Home Education argues that stronger oversight is needed to prevent child abuse and neglect in homeschooling. The group cites its Homeschooling’s Invisible Children national database, which found 423 cases of abuse and 191 child fatalities among home-schoolers since 2000.

“One of the reasons that we advocate for homeschool oversight is to ensure that children are coming into contact with mandated reporters, with a larger community so that they can have more opportunities to hopefully not fall through the cracks,” Ulrey said. “We want all of our children to have access to an open future, and that does mean coming into contact with more safe adults. It sounds like these children were unfortunately victims of that process.”

But the Oregon-based National Home Education Research Institute argues that students who are in public schools or private schools are more at risk of abuse or fatalities than those who are in a homeschool.

“There is no clear evidence of an increase in reported incidents of abuse or other harm in states that move toward laws recognizing and allowing fuller homeschooling freedom,” according to the National Home Education Research Institute.

How popular is homeschooling?

In the 2024-25 school year, there were 101,880 homeschools registered with the state. North Carolina’s estimated enrollment is 165,243 home-schoolers.

The majority of North Carolina homeschools (53%) are religious based.

In a 2017 court filing, Dickens claimed he shouldn’t be subject to federal statute 42 US Code section 666, which governs state child support procedures, because the number 666 violated his religious beliefs, The N&O previously reported.

The number 3.7 million is often cited as the nationwide total for home-schoolers. Enrollment numbers rose during the pandemic even as they shrank in traditional public schools

Read more at: https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/education/article312710244.html#storylink=cpy

Categories Home Schooling, North Carolina

Arkansas: 88% of Students Who Use Vouchers Never Attended Public Schools

By dianeravitch
October 14, 2025 //
4

Long ago, back in the 1990s, the idea of vouchers was proposed as a brand new idea. Its advocates said that vouchers would “save poor kids trapped in failing public schools.” They presented themselves as champions of poor and needy kids and predicted that vouchers would change the lives of these children for the better. Eminent figures proclaimed that school choice was “the civil rights issue” of our time.

Of course, as many writers have explained, vouchers were not a brand new idea. They were popular among segregationists after the 1954 Brown decision. Several Southern states passed voucher laws in that era that were eventually knocked down by federal courts as a ploy to maintain all-white schools.

Trump’s first Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos –never considered a leader of civil rights–championed vouchers. So does Trump’s current Secretary of Education Linda McMahon.

But guess who’s getting vouchers? Not the poor kids. Not the neediest kids. Mostly the kids who were already enrolled in religious and private schools.

The story is the same in every state but accentuated in states where every student can claim a voucher, regardless of family income, as in Florida and Arizona.

Now the numbers are available in Arkansas: 88% of students who use vouchers never attended public schools.

Benjamin Hardy of The Arkansas Times reports:

On Oct. 3, the Arkansas Department of Education released its annual report on school vouchers (or as the state calls them, “Educational Freedom Accounts”). The voucher program, which was created by Gov. Sarah Sanders’ Arkansas LEARNS Act in 2023, gives public money to private school and homeschool families to pay the cost of tuition, fees, supplies and other expenses.

Among the takeaways of the new report: Just one of every eight voucher participants in Year 2 of the program was enrolled in a public school the year before. (Year 2 was the 2024-25 school year; we’re currently in Year 3.)

This matters because Sanders and other school choice supporters often frame vouchers as a lifeline for poor families to escape failing public schools. Opponents of voucher programs say the money tends to mostly go to existing private school and homeschool families. 

Private school families as a whole tend to be higher income. And because the Arkansas program is open to everyone, regardless of how wealthy they are, the voucher program puts money in the pockets of many households that could already afford private school. 

Categories Accountability, Arkansas, Betsy DeVos, Civil Rights, Disruption, Education Industry, Ethics, Hoax, Home Schooling, Privatization, School Choice, Vouchers

New Hampshire: Governor Selects Nonpartisan Bureaucrat as Superintendent

By dianeravitch
August 12, 2025 //
5

Former Governor Chris Sununu of New Hampshire made a horrible choice for state school superintendent. He picked Frank Edelblut, after beating him in the election. Edelblut is a homeschooler of his 10 children with a low opinion of public schools. He successfully promoted vouchers and every other kind of school choice. He didn’t see the point of public schools.

The overwhelming majority of students in New Hampshire attend public schools. As soon as vouchers passed, most of them were used by families whose children never attended public schools. In other words, the state is spending many millions of dollars to subsidize the tuition of students already enrolled in private schools, whose families could afford the tuition.

Sununu was replaced by Republican Governor Kelly Ayotte. She did not reappoint Edelblut. Instead, she selected Caitlin Davis, a 15-year veteran of the state Department of Education. The selection of Davis was cheered by members of both parties, as well as the teachers’ union, no doubt thrilled to be rid of Edelblut.

Unlike Edelblut, she is unlikely to attack public schools but will collaborate with all sectors.

Davis, who most recently served as the director of education analytics and resources, had worked in the department for 15 years. She built a reputation as a neutral, data-driven financial expert, often sitting before lawmakers on the Joint Legislative Fiscal Committee or Finance Committee to brief them on complicated budget spreadsheets. And she vowed to lead the department as a nonpartisan executive, carrying out both lawmakers’ and the governor’s policies without injecting her own politics…

In seeking the job, Davis styled herself as an experienced administrator. Near the start of a multi-hour confirmation hearing Tuesday, Executive Councilor Joseph Kenney, a Wakefield Republican, asked Davis whether she considered herself a “passionate educator” or a “passionate bureaucrat.”

“I suppose I’m a passionate bureaucrat, but I don’t like the term bureaucrat,” Davis replied. “… When you use the term bureaucrat, I think you take away all of the effort that state employees and the legislators and the citizens are putting into the system.”

. 

Categories Administrators, superintendents, Home Schooling, New Hampshire, Privatization, School Choice, Vouchers

Arizona: School Choice Harms Public Schools

By dianeravitch
August 6, 2025 //
6

Laura Meckler of the Washington Post visited Arizona to learn about the effects of an expansive program of charter schools and vouchers. Arizona voted overwhelmingly against vouchers in a state referendum in 2018. Vouchers lost by 65-35%. The rightwing legislature and Governor Douglas Ducey, encouraged by billionaire Charles Koch, ignored the views of the electorate and enacted a large voucher program.

Now the state underwrites the tuition of kids who were already in private schools, many of whom come from affluent families. Voucher schools admit the students they want and exclude those they don’t want.

Arizona’s charter sector includes for-profit charters and charters run by entrepreneurs and grifters. It has experienced numerous scandals.

There’s no accountability for voucher schools and minimal accountability for homeschoolers whose parents spend money on sports equipment, ninja warrior training, toys, LEGO sets, and a wide variety of nonacademic stuff.

Eli Hager of ProPublica wrote that the cost of vouchers had blown a huge hole in the state’s budget, making it necessary to reduce spending on highway projects, water infrastructure, and other critical needs.

Vouchers and charters have not produced academic gains. On the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), Arizona is among the lowest-ranking states.

But the biggest consequence of voucher expansion has been the closing of neighborhood public schools. .

Meckler writes:

PHOENIX — The party at John R. Davis Elementary School was in full swing, but at the snow cone station, the school’s librarian was in tears.

In the cafeteria, alumni marveled at old photographs on display and shook their heads. On a wall of the library, visitors posted sticky notes to describe their feelings: “Angry,” read a purple square. “Anxious,” said a pink one. “Annoyed.” “Heart broken.” “Bummed.” And more than any other word: “Sad.”

Ten days later, John R. Davis Elementary School would close — not just for the summer, but for good.

Now, as the new school year begins, the Roosevelt Elementary School District opens with just 13 schools. That’s almost a third fewer than it had last spring, a response to enrollment declines as the state offers unprecedented taxpayer funding for alternatives to public school.

The party gave the community a few hours to celebrate the school’s 43 years — to say goodbye.

“It’s a grieving process for me,” Antionette Nuanez, the librarian, told a pair of Davis graduates who dropped by the party. Everyone at the party, it seemed, was feeling the loss — loss of tradition, of community, of simply having a school in walking distance. Nuanez, in particular, was overcome with the emotion of it all: “It’s like a death,” she said.

Perhaps more than any other state, Arizona has embraced market competition as a central tenet of its K-12 education system, offering parents an extraordinary opportunity to choose and shape their children’s education using tax dollars, and developing a national reputation as the Wild West of schooling.

The state has supported a robust charter school system, tax money for home schooling and expansive private school vouchers, which are available to all families regardless of income. Nearly 89,000 students receive Empowerment Scholarship Accounts, a form of vouchers, state data show; a second voucher program awarded nearly 62,000 tax-supported private school scholarships in 2024, though some students received more than one. More than 232,000 students attend charter schools.

Together, these programs help explain why just 75 percent of Arizona children attended public schools in 2021, the most recent year for which data is available. That’s one of the lowest rates in the country.

Supporters of school choice say families are turning to alternatives because public schools are not serving their children well. It’s only right, they argue, that tax dollars follow children to whatever educational setting their families choose.

Critics complain that vouchers eat up state funding, benefit families who can afford private school on their own, disrupt communities and send tax dollars to schools that face little accountability. Unlike public schools, private schools don’t have to administer state tests. They can pick and choose their students, while public schools must educate everyone.

The modern school choice movement began in 1990 with a small voucher program in Milwaukee and has grown into a central plank of the Republican education agenda, with programs now operating in more than half the states. In 2022, Arizona created the first universal program — open to all, not just low-income families. Since then, about a dozen conservative states have adopted universal or near-universal programs. And in July, President Donald Trump signed into law the first federal voucher program, which will require states to opt in, at an estimated cost of $26 billion over the next decade.

Some state programs have now grown so large that spillover effects on public schools are coming into view. In Ohio, the legislature agreed toincrease voucher spending to $1.3 billion by 2027, up from just over $1 billion in 2025, while traditional public schools, which serve far more children, were given a smaller increase — and less than what public education advocates say had been promised under a multiyear agreement to ramp up school spending. In Florida, which has a $4 billion voucher program, public schools districts are seeing enrollment declines, meaning less money from the state and, in many cases, budget cuts.

The ramifications for public education have been particularly clear in Arizona, offering an early picture of K-12 education under the Republican vision of maximum school choice, or what proponents call education freedom. Here, public schools are starting to close.

The challenge: more competition for the same number of students. For the past 15 years, the state’s school-age population has remained steady, though the overall population has grown, said Rick Brammer, principal manager of Applied Economics, a consulting firm that has analyzed enrollment trends, demographic data and the effects of school choice programs in dozens of Arizona school districts.

“You’re taking the same size pie and cutting it into more pieces,” Brammer said. “As we’ve created and funded alternatives, we’ve just emptied out school after school from the districts. In a tight nutshell, that’s the whole story.”

Categories Accountability, Arizona, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Closing schools, Disruption, Education Industry, For-Profit, Fraud, Funding, Home Schooling, Privatization, Vouchers

NEA: The Purpose of Block Grants is to Diminish Federal Responsibility for Education

By dianeravitch
May 13, 2025 //
2

Project 2025’s section on education proposes that the U.S. Department of Education’s largest funding streams for K-12 schools be turned into block grants to the states with minimal oversight. The two big programs are Title 1 for poor kids and the funding for students with disabilities (IDEA).

The states would be free to convert these funds into vouchers, instead of spending them on low-income students or students with disabilities.

The National Education Association explains here:

Block Grant Overview

Typically, the deal between the federal government and states when specific program funds are block-granted is that the federal government will provide less funding in return for less regulation and requirements. With less regulation, the assumption is that states should be able to do as much or more with less money. While it may be appealing initially to those who administer federal grants at the state and local level, in reality, fewer dollars mean fewer programs and services. States and school districts may have more flexibility in using federal funds but it comes at the expense of the students the federal grant program was designed to help in the first place.

 Many states already underfund their commitment to public education. If states and districts don’t cover the shortfall, students receiving Title I and IDEA services will suffer. Furthermore, both Title I and IDEA have maintenance of effort and supplement, not supplant requirements to ensure states and districts hold up their levels of spending when receiving federal funds. Those requirements will fall away, too, and, most likely, so will the funding commitments by states and districts.

Title I of the ESEA and IDEA were created to ensure all students have equal access to an education, regardless of family income or disability. Many states were failing to adequately educate students in these populations, if at all. The federal role here was clear: where a student lived or their circumstances should not determine the quality of their education. ESEA and IDEA enshrined this principle and attached specific conditions and requirements that states must follow, in return for federal financial assistance, to ensure that students from lower-income families and communities and those with disabilities have the same opportunity to learn as any other student. “No-strings-attached” block grant funding turns the clock back 60 years on education policy and progress, and turns its back on our nation’s commitment to educating all students. While one would like to think that we can trust states to do the right thing on behalf of all students, history tells us differently. 

Providing states with federal aid and fewer requirements leaves the door open for states to do as they wish. Title I of ESEA and IDEA include important requirements and protections for students and families precisely because they were lacking previously. At its core, the Department of Education is a civil rights agency, providing dollars, regulations, requirements, guidance, technical assistance, research, monitoring, and compliance enforcement to preserve and protect students’ access to a free and appropriate education. Strip it away, and you strip away the rights of certain students to a meaningful education.  

 

Categories Accountability, Disruption, Equity, Ethics, Extremism, Funding, Home Schooling, Inequity, Poverty, Privatization, Special Education, Trump, Vouchers

U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon on the “Final Mission”

By dianeravitch
March 4, 2025 //
9

Former entertainment entrepreneur Linda McMahon is now U.S. Secretary of Education. She released her first statement, reiterating Trump’s attacks on “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” as well as “gender ideology” (I.e. recognizing the existence of ONLY the male-female binary and not recognizing those who are LGBT, such as Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, who is openly gay).

McMahon’s views are closely aligned with those of Moms for Liberty. Check out the website of the America First Policy Forum, where McMahon was chair of the board.

This statement was released by the department’s press office.

SPEECH

Secretary McMahon: Our Department’s Final Mission

MARCH 3, 2025

Secretary Linda McMahon

When I took the oath of office as Secretary of Education, I accepted responsibility for overseeing the U.S. Department of Education and those who work here. But more importantly, I took responsibility for supporting over 100 million American children and college students who are counting on their education to create opportunity and prepare them for a rewarding career. 

I want to do right by both. 

As you are all aware, President Trump nominated me to take the lead on one of his most momentous campaign promises to families. My vision is aligned with the President’s: to send education back to the states and empower all parents to choose an excellent education for their children. As a mother and grandmother, I know there is nobody more qualified than a parent to make educational decisions for their children. I also started my career studying to be a teacher, and as a Connecticut Board of Education member and college trustee, I have long held that teaching is the most noble of professions. As a businesswoman, I know the power of education to prepare workers for fulfilling careers. 

American education can be the greatest in the world. It ought not to be corrupted by political ideologies, special interests, and unjust discrimination. Parents, teachers, and students alike deserve better. 

After President Trump’s inauguration last month, he steadily signed a slate of executive orders to keep his promises: combatting critical race theory, DEI, gender ideology, discrimination in admissions, promoting school choice for every child, and restoring patriotic education and civics. He has also been focused on eliminating waste, red tape, and harmful programs in the federal government. The Department of Education’s role in this new era of accountability is to restore the rightful role of state oversight in education and to end the overreach from Washington. 

This restoration will profoundly impact staff, budgets, and agency operations here at the Department. In coming months, we will partner with Congress and other federal agencies to determine the best path forward to fulfill the expectations of the President and the American people. We will eliminate unnecessary bureaucracy so that our colleges, K-12 schools, students, and teachers can innovate and thrive. 

This review of our programs is long overdue. The Department of Education is not working as intended. Since its establishment in 1980, taxpayers have entrusted the department with over $1 trillion, yet student outcomes have consistently languished. Millions of young Americans are trapped in failing schools, subjected to radical anti-American ideology, or saddled with college debt for a degree that has not provided a meaningful return on their investment. Teachers are leaving the profession in droves after just a few years—and citing red tape as one of their primary reasons. 

The reality of our education system is stark, and the American people have elected President Trump to make significant changes in Washington. Our job is to respect the will of the American people and the President they elected, who has tasked us with accomplishing the elimination of bureaucratic bloat here at the Department of Education—a momentous final mission—quickly and responsibly. 

As I’ve learned many times throughout my career, disruption leads to innovation and gets results. We must start thinking about our final mission at the department as an overhaul—a last chance to restore the culture of liberty and excellence that made American education great. Changing the status quo can be daunting. But every staff member of this Department should be enthusiastic about any change that will benefit students. 

True change does not happen overnight—especially the historic overhaul of a federal agency. Over the coming months, as we work hard to carry out the President’s directives, we will focus on a positive vision for what American education can be. 

These are our convictions: 

  1. Parents are the primary decision makers in their children’s education. 
  2. Taxpayer-funded education should refocus on meaningful learning in math, reading, science, and history—not divisive DEI programs and gender ideology. 
  3. Postsecondary education should be a path to a well-paying career aligned with workforce needs. 

Removing red tape and bureaucratic barriers will empower parents to make the best educational choices for their children. An effective transfer of educational oversight to the states will mean more autonomy for local communities. Teachers, too, will benefit from less micromanagement in the classroom—enabling them to get back to basics. 

I hope each of you will embrace this vision going forward and use these convictions as a guide for conscientious and pragmatic action. The elimination of bureaucracy should free us, not limit us, in our pursuit of these goals. I want to invite all employees to join us in this historic final mission on behalf of all students, with the same dedication and excellence that you have brought to your careers as public servants. 

This is our opportunity to perform one final, unforgettable public service to future generations of students. I hope you will join me in ensuring that when our final mission is complete, we will all be able to say that we left American education freer, stronger, and with more hope for the future.

Sincerely,

Linda McMahon
Secretary of Education

Categories Bigotry, Billionaires, Censorship, Civil Rights, Curriculum, Education Industry, Equity, Extremism, For-Profit, Funding, Gender, Home Schooling, Ignorance, Innovation, Privatization, Racism, Religion, Segregation, Teachers, Vouchers

Trump Signs Executive Order Directing Federal Funds to School Choice, Directly Attacking Public Schools

By dianeravitch
January 30, 2025 //
25

Trump has always expressed contempt for public schools. In his first term, he appointed billionaire religious zealot Betsy DeVos to be Secretary of Education. She has spent many millions over decades to promote charters and vouchers, and she shoveled as much money as she could to charter schools, especially large chains.

His nominee for Secretary of Education, wrestling-entertainment entrepreneur Linda McMahon, will be no less spiteful towards public schools than DeVos. McMahon is chair of the extremist America First Policy Institute, which peddles the lie that public schools “indoctrinate” their students to hate America.

In his 2024 campaign, Trump pushed school choice as one of his major issues.

Yesterday he signed an executive order directing that discretionary federal funds be spent to promote all forms of choice, and he praised states with universal vouchers.

His executive order lambastes the “failure” of the public schools, a refrain we have heard from privatizers for the past 30 years, and he makes false claims about the benefits of private choices.

He says:

When our public education system fails such a large segment of society, it hinders our national competitiveness and devastates families and communities.  For this reason, more than a dozen States have enacted universal K-12 scholarship programs, allowing families — rather than the government — to choose the best educational setting for their children.  These States have highlighted the most promising avenue for education reform:  educational choice for families and competition for residentially assigned, government-run public schools.  The growing body of rigorous research demonstrates that well-designed education-freedom programs improve student achievement and cause nearby public schools to improve their performance. 

This paragraph is larded with lies. Despite decades of loud complaining about how public schools hurt our economic competitiveness, we have the most vibrant and successful economy in the world. Our public schools, which enroll 85-90% of our nation’s students, contributed to that success.

Next is his patently false claim that universal choice is the best path to educational success. There is no evidence for that claim. In fact, Florida–a leader in universal choice–just experienced a sharp drop in its NAEP scores. Its reading and math scores dropped to their lowest level in more than 20 years.

And most ridiculous is his assertion that “rigorous research demonstrates that well-designed education-freedom programs improve student achievement and cause nearby public schools to improve their performance.”

Josh Cowen’s new book The Privateers: How Billionaires Created a Culture War and Sold School Vouchers thoroughly debunks those claims.

The most rigorous research, which Cowen reviews, shows that poor kids who take vouchers and switch to a private school experience a dramatic decline in their test scores. Many return to public schools.

The most rigorous research shows that most students who use vouchers were already enrolled in private schools. The voucher is a subsidy for their religious and private school tuition.

The most rigorous research shows that universal vouchers in every state that has them are used by affluent families. They are welfare for the rich.

The most rigorous research shows that public schools lose funding when new and existing state funding goes to nonpublic schools.

The most rigorous research shows that universal choice busts the budgets of states that fund all students, including private school students.

Trump has sharpened his knife to destroy public education.

Fight back!

Join the Network for Public Education and link up with people in your community, your state, and the nation who believe that public dollars should be spent on public schools.

Sign up for the annual conference of the Network for Public Education in Columbus, Ohio, April 5-6 and meet your allies.

Organize, strategize, resist!

Categories Betsy DeVos, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Disruption, Education Industry, Extremism, Failure, Funding, Home Schooling, Privatization, School Choice, Trump, Vouchers

Politico Reporter Falls in Love with Voucher Pusher

By dianeravitch
November 27, 2024 //
12

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!

Categories Arizona, Budget Cuts, Disruption, Education Industry, Home Schooling, Love, Privatization, Vouchers
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