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Texas Charter Schools: Don’t Believe the Boasting and Hype

By dianeravitch
September 15, 2019 //
14

William J. Gumbert has prepared statistical analyses of charter performance in Texas, based on state data.

Charters boast of their “success,” but the reality is far different from their claims. They don’t enroll similar demographics, their attrition rate is staggering, and their “wait lists” are unverified.

Their claims are a marketing tool.

They are not better than public schools.

They undermine and disrupt communities without producing better results.

Yet Texas is plunging headlong into this strategy that creates a dual system but benefits few students.

 

 

Texas Charter Schools – Perception May Not Be Reality

Part 5: The State’s Efforts to “Privatize” Public Education in Local Communities is “Simply Indefensible”

By: William J. Gumbert

If you are a parent residing in an urban or suburban area of Texas, it is likely that you have received promotional materials recruiting your child to enroll at a privately operated, charter school (“charters”). Charters are taxpayer funded, private organizations that the State approves to independently operate schools in community-based school districts. Despite it being your students, schools, tax dollars and communities, the State has unilaterally decided that a “dual education system”, consisting of locally governed, community-based school districts and State approved, privately governed charters, is best for local communities. The State has also conveniently and unilaterally decided to share the public education funding of local communities with privately governed charters.

To conclude this series on Texas charter schools, Part 5 uses the lyrics of Robert Palmer’s hit song “Simply Irresistible” to demonstrate that the State’s politically driven and orchestrated efforts to “privatize” public education in local communities is “Simply Indefensible”. Since the song was a hit in 1988, feel free to click on the YouTube video of the “Donnie and Marie Show” below to remember the vibe.

Screen Shot 2019-09-03 at 10.26.40 PM

“How Can It Be Permissible”:

Without the approval of taxpayers and local communities: State approved charters:

  • ▪ Transfer the control and governance of public schools from local communities to privately-operated charters;
  • ▪ Divert funding from community-based school districts to privately-operated charters. The State has already provided charters with over $22.5 billion of taxpayer funding;
  • ▪ Increase the debt burden of taxpayers as charters are free to incur long-term bond debt without taxpayer approval;
  • ▪ Increase the segregation of students attending public schools in certain communities; and
  • ▪ Reduce the quality of schools in many community-based school districts as 20.4% of all charter campuses are rated as “low performing” (rated equivalent of “D” or “F”) by the State’s 2018 Academic Accountability Ratings.

    “She Compromise My Principle – Yeah, Yeah”:

    Every community has a fundamental responsibility to provide a quality public education that equally serves the unique needs of every student. As public servants, community-based school districts embrace this responsibility as all students are welcome and no student is turned away. If there is not room, community-based school districts hire more teachers and make room. In comparison, the State’s deliberate intervention in local communities allows privately-operated charters to:

    • ▪ Serve a limited number of students and NOT enroll all students;
    • ▪ Recruit the targeted students and families they desire to serve;
    • ▪ Deny enrollment to students with “discipline histories”;
    • ▪ Serve a lower percentage of “students with disabilities”;
    • ▪ Serve a lower percentage of students “at risk” of dropping out; and
    • ▪ Disrupt the education of over 12,800 “economically-disadvantaged” students due to charter closures in the last 5-years.

    “That Kind of Love is Mythical”:

    The promotion of charters is primarily coordinated by charter advocacy organizations that are intended to support and grow the charter school movement. Although not all-inclusive, these organizations train charter administrators, teachers and parents to be advocates, they assist organizations to start new charters, and they coordinate the political strategy to secure favorable support from the Legislature. But it is not publicized that these advocacy organizations are funded by private donors and fueled by privately funded “public policy” organizations that desire to “privatize” public education across Texas.

    To demonstrate parent demand and to garner political support, charter advocacy organizations have notoriously publicized a “wait list” of students. But charters do not publicize the alarming 33.8% attrition rate of students in grades 7-12 that decided to transfer to another Texas public school to start year 2017/18. Charters also do not publicize that the desires of families on “wait lists” are a lower priority than the desire of charters to expand in other regions of the State. By charters expanding in other regions, without expanding current schools to serve students on “wait lists”, charters are choosing to have families “stuck” on the wait list”. In addition, charters strategically attempt to maintain a “wait list” to ensure that their taxpayer funding is preserved as existing students transfer to community-based school districts or another Texas public school in the future.

    In Texas, the promoted (unverified) “wait list” is 141,000 students. However, taking a deeper dive, a more realistic estimate is closer to 75,000 students or an amount that is very similar to the 73,713 disciplinary students that are intentionally denied service by charters. This estimate was derived from certain enrollment statistics in a study funded by the KLE Foundation entitled: “An Analysis of Austin area Charter School Waitlists and Enrollment”. It is important to note that the KLE Foundation is also funding the expansion of charters in Austin.

    “She’s Anything But Typical”:

    In comparison to community-based school districts, charters serve the unique needs of students by:

    • ▪ Employing teachers with lower experience;
    • ▪ Deploying higher class sizes;
    • ▪ Having higher teacher turnover
    • ▪ Spending less on “student instruction”;
    • ▪ Offering fewer co/extra-curricular activities;
    • ▪ Having limited career and technical training; and
    • ▪ Closing 108 charters

    .

    “She’s a Craze You’d Endorse, She’s a Powerful Force”:

  • The charter movement is coordinated by “public policy” and “education reform” organizations that circumvent the voice of local taxpayers by strategically controlling our elected officials at the State and Federal levels. In politics, money is power and the rich and powerful support the charter school movement. As a result, many elected officials are politically motivated to endorse and support the “charter craze”. The following quote from the Texas Charter Schools Association, an advocacy organization to support and expand charters, provides an indication of the movement’s focus on political patronage:

    “Generally speaking, we have a broad enough bipartisan coalition in the House and Senate that largely will prevent anything existential happening to charters” – CEO of TCSA

    “You’re Obliged to Conform, When There’s No Other Course”:

    It is interesting that the Legislature continues to increase the transparency requirements of community-based school districts to enhance the involvement of taxpayers, but at the same time, the State forces charters upon taxpayers by unilaterally controlling the expansion and taxpayer funding of charters. In this regard, taxpayers do not receive public notice of the charters that the State approves to operate in local communities. The State does not notify taxpayers of the public funding it provides to charters and the State has ensured that taxpayers cannot prohibit or limit the bond debt incurred by charters to finance the construction of new charter schools in local communities (charters are granted the ability to incur bond debt without voter approval). Lastly, with charters having “privately appointed boards”, the State has also ensured that taxpayers cannot democratically elect the governing boards of charters and in fact, the State does not even require charters to meet in the communities they serve.

    “She Used to Look Good to Me, But Now I Find Her”:

    The original purpose of charters was to improve the educational opportunities of “economically-disadvantaged” students in urban areas and to develop and share instructional innovations to enhance the education of all students. However, the charter school movement has evolved into an aggressive, strategic and “non-cooperative” movement that is coordinated by “special interests” to “privatize” and “control” the public education system in local communities. Since charters have introduced “private business practices” into public education, the charter movement could be characterized as a “hostile takeover” of public schools and the tax dollars of Texas communities.

    “Simply Indefensible” … “There’s No Tellin Where the Money Went”:

    The charter facts are “irrefutable”;

    Charter expenditures are “inscrutable”;

    Special interests have made charters politically “irresistible”; and

    By the State providing privately governed charters with taxpayer funding, “there’s no tellin where the money went”.

    With the education of children and taxpayer funding at stake, the State’s deliberate and politically-motivated actions to “privatize” public education in local communities is:

    “Simply Indefensible”

    DISCLOSURES: The author is a voluntary advocate for public education and this material solely reflects the opinions of the author. The author has not been compensated in any manner for the preparation of this material. The material is based upon various sources, including but not limited to, the Texas Education Agency, Txschools.org; Texas Academic Performance Reports, tpeir-Texas Education Reports, Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, KXAN and other publicly available information. While the author believes these sources to be reliable, the author has not independently verified the information. All readers are encouraged to complete their own review of the charter school movement in Texas, including the material referenced herein and make their own independent conclusions.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Disruption, Education Industry, Education Reform, Hoax, Lies, Privatization

ProPublica Exposes the Man and the Myths Behind the Trump Campaign

By dianeravitch
September 13, 2019 //
1

 

This is a fascinating investigation by ProPublica of the life and exaggerations of the webmaster behind the Trump campaign. Brad Parsquale is a Trumpian figure who is running Trump’s re-election campaign and is paid big bucks to market his life story of rags to riches. But it ain’t necessarily so.

Categories Lies

How the GOP in North Carolina Pulled Off Its Sneak Attack on Medicaid Expansion for 634,000 People

By dianeravitch
September 12, 2019 //
18

Think dirty politics, think North Carolina.

Yesterday, while some Democratic legislators and Governor Roy Cooper attended a 9/11 memorial service, the Republican legislators called a snap vote to override the governor’s veto of the state budget. They had repeatedly assured the Democrats that no votes would be recorded that morning, but they lied. If the full body of representatives had been present, the governor’s veto would have stood.

Cooper vetoed the budget because it did not include Medicaid expansion, which he favors but the Republicans oppose. Thanks to the Republicans, 634,000 citizens in the state will not have health coverage.

This article includes an interview with Democratic representative Chaz Beasley, who explains what was at stake.

He said,

North Carolinians sent us up to Raleigh to have a voice and a say in how we spend $24 billion. And what we’ve seen throughout this process is that many of us were not at the table when whole swaths of the budget were negotiated and settled upon. The governor has made it clear what he would like to see in the budget. One thing he’d like to see is Medicaid expansion in there.

But problems with the budget go beyond the fact that it doesn’t expand Medicaid for 500,000 North Carolinians. We still underpay our teachers. We still have schools that lack the resources to be successful. We still haven’t given a large enough pay increase to our state employees, or a cost of living adjustment to our retirees. Instead, the budget includes things like expanding programs for virtual charter schools that do not have good ratings for how they’re teaching our kids.

Virtual charter schools, we know, are a cash cow for big out-of-state corporations, and they are noted for terrible academic performance, high attrition, and low graduation rates.

The only mildly amusing comment in the article comes from a Republican who said that it was important to take a vote on 9/11 “so that the terrorists didn’t win.” He didn’t explain why it was necessary to take the vote when members of the Democratic party had been assured there would be no vote that morning. When you lie, cheat, and steal to get your way, you undermine democracy. When you betray democracy in your pursuit of power, the terrorists win.

 

Categories Corruption, Democrats, Lies, North Carolina, Republicans, Virtual Charter Schools

Jan Resseger: For-Profit MGT Did NOT “Turn Around” the Schools of Gary, Indiana

By dianeravitch
August 24, 2019 //
4

Jan Resseger noted that the Colorado state board of education awarded a contract to MGT Consulting based on their “success” in turning around the public schools of Gary, Indiana. She shows in this post that there was no turnaround.

She writes:

Colorado state school board members praised MGT’s record in the so-called turnaround of the only whole school district it has managed—for the past two years—in Gary, Indiana. The fact that MGT Consulting, a for-profit, was praised for work in Gary caught my eye. I have been to Gary, just as I have been to Detroit, whose public schools have shared some problems with Gary’s. Detroit’s school district was assigned a state emergency fiscal manager by former Governor Rick Snyder; in fact Detroit’s school district was assigned an emergency manager named Darnell Earley after he left Flint, where, as municipal emergency fiscal manager, he had permitted the poisoning of the city’s water supply. Fortunately Detroit’s schools have been turned back to the democratically elected local school board, which hired a professional educator, Dr. Nikolai Vitti.

And I have been to the cities in Ohio now in state takeover, and being operated by appointed Academic Distress Commissions. I am thinking of Youngstown, which in four years under an Academic Distress Commission and appointed CEO, has not turned around. I am thinking of Lorain, where outright chaos has ensued under an Academic Distress Commission’s appointed CEO, David Hardy. And I am thinking of East Cleveland, whose schools are just beginning the state takeover process, and ten other Ohio school districts—including Dayton and Toledo—being threatened with state takeover.

All of these Rust Belt cities and their school districts are characterized by economic collapse. They are industrial cities where factories have closed and workers moved away to seek employment elsewhere. When industry collapses, the property tax base—the foundation of the local contribution of school funding—evaporates, and as workers lose jobs or leave, local income tax revenue collapses as well…

In July 2017, the state took over the school district in Gary and turned the schools over to a private, for-profit management company: MGT Consultants. MGT hired Peggy Hinkley, a retired school superintendent to run the schools, but she resigned a little more than a year later. The Post-Tribune‘s Carole Carlson describes Hinkley’s tenure: “Hinkley served 14 months and ruffled the feathers of some elected officials who criticized her decisions, especially the closing of the Wirt-Emerson School of Visual and Performing Arts. When Wirt-Emerson closed in June (2018), it left the district with just one high school, the West Side Leadership Academy. It stoked fears of a continuing exodus of students who would leave for charter schools or other districts… Under Hinckley, Gary reached a deal resolving $8.4 million in back payroll taxes owed to the Internal Revenue Service. The IRS forgave a large portion of the debt, leaving the district with a $320,000 payment. The freeing up of the liens on buildings allowed Hinckley to list 33 vacant schools and properties for sale. By November, the district had accepted five offers, amounting to $480,000. More sales are still being weighed. In all, Hinckley erased about $6 million of the district’s $100,000 million in long-term debts and reduced its monthly deficit from about $1.8 million to $1.3 million… Academically, all seven elementary schools received Fs on state report cards this year.”

Clearly, in Gary, Indiana, MGT Consultants has not miraculously achieved the kind of quick school district turnaround Colorado’s state school board bragged about when it contracted with MGT to take over three school districts.

Read on to learn about the role of ex-Indiana superintendent Tony Bennett and the Corporate Reform-disruption-greed Movement.

Categories Accountability, Colorado, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, Indiana, Lies, Privatization

Stuart Egan Fact-Checks Baker Mitchell: He Prevaricates

By dianeravitch
August 23, 2019 //
13

Stuart Egan read Baker Mitchell’s op-ed in the Wall Street Journal defending charters against critics who say they foster segregation, and he was flabbergasted.

Here is his post.

He includes Baker Mitchell’s Wall Street Journal article, fulminating against the critics.

Then he cites the ProPublica article, Lindsay Wagner’s reporting, and John Merrow’s commentary, all reinforcing that Baker Mitchell has made millions by operating four charter schools.

Then Stuart goes to the official North Carolina report card site to gather information about Baker Mitchell’s charters.

Three are overwhelmingly white; one is overwhelmingly black. In other words, this champion of charters, this man who told the world that charters do not promote segregation, is managing a charter chain that is highly segregated. Furthermore, contrary to what he claimed in his article, his schools do NOT outperform local public schools.

Baker Mitchell prevaricated Bigly.

Someone should tell the Wall Street Journal to do their own fact-checking.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, For-Profit, Lies, North Carolina, Privatization, Segregation

Bob Shepherd Channels The Donald, #45

By dianeravitch
August 15, 2019 //
52

 

Bob Shepherd, all-around educator, assessment expert, curriculum expert, teacher, author, wrote a brilliant parody of a Trump rally. Read it here.

Incoherent stream of consciousness. Fourth grade vocabulary. Boasting. Narcissism. Replaying moments of triumph over his enemies. Crowd size. The biggest. Bullying.

Bob Shepherd also commented here about how Trump would act if he were a student in high school.

Trump is just like the high-school kid who throws spitballs or knocks someone’s books off a desk or otherwise disrupts class every time the teacher’s back is turned. He screws up his ugly, orange face and continually makes racist, anti-immigrant statements; stokes anti-immigrant feeling among white supremacists; and puts forward racist, anti-immigrant policies, but he usually stops short of the most bald racist language, preferring, instead, racist policy accompanied by dog-whistles. Then, after making some racist attack–telling congresswomen of color to go back to their countries, for example–he will, just like that high-school kid, deny, deny, deny. Trump: I am the least racist person. High-school kid: What? I didn’t do nothing.

Immaturity and disingenuousness. Not the qualities of a statesman, but those of a demagogue. “Hate has no place in America,” the Hater-in-Chief said this morning. That’s true. That’s why he should resign. And then be placed in detention.

 

Categories Education Reform, Lies

Arizona: Legislators Are Trying to Sneak a Voucher Bill Through. Stop Them!

By dianeravitch
May 2, 2019 //
2

Last fall, the voters of Arizona rejected vouchers by an overwhelming vote.

But the Koch brothers and devious Doug Ducey are not giving up. They slipped through an innocuous bill to thwart the will of the people.

Stop them!

From: “Save Our Schools Arizona” <info@sosarizona.org>
Date: May 1, 2019 at 8:16:11 PM MST
To: “Barbara Veltri” <barbvbtv@aol.com>
Subject: 🚨🚨🚨 Red Alert: Stealth bill SB 1349 needs IMMEDIATE opposition
Reply-To: info@sosarizona.org
SB 1349 “Family College Savings Program” sounded innocent, and flew right under our radar. But when we took a closer look, we realized this program was introducing vouchers by another name.  

We are asking for IMMEDIATE action, since this bill has already passed Senate and House and is now back in the Senate for conformity review. We have only ONE chance to kill this bad bill.

  1. Call your Senator and ask for a NO vote on the conformed SB 1349
  2. Use “RTS 2.0” to enter AGAINST SB 1349 (Request to Speak → My Bill Positions → Enter Bill Number, select bill, then click AGAINST)

This bill creates a new way to siphon tax dollars out of the state’s general fund by incentivizing Arizona families to spend their 529 savings on K-12 private school tuition and expenses (up to $10,000 per account per year!) instead of saving for college, as the accounts are intended.

To add insult to injury, the bill could drain up to $438K annually from the general fund (and therefore our public schools), according to the state’s own nonpartisan fiscal review board.

This is NOT fiscally responsible and harms our public schools.

Thank you for your activism!
The Leadership Team

Save Our Schools Arizona
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Save Our Schools Arizona
PO Box 28370
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Categories Arizona, Betsy DeVos, Corruption, Education Industry, Education Reform, Koch Brothers, Lies, Privatization

Trump Hits a Milestone: More Than 10,000 Lies!

By dianeravitch
April 29, 2019 //
45

The Washington Post FactChecker Glenn Kessler and his team announced today that Trump had passed a total of 10,000 lies. That is a record, even for him! And he still has another 20 months to go in his term!

It took President Trump 601 days to top 5,000 false and misleading claims in The Fact Checker’s database, an average of eight claims a day.

But on April 26, just 226 days later, the president crossed the 10,000 mark — an average of nearly 23 claims a day in this seven-month period, which included the many rallies he held before the midterm elections, the partial government shutdown over his promised border wall and the release of the special counsel’s report on Russian interference in the presidential election.

This milestone appeared unlikely when The Fact Checker first started this project during his first 100 days. In the first 100 days, Trump averaged less than five claims a day, which would have added up to about 7,000 claims in a four-year presidential term. But the tsunami of untruths just keeps looming larger and larger.

It seems that the longer he is in the White House, the easier it is to say whatever he wants, without bothering to discern whether it has any factual basis.

Also, he has gotten rid of anyone who restrained his impulse to lie or distort the facts, like General Kelly.

About one-fifth of the president’s claims are about immigration issues, a percentage that has grown since the government shutdown over funding for his promised border wall. In fact, his most repeated claim — 160 times — is that his border wall is being built. Congress balked at funding the concrete wall he envisioned, and so he has tried to pitch bollard fencing and repairs of existing barriers as “a wall.”

Trump’s penchant for repeating false claims is demonstrated by the fact that The Fact Checker database has recorded nearly 300 instances when the president has repeated a variation of the same claim at least three times. He also now has earned 21 “Bottomless Pinocchios,” claims that have earned Three or Four Pinocchios and which have been repeated at least 20 times.

About a fifth of his lies are told at his campaign rallies, where he gets up without a speech and riffs on whatever crosses his mind, whatever makes him angry, free associates about his enemies and critics and alleged accomplishments.

When the president of the United States lies wantonly and when he calls the press “the enemy of the people,” you can see we are on a downward trajectory in which there are no truths and no objective facts, whom do you believe? George Orwell wrote about this phenomenon.

Orwell wrote in his essay, “Looking Back on the Spanish War”:

I know it is the fashion to say that most of recorded history is lies anyway. I am willing to believe that history is for the most part inaccurate and biased, but what is peculiar to our own age is the abandonment of the idea that history could be truthfully written. In the past, people deliberately lied, or they unconsciously colored what they wrote, or they struggled after the truth, well knowing that they must make many mistakes; but in each case they believed that “the facts” existed and were more or less discoverable. And in practice there was always a considerable body of fact which would have been agreed to by almost anyone. If you look up the history of the last war in, for instance, the Encyclopedia Britannica, you will find that a respectable amount of the material is drawn from German sources. A British and a German historian would disagree deeply on many things, even on fundamentals, but there would still be a body of, as it were, neutral fact on which neither would seriously challenge the other. It is just this common basis of agreement with its implication that human beings are all one species of animal, that totalitarianism destroys. Nazi theory indeed specifically denies that such a thing as “the truth” exists. There is, for instance, no such thing as “Science”. There is only “German Science,” “Jewish Science,” etc. The implied objective of this line of thought is a nightmare world in which the Leader, or some ruling clique, controls not only the future but the past. If the Leader says of such and such an event, “It never happened” — well, it never happened. If he says that two and two are five — well two and two are five. This prospect frightens me much more than bombs — and after our experiences of the last few years that is not such a frivolous statement.

Categories Fake News, Fascism, Lies, Trump

Carol Burris: Why Charter Schools Are Unnecessary

By dianeravitch
April 14, 2019 //
13

 

Carol Burris is the executive director of the Network for Public Education. She is a lifelong educator, first a teacher of Spanish, then an award-winning principal of a high school in New York.

She writes here to explain briefly why charter schools are unnecessary and are not public schools.

“When I was a high school principal, I also ran an alternative school called The Greenhouse. It was small–its average enrollment was 17 students. The students were older–juniors or seniors–who were credit-deficient or who, for personal reasons, needed an alternative setting.

“Greenhouse saved lives and reduced our dropout rate to less than 1%. It was run (and is still run) by a wonderful teacher, Frank Van Zant. I gave Frank ample resources with teachers from South Side going to the school to provide content instruction for one or two periods a day. I trusted him and gave him freedom. It has (and still has) a full-time social worker. Hours for students were more flexible. Instruction was small group. I called the Greenhouse a delicate ecology. I was careful to place in the program only those students who really needed it.
“Our students on suspension also benefitted. They would receive instruction there at the end of the day so that they were well educated and counseled when out of school and could more easily transition back.
“All of that innovation and I did not need “a charter” to do it. The ultimate authority was the School Board. The kids who graduated received a South Side diploma. In fact, by the time I left, 100% graduated with a NYS Regents diploma.
“I am weary of hearing that charter schools are public schools. That is a lie.  Public schools are governed by the public, not by a private corporation.
“Charter advocates will say Wisconsin has “public charters” because they are authorized by the school district. However, all of those district authorized schools, thanks to Scott Walker,  are now run by for-profit or nonprofit corporations. Publicly-governed charter schools without a private board are not allowed.  I do not believe there is even one public charter school–that is a charter school run by an elected school board–in the United States. Is there one left?”
Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Hoax, Innovation, Lies, Privatization, Walker, Scott, Wisconsin

Tennessee: Showdown Over Vouchers

By dianeravitch
April 11, 2019 //
18

 

Governor Bill Lee has proposed a voucher program. Teachers and parents are outraged. —but not enough of them.

When the bill moved from the House to the Senate,  the number of vouchers were doubled to 30,000.

The money for vouchers will be subtracted from public schools, which educate 90% of the children of Tennessee. Expect more segregation, more bigotry, more children taught by uncertified teachers, more state-sponsored ignorance of science and history. Expect budget cuts in public schools, larger classes, no money for higher salaries, layoffs for teachers, school nurses, librarians, counselors, the arts.

Betsy DeVos visited Tennessee last week to promote vouchers, and she flatly lied about Florida’s test scores, which are mediocre. She claimed that achievement in Florida had gone up because of the $3 billion that the state spends each year on vouchers and charters. Not true. Surely she is well aware of the voucher studies in D.C., Milwaukee, Ohio, Louisiana, and Indiana showing that students who use vouchers do no better or much worse in school than their peers who remain in public schools.

Florida’s performance on NAEP is mediocre, except for fourth grade, where scores are artificially inflated by the state policy of holding back low-scoring third graders.

Quote of the day:

“‘We don’t have the luxury of worrying about a handful of children,” said Knox County teacher Lauren Hobson, speaking to another crowd assembled by the Tennessee Democratic Party. “We have to worry about the 90% of the children across the country left in schools with us.”

“Hobson and other critics believe underfunding is the real battle in public schools.

“‘Our legislators actually have a constitutional duty in Tennessee to maintain and support a public education,” she said. “They have no duty to support private education.’”

Read that last line again. She is right. Republican legislators in Tennessee, Florida, Indiana, and other states are ignoring their constitutional duty “to maintain and support public education,” not private schools.

 

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Florida, Lies, School Choice, Separation of church and state, Tennessee, Vouchers
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