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Peter Greene: Will Wyoming Pass Vouchers and Throw Rural Schools Under the Bus?

By dianeravitch
December 2, 2023 //
5

Peter Greene has been following the debate over voucher legislation in Wyoming, where they have failed until now. Surely some Republicans must be following what happened to vouchers in Texas, where a significant number of Republicans representing rural districts voted them down to protect their community public schools. They knew their schools needed funding, not competition. What states like Wyoming need is a public referendum on vouchers: let the public decide. Could it be that the politicians know that no state referendum on vouchers has ever passed?

Greene writes:

Attempts have been made to sell a school voucher bill in the Wyoming legislature, like the Wyoming Freedom Scholarship Act (because “scholarship” and “freedom” are more popular terms than “voucher”) earlier this year, but they have all failed. Now a new variation on the theme is aiming at a place on the 2024 schedule.

Oddly enough, the bill comes from Speaker of the House Albert Sommers, a Republican who actually helped block the Freedom Scholarship Act. But he thinks this alternate form will work better. Opponents disagree. Actually, some supporters disagreed, too– State Senator Bo Biteman said this new version was too watered down and was a “crap sandwich,” and so, as we’ll see, GOP reps managed to un-water the bill.

Some key features.

The bill runs on $40 million taken from the general fund. Of that $40 million, $12 million (30%) goes to fund preschool education. Because if there’s one technique that voucher proponents have learned, it’s to team up your unpopular voucher plan with something that people want.

The rest of the funding would go to ESA vouchers.
The bill uses the usual foot-in-the-door feature of an income cap for receiving the vouchers. This bill sets the cap at 250% of federal poverty limit, which adds up to $75,000 for a family of four. Median household income in Wyoming is $68,000. One legislator unsuccessfully tried to boost this up to 350% ($105K). At this point, nobody should be fooled by the “we’re just doing this to rescue the poor kids” line, as we have seen multiple states modify their program with ever-increasing caps or simply getting rid of the cap entirely.

With that expansion of eligibility, we keep seeing voucher program costs explode to budget-busting extremes.

Voucher amount would be up to $5,000. According to the website Private School Review, average private school tuition in Wyoming is $8,719 per year.

In one feature that is not common to voucher laws, the bill proposes that the Department of Education would certify vendors eligible to be paid with the taxpayer-funded vouchers. (That was not part of the Freedom Scholarship Act.) But a legislator successfully added an amendment, typical of current voucher law, that the state can’t interfere with the private school’s curriculum or admission policies, meaning that the school could teach religion, flat earth science, creationism, and racial supremacy if it so desired, as well as discriminating against whatever applicants it so desired.

In practice, what that means is that religious schools can accept vouchers while offering religious indoctrination and religion-based discrimination (e.g. the Illinois voucher school that requires families to be born-again Christians)
And another legislator successfully stripped the portion of the bill that voucher-using students had to take the same state tests as public school students. Rep. Karlee Provenza pretty well captured what all these changes mean.

“When we remove that testing standard, we are moving away from saying is government money being well spent?” Provenza said. “We’re not regulating choice, we’re regulating accountability of our state funds.”

True enough, but current voucher theory says that a voucher bill isn’t non-crappy unless it’s stripped of accountability and oversight. So if Wyoming is going to have school vouchers, they should be as unaccountable and unregulated as possible. Kiss those dollars goodbye, taxpayers, and don’t ask where they went or how effectively they were spent. Freedom!

The bill will still have to clear some hurdles, including a state constitution that prohibits the use of “any portion of any public school fund” for private schools (Article 7, Section 8).

Wyoming voucher advocates have struggled with this, and the argument seems to boil down to:

1) Once we hand the money over to the parents, it is transformed into private money and so there’s no problem!

2) Supreme Court thinks public money should absolutely finance the exercise of religion, so if this makes it all the way to SCOTUS, they will be on our side.

So we’ll see. There are unique features to a voucher initiative in Wyoming. For one, funding vouchers by having “the money follow the child” would never fly, because Wyoming schools have wildly different per pupil costs. In 2019-2020, Laramie #1 spent $14,582 per student, but the very rural Sheridan district (90 students) spent $41,176 per student. That means Wyoming is better inclined to fund vouchers separately from public education. They could, in fact, be the first legislature to be honest and say, “We believe in choice so much that we are going to raise your taxes to fund it.”

For another, there’s that state constitution, exactly the same sort of challenge that sank a voucher proposal in Kentucky.

Other state constitutions, such as Florida and Ohio, ban public funding for religious schools, but that has not been an obstacle to GOP politicians.

Categories Accountability, Equity, Extremism, Funding, Privatization, Rural Schools, School Choice, Vouchers, Wyoming

Jan Resseger: The Facts About Vouchers

By dianeravitch
December 1, 2023 //
5

The Network for Public Education reposted this excellent review of a book about vouchers. The review and the book summarize the findings about who benefits from vouchers and how they affect the public schools. The place to begin is with recognition of the handsomely funded propaganda campaign on behalf of vouchers. The promise was equity. The reality was inequity, diverting public funds to subsidize students who never attended public schools. Were vouchers intended as a scam or did they unexpectedly turn into one?

New post on Network for Public Education. Jan Resseger: New Book Contrasts What Voucher Proponents Promise to the Inequitable Results

Jan Resseger writes:

Jan Resseger looks at a new book edited by Kevin Weltner of the National Education Policy Center entitled The School Voucher Illusion. Reposted with permission.

Teachers College Press recently published The School Voucher Illusion: Exposing the Pretense of Equity, a dispositive analysis of the failure of publicly funded private school tuition voucher programs.

The book is a collection of essays edited by Kevin Welner, Director of the Education Policy Center and professor at the University of Colorado; Gary Orfield, Director of the Civil Rights Project and professor at UCLA; and Luis Huerta, professor at Teachers College, Columbia University. Contributors include the editors as well as Derek Black, author of Schoolhouse Burning and professor at the University of South Carolina; Christopher Lubienski, author of The Public School Advantage and professor at Indiana University; Preston Green, professor at the University of Connecticut; and Suzanne Eckes and Julie Mead, professors at the University of Wisconsin, and many other scholars. The list includes academic experts on constitutional law, civil rights, public policy, and the social foundations of education.

In the final chapter, after 270 pages of data and theoretical exploration, Welner, Orfield, and Huerta contrast what the promoters of school privatization promise to the damage caused by the school voucher programs spreading across the states today: “If the real choice is not access to a superior, idealized school with an excellent faculty, but instead to a segregated religious school that is also struggling with concentrated poverty plus a weak and inexperienced teaching force, then vouchers are offering a fundamentally different experience than what’s been advertised.” (p. 276)

What about the diversion of states’ education budgets to private schools?

“What began in Cleveland and Milwaukee as small-scale pilots targeted to ‘save’ students of color from ‘failing public schools’… quickly transformed into a movement to give all students a taxpayer subsidy to incentivize them to leave their public schools and, then, into subsidies for students who were in private schools anyway—simply a transfer of money, usually to families without the financial exigency.” (p. 278)

Through the research reported by contributors to this book, the editors conclude that measuring the fiscal impact of transferring tax dollars to private schools is complicated due to all the ways: “vouchers interact with public budgets… Any measure of the immediate fiscal and educational efficiency of vouchers must… account for significant cost differentials compared to a comprehensive public school system… and must include measures of quality and the amount of services provided to all students. For example, public schools routinely enroll greater numbers of special education, vocational education, and English language learner students, who require more expensive educational services than those that private schools typically provide.” (p. 284)

There is also the problem of fixed costs that do not change when students leave public schools with a voucher: “A reduction in public school enrollments must also be taken into account due to effects on the economies of scale that support public school infrastructure…. When policies move students out of public school systems, the schools often have fixed costs… that cannot be lowered to match declining per-student aid from state governments, leaving less money for educational operations.” (p. 284)

And what about the vouchers taken up by students already in private schools? “Voucher programs only realize financial savings for state governments when the cost of providing vouchers to families is offset by corresponding reductions for students opting out of the public school system… Advocates who claim voucher and neovoucher programs are a savings to taxpayers use very high switcher rates, which can result in a gross overestimate of public-coffer savings.” (p. 284-285)

What have we lost through the erosion of the Constitutional protection of the separation of church and state?

The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution begins: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” Although previous U.S. Supreme Courts used to interpret the separation of government and religion under the Establishment Clause, in three recent Supreme Court precedents, today’s justices have relied on the Free Exercise Clause—opining that if a state provides vouchers to private schools, it may not interfere with the free exercise of religion by denying vouchers to private schools that are run by faith communities, even those private schools that explicitly teach religion as part of the curriculum.

Welner, Orfield and Huerta explain how the Supreme Court’s new definition of church/state separation complicates voucher expansion across the states: “A state-established church is, after all, a formalized entanglement between the two institutions. Connected leadership and decision-making, finances and personnel, beliefs and positions…. Each of these is… a type of entanglement, in the sense that a move taken by one of the two institutions is directly felt by the other… We cannot yet know how far the current Supreme Court will take its elevated Free Exercise concerns about bias against religious institutions—perhaps all religiously motivated discrimination will be given heightened legal protection, or perhaps the Court will treat discriminatory practices as beyond the protection of the Free Exercise Clause, or perhaps racial discrimination will trigger greater scrutiny and protection than discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. It is not difficult to see the slippery slope of unregulated funding combined with extreme protection of religious freedom. While religious beliefs are often caring and comforting, some of these beliefs are hostile to outsiders…. (D)iscrimination against members of the LGBTQ+ community is not unusual in private religious schools.” (pp. 280-283)

Are the most vulnerable children the ones who actually receive the vouchers? And what about protecting children’s civil rights?

“Advocates for expanding vouchers argue that students of color and low income students, particularly those with special needs, are otherwise denied the choices available to middle-class families. Vouchers, they say, will provide a large step toward equity of educational opportunity. Yet as described throughout this book, actual voucher policies tend to reach a different set of students. Choice research across the globe finds that unregulated choice creates stratification and disadvantages the disadvantaged.” (p. 286)

I wish the National Education Policy Center, of which Welner is the director, would publish, as a resource brief, the list of 13 questions (pp. 286-287) which advocates, critics, and regulators should ask when voucher programs are proposed. These questions are designed to expose a voucher program’s violations of standards of equity and opportunity. Here are just three examples: “Under what conditions are voucher-receiving schools allowed to reject applicants and expel students?” “Do the voucher-receiving schools have the staff and training to educate successfully and responsively with a community’s diverse population?” “Does the voucher program increase (or diminish) stratification by race and class? For students with special needs and students whose first language is other than English?” (pp. 286-287)

When students bring vouchers to private schools, there are myriad ways their rights are likely to remain unprotected: “State laws should mandate that, with the receipt of public funds, all participating schools become fully responsible to comply with all civil rights laws. For instance, they must agree to comply with the nondiscrimination provisions of the 1964 Civil Rights Act (or a substantially equivalent state civil rights act), including the antidiscrimination policies protecting students and all job discrimination components of staffing. They must also agree to comply with federal laws on special education rights and prohibitions against sex discrimination. Without such policies (which mirror those in many European countries that have voucher-like funding systems), taxpayer dollars are subsidizing open discrimination against some groups.” (p. 288)

The editors conclude The School Voucher Illusion: Exposing the Pretense of Equity with a warning: “As currently structured, voucher policies in the United States are unlikely to help the students they claim to support. Instead, these policies have often served as a facade for the far less popular reality of funding relatively advantaged (and largely White) families, many of whom already attended—or would attend—private schools without subsidies. Although vouchers are presented as helping parents choose schools, often the arrangements permit the private schools to do the choosing… If publicly stated social justice goals are to be anything more than empty and misleading rhetoric, lawmakers will need to address the concerns raised by the authors throughout this volume. Advocacy that began with a focus on equity must not become a justification for increasing inequity. Today’s voucher policies have, by design, created growing financial commitments of taxpayer money to serve a constituency of the relatively advantaged that is redefining their subsidies as rights—often in jurisdictions where neighborhood public schools do not have the resources they need.” (p. 290)You can view the post at this link : https://networkforpubliceducation.org/blog-content/jan-resseger-new-book-contrasts-what-voucher-proponents-promise-to-the-inequitable-results/

Please open the link to read the post in full.

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Education Industry, Failure, Privatization, Propaganda, School Choice, Vouchers

The Network for Public Education Needs YOU!

By dianeravitch
November 28, 2023 //
7

The Network for Public Education is the largest organization of volunteers and a tiny staff working every day to stop privatization of our public schools. The following is a message from our executive director, Carol Burris. Unlike the billionaire-funded advocacy groups for charters and vouchers, we need you! Contributions of any size are welcome!

What keeps NPE going are donors like you–friends of public education who are willing to make a one-time or monthly donation to invest in the continuance of our public schools.

We operate on a shoestring. But our reports, action alerts, advocacy, conferences, and webinars with Diane put us at the forefront of saving public education. Behind the scenes in fighting vouchers in Texas or making the case for Charter School Programs reform, NPE is the organization with a tiny budget but a mighty voice.

So please give to NPE this holiday season. You can make an online donation here, or, if you prefer to send a check, our address is:

The Network for Public Education, PO BOX 227, New York City, NY 10156.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Network for Public Education, Privatization, Supporting public schools, Vouchers

Brilliant! Houston Chronicle: Gov. Abbott, Give Up on Vouchers!

By dianeravitch
November 21, 2023 //
3

The Houston Chronicle editorial board advised Governor Abbott to abandon his determined fight for vouchers. Fund the public schools instead. Abbott tried and failed to pass vouchers in the regular session. He then called four special sessions and failed every time to pass vouchers, despite threats and bribes. Abbott refused any increase for public school funding or teachers’ salaries. The Educatuon of the more than 5 million children in public schools meant far less to him than the chance to subsidize the tuition of the tens of thousands of children already enrolled in private and religious schools.

The Chronicle wrote:

If at first (and second, and third, and so on) you don’t succeed, try strong-arming and threats.

That was Gov. Greg Abbott’s strategy to try to pass school vouchers in the fourth special session so far. He’ll need to find another trick.

Tucked inside an omnibus school spending bill in the House, vouchers made it the farthest yet this year: all the way to a floor debate Friday. Once again, however, a bipartisan alliance stood in Abbott’s way, passing an amendment 84-63 that removed vouchers from the bill.

In the first full House discussion on the issue in decades, voucher advocates repeatedly appealed to the needs of the most disadvantaged students who they claimed would be most impacted by such a program: low-income students, bullied kids, sexual assault victims and students with special education needs. House Bill 1 author Rep. Brad Buckley, R-Killeen, promised the bill would prioritize “the most vulnerable,” including those with learning challenges.

We’ve seen the failures of such promiseselsewhere. But consider the numbers here in Texas.

While most private schools say they serve students with some sort of special education need, only 63 across the entire state actually cater to those students, according to testimony from Andrea Chevalier, director of government relations with the Texas Council of Administrators of Special Education.

Those 63 schools, identified by the online database Private School Review, serve approximately 4,510 students in Texas. That’s compared to 700,000 students in the public school system currently enrolled in special education services.

Those private schools are mostly in urban centers, have an average tuition of more than $19,000 and can, of course, reject anyone they want based on their own screening criteria.

“Do you think even 5% of special ed kids that we’re proposing to do the most for would qualify or that there would be a place in a private setting for them?” asked state Rep. Ken King, R-Canadian, during a committee hearing on the bill.

Special education experts know vouchers won’t help the neediest. By now, lawmakers should know better too.

Still, it gets worse. The governor has also held hostage desperately needed increases to public special education budgets until he gets what he wants. As part of an omnibus bill, vouchers were mixed with badly needed boosts to public education funding — fine arts dollars, more per-student funding, new teacher stipends and raises and more.

King asked several witnesses how much sugar might be enough for them to swallow his poison pill?

“There is no dollar amount for us that would justify the long-term damage,” said Chevalier.

In the proposed program’s first wave, some 40,000 students would get $10,500 each at an estimated cost of $461.8 million in fiscal year 2025. But the costs balloon, especially, as many fear will happen, if the Legislature looks to expand the program after getting a foot in the door. Importantly, students currently attending private schools would be eligible for those dollars, betraying the promise made repeatedly Friday that vouchers offered a lifeline to low-income families stuck in their failing zoned school.

We’ve complained — as Abbott has given us ample opportunity to do — about the financial ramifications of vouchers, the lack of accountability and clear, persuasive data showing achievement boosts. But we also oppose vouchers because of the absolute disservice they would do to many students with special needs, students who, even if accepted to a pricey private school, surrender their federal protections against discrimination when they leave public schools.

Friday, Buckley told heart-rending stories of hard-working families struggling on behalf of their special needs students. The government does offer those families not well served by public schools an option: they can challenge their school district in a due process hearing before a state education official, seeking to either force the district to provide appropriate accommodations or to pay for the cost of private schooling. For too many parents, that rare option is still out of reach and requires time and legal savvy to be successful. We’d rather see access to that process strengthened than a sham of a private-school handout.

If Buckley and others really want to help our special education students, they should fully fund our public school system. No poison pill required.

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Extremism, Failure, Funding, Privatization, Texas, Vouchers

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

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

A Useful Guide to the Privatization Movement: Please Add Your Nominees!

By dianeravitch
November 15, 2023 //
5

Maurice Cunningham, a retired professor of political science and an expert on dark money in education elections, prepared A CITIZEN’S GUIDE TO SCHOOL PRIVATIZATION.

It is posted on the website of the Network for Public Education.

It is a glossary of the organizations and individuals who lead the effort to privatize education.

Please open the guide and see if you have names and groups to add. The GUIDE is meant to be built on the foundation created by Cunningham. Please send your suggestions. Are there groups active in your community that were not included? Send them to the Carol Burris at the Network for Public Education.

cburris@networkforpubliceducation.org.

Carol will forward your tips to Maurice Cunningham for review and possible inclusion.

Categories Corporate Reformers, Dark Money, Disruption, Education Industry, Extremism, Fake, Privatization, Propaganda, School Choice, Vouchers

“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

Jan Resseger: The Governor‘s Takeover of Education Is Hurting Ohio’s Schools

By dianeravitch
November 13, 2023 //
12

Recently, there has been a trend in states with a supermajority of Republicans in the Legislature to seize the reins of power in every realm. First, they gerrymander the state to assure that the other party has no chance to win control. Then they strip power where Democrats exercise any authority. In North Carolina, the Republican Legislature removed power from the Democratic governor. In Wisconsin, the Republican Legislature followed suit. In Ohio, with a Republican Legislature and Governor, the Governor took control of education away from the mostly elected State Board of Education.

The Ohio State Board resisted. It even sued. But a judge ruled that the governor had the authority to take control of education policy away from the State Board, even though voters gave those powers to the State Board in 1953.

Bill Phillis of the Ohio Coalition for Equity and Adequacy provided the context:

Judge rules that state level governance of education can return to the Governor’s office, notwithstanding that Ohioans, in 1953, transferred education governance from the Governor’s office to the State Board ofEducation via a constitutional amendment.

Article VI, section 4 was added to the Constitution in 1953 by the citizens of Ohio. At that time, the governance of education was embedded in the governor’s office. Ohioans passed a constitutional amendment to have education governed with the same model as used at the local level—citizens elected on a non-partisan basis to govern school districts. Local districts were not and are not now governed by other governmental jurisdictions—mayors, city councils, county commissions, township trustees.

In Ohio’s current political climate, the will of the people is summarily disregarded, even though the Ohio Constitution states that “all political power is inherent in the people.” (Article I, section 2) Notwithstanding this powerful constitutional safeguard for the folks, a Senate leader in Ohio recently said publicly, “We kinda do what we want…”

The Court, in other words, overturned the will of the voters and the state constitution.

Jan Resseger, who lives in Ohio, describes the evisceration of the State Board of Education.

She writes:

Education Week‘s Libby Sanford recently covered the education governance battle in Ohio, where the legislature just seized control of public education standards and curriculum by eviscerating the power of the Ohio State Board of Education and moving control of the state’s public schools under the political control of the governor and his appointees.

Sanford explains how the leaders of Ohio’s gerrymandered, supermajority Republican legislature folded the school governance takeover into the state budget after the legislature had failed on its own to enact the the plan to gut the power of the State Board of Education: “(T)he Republican-led Ohio state legislature passed a two-year budget that included a provision converting the Ohio Department of Education, led by a superintendent chosen by the State Board of Education, into the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce, led by a director appointed by the governor. The budget also… includes a requirement that schools adopt a state-approved reading program by the next school year and a ban on the use of the three-cueing method in literacy instruction. The move changing how education is overseen in The Buckeye State strips the 19-member State Board of Education—of which 11 members are elected and eight are appointed by the governor—of its powers to… set academic standards and set frameworks for school curricula, limiting the board to decisions on teacher disciplinary and licensure cases and disputes over school boundaries.”

According to the provisions of a 1953 state constitutional amendment, Ohio’s state board of education will continue to exist but will lack any power to control significant policy. Its members will continue to appoint a state superintendent of public instruction, but that individual will serve as a mere advisor to the governor’s appointee who will control the state’s primary public education governance and operations.

In Ohio, two members of the State Board and another parent, on behalf of their children enrolled in public schools, along with the Toledo Board of Education filed a lawsuit to block the governor’s seizure of the powers of the state board. A judge has allowed the takeover to move forward, however, while the case makes its way through the courts. On November 3, 2023, plaintiffs’ attorneys submitted a brief in support of the plaintiff’s objections to the magistrate’s decision.

Sanford examines the political takeover of Ohio’s public schools in the context of a broader national trend among legislatures and governors to introduce partisan bias into governance of an institution that has historically been protected: “(T)he state (Ohio) isn’t the first to make a move of this kind… (E)specially over the past few years, lawmakers and state leaders have taken more aggressive action on state education policy, enacting laws that limit what teachers can talk about in the classroom, greatly expanding school choice, and requiring that schools notify parents when their children seek to use pronouns or names that don’t align with their sex assigned at birth.”

Sanford interviews Jeffrey Henig, a professor of education and political science at Teachers College, Columbia University, who identifies Ohio’s insertion of politics into the governance of the state’s public schools as part of a growing trend across the states.  He calls the move, nonetheless, “a high-risk proposition.” Henig explains: “(A)t the start of the 20th century, around two-thirds of states elected their chief school officers. By 2010 that number had dropped to less than 30 percent. Many states, like Ohio, gave the power to choose a state school officer to state boards, while others gave that power to the governor. ‘The general story is there’s been this long, slow shift in formal authority… but more recently governors getting more directly involved.”

Citing examples like Governor Ron DeSantis in Florida and Governor Kim Reynolds in Iowa, Henig hopes that perhaps the new trend will run its course: “Public education can be a hot potato issue… You can get your hands burned by being too closely involved… General-purpose politicians will realize that education isn’t a sure winner for them and succumb to the pressures, many of which are legitimate, to make their mark in other areas of domestic policy rather than stick their noses right in the middle of these swirling waters of culture wars.”

As a citizen in Ohio who values public schooling, I hope Henig is correct. The danger for our children of inserting politics and ideology into the public schools has become clearer not only through the insertion of culture war bias into state legislation, but also as lobbyists pressure politicians to adopt ideology-driven education theories and even specific curricula from think tanks with known political biases. Ohio is an example. Dee Bagwell Haslam, whose family owns the Cleveland Browns, is a major contributor to the campaigns of Ohio’s Republican politicians. She also serves on the board of Jeb Bush’s ExcelinEd.  Dee Haslam has lobbied Governor Mike DeWine and the Ohio Legislature to promote one of ExcelinEd’s priorities: the Science of Reading. In this year’s state budget, the Ohio Legislature mandated that all Ohio public schools will adopt the Science of Reading as their sole reading curriculum.

In Schoolhouse Burning, his excellent exploration of the history of public education, Derek Black, an attorney and professor of constitutional law, describes the reasons why, in the period immediately following the Civil War, the authors of many of the state constitutions created state boards of education that would be independent and resistant to political meddling in public schools’ standards and curriculum:

“States… guarded against the politicization of education by vesting constitutional authority in the hands of education professionals (or at least people solely focused on education)… Following the Civil War, state constitutions increasingly established a state superintendent and/or state board of education. Doing so ensured that the individuals entrusted with administering education and setting various education policies would not be wedded to any geographic or political constituency. They were to act on behalf of all the state’s children and exercise their best judgment, hopefully devoid of the normal politics of the state house. And unlike the heads of transportation, agriculture, commerce, and police, for instance, these education officials would not serve at the pleasure of the governor or legislature.” (Schoolhouse Burning, pp. 220-221)

Categories Corruption, Education Industry, Extremism, Ohio, Privatization, Republicans, School Choice, Unions

ProPublica: Voters in Midland, Texas, Defy Billionaire, Pass School Bond Issue

By dianeravitch
November 12, 2023 //
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Last week, ProPublica wrote about billionaire Tim Dunn and his efforts to defeat a $1.4 billion bond issue in Midland, Texas. Dunn ran his campaign through a Dark Money nonprofit that is staffed by his colleagues. Dunn wants a voucher program for the state and opposes new funding for public schools.

Allies of influential Texas billionaire Tim Dunn are pushing ahead in Austin with efforts to create a private-school voucher system that could weaken public schools across the state. Meanwhile, Dunn’s associates in his hometown of Midland are working to defeat a local school bond proposal that his district says it desperately needs.

Dunn, an evangelical Christian, is best known for a mostly successful two-decade effort to push the Texas GOP ever further to the right. His political action committees have spent millions to elect pro-voucher candidates and derail Republicans who oppose them. Defend Texas Liberty, the influential PAC he funds with other West Texas oil barons, has come under fire after The Texas Tribune revealed that the PAC’s president had hosted infamous white supremacist Nick Fuentes for an October meeting and that the organization has connections to other white nationalists.

Less known are Dunn’s efforts to shape politics in his hometown of Midland, which will come to a head next week. On Tuesday, residents in the Midland Independent School District will vote on a $1.4 billion bond, the largest in its history, after rejecting a smaller measure four years ago. A dark-money organization whose leaders have ties to Dunn’s Midland oil and gas company, as well as to a prominent conservative public policy organization where Dunn serves as vice chairman, have become among the loudest voices against the bond.

On Sept. 21, less than two months before the Midland bond election, three Midland residents with deep connections to Dunn and his associated public policy organization registered a “social welfare” nonprofit called Move Midland.

The nonprofit is headed by Rachel Walker, a public affairs manager for Dunn’s oil and gas company, CrownQuest Operating LLC, according to public records. A second member, Ernest Angelo, is a former Midland mayor and board member of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative think tank that Dunn has helped lead for more than two decades. The third member of the nonprofit’s board is Elizabeth Moore, a former West Texas development officer for the Texas Public Policy Foundation.

But then the voters got a chance to be heard. They said NO to Tim Dunn!

Update, Nov. 8, 2023: On Nov. 7, Midland school district voters approved a $1.4 billion bond proposal by a 56% to 44% vote, rejecting arguments against the measure from a nonprofit led by associates of billionaire oilman Tim Dunn.

Categories Billionaires, Dark Money, Democracy, Education Reform, Elections, Privatization, Texas
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