Archives for category: Privatization
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Kentucky Governor Vetoes Voucher Bill and Pension Bill

By dianeravitch
March 24, 2021 //
7

Democrat Andy Beshear vetoed school bills passed by the Republican-dominated legislature of Kentucky. Beshear campaigned as a friend of public schools, and he came through for students, parents, teachers, and communities in Kentucky.

Blogger Fred Klonsky has the story from the Louisville Courier Journal by Olivia Krauth:

Calling them a “direct attack” on Kentucky’s public schools, Gov. Andy Beshear vetoed a set of controversial education bills Wednesday. 

Chief among the vetoed bills is House Bill 563, which would allow state funding to follow students who attend a public school outside of their home district and create a form of scholarship tax credits that would siphon millions from Kentucky’s general fund.

“Can we expect more from public education? Absolutely,” Beshear said Wednesday. “But the way to do that is not to defund it.”

The measure is “unconstitutional” on multiple fronts, Beshear said, and he expects it to face a legal challenge should his veto be overriden. 

The legislation landed on his desk after passing through the House on the slimmest of margins — 48-47 — raising questions if the Republican-led House will get the 51 votes needed to override Beshear’s veto when they reconvene Monday for the final two days of the 2021 legislative session.

Beshear, a Democrat who made public education a cornerstone of his administration, also rejected legislation placing new teachers on “hybrid” pension plans.

In an education-focused press conference, Beshear signed a bill allowing Kentucky students a “do-over” year after the pandemic disrupted classes and milestones for thousands of kids. 

VETO OVERRIDE OF SCHOOL CHOICE BILL QUESTIONABLE

A provision to create tax credits to rally donations that would go to private school tuition in Kentucky’s largest areas was the main sticking point in HB 563.

Lt. Gov. Jacqueline Coleman, a former educator, said the piece of legislation is “unconstitutional” and “unethical.”

A piece of the bill requiring districts to create open enrollment policies with each other was less controversial, with Beshear acknowledging the struggles some leaders of small, independent school districts face and offering to help find a solution outside of this bill.

“Governor Beshear is wrong to veto House Bill 563,” EdChoice KY President Charles Leis said in a statement. “By doing so, he chose to listen to special interests like the KEA (Kentucky Education Association) over the voice of Kentucky parents who are begging for help.”

Leis, whose group backs school choice measures, asked lawmakers to “put students first” and override Beshear’s veto next week. 

Beshear expects the legislation to be challenged in court if his veto is overriden, but clarified that he is not threatening legal action himself.

He believes the bill could be challenged on the grounds of sending public money to private schools, he said Wednesday.

It also could be challenged due to Kentucky’s larger public school funding system, which has increasingly placed the funding burden on local school districts. 

Kentucky’s Constitution requires the legislature to run an “efficient system of common schools throughout the state,” which several in public education contend lawmakers are not doing due to underfunding...

Beshear also vetoed legislation that previously sparked “sickouts” and the creation of large teacher activism groups in Kentucky. 

House Bill 258 would place new teachers on a “hybrid” pension plan that combines aspects of defined contribution and defined benefit plans, rather than the defined benefit plan teachers have currently.

Beshear said previously the “hybrid” plan could push away prospective teachers when states face a shortage of educators. 

Categories Accountability, Kentucky, Pensions, Privatization, Vouchers

Florida: Republicans Plan to Eviscerate Public Schools

By dianeravitch
March 19, 2021 //
13

Kathleen Oropeza, parent activist in Florida, explains in The Progressive how Republicans intend to destroy public schools and turn the state into a publicly-funded voucher haven. Governor Ron DeSantis is accomplishing Betsy DeVos’s dream while tossing aside the future of the state’s children. In Florida, public schools are held accountable for students and teachers but in private and religious schools, no accountability or standards are required.

Oropeza writes:

In what state Senator Perry Thurston calls a “death knell,” the 2021 Florida House and Senate are fast-tracking the passage of SB 48. This bill will convert the state’s five vouchers into two Education Savings Account/Debit Cards paid, for the first time, with public school tax dollars and a spending flexibility so wide that parents are not even required to pay for teachers or tuition.

Vouchers provide parents with public money to pay for private, often religious schools, with little accountability or guarantee of quality, in eighteen states. Florida leads the way, ahead of other states like Arizona, in how to “choice” parents out of public education and into private school voucher programs. Today, Florida operates two Exceptional Student Educationvouchers, the McKay and Gardiner, plus the Corporate Tax Credit, Hope and Family Empowerment, for a total of five vouchers. The goal has always been to significantly expand the base of students giving up their right to a free public education in exchange for granting parents the freedom to spend their child’s money as they see fit. 

To accelerate the growth of vouchers, Florida seeks to convert all five programs into Education Savings Account/Debit Cards, funded directly by state general revenues. This money will not be spent on public schools. Instead, “parents can use the funds to pay for a variety of educational services, including private school tuition, tutoring, online education, home education, curriculum, therapy, postsecondary educational institutions in Florida and other defined educational services.

The bill, modeled after legislation created by the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, represents the unfinished business of former U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, the late libertarian economist Milton Friedman, and a host of rightwing philanthropists from the Waltons to the Kochs. 

Categories Education Reform, Florida, Privatization, Vouchers

Arkansas: Voucher Forces Trying Again, Backed by Walton Money

By dianeravitch
March 18, 2021 //
8

Max Brantley writes in the Arkansas Times that the voucher lobby is determined to reverse their 44-52 loss in the Arkansas House. Backed by Walton money, they are naming and shaming the legislators who stood up for their community’s public schools.

Although Sam Walton, founder of Walmart, and his children attended public schools, they are determined to destroy public schools that provide the same opportunity for other people’s children. They blithely toss out millions to buy the support of people who have no heart or soul and will gladly lobby to harm the institution that has been an abiding symbol of our democracy for generations. Public schools have failings, like every other institution. They must be far better, and they should have the respect and the funding to provide equal opportunity to all children.

But the Waltons have led the forces of greed that seek to undermine public schools that accept all students and have standards for professionals. Let me tell you what I think of the Waltons: I think they are greedy. I think they don’t care about other people’s children. They hate unions and public schools. They love privately managed charter schools, vouchers,and any other substitute for the public schools they attended. They treat everyone else as peasants. They are arrogant. They are prideful.

The Waltons represent the worst of American society: people who have become fabulously wealthy by killing small towns, driving small stores out of business, underpaying their one million employees, using their vast wealth to impoverish others and to undermine the community institutions that enrich the lives of people they treat with contempt. For them and their ilk, playing with the lives of other people’s children is a hobby, a pastime. They are very, very rich, and they must have their way. They don’t understand why the peasants refuse to bow down to their wishes.

Categories Accountability, Arkansas, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Privatization, Vouchers, Walton Foundation

Kentucky: Educators Dismayed by Rushed Voucher Bill

By dianeravitch
March 18, 2021 //
8

Educators in Kentucky expressed their opposition to the voucher legislation that was rushed through the Legislature without careful deliberation of its likely negative impact on the state’s public schools. Nor was there any discussion of the research showing the harm that vouchers do to the children that use them or the high attrition rates of voucher schools.

Acting Fayette Superintendent Marlene Helm on Tuesday issued a strong statement before the House and Senate approved a bill in which private school tuition in Fayette and other counties could be paid from newly created education opportunity accounts.

“Quite honestly, I am dismayed that a bill of this magnitude has been brought forward this late in the session without thorough, public discussion with various stakeholders,” Helm said.

In addition to Fayette, Jefferson and Kenton counties, House Bill 563 now adds Boone, Hardin, Daviess, Warren and Campbell counties — all with populations of 90,000 — to those in which private school tuition amounts can be paid out of the scholarship funds.

The Kentucky Senate Appropriations and Revenue committee passed the bill 6-2. Later, the full Senate approved it with a 21-15 vote as did the House 48-47 in a marathon session Tuesday, the last day of the General Assembly before the veto recess. The bill will now be sent to the Governor for signing. Lawmakers will come back on March 29 and 30 to override any gubernatorial vetoes.

“This bill is dangerous. This bill is bad education policy. It’s bad fiscal policy. And its bad public policy. It does nothing to protect our students and their families or to assure that they receive a high quality education,” Kentucky Education Association President Eddie Campbell told the committee Tuesday…

In voicing his opposition, Campbell said private schools will be charging for many of the services that their tuition already covers. The services are already provided by public schools for free under the law, he said.

Campbell said the bill prohibits oversight of the education service provider that will receive the donations to distribute to families. He said providers are not required to have credentials or background checks. He said the bill opens the door for discrimination on the basis of race, religion, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation and other fronts…

Kentucky Education Commissioner Jason Glass said he was concerned with the bill on multiple fronts.

“It is being rushed through the legislative process with little effort at gaining input or correction of obvious flaws and predictable negative consequences which the current language contains,” Glass said after the full House vote. “This legislation is of potentially enormous consequence – which begs a more thorough approach to considering both the public school choice and tax credit aspects.”

Jim Flynn, executive director of the Kentucky Association of School Superintendents, said his group remains steadfast in their opposition to any privatization of public funds for education “–this bill provides that in the form of tax credits for education opportunity accounts.”

The lobbyist for the ultra-conservative, libertarian EdChoice organization, formerly the Rose and Milton Friedman Foundation, was delighted with passage of the voucher bill. EdChoice lobbies for privatization of public schools and th


Read more here: https://www.kentucky.com/news/local/education/article249964599.html#storylink=cpy



Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Kentucky, Privatization, Vouchers

Kentucky: Legislature Passes Voucher Bill

By dianeravitch
March 17, 2021 //
13

The Kentucky legislature, controlled by Republicans, passed voucher legislation. The Governor, Democrat Andy Bashear, seems certain to veto it.

Linda Blackford of the Lexington Herald-Leader wonders why Republicans are both anti-public school and anti-teacher, since most of them graduated from public schools and send their own children there. Why are they so eager to take money away from their community schools to fund what are almost certain to be inferior choices? Is it revenge on teachers for leading protests against pension changes?

She writes:

Back in the 1990s, Kentucky was a shining model of a state that valued education. The Kentucky Education Reform Act revolutionized school funding by creating a central pot of property taxes rather than an uneven patchwork of rich and poor. There was much more: cracking down on corruption and nepotism, raising academic standards, new money for teacher training, important supports for struggling children.

But over the past two decades, the state’s politics have turned crimson and all that potential — and state support for it — is slipping away. Why do Republicans appear to dislike and distrust public schools so much? Is it because their teachers are represented by politically powerful unions that happened to get our Democratic unicorn governor elected? Is it because those unions negotiated pretty good pension promises? Is it because they resisted reopening schools? Is it because the very notion of public education recognizes that government can do good things? 

“I think what you see is a demonization of public education that’s coming from all these right wing groups,” said Nema Brewer, a co-founder of 120 Kentucky United, an education advocacy group that helped defeat Republican plans for teacher pensions and elect Beshear in 2019. “The Republican Party of Kentucky has bought into this demonization of public schools, completely forgetting the majority of them are products of public schools. It’s just amazing to me that this is what’s happened.”

Those Republicans got their political revenge on Tuesday night when they passed House Bill 563, what’s known as a “neo-voucher bill.” It hurts teachers and rural school districts, while creating more segregation and less school funding, a veritable lottery for the GOP.

By now, the research on vouchers is compelling: they don’t raise the academic achievements of students. Voucher schools are typically inferior to public schools because they are free to hire uncertified teachers and principals. They discriminate at will. Why would Republicans think it was a good idea to waste public money on low-quality religious schools or to subsidize the tuition of students already in religious schools?


Read more here: https://www.kentucky.com/opinion/linda-blackford/article249974744.html#storylink=cpy

Categories Accountability, Kentucky, Privatization, Religion, Research, Separation of church and state

Maurice Cunningham: A Tangled Web of Christian Conservatives, Economic Royalists, and the “National Parents Union”

By dianeravitch
March 16, 2021 //
5

Maurice Cunningham, a professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts, is a specialist in exposing the influence of “dark money” in our political life, especially in the area of education politics. In this post, he explores the connections among Christian conservatives, economic royalists like the Waltons and Charles Koch, and the so-called “National Parents Union,” which enjoys Walton funding.

The same people now running the NPU were funded by the Waltons, Mike Bloomberg, and other billionaires in 2016 to press for unlimited charter expansion in Massachusetts. When Cunningham exposed the money behind the “Yes on 2” campaign, the wind went out of its sails. Voters realized that the campaign was intended to divert money from their public schools to billionaire hobbies. I wrote about the fight over Proposition 2 in Massachusetts in my latest book Slaying Goliath as an example of successful parent-teacher resistance to the billionaires.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Dark Money, Disruption, Education Reform, Massachusetts, Privatization, Religion

An Interview with Jennifer Berkshire and Jack Schneider About ”A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door”

By dianeravitch
March 15, 2021 //
2

This interview was recorded by Town Hall in Seattle, which is a great venue for speakers but in COVID Times was recorded remotely. I interviewed them about their important new book, A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door.

They had some very valuable insights, and the time flew by. I hope you will take a few minutes and join us.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Corporate Reformers, Dark Money, Democracy, Disruption, Duncan, Arne, Education Industry, Privatization

Why Zip Codes Matter

By dianeravitch
March 15, 2021 //
23

From the earliest days of corporate reform, which is now generally recognized to have been a failed effort to “reform” schools by privatizing them and by making standardized testing the focal point of education, we heard again and again that a child’s zip code should not be his or her destiny. Sometimes, in the evolving debates, I got the sense that some people thought that zip codes themselves were a problem. If only we eliminated zip codes! But the reality is that zip codes are a synonym for poverty. So what the reformers meant was that poverty should not be destiny.

Would it were so! If only it were true that a child raised in an impoverished home had the same life chances as children brought up in affluent homes, where food, medical care, and personal security are never in doubt.

But “reformers” insisted that they could overcome poverty by putting Teach for America inexperienced teachers in classrooms, because they (unlike teachers who had been professionally prepared) “believed” in their students and by opening charter schools staffed by TFA teachers. Some went further and said that vouchers would solve the problem of poverty. All of this was nonsense, and thirty years later, poverty and inequality remain persistent, unaffected by thousands of charter schools and TFA.

In effect, the reformers held out the illusion that testing, competition, and choice would level the playing field and life chances of rich and poor kids. After 30 or more years of corporate reform, it is clear that the reform message diverted our attention from the wealth gap and the income gap, which define the significant differences among children who have everything and children who have very little.

Imagine the cost of assuring that every school in the nation were equitably and adequately funded. Imagine if all students had small classes in a school with beautiful facilities, healthy play spaces, the best technology, and well-paid teachers. That would go a long way towards eliminating the differences between rich schools and poor schools, but our society has not taxed itself to make sure that all kids have great schools.

None of the promises of “reform” have been fulfilled. The cynical among us think that the beneficiaries of reform have been the billionaires, who were never willing to pay the taxes necessary to narrow income and wealth inequality or to fund good schools in every neighborhood. They gladly fund “reforms” that require chicken feed, as compared to the taxes necessary to truly make zip codes irrelevant.

Categories Education Reform, Funding, Poverty, Privatization, Racism, School Choice

A Florida Blogger You Should Read

By dianeravitch
March 14, 2021 //
10

I said I won’t repost blogs anymore, except for very rare occasions. I intend to stick to my promise.

So don’t consider this a repost. Consider it an introduction.

An ally in Florida sent me two blogs by Billy Townsend.

Here are the ones I read. I subscribed to his blog.

He wrote this blog for the benefit of Jennifer Berkshire, co-author of A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door.

He says that Florida is the state that put the nation at risk. He explains why. Great reading.

In this one, he lays out exactly how to get Biden’s attention: prepare to run a primary against him for ignoring/betraying the parents and teachers devoted to public education. Active opposition, he says, will get the wolf away from the schoolhouse door.

In this one, he describes how the voucher schools that Florida wants more of include a large number of segregated and unaccredited schools. How cynical that Florida figured out a clever way to restore segregation by lying to black parents. He asks:

Is it any wonder Florida’s FTC vouchers have a 61 percent 2-year drop out rate?

I have noticed that voucher studies typically overlook or minimize or obscure attrition rates. I remember a voucher study of Milwaukee by pro-voucher academic Patrick Wolf where he noted that voucher schools had higher graduation rates when compared to public schools. In the original study, the attrition rate was 75%. When Mercedes Schneider jumped on that statistic, Wolf said he made a error and lowered the dropout rate to 56%. Of course, 56% is a huge attrition rate too. (See here too and see here as well.)

Categories Accountability, Biden, Democrats, Elections, Florida, Privatization

Maurice Cunningham: The “National Parents Union” and Dark Money

By dianeravitch
March 13, 2021 //
7

Maurice Cunningham is the Master of the Mysteries of Dark Money. In this post, he traces the shifting membership of the board of directors of the Walton-funded “National Parents Union.” You know what NPU wants: charter schools. After reading the story, you will understand who pays the bills: the Waltons and Charles Koch. They are parents too! Be sure to read Christine Langhoff’s comment.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Dark Money, Massachusetts, Parent Groups, Privatization, Walton Foundation
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