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Clint Smith: GOP Tax Plan Hurts Poor Kids, Worsens Unequal School Funding

By dianeravitch
February 22, 2018 //
4

 

Clint Smith writes in The Atlantic that the underlying cause of educational inequality is unequal funding of children who are poor. Instead of getting more funding and smaller classes, their schools are  systematically underfunded as compared to the schools attended by the wealthiest children.

The GOP tax plan will worsen this inequality. It creates pathways to enrich rich families and take from the public schools that serve the neediest children.

It is a reverse Robin Hood plan: steal from the poor, give to the rich.

https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2018/02/the-new-tax-laws-subtle-subversion-of-public-schools/552356/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=atlantic-weekly-newsletter&utm_content=20180209&silverid=MzM0NTY0NzMyNzIyS0

Categories Accountability, Funding, Inequality, Privatization, Republicans

Larry Lee Reports from Alabama on the End of an Ugly Political Season

By dianeravitch
December 11, 2017 //
9

My good friend Larry Lee lives in Alabama and blogs about education.

We have been exchanging emails about the Senate election, but I could tell Larry was getting fed up. The polls have swung back and forth, and no one knows who will win. My view, for what it’s worth, is that if Roy Moore wins, he will be an albatross for the entire Republican Party. If they couldn’t bring themselves to disown a man who was twice thrown off the State Supreme Court for refusing to obey the law, a man who hates Muslims and gays, a man who longs for the good old days of slavery, then the party stands for nothing but ambition and power.

Larry finally broke down and wrote about the election.

Categories Alabama, Republicans

North Carolina: The News-Observer Opposes GOP Tax Plan Because It Will Harm Public Education

By dianeravitch
December 11, 2017 //
61

North Carolina is one of the states where the legislature has been working overtime to pass programs to harm public schools. Charters, vouchers, cybercharters, Teach for America, and regular assaults on the teaching profession.

That context makes it especially surprising and gratifying to see that the editorial board of the News-Observer wrote a strong critique of the GOP Tax Plan because it hurts public education.

This is a fantastic editorial:

There’s no doubt that tax-cut proposals in the House and Senate will increase income inequality today, but provisions in the bills could also weaken the earning power of many in the future by eroding the quality and the diversity of public schools.

One change that as approved by the Senate and also found in the House bill extends a tax benefit for college savings accounts to cover tuition for private elementary and secondary education. The change means that those who can afford to save money for non-public school tuition will be able to see that money grow tax-free.

Extending the tax break won’t mean much for families of modest incomes since they can’t afford to save large amounts for pre-college schooling, but it will have the effect of making high-priced private schools less costly to the wealthy. The Senate version of the change offered by Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas even allows those who home school to draw up to $10,000 annually out of the tax-favored accounts to cover loosely defined school expenses. In the end, the change reduces tax revenue to give the wealthy a break on private education costs.

This relatively narrow adjustment will be joined by sweeping proposals in both the House and Senate tax bills that limit federal deductions for state and local taxes. Those changes will make it harder for local and state governments to raise taxes to support public schools. Together, the changes will lighten the tuition bill at private schools while adding to the tax burden that supports public schools.

Of course, higher education is also threatened by provisions in the tax plans that would include levies on endowments and on tuition benefits provided to graduate students and children of college employees. But the plans’ broader threats are to public schools, which are already being undermined by Republican-backed efforts to increase the number of charter schools – publicly funded but privately run – and to expand the use of tax funds for private schools through voucher programs. Now that “school choice” movement has gained support at the federal level with the appointment of Betsy DeVos – a charter and private school advocate – as the U.S. education secretary.

Fueling re-segregation

As Republicans cut away at the financial foundation of public schools they are also accelerating the re-segregation of all schools at the elementary and secondary levels. Adding charters and using tax dollars to subsidize private and sectarian school tuition is leading to a great sorting by race. And that, rather than enhancing education, deprives children of learning through exposure to classmates of different racial groups and economic backgrounds.

In a recent report on charter schools, The Associated Press found the number of charter schools has tripled over the last decade and racial isolation has grown with them. Charters tend to be overwhelmingly white, or overwhelming one minority. The AP reported: “While 4 percent of traditional public schools are 99 percent minority, the figure is 17 percent for charters. In cities, where most charters are located, 25 percent of charters are over 99 percent nonwhite, compared to 10 percent for traditional schools.”

The trend worries even some charter school advocates. Pascual Rodriguez, principal of a Milwaukee charter where nearly all the students are Hispanic, told the AP: “The beauty of our school is we’re 97 percent Latino. The drawback is we’re 97 percent Latino … Well, what happens when they go off into the real world where you may be part of an institution that’s not 97 percent Latino?”

The AP report mirrors what an October News & Observer report found about racial segregation in North Carolina charter schools. The report found that the schools are more segregated and have more affluent students than traditional public schools.

Christine Kushner, a member of the Wake County Board of Education and a former chair of the panel, said that despite efforts to foster diversity in the Wake County school system, the state’s largest, minorities are the majority, largely because of an increase in Hispanic students and more white students enrolling in schools outside of the system. She said Wake schools remain strong, but their reduced diversity both in race and income is a setback.

“It’s troubling to me that we are going backward because I think diverse schools are what’s best for all children and economics and history affirm that,” she said. School choice is fine, she said, but public schools need to have the resources “to be the first choice for all parents.”

Good public schools and strong support through taxes are inseparable. But the tax bills in Congress are adding to the forces that are splitting that bond and jeopardizing public education.

Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/opinion/editorials/article188972429.html#storylink=cpy

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Funding, North Carolina, Privatization, Republicans, School Choice, Segregation, Supporting public schools

Politico: GOP Tax Plan is a Dagger Aimed At Higher Education

By dianeravitch
December 1, 2017 //
73

Someone smarter than me will have to figure out why the Republican Party is intent on inflicting pain on college students, graduate students, and higher education. Don’t they know that our economy depends on having an educated populace? Don’t they know that successful societies invest in generating new knowledge?

Politico reports about the effects of the tax bill on higher education:

HIGHER ED GROUPS TRYING TO STOP A ‘SPEEDING TRAIN’: With the GOP’s tax reform efforts moving swiftly along, higher education groups are stepping up their efforts to persuade lawmakers to strip the plans of provisions they say would make college more expensive, such as a plan in the House bill to scrap deductions on student loan interest and tax as income tuition waivers for graduate students. The Senate is expected to vote on its plan as soon as today. “It’s a speeding train,” said Steven Bloom, director of government relations at the American Council on Education, the leading higher education lobbying group.

– Bloom said higher education is on high alert and will continue its campaign by writing letters, calling members of Congress and holding rallies and protests. “We have to keep running right through the finish line, and that’s what we’ll do.”

– Senate Republicans’ work on their massive tax overhaul will continue today. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has said the next vote in the tax debate will come at 11 a.m.

– Bloom said he is “cautiously optimistic” that one of the biggest concerns among higher education leaders won’t make it into the final bill: The House’s plan to tax as income tuition waivers for graduate students working as teaching and research assistants. Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Tex.), the Ways and Means chairman, said on the House floor earlier this month that he has “a keen interest in this issue” and that he is open to working “toward a
positive solution on tuition assistance in conference with the Senate.” Sens. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) and Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said earlier this week they’re confident the provision won’t make it into the final bill.

– The chorus of voices speaking out against the grad student tax, meanwhile, is growing. National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins, who has broad bipartisan respect, on Thursday warned of negative consequences it could bring. “Anything that would diminish the interest in that talent of the next generation in joining that workforce is something we should be very cautious and careful about,” Collins said during a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing. “I think we can all agree that given that science has driven our economy in this country by most estimates more than 50 percent of our growth since World War II, this is a very important issue for continued investment.”

– But it’s not just the grad student tax that has higher education leaders worried. Between them, the tax plans threaten to end a deduction on student loan interest and tax the richest private schools’ endowments, which those schools insist is a crucial source of scholarships for low-income students. The plans could also end deductions for state and local taxes, which could create problems for public colleges by putting a strain on state budgets. Colleges and universities also fear changes in the standard deduction will discourage charitable giving, which many of them rely upon heavily. Asked what his top priorities are moving forward, Bloom said: “That’s like asking me to make a Sophie’s choice. I can’t and I won’t. They hit different students in different ways. They’re all important.”

– One education leader who isn’t up in arms over the tax plan: Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, who said on Thursday she is “so encouraged” by the GOP’s efforts to do something about “our nation’s broken tax system.” Her enthusiasm was not shared by another Republican and former Education secretary, Margaret Spellings, who led the agency under George W. Bush and now is president of the University of North Carolina System. Spellings wrote in the Chronicle of Higher Education that the tax plan would be “a self-inflicted setback in the national effort to build a more competitive, better educated citizenry.”

Categories Higher Education, Ignorance, Republicans

Bill Becker: The Republican Tax Plan is a Massive Hoax!

By dianeravitch
November 30, 2017 //
58

Bill Becker is an internationally recognized expert on climate change and the environment.

In this article, he demonstrates how Republicans are pullling the wool over the eyes of the public.

Start with the graphic at the top of the article:

Of the 30 richest nations in the world, the U.S. ranks:

*29th in net income inequality
*29th in wealth inequality
*28th in poverty rate
*29th in life expectancy

Correlate those data with test scores on PISA and TIMSS. Amazing.

Becker writes:

“Question: As Republican leaders have described it, the central promise of tax reform is to put more money in the pockets of middle-class Americans and to provide more money for corporations to create jobs. Can we be confident of that result?

“Background: The answer is no. Earlier this month, CNN broadcast a meeting in which Donald Trump’s economic advisor, Bary Cohn, met with a group of CEOs. The meeting’s moderator asked for a show of hands on how many of the companies in the room would use their savings for capital investment in the economy if Congress reduced their taxes. Only two CEOs raised their hands. “Why aren’t the other hands up?” Cohn asked.

“Past experience provides the answer. Our bigger corporations have demonstrated that when they have extra cash, they don’t use it to create jobs; they use it to increase the value of their stock by raising dividends and buying back shares. CEOs and shareholders benefit, but not most middle- and lower-class households. They usually don’t own stocks. Eighty percent of stocks today are owned by the top 20% of income earners.

“Question: Republicans want to lure trillions of dollars back into the United States by giving a tax break to companies that repatriate the profits they have stashed overseas. By one estimate, the tax break would amount to a half-trillion dollars. Is it realistic to expect that these funds would be used to create jobs and to benefit middle-America?

“Background: Again, experience provides an answer. Congress gave a similar “tax holiday” in 2004 to companies that repatriated their overseas money. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities found that CEOs again used their money to repurchase and raise the value of their stock and to pay dividends to shareholders. “Moreover, many firms laid off large numbers of U.S. workers even as they reaped multi-billion-dollar benefits from the tax holiday and passed them on to shareholders,” the Center found.

“What about today? Our big corporations are flush with cash and their earnings are healthy. They already could be investing their profits to create more jobs, if they wanted to. But when more than 300 business executives were polled over the summer, they said they would use repatriated money to pay down their debt, buy back their own stock to drive up its price, and engage in mergers, in that order.”

Oh, and by the way, Senator McCain announced that he would vote for the tax bill. The last possible independent has fallen in line with the party.

Categories Economy, Republicans

Jennifer Berkshire: How Education Reform Ate the Democratic Party

By dianeravitch
November 27, 2017 //
93

This is one of the best pieces I have read about the pernicious effects of “education reform” on the the Democratic Party. I have consistently argued that the Democrats triangulated so far during the Clinton administration that they blurred the distinct lines between the parties, then ended up supporting the Republican policies of testing, accountability, and choice, which previously they abhorred.

Jennifer Berkshire here fills in the details with her sharp eye and wit. So thoroughly have Democrats joined with Republicans in demonizing teachers and unions, that there is hardly a dime’s worth of difference between them on education issues. Things have gotten so bad that one Democrat espousing privatization recently co,pare the teachers unions to Alabama governor George Wallace, blocking children as they try to escape public schools to enter charter nirvana.

She writes:

“To begin to chronicle the origin of the Democrats’ war on their own—the public school teachers and their unions that provide the troops and the dough in each new campaign cycle to elect the Democrats—is to enter murky territory. The Clintons were early adopters; tough talk against Arkansas’s teachers, then among the poorest paid in the country, was a centerpiece of Bill’s second stint as Governor of Arkansas. As Hillary biographer Carl Bernstein recounts, the Arkansas State Teachers Association became the villain that cemented the couple’s hold on the Governor’s mansion—the center of their Dick Morris-inspired “permanent campaign.” The civil rights language in which the Democratic anti-union brigade cloaks itself today was then nowhere to be heard, however. And little wonder: Civil rights groups fiercely opposed the most controversial feature of the Clintons’ reform agenda—competency tests for teachers—on the grounds that Black teachers, many of whom had attended financially starved Black colleges, would disproportionately bear their brunt.

“Hillary made the cause her personal crusade in 1983, trotting out anecdote after anecdote about teachers she’d heard about who couldn’t add or read. The reform package passed, cementing Bill’s reputation as a new breed of Democratic governor, one who wasn’t afraid to take on entrenched interests in order to tackle tough problems. “Anytime you’re going to turn an institution upside down, there’s going to be a good guy and a bad guy,” recalls Clinton campaign manager Richard Herget. “The Clintons painted themselves as the good guys. The bad guys were the schoolteachers.”

“By the early 1980s, there was already a word for turning public institutions upside down: neoliberalism. Before it degenerated into a flabby insult, neoliberal referred to a self-identified brand of Democrat, ready to break with the tired of dogmas of the past. “The solutions of the thirties will not solve the problems of the eighties,” wrote Randall Rothenberg in his breathless 1984 paean to this new breed, whom he called simply The Neoliberals. His list of luminaries included the likes of Paul Tsongas, Bill Bradley, Gary Hart and Al Gore (for the record, Gore eschewed the neoliberal label in favor of something he liked to call “neopopulism”). In Rothenberg’s telling, the ascendancy of the neoliberals represented an economic repositioning of the Democratic Party that had begun during the economic crises of the 1970s. The era of big, affirmative government demanding action—desegregate those schools, clean up those polluted rivers, enforce those civil rights and labor laws—was over. It was time for fresh neo-ideas.

“Redistribution and government intervention were out; investment and public-private partnerships were the way to go. Neoliberal man (there are no women included in Rothenberg’s account) was also convinced that he had found the answer to the nation’s economic malaise: education, or as he was apt to put it, investment in human capital. “Education equals growth is a neoliberal equation,” writes Rothenberg.

“But this new cult of education wasn’t grounded in John Dewey’s vision of education-as-democracy, or in the recent civil-rights battles to extend the promise of public education to excluded African-American communities. No, these bold, results-oriented thinkers understood that in order to fuel economic growth, schools had to be retooled and aligned in concert with the needs of employers. The workers of the future would be prepared to compete nimbly in the knowledge-based post-industrial society of the present, For the stragglers still trapped in older, industrial-age models of enterprise and labor, re-training—another staple of the neoliberal vision—would set them on the path to greater prosperity….

“Today’s Democratic school reformers—a team heavy on billionaires, pols on the move, and paid advocates for whatever stripe of fix is being sold—depict their distaste for regulation, their zeal for free market solutions as au courant thinking. They rarely acknowledge their neoliberal antecedents. The self-described radical pragmatists at the Progressive Policy Institute, for instance, got their start as Bill Clinton’s policy shop, branded as the intellectual home for New Democrats. Before its current push for charter schools, PPI flogged welfare reform. In fact, David Osborne, the man so fond of likening teacher unions to arch segregationists in the south, served as Al Gore’s point person for “reinventing government.” Today the model for Osborne’s vision for reinventing public education is post-Katrina New Orleans—where 7,500 mostly Black school employees were fired en route to creating the nation’s first nearly all-charter-school-system, wiping out a pillar of the city’s Black middle class in the process.”

Read the article.

It brilliantly describes how Democrats attacked their own base, embraced Republican ideas, and merged their thinking with that of Republicans. A sure-fire recipe for disaster, since Republicans are so much better at being Republicans than Democrats are. You can’t win by destroying your base.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Democrats, Democrats for Education Reform, Deregulation, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization, Republicans, School Choice, Teachers, Unions

Jeff Bryant: The GOP Tax Bill Is a Disaster for Education

By dianeravitch
November 17, 2017 //
5

Jeff Bryant

Categories Funding, Republicans

National Superintendents Roundtable: How the GOP Tax Proposal Would Affect Public Education

By dianeravitch
November 6, 2017 //
15

A memo from James Harvey, CEO of the National Superintendents Roundtable:

The House GOP unveiled a 429-page tax reform bill late this week that lowered the corporate tax rate from 35 to 20 percent, raised the standard deduction, and sought to keep lost revenue down to $1.5 trillion by eliminating dozens of deductions now available in the existing tax code. Several press accounts document the profound impact these changes will have on students, families, and educational institutions. Here’s what’s on the chopping block:

Existing Tax Code

Deduction for interest on student loans
Eliminate

Deduction for college tuition
Eliminate

Business deduction for employees’ tuition
Eliminate

Coverdell Education Savings Accounts*
Eliminate

Section 529 college savings accounts*
Add K-12 private schools

$250 teacher deduction for supplies
Eliminate

Deduction for state sales taxes**
Eliminate

Deduction for state/local income taxes**
Eliminate

Deduction for property taxes**
Cap at $10,000

* Coverdell Education Savings Accounts are tax-free accounts for middle- and lower-income families to pay up to $2,000 for qualified education costs, including college costs and some private K-12 expenses. Although eliminating this vehicle, the House GOP package simultaneously extends the existing Section 529 college savings program to permit all parents, no matter how wealthy, to set aside up to $10,000 tax-free for K-12 private schools.

** These income sources at the local level are the foundation of school funding. Limitations on these features will make passage of school levies and bonds more difficult, as voters realize their state and local taxes can no longer be used to off-set their federal tax liabilities and that they will be taxed on taxes already paid.

Categories Funding, Republicans

GOP Tax Plan Will Hurt Teachers and Public Education

By dianeravitch
November 4, 2017 //
21

In Education Week, Allyson Klein and Andrew Ujifusa report that the GOP tax proposal will have negative effects on funding for public schools.

“The Republicans’ much-anticipated legislation to change the federal tax system includes a victory for school choice advocates: It would allow families to use up to $10,000 in savings from 529 college savings plans for K-12 expenses, including private school tuition.

“Overall, the bill released Thursday would slash corporate and some individual tax rates, offsetting the cost by nixing other deductions. That includes a $250 deduction that teachers can use to cover classroom expenses, such as books, art supplies, and rewards for students. The bill would also eliminate the deduction for state and local income and sales taxes, a step advocates warn could pinch K-12 spending at the district and state level. More on that below.

“And the legislation would put an end to the so-called Coverdell Accounts, tax-free accounts which families currently can use to cover up to $2,000 of K-12 costs, including private school tuition, in favor of the 529 change. Families could also use 529s to cover the cost of apprenticeships and could open an account when a child is “in utero” or “unborn.” We previewed the possibility of a 529 benefit for K-12 back in August. It has strong support from the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank…

The inclusion of 529 plans for K-12 in the tax package represents the first tangible win in the Trump era for school choice, a huge priority for DeVos.

But a tax credit for donations to fund private school scholarships, which some speculated would be a part of changes to the federal tax code, does not appear to be in the bill. Congress has also rejected the administration’s budget proposals to create a federal voucher program.”

The reduction in the deductibility of state and local taxes will hurt public school funding by reducing revenues.

“Teachers’ unions are unhappy about the elimination of the state and local tax deductions—but also upset about the decision to scrap the tax deduction to help teachers furnish their classrooms. During the 2012-13 academic year, teachers spent a total of $1.6 billion out of their own pockets for classroom expenses, according to a survey by the National School Supply and Equipment Association. A separate survey conducted during the 2015-16 school year found that each teacher spent $600 on average of his or her own money on those supplies and materials every year.”

SPEAK OUT AGAINST THE GOP TAX PLAN! IT TAKES AWAY THE SMALL DEDUCTION THAT TEACHERS USE TO COVER THE COST OF SCHOOL SUPPLIES THAT THEY PAY FOR, WHILE ENABLING WEALTHY FAMILIES TO CLAIM TAX CREDITS FOR PRIVATE SCHOOL TUITION.

The Network for Public Education is encouraging everyone to write to their members of Congress to vote against this unfair and unwise tax plan. It will hurt public schools and aid wealthy families.

Categories Funding, Privatization, Republicans, Teachers

Mike Petrilli: Why Is Republican Support for Charter Schools Declining?

By dianeravitch
October 31, 2017 //
51

Mike Petrilli is concerned that Republican support for charter schools has declined sharply. He suspects it is because charter advocates have tried too hard to pretend that charters are all about being progressive.

He thinks it is time to remind Republicans that charters are a conservative idea.

“We found a 12-percentage-point drop in public support for charter schools from the spring of 2016 to the spring of 2017. What’s most surprising is that Republican and Republican-leaning respondents helped to drive this trend, with GOP support down 13 percentage points. Nor is this a one-year blip; roll back the tape to 2012 and Republican support for charter schools is down a whopping 22 points.

“The puzzle is why. This is no idle question, as Republican support has been crucial to the growth and success of the charter movement over the past twenty-five years.

“While the charter movement has historically received proud bipartisan backing in Washington—Presidents Clinton and Obama both strongly supported charter schools, as have Presidents Bush II and Trump—charters are almost entirely a GOP accomplishment at the state level, where charter policy is made. To be sure, some blue and purple states can count a handful of Democratic legislators and the occasional Democratic governor as proponents, but the charter movement has relied on strong Republican support to sustain it. If that support evaporates, the movement could hit a brick wall.

“One would imagine then, that advocates of charter schools would be exquisitely attentive to the political math at the heart of their coalition: They typically need virtually every Republican vote, plus a handful of Democrats. Such attention would inexorably lead to an obsession with shoring up support on the right side of the aisle, correct?

“Well, no. Instead, many leaders of the charter movement have spent the past decade displaying their progressive credentials and chasing after Democratic votes that almost never materialize. Thus, the case for charter schools today is almost always made in social-justice terms—promoting charters’ success in closing achievement gaps, boosting poor kids’ chances of upward mobility, and alleviating systemic inequities. That was certainly the approach taken by President Obama and his social-justice-warrior secretary of education, Arne Duncan….

“A simpler, more direct way to boost conservative support is to remind people what made charter schools conservative in the first place. This means emphasizing personal freedom and parental choice—how charters liberate families from a system in which the government assigns you a public school, take it or leave it. Choice brings free-market dynamics into public education, using the magic of competition to lift all boats. And while some conservatives understandably would prefer private school choice, which allows a family to select a religious school, for example, instead of an independently run public school, charters are much more than a way station to vouchers. They have proven to be scalable and powerful, especially in cities.

“But there’s another aspect of charter schools that gets very little attention these days, especially from the social-justice types: Most are non-union. In fact, in most districts, union representation is the most significant difference between charter schools and traditional public schools. It’s hugely important. It’s why charter schools can and do fire ineffective teachers, why they can turn on a dime when an instructional approach isn’t working, why they can spend their money on the classroom instead of the bureaucracy, and why they can put the needs of students first, every day, all day. Yet most charter supporters almost never talk about any of this.”

Yes, It is time to remind Republicans—and Democrats—that charters are a conservative strategy. They sacrifice community to competition. They get rid of unions. They make teachers at-will employees.

But I disagree with Mike about the reasons for declining support for charters among Republicans and Democrats alike. I think that the public—that is, members of both parties—are hearing quite a lot these days about charter scandals and swindles in their own states. They don’t want to waste their tax dollars on exorbitant charter salaries coupled with frequent reports of graft, misappropriation of funds, and indictments of charter operators. How do people react when they hear about the millions paid to virtual charter operators? What about the convictions of swindlers in Pennsylvania and Michigan? Most Republicans went to public schools, send their own children to public schools and are happy with them. They cheer for the local teams and show up when their neighbors’ kids are in a school play. They don’t want charters in their neighborhood. Many serve on school boards. They are not antagonistic to public schools, not like  DeVos or the people who work at conservative advocacy shops inside the Beltway. In New York, for example, Republicans in the legislature vote for charters but don’t want them in their own backyard. They think charters are fine for black and brown kids, but not their own.

Charters could never have gotten this far without bipartisan support so it was useful for their advocates to play the “social justice” card. Now that Republicans control so many states and DeVos is Secretary of Education, why not tell the truth? Charters are a way to break up public schools and replace them with competition and choice, while getting rid of unions. They are and always have been a conservative ploy to launch school choice. Obama and Duncan fell for it. So have Corey Booker and Andrew Cuomo. They got fooled into attacking their political base. Will Democrats continue to support charters now that they are clearly part of the Trump-DeVos agenda?

Republicans support charters for “those kids,” not for their own kids. If they are losing faith in the charter idea, it is probably because they don’t want them for their suburban and rural communities.

Categories Charter Schools, Democrats, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization, Republicans
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