Archives for category: School Choice
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Peter Greene: There is Nothing Democratic about School Choice

By dianeravitch
June 5, 2017 //
25

Peter Greene has a genius for taking complicated ideas and boiling them down to their essence in language that everyone can understand. This post is a classic example of that genius. Others have written entire books trying to explain what he says concisely here.

In the recent writings about school choice, pro and con, Peter Greene was especially affronted by a statement from Kevin Chavous, who works for Betsy DeVos’s American Federation for Children. He said: It is school choice–directly empowering parents to choose the best educational environment for their child–that is the most democratic of ideas.

Greene responded:

Nope. Nope nope nopity nope. There are arguments to be made for parent choice, but “it’s the essence of democracy” is not one of them.

Democracy, even the sort-of-democracy practiced by the USA, is not about saying, “I want to make this personal choice, and I want everyone else to pay for it.”

Democracy is not saying you want a six-lane highway to run back the lane where only your house sits, so you get the rest of the taxpayers in your state to pay for it.

Democracy is not saying that since I want to have a police force that patrols my own house 24/7, I should have that police coverage and all local taxpayers should foot the bill.

Democracy is not “My fellow taxpayers have to pay for whatever I decide on my own that I want.”

He adds:

Choice fans often like to talk about the money following the child because “that money doesn’t belong to the school system.” And they have a point– it is not the school’s money. It is also not the family’s money. It is the taxpayers’ money, and the taxpayers have given it to support a system that will educate all students in the community through an institution managed by elected representatives of those taxpayers (when was the last time you saw a school board requirement that only parents can be elected).

And so, my fellow Americans, democracy consists of the consent of the governed, not the requirement to pay for whatever each person wants:

The “most democratic of ideas” is not that each individual gets to live in the Land of Do As You Please at public expense. Vouchers may be many things, but they are not remotely democratic.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Democracy, School Choice, Vouchers

Mercedes Schneider: The True History of School Choice

By dianeravitch
June 3, 2017 //
8

In this post, Mercedes Schneider tries to explain the ludicrous claim that vouchers are more “democratic” that public schools controlled by elected school boards.

The choice advocates contend that letting parents choose their child’s school is the height of democracy. They do not admit that the schools choose their students, and some will slam their doors to students who don’t fit.

Now with Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education, the nation has a choice zealot in the bully pulpit, talking about the only subject she knows: choice. School quality doesn’t matter; results don’t matter. The only thing that matters is choice, even if you can’t exercise it.

Mercedes reviews recent events–including the Edelman-Weingarten article opposing vouchers and defending charters–but the meat of her piece goes to the origins of svhool choice as a strategy to evade desegregation.

She places DeVos in the same boat with the notorious Southern governors, senators, and legislators who knew that their chance of defeating the Brown Decision of 1954 was to advocate school choice.

It is important to know history so you won’t be fooled.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, History, School Choice, Segregation, Vouchers

Carol Burris: The Big Lie Behind Vouchers

By dianeravitch
June 2, 2017 //
15

Carol Burris analyzes Betsy DeVos’ narrative about vouchers in this post.

What she describes goes far beyond the whims of a billionaire zealot. She describes the step-by-step plans of rightwingers who have long planned to undermine the very idea of public education as a civic responsibility.

DeVos said when she spoke at Brookings a few weeks ago that she in “not a numbers person.” She is also “not a facts person.”

First, she slimed those who defend public education from privatizers as “flat earthers.” Very likely, her family foundation has supported “flat earthers,” as they have supported creationism, quack science, and anti-gay organizations.

Then, she went on to attribute the origin of the modern voucher movement to African American Democrat, Polly Williams of Milwaukee. She forgot to mention that Polly Williams came to realize that she had been used by conservative rich people, and she renounced her support for vouchers. Not a small detail.

The great lie of the voucher movement is that it is built on the spurious claim that vouchers will “save” poor black and brown children. Faced with that claim, fraudulent though it is, liberals collapse and go along with the rightwing plan. But it never ends with the neediest children. That is only the beginning.

“And that, of course, was what Williams came to understand. Vouchers for the poor were the gateway; they were never the goal. That same pattern of starting small and going big repeats itself over and over. Educational savings accounts, tax credit scholarships and the like begin with student groups that evoke public sympathy — students with disabilities, low-income kids, the children of parents in the armed forces — but the goal is vouchers for all.

“DeVos and her allies are playing the long game. Each legislative season, the selected groups expand and the caps are raised. It happened in Indiana, where DeVos spoke to the American Federation for Children, and it is happening in other voucher states, as well.

“There is no better example than Arizona. Vouchers, disguised as the Empowerment Scholarship Account program (ESAs), began 2011. The program was designed for special-needs students. Then it expanded — foster-care students, children of military families, students on reservations, or students living in districts with schools rated a “D” or an “F” were eligible, as well.”

Now we know that vouchers don’t “save poor kids from failing schools.” In recent years, evaluations of vouchers in Louisiana, Indiana, and D.C. show that poor kids who use vouchers actually lose ground.

DeVos doesn’t care about evidence or facts or numbers. She is a choice zealot, and she will exploit her role in the government to push her lifelong passion to take public education away from the communities and families who support them. She doesn’t understand why people like their public schools. She never will.

Categories Betsy DeVos, School Choice, Vouchers, Wisconsin

Jeff Bryant: What Is the Point of School Choice?

By dianeravitch
May 31, 2017 //
44

Jeff Bryant is trying to figure out what the purpose of school choice is.

“Another week, another round of evidence that providing parents with more “school choice,” especially the kind that lets them opt out of public schools, is not a very effective vehicle for ensuring students improve academically or that taxpayer dollars are spent more wisely.

“The latest evidence comes from a study of the voucher program in Washington, DC that allows parents to transfer their children from public to private schools at taxpayer expense.

“The study found that students “who attended a private school through the program performed worse on standardized tests than their public school counterparts who did not use the vouchers,” reports the New York Times.

“This study adds to others – from Ohio, Indiana, and Louisiana – finding that school vouchers have negative impacts on students.

“Despite these results, many proponents of school choice contend the purpose of school choice was never about generating better results. It’s about choice.

“The latest evidence comes from a study of the voucher program in Washington, DC that allows parents to transfer their children from public to private schools at taxpayer expense.

“The study found that students “who attended a private school through the program performed worse on standardized tests than their public school counterparts who did not use the vouchers,” reports the New York Times.

“This study adds to others – from Ohio, Indiana, and Louisiana – finding that school vouchers have negative impacts on students.

“Despite these results, many proponents of school choice contend the purpose of school choice was never about generating better results. It’s about choice for choice’s sake.

“Results Don’t Matter?

“That seems to be what US Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos argues in her reaction to the news about the apparent failure of the DC voucher program. As the Washington Post reports, the report prompted her to say, “When school choice policies are fully implemented, there should not be differences in achievement among the various types of schools.”

So if choice doesn’t raise scores, what’s the point?

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization, School Choice, Vouchers

Some Reasons I Object to Vouchers for Religious and Private Schools

By dianeravitch
May 30, 2017 //
165

There are many reasons to object to diverting public dollars to religious and private schools. One reason is that every dollar that goes to a nonpublic school is subtracted from a public school. A vote for vouchers is a vote to defund public schools and impose budget cuts on them.

One of our readers is an avid supporter of school choice. When he asked why anyone objects to school choice, this was my reply:

“I object to paying for religious indoctrination in any faith including my own.

“I object to my tax dollars paying for schools that discriminate against children based on their race, their sexual orientation, or their disabilities.

“If the Supreme Court eliminates the state Blaine amendments and allows tax dollars to subsidize religious schools, expect that lawsuits will challenge their discriminatory admission policies, and states will begin demanding that their students take the same tests and meet the same standards as all publicly funded schools. Expect states to require the hiring of certified teachers in schools that take public money.

“The religious and private schools that want to protect their autonomy will not accept state money. Only the very marginal schools, those that can’t fill their seats, will take the money.”

What are your reasons for supporting or opposing tax dollars for private school choice?

Categories Privatization, Religion, School Choice, Separation of church and state, Vouchers

Jennifer Berkshire: How Betsy DeVos Segregated the Public Schools in Her Hometown, Holland, Michigan

By dianeravitch
May 30, 2017 //
10

A few years back, I went to Michigan to speak to a large group of superintendents, whose schools collectively enrolled half the students in the state. I learned from them about the pernicious effects of school choice. The state wiped out all district lines for purposes of enrollment. Students can enroll in any public school without regard to district lines, and schools are paid by the state based on numbers enrolled. Consequently, every district commits a portion of its budget to poaching students away from the neighboring districts. Each district spends about $100,000 each year on advertising, in hopes of getting more students and the money attached to them.

All this is background to Jennifer Berkshire’s incisive piece about how school choice promotes segregation. Jennifer recently visited Betsy DeVos’s hometown, Holland, Michigan, and was there to view the Tulip Time parade. As she watched the high school marching bands pass by, she saw a vivid portrait of segregation on display.

She writes:

“First, some background. During the endless runup to DeVos’ confirmation hearing last year, it was the Wild West-style school choice she’d pushed in Detroit that garnered most of the attention. But DeVos was also behind Michigan’s inter-district choice policies that, starting in 2000, *disrupted* neighborhood attendance zones, just as the proposed Trump/DeVos education budget seeks to do. In Michigan, school choice has become the new white flight as white families have fled their resident districts for schools and districts that are less diverse. The most dramatic example of this may be in DeVos’ own home town of Holland.

“The choice to segregate

“Since Michigan adopted the school choice policies DeVos is now pushing across the country, Holland’s white enrollment has dropped by more than 60%, as students decamped for public schools or charters in whiter communities nearby. The students who remain in the Holland Public Schools are now majority Hispanic and overwhelmingly poor—twice the schools’ poverty rate when Michigan’s school choice experiment began. Many of these students are the children of migrant farm workers who came to this part of the state to pick fruit; school choice enabled Holland’s white families to pick not to attend school with them. One in three students in Holland no longer attends school there, and since the money follows the child in the Mitten State, yet another DeVos priority, white flight has eaten the district’s finances too.

“In 2000, Holland had fifteen schools. Now it has just eight. Of nine Holland schools that once served elementary students, half have closed. By 2009, even the elementary school where DeVos’ mother once taught had been shuttered. As students flee for schools in communities like Zeeland, the future of Holland’s public schools looks increasingly dire. Already there are mutterings in this wealthy, Dutch-dominated community that the school population *doesn’t represent* Holland. And as DeVos well understands, a community that has little stake in its schools is unlikely to shell out money to pay for them…

“The Trump/DeVos education budget was made public on the 63rd anniversary of Brown vs. Board. DeVos’ vision isn’t just a retreat from Brown—it embodies the spirit that animated its opponents to set up segregation academies in Brown’s wake. The budget that bears her imprint would encourage and even incentivize white flight. We don’t have to speculate about where all this leads. The outcome of the kind of school choice policies that DeVos has pushed for decades in her home state and now wants every state to embrace has been starkly measurable segregation. And even that is an understatement. What I witnessed in DeVos’ hometown last week was extreme sorting on the basis of race and class. That the top education official in the country thinks this is a good thing is appalling.”

Folks, our Secretary of Education is encouraging racial and social segregation. She won’t stand in its way. She doesn’t care, she won’t act to stop it, she wants to subsidize it.

Were he alive, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. would denounce her actions. How dare she and Trump claim they are advancing “the civil rights issue of out time!” They are reversing the progress made since 1954 with “all deliberate speed.”

Categories Betsy DeVos, Civil Rights, Michigan, School Choice, Segregation , Racial Isolation and Integration

Linda Lyons: DeVos is Intent on Reviving State-Sponsored Discrimination

By dianeravitch
May 30, 2017 //
20

Lina Lyons is president-elect of the Arizona School Boards Association.

She writes here about the spurious claim that school choice is the answer to all problems.

She says that the nevitable result of school choice will not be better education, but segregation by race, class, ethnicity, and socioeconomic.

Yet DeVos continues to evade any federal responsibility for promoting desegregation and evades any federal responsibility for discouraging discrimination.

She writes:

“Some parents don’t know best. There. I said it. Let’s face it, some parents aren’t present, some are abusive, and some are drug addicts. Then there are those who are trying their damnedest to provide for their children but their minimum wage jobs (without benefits) just don’t pay enough to make ends meet. Bottom line is, not all parents know how, or care enough to provide, the best they can for their children. Where that is the case, or, when hard working parents need a little help, it is up to all of us in a civil society, to ensure all children are safe and that their basic needs are met. As education reformer John Dewey said over a century ago, “What the best and wisest parent wants for his child, that must we want for all the children of the community. Anything less is unlovely, and left unchecked, destroys our democracy.”

“Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos evidently doesn’t agree. In recent testimony to Congress, no matter what question she was asked about how far states would be allowed to go in discriminating against certain types of students, she kept deflecting to “states rights” and “parental rights,” failing to say at any point in the testimony that she would ensure states receiving federal dollars would not discriminate. From watching her testimony, if she had been the Secretary of Education with Donald Trump as President back in the early 1960s, the Alabama National Guard would undoubtedly never have been called up to integrate the schools.

“This should surprise no one. After all, the entire school reform agenda is really about promoting survival of the fittest. Those who “have” and already do well, will be set up for even more success while those dealing with the challenges poverty presents, will continue to suffer. As far as Betsy DeVos is concerned, the U.S. Department of Education has no responsibility to protect students from discrimination based on race, ethnicity, religion, sexual preference, gender identity. The hell with Brown vs. Board of Education, she will not step in to ensure states do the right thing for their students. As Jack Covey wrote recently to Diane Ravitch, to Betsy, “choice” is everything and parents should be able to send their children to a black-free, LGBT-free, or Muslim-free school on the taxpayer’s dime if they want to.

“Does that EVEN sound remotely like America to you? How can it be okay for our tax dollars to promote blatant discrimination? This is essentially state-sponsored discrimination. Yes, discrimination has always occurred via self-funded choice. The wealthy have always been able to keep their children away from the rest of us but, it was on their own dime. As it has always been with parents who stretched budgets to live in neighborhoods with the “best” school district as a way to ensure their child had the best chance.”

There were many reasons to oppose Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education. Add another: she has no intention of using federal dollars to enforce the laws barring discrimination.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Bias, Civil Rights, Democracy, Inequity, Racism, School Choice, Segregation

Jeff Bryant: DeVos’s “Transformation”=Public Theft

By dianeravitch
May 26, 2017 //
8

Jeff Bryant has read Betsy DeVos’s speeches slamming public schools and extolling the virtues of public subsidy for private and religious schools. She carefully selects an anecdote to make her case. But she is late to the party. There is now persuasive evidence that students in voucher schools get worse results than their peers in public schools. In addition, many of those who use vouchers are students from affluent families who are happy to have the pyvlid foot the bill for their private school tuition.

Betsy is shilling for her extremist allies at ALEC.

“Declaring “the time has expired for ‘reform,’” she called instead for a “transformation… that will open up America’s closed and antiquated education system.” Her plan also opens your wallet to new moochers of taxpayer dollars.

“By the way, AFC, according to SourceWatch, is a “conservative 501(c)(4) dark money group that promotes the school privatization agenda via the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and other avenues.” It also grew out of a defunct PAC connected to DeVos called “All Children Matter” that ran afoul legally in Ohio and Wisconsin and still owes Ohio $5.3 million for breaking election laws.”

Bryant concludes:

“In her efforts to create the education transformation she calls for, DeVos is supremely eager to “get Washington and the federal bureaucracy out of the way,” but still wants you to pay the cost of privatizing our schools. That’s not an agenda for better schools. It’s about stealing public money.”

Categories Accountability, ALEC, Betsy DeVos, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Fraud, Hoax, Privatization, School Choice

Jack Covey: The Return of Jim Crow?

By dianeravitch
May 26, 2017 //
30

Reader Jack Covey watched Betsy DeVos testify at a Congressional hearing and was startled by what he saw and heard:

“What’s scary is Secretary Devos’ tacit claim that, when it comes to schools that receive government funding — charter schools, voucher-funded private schools, etc. — the U.S. Department of Ed.:

“— HAS NO RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECT STUDENTS FROM DISCRIMINATION — based on race, ethnicity, religion sexual preference, gender identity, etc. — AT THE HANDS OF THOSE RUNNING THOSE GOVERNMENT-FUNDED SCHOOLS.

“— WILL DO NOTHING — provide NO protections, NO assistance in filing a grievance, or any help seeking a remedy (i.e. and amicus brief in any lawsuit) … NO NOTHING, brother — FOR ANY STUDENTS WHO ARE DISCRIMINATED AGAINST BY THOSE IN CHARGE OF CHARTER OR VOUCHER-FUNDED PRIVATE SCHOOLS THAT RECEIVE GOVERNMENT FUNDING. (again, this is discrimination based on race, ethnicity, religion, special ed disability, sexual preference, gender identity, etc.)

“Watch this exchange here between Secretary Devos and Congresswoman Katherine Clark (MA-05):.

Secretary Devos is essentially sending a message to those in charge of those government-funded schools — charter schools, voucher-funded private schools, etc.

“Discriminate against any and all students, based on whatever criteria tbat you see fit, and do so to your heart’s content, and we at the U.S. Department of Ed. will back you all the way.

“What’s that? You say don’t want any blacks at your school? Just feel free to tell any who try to get in, ‘We don’t accept blacks here,’ and if and when those against whom you are discriminating try to fight back, the U.S. Department of Ed. and the Federal Government will just sit back, stay out of it, and do nothing to assist those against whom you are discriminating. We at the U.S. Department of Ed. are givin’ you The Green Light to go ahead with all this.”

“That same Green Light goes DITTO for any other group. race, ethnicity, religion, sexual preference, gender identity, etc.”

“Question: why isn’t this on the cover of every newspaper in the country, the lead story in the network news, etc?

“I mean, Sweet Jesus, the nation’s top Education official has — when it comes to schools getting government funding, such as charter schools and voucher-funded private schools — just announced the de facto reversal of Brown vs. Board of Education, and a century-and-a-half of anti-discrimination civil rights laws and activism.

“Watch it again:

“The Congresswoman is asking Devos if there’s any instance of discrimination that would merit the U..S Department stepping in to assist students who are victims of discrimination, and Devos, in effect, replies, “No, never. We ain’t doin’ jack for them.”

“Secretary Devos’ logic is basically that “Choice trumps everything”, and by that, she means that a black-free school, or a LGBT-free school should be a “choice” that all parents should have, and that taxpayers’ money should be provided to those parents and to those schools to assist in exercising that choice.

“Furthermore, Devos argues that anything that prevents such schools from having free reign to discriminate against certain students — i.e. a government compulsion to accept blacks, or Hispanics, or gays, or Special Ed. kids,or whomever, through, for example, a threatened loss of funding or vouchers — would also simultaneously deprive parents of that no-blacks-allowed, no-whomever-allowed school “choice” and again, “Choice trumps all.”

“This confirms people’s worst fears about Trump — that yes, he is indeed working hand-in-hand with racist elements in the population, or with people who wish to discriminate against anyone for any reason whatsoever — and get taxpayers’ money to fund and carry out such discrimination.”

HOW LOW CAN THEY GO?

Categories Betsy DeVos, Bias, Bigotry, Civil Rights, Injustice, School Choice, Segregation

Wisconsin Congressman Tries but Fails to Get DeVos to Acknowledge Failure of Vouchers in Milwaukee

By dianeravitch
May 25, 2017 //
28

Betsy DeVos appeared at her second Congressional hearing to defend the Department’s budget priorities. At her first hearing, she said that schools might need guns to protect against grizzlies.

What she demonstrated was her masterful ability to evade and obfuscate questions, never giving a direct answer to inconvenient questions.

Congressman Mark Pocan of Wisconsin tried to get her to respond to the failure of vouchers in Milwaukee, and DeVos ducked and bobbed skillfully.

“Pocan, from Wisconsin, said that the state’s pioneering work on taxpayer-funded private school vouchers was a “failed experiment” that resulted in lackluster test scores, unaccountability and the ability for private schools to exclude kids with disabilities.

“Pointing to a lawsuit by parents of kids at Right Step Inc., a Milwaukee voucher school, because only 7 percent of students were proficient in English and none were proficient in math, he asked DeVos, “Would you send you kid to a school where 93 percent of the students aren’t English proficient and 0 percent are math proficient?”

“DeVos thanked Pocan for the question, then launched into a history of vouchers in Wisconsin, dropping the name of Annette Polly Williams, the late Democratic state lawmaker from Milwaukee who was an early voucher advocate.

“Who now says it’s not lived up to its promise,” interjected Pocan, leaving him open to a technicality.

“And who’s no longer living,” DeVos pointed out.

“Williams, for the record, ended up disowning the choice program and accusing its supporters of exploiting black children.

“The pointed but unproductive questioning continued with DeVos pointing out at least three times that Milwaukee has 28,000 kids in voucher programs.

“For his part, Pocan pointed out that the last expansion of the choice program resulted in three-fourths of the public money going to parents whose kids were already enrolled in the private schools they were getting vouchers for, and two-thirds went to families making over $100,000 a year.

“Do you think your federal program will support this sort of thing, so it’s not to encourage new outlets in education, simply to give money to people who already attend those schools?” he asked.

“Well, I really applaud Milwaukee for empowering parents to make the decisions that they think are right for their students and children,” DeVos answered.”

Pecan must have forgotten that DeVos is not a numbers person. Also not a facts person or a research person.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Failure, Milwaukee, School Choice
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