Archives for category: Vouchers
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Trump Budget Would Cut Education Programs by 10%, While Expanding $$ for Vouchers, Charters

By dianeravitch
March 12, 2019 //
19

Education Week describes Trump’s proposed cuts for programs in the U.S. Department of Education. Trump proposes eliminating 29 federal education programs while maintaining level funding for Title 1 and Special Education. The key quote in this article is the one from Secretary DeVos, who says the budget is about “education freedom,” by which she means, “So long, you are on your own, don’t expect the feds to help you.” The administration proposes $5 billion for vouchers and an increase in the federal charter school program to $500 million. It is not clear why the federal government needs to spend any money to start charter schools, since this project is now well covered by the Waltons, the Koch brothers, the DeVos family foundations, Michael Bloomberg, the Broad Foundation, the Dell Foundation, the Arnold Foundation, the Fisher Family Foundation, the Gates Foundation, the NewSchools Venture, the Charter School Growth Fund, and others too numerous to mention.

 

President Donald Trump is seeking a 10 percent cut to the U.S. Department of Education’s budget in his fiscal 2020 budget proposal, which would cut the department’s spending by $7.1 billion down to $64 billion starting in October.

Funding for teacher development under Title II, totaling $2.1 billion, would be eliminated, as would $1.2 billion in Title IV funding for academic supports and enrichment and $1.1 billion for 21st Century Community Learning Centers that support after-school programs. In total, funding for 29 programs would be eliminated in the federal budget. 

On the other side of the ledger, Trump’s budget blueprint calls for $500 million for federal charter school grants, a $60 million increase from current funding levels. The president also wants $200 million for the School Safety National Activities program, which would more than double the program’s $95 million in current funding—of that amount, $100 million would be used to fund a new School Safety State Formula Grant program. There are no requirements for the grant program related to firearms, according to the Education Department. And the office for civil rights would get $125 million, the same as current funding.

On the school choice front, the department says its main proposal has already been introduced: a federal tax-credit scholarship program from Republicans. The Treasury Department’s budget proposal includes $5 billion for the cost of such a program. 

Meanwhile, the Education Innovation and Research fund would be funded at $300 million, a $170 million increase from fiscal 2019. Of that amount, $200 million would “test the impact of teacher professional development vouchers,” according to a presentation from the Education Department, while $100 million would go toward innovative STEM grants. In addition, the Trump budget would provide $50 million for a pilot program under Title I to help districts create and use weighted student-funding formulas—this pilot program was created under the Every Student Succeeds Actin order to help schools focus money directly on disadvantaged students and those with special needs. Funding for the District of Columbia Opportunity Scholarships Program, which provides vouchers to students in the nation’s capital, would increase to $30 million. 

Title I funding for disadvantaged students, the single-largest federal funding program for public schools, remains flat at $15.9 billion in Trump’s budget pitch. Special education grants to states would also be level-funded at $13.2 billion. Also flat-funded are the English Language Acquisition formula grants at $737.4 million. 

“This budget at its core is about education freedom—freedom for America’s students to pursue their life-long learning journeys in the ways and places that work best for them, freedom for teachers to develop their talents and pursue their passions, and freedom from the top-down ‘Washington knows best’ approach that has proven ineffective and even harmful to students,” said U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos in a statement about the budget proposal.

On a Monday conference call with reporters, Jim Blew, the assistant secretary for planning, evaluation, and policy development, acknowledged that Congress and the Trump administration have not been synced up in terms of education spending priorities. 

“The administration believes that we need to reduce the amount of discretionary funding for the education,” Blew said. “That is based on the desire to have some fiscal discipline and address some higher-priority needs.”

Blew indicated that the priorities should be the disadvantaged children and students with disabilities. 

For more details on Trump’s fiscal 2020 proposal for the Education Department, click here. And check out our chart below to see the effects Trump’s budget request would have on different programs.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Funding, Privatization, U.S. Department of Education, Vouchers

Missouri: Stop Privatization Now!

By dianeravitch
March 8, 2019 //
6

 

The legislature in Missouri is considering bills for charters and vouchers, which will defund public schools.

if you live in Missouri, contact your legislator and express your support for yourcomm7nity’s Public s hoops.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Missouri, Privatization, Vouchers

Florida: Heads Up, Some Bad Legislation is on the Front Burner

By dianeravitch
March 7, 2019 //
1

 

Betsy DeVos touts Florida as a national model even though it spends less per pupil than most states and pays its teachers less. It has vouchers! It has charters! It violates its own state constitution!

From a reader:

We could use some help. Make a call. I Cannot stress enough how parents and teachers need to call and protest these bills. Please make a call today:

Please feel free to share this. 

On Wednesday, 3/6/19, at 10:30 AM, the Senate Education Committee will be hearing SB 7070.

This is a train bill, meaning it covers multiple education topics in one bill. Several of the components are very bad. Tell the Senator that you oppose train bills.

1. Establishes a new voucher program “Family Empowerment Scholarship”, which will provide low income children with vouchers to private, mostly religious, schools. The funding will come directly from the FEFP (Florida Education Finance Program), meaning your property taxes will pay for much of it. Please tell the senators that you are opposed to paying property taxes for vouchers to religious schools with no academic accountability.

2. Also funded in the FEFP are a series of teacher/principal bonuses. Our teachers need RAISES not bonuses. Bonuses can not be used to secure a mortgage. In the midst of a critical teacher shortage our teachers need increased salaries.

Please let these senators know you oppose SB7070 because of the above. Also, let them know that you believe PUBLIC SCHOOLS are an essential part of our community and they deserve our full support.

Senate Ed Committee
Senator Diaz 850-487-5036
Senator Baxley 850-487-5012
Senator Perry 850-487-5008
Senator Simmons 850-487-5009
Senator Stargel 850-487-5022
Senator Montford 850-487-5003
Senator Berman 850-487-5031
Senator Cruz 850-487-5018

Categories Florida, Merit pay, Vouchers

Anthony Cody: Charter Schools and Vouchers Are an Existential Threat to Public Schools

By dianeravitch
March 6, 2019 //
21

Recently Education Week posted a column claiming that charters and vouchers do not threaten public schools and that concern about privatization is vastly overblown.

Anthony Cody refutes that argument for complacency in this post. 

The writer of the article, Arianna Prothero, is a staff writer for Education Week.

Cody writes:

Prothero apparently only consulted one side of this contentious issue, as all the statistics she cites are from the National Alliance for Public (sic) Charter Schools.

When she refers to “most parts of America,” she apparently means rural areas, he says.

She wondered why West Virginia teachers were willing to strike to block charter schools, when, she claims, they are no big deal in a state like West Virginia. After all, legislators only want to start small, with one itty-bitty program with only a few charters.

Cody responds:

Wow. That is quite a conclusion! It would be reassuring if this were not the way that almost every charter school and voucher program began – with just a few schools, or only targeting a limited group of students. And then within a few years, the programs are expanded to include nearly everyone. Reporters covering education should know this history.

Indiana’s voucher program started for limited income students who had attended public schools for at least a year. It expanded to the point that today many students are eligible. Take a look at all the student eligibility pathways.   This year, taxpayers will spend $153 million on vouchers for students attending private and parochial schools. Families earning as much as $91,000 a year are eligible.

Voucher programs such as “Education Savings Accounts” almost always start with one group, such as students with disabilities,  and then more groups are added every year. That is what happened in Arizona. The program in Arizona started small, and by last year had expanded to make 20% of students eligible. State lawmakers tried to make 90% of students eligible, but last year voters overturned the law. The proposal in West Virginia, for seven charter schools and vouchers for a thousand students this year, would have been a platform for further growth.

Cody shows how charters are undermining the very existence of public schools in some cities.

And he notes:

Mainstream media coverage for the past decade has, similar to this EdWeek blog post, generally downplayed the potential and real harms inflicted by the expansion of charter schools and voucher programs. The experiences of those in places like Oakland, Los Angeles and Pennsylvania serve as a warning to others — whether they are in urban, suburban or rural areas. Charter schools are a costly experiment that so far, has failed to yield much. Those in states fortunate enough to have avoided charters thus far do not need to repeat these failed experiments to learn the same lessons the hard way. Teachers in West Virginia were wise to ward off this danger.

Readers might be interested to know that blog posts in EdWeek bearing the K12 Parent Engagement logo are partly funded by contributions by the Walton Family Foundation, though EdWeek retains editorial control.

The Walton Family Foundation is anti-union, anti-public school, and pro-privatization. They expect a return on investment.

 

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Privatization, Vouchers, Walton Foundation, West Virginia

Georgia: State Senate Says NO to Vouchers!

By dianeravitch
March 5, 2019 //
3

 

The Georgia State Senate, controlled by Republicans, voted not to create a private school voucher program. 

Critics said the program would eventually cost the state half a billion a year, defunding public schools.

Democrats voted as a bloc against it, joined by key Republicans including Senate President Pro Tem Butch Miller of Gainesville.

Public school supporters who opposed the bill were astonished.

The fate of the bill by Sen. Greg Dolezal, R-Cumming, stunned the public school lobby, which had been working overtime against it.

“Pleasantly surprised,” was how Craig Harper, executive director of the 90,000-plus member Professional Association of Georgia Educators put it.

John Zauner, executive director of the Georgia School Superintendents Association, said the legislation would have “fundamentally” changed school financing.

Categories Georgia, Vouchers

Libertarians: Cory Booker is the Champion of Charters and Vouchers

By dianeravitch
March 3, 2019 //
21

 

In this article, a writer for the libertarian Reason magazine–which supports free-market solutions to all government problems–praises Cory Booker for his advocacy on behalf of charters and vouchers, and even dares to mention that he worked closely with Betsy DeVos, his ideological ally on education issues.

Booker is proud of his record as an advocate of privatization and a supporter of non-union schools.

Real Democrats don’t support charters and vouchers. These are Republican issues.

Public schools belong to the public, not to entrepreneurs or privatizers or profiteers or corporate chains or foreign entities.

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

Peter Greene: Republicans Plan to Eliminate Public Schools in Florida

By dianeravitch
March 1, 2019 //
35

Peter Greene paints an ugly picture of the dominant forces of privatization in Florida and their plans to destroy public education and share the spoils.

He begins by asking these questions:

Here are two not-entirely-academic questions:

Is it possible to end public education in an entire state?

Can Florida become any more hostile to public education than it already is?

Newly-minted Governor Ron DeSantis and a wild cast of privatization cronies seem to answer a resounding “yes” to both questions.

The trick they play is to say that anything funded by the public, no matter who owns it, runs it, or uses it, is “public,” by definition.

Florida has become a playground for for-profit entrepreneurs and religious zealots, and the new governor Ron DeSantis is on their team.

He describes the leaders of a group that calls itself the “School Choice Movement,” and they are people who never give a moment’s thought to the public interest or the common good.

There is a lot of dirty politics in the Sunshine State, and a good deal of money to line someone’s pockets. Up until now, the courts have blocked the goals of the privatizers, which directly violate the state constitution. But Governor DeSantis just replaced some of those pesky judges to get the courts out of his way.

Greene writes:

Calling charter schools public creates a nice batch of smoke and mirrors, allowing DeSantis and his cronies to privatize giant chunks of Florida’s school system while still proclaiming, “No need to worry. You still have public schools!” You could completely shift the education system to privately owned and operated schools while still reassuring parents, taxpayers, and, perhaps, courts, that you haven’t done a thing because it’s still all public schools.

It’s not just marketing. It’s stealing the Mona Lisa and hanging up a Polaroid picture of the painting in its place. It’s kidnapping your spouse and replacing them with an inflatable doll. It is a gaslighting of epic proportions.

In the meantime, Florida taxpayers, you probably should not try to just stroll into the public governor’s mansion you paid for or borrow one of those public vehicles that you bought for officials to drive around in (especially don’t try to commandeer a public army tank). Instead, I would keep a close eye on your public schools while you’ve still got them. And if it’s already too late in your county, don’t be sad– your loss of public education has at least made some of your leaders really wealthy.

And the rest of us need to pay attention, too. Remember– Betsy DeVos is among the many people who think Florida is an educational exemplar.

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Florida, For-Profit, Fraud, Privatization, School Choice, Vouchers

Tennessee: Governor Wants Vouchers, But Many Worry about the Frauds and Scams in Other States

By dianeravitch
February 23, 2019 //
56

 

The newly elected Republican governor of Tennessee, Bill Lee, wants vouchers, but he can expect pushback from the local media and local school boards that know of the frauds and scams in other states that have endorsed vouchers.

The Daily Memphian warns about the squandering of taxpayer dollars in other states.

Tennessee lawmakers say that if broader school choice options are offered, the Legislature would need to enact restrictions to avoid the kind of education savings account fraud seen in states where public-dollar vouchers are given to parents for homeschooling and private school enrollment.

Reports from across the nation show situations in which private-school officials and parents spent voucher money for items unrelated to education. Cards were used at beauty supply stores, sporting good shops and for computer tech support, in addition to trying to withdraw cash, which was not allowed.

“Absolutely, that’s one of my concerns,” said Rep. Mark White, a Memphis Republican who chairs the House Education Committee.

The Arizona Republic found many parents there put voucher funds into college-savings accounts then sent their children to public schools, among other fraudulent activity, all amid lax oversight. The Phoenix newspaper also reported the state investigated one case in which voucher funds were allegedly used to pay for an abortion after it adopted an Empowerment Scholarship Account program in 2011.

Arizona voters rejected a 2018 referendum to expand the education accounts to make all public-school students eligible.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported in 2004 the principal of a private school used voucher payments to buy two Mercedes-Benz cars, then claimed they were a legitimate expense because he had invested his own money in the school.

The school board in Murfreesboro passed a unanimous resolution against vouchers that would divert public money away from public schools to religious schools and home schooling.

Lawmakers should oppose state money being used for private education, says a resolution approved Thursday by Rutherford County school officials.

The seven Board of Education members also signed the document in opposition to any state legislation allowing vouchers or education savings accounts for private education. The elected school officials represent a district serving 46,772 students from prekindergarten through 12th grade.

Parents and school boards should be aware that the opening bid for vouchers is to authorize one only for students with special needs. That is the camel’s nose under the tent. See what happened in Arizona and Florida, which began with that single group, then added another group, then another group, then another and another. Beware.

Categories Education Reform, Fraud, Tennessee, Vouchers

The West Virginia Strike Is Not About Pay: It’s About Charters and Vouchers and the Fight for Public Education

By dianeravitch
February 20, 2019 //
19

 

Valerie Strauss sums up why the teachers’ renewed strike in West Virginia is different. It is not about pay. It’s about a fight for the future of public education. The teachers were fighting not only the local supporters of privatization. They were fighting the Koch brothers and ALEC.

Strauss writes:

This time, it wasn’t about pay.

West Virginia teachers walked off the job across the state Tuesday to protest the privatization of public education and to fight for resources for their own struggling schools.

It was the second time in a year that West Virginia teachers left their classrooms in protest. In 2018, they went on strike for nine days to demand a pay increase, help with high health-care costs and more school funding — and they won a 5 percent pay hike. On Tuesday, union leaders said that, if necessary, they would give up the pay hike as part of their protest. They are fighting legislation that would take public money from resource-starved traditional districts and use it for charter schools and for private and religious school tuition.

“Teachers are willing to forsake their raises for the proposition that public education must be protected and that their voices must be protected,” said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, who went to Charleston, W.Va., for the strike Tuesday. “This was absolutely an effort to defund public education, and teachers fought it.”

Barely four hours into the strike, with hundreds of teachers packed into the statehouse, the Republican-led House of Delegates voted down the state Senate’s version of the omnibus education bill — despite pressure to pass it from conservative and libertarian groups, including some connected to the Koch network funded by billionaire Charles Koch.

It was not clear whether the House vote would put the bill to rest for good, but the episode underscored a growing determination among teachers around the country to fight for their public schools.

“I am DONE being disrespected,” Jessica Maunz Salfia, who teaches at Spring Mills High School in Berkeley County, W.Va., wrote in an open letter (see below) on Monday about why she was going to protest Tuesday.

West Virginia teachers remain at the forefront of a rebellion by educators throughout the country who began striking last year over meat-and-potatoes issues such as pay and health-care costs. But that movement has morphed into something broader: a fight in support of the U.S. public education system that Education Secretary Betsy DeVos once called “a dead end.”

In state after state, teachers are saying the same things: Pay matters, but the future of public education matters more. Privatization is intolerable, whether by charters or vouchers.

No compromise with privatization!

 

Categories ALEC, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Privatization, School Choice, Teacher Pay, Vouchers, West Virginia

West Virginia Teachers Need Our Support

By dianeravitch
February 19, 2019 //
4

I just received this email from the “Campaign to End Child Poverty.” Open the link: parents, churches, and public libraries are offering meals and safe spaces for children and supporting the teachers’ just demands. The teachers are turning their backs on a pay raise because the legislature and governor broke their promise not to introduce charters and vouchers, which will further defund the public schools.

#55STRONG!

 

West Virginia Teachers and Service Personnel are again taking a stand – a bold, brave stand for OUR Children, Our public education system and OUR Future.

WE stand with them in full support! #55Strong!

With Senate leadership rushing a vote with little time for most to read and digest the changes, teachers and service personnel are standing against a bill that will benefit outside interests and line a business person’s pocket before it will ever support WV children in the classroom.

Our teachers and service personnel are fighting back against an omnibus education bill that does not lower classrooms size, support the needs of special ed students, fully fund counselors and a social worker in every school. They are not accepting a 5% pay raise, if OUR children are not put first!

The decision to stand against this bad bill is not an easy one. We know this. Lets show solidarity in our ACTIONS.

Here is what YOU can do:

  • Call YOUR House Delegate TODAY and let them know you stand with WV Teachers and Service Personnel and do not support this bill. Today is the day to let them hear from you!
  • Stand in solidarity with your teachers and service personnel at the school nearest you (Please support Putnam County teachers and service personnel. They NEED US!)
  • Donate, volunteer at your local church or organization feeding and supporting children and parents in this moment. For more info on who is offering meals and child care, join and follow Families Leading Change WV Facebook page
  • Come to the Capitol and STAND 55 Strong!
  • Talk to your neighbors, friends and fellow parents. Ask them to lift their voice on this issue. A show of power will win!

Stay tuned for more details as they develop!

We stand in power and solidarity! West Virginia Strong! 55 Strong!

Jennifer

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Privatization, Teachers, Vouchers, West Virginia
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »