Archives for category: Vouchers
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Nevada Rejects ESA Vouchers, But Funds Tax Credit Voucher

By dianeravitch
June 7, 2017 //
12

A voucher is a voucher is a voucher. It means shifting public tax money to private schools.

The Democrat-controlled Nevada Legislature rejected Education Savings Accounts vouchers, which would have allowed every family to have a debit card for education. It was hailed by conservatives as the best universal voucher program in the nation. But it will not be funded. However, the Democrats did allocate $10 million for tax credits, which allow wealthy individuals and corporations to donate to a private scholarship fund. What should have been paid in taxes goes to pay for private schools. A rose is a rose is a rose.

http://www.idahostatesman.com/news/business/article154497234.html

Categories Nevada, Vouchers

“The Demolition of American Education,” By Trump and DeVos

By dianeravitch
June 6, 2017 //
19

I wrote an article for the New York Review of Books about the proposed Trump-DeVos budget.

The whole world needs to know what Trump and DeVos want to do to limit access to college and to undermine public education.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Funding, School Choice, Trump, Vouchers

Ann Waldman: Vermont’s Voucher Program Pays Tuition at Elite Boarding Schools

By dianeravitch
June 5, 2017 //
10

Voucher advocates like to point to Vermont as the nation’s oldest program. When it was started in 1869, it was intended to pay the tuition of students whose town did not have a public school. It has very little in common with the curren voucher movement, which takes its inspiration from the libertarian economist Milton Friedman, who wrote a seminal essay in 1955 proposing that all students should receive vouchers to attend the school of their choice. The group that was fastest to seize upon his ideas was Southern segregationists, who saw school choice as an effective way to keep their schools racially segregated. It took a dozen years until the federal courts and the U.S. Department of Education compelled Southern schools to desegregate their schools.

Meanwhile, Vermont’s voucher program continued undisturbed.

Today as education writer Anne Waldman of ProPublica explains, the voucher program funds a disproportionately large number of students from affluent families who choose expensive private schools, including out-of-state boarding schools like Exeter and Deerfield Academy.

“Vermont’s voucher program is a microcosm of what could happen across the country if school-choice advocates such as Education Secretary Betsy DeVos achieve their vision. By subsidizing part of the cost of private schools in or out of state, it broadens options for some Vermonters while diverting students from public education and disproportionately benefiting wealthier families like the Bowmans.

“Vermont vouchers have been used to send students to ski academies, out-of-state art schools and even foreign boarding schools, such as the Sigtunaskolan School in Sweden, whose alumni include Sweden’s current king and former prime minister. Vermont paid more than $40 million in vouchers to more than 60 private schools last year, including more than $1.3 million to out-of-state schools, according to data received from the state’s education agency through a public-records request.

“Of the almost 2,800 Vermonters who use publicly funded vouchers to go to private schools in state, 22.5 percent qualify for free or reduced price lunch, according to state education data. (The data excludes out-of-state private schools.) By contrast, 38.3 percent of public school students in Vermont have family incomes low enough to qualify them for the lunch discount.”

Voucher advocates in other states will insist that they want vouchers for poor black and Hispanic students or for students with disabilities.

Such claims, however, are the first step towards the goal of making vouchers available for everyone.

Vermont sets no income limit for students who choose to use vouchers. However, the vouchers may not be used in religious schools, because the state Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional in 1999.

Betsy DeVos has said many times that she seeks vouchers for every kind of school, including religious schools. Private and religiousschools set their own admissions requirements, so the schools choose the students. Public schools are required by law to accept all students, regardless of race, religion, family income, sexual orientation, language or disability status.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Inequity, Religion, School Choice, Vermont, Vouchers

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

Texas PTA Blasts Lt. Governor Dan Patrick and State Senate for Failure to Fix School Finance

By dianeravitch
June 2, 2017 //
2

The Texas PTA is furious at Lt. Governor Dan Patrick and his allies in the State Senate.

Just when it seemed that the legislature was going to increase funding for the state’s woefully underfunded public schools, the Senate insisted on attaching voucher legislation. The House had already defeated vouchers, but the Senate came back a second time and was defeated again. The Senate held the budget hostage.

Meanwhile due to the stubborn Dan Patrick, millions of children across the state will be deprived of the schools they need.

Way to go, Texas PTA!

Categories Funding, Texas, Vouchers

DeVos’ Organization Attacks Randi and Jonah for Opposing Vouchers

By dianeravitch
May 31, 2017 //
40

Betsy DeVos founded and funded the American Federation for Children, which advocates for vouchers.

AFC issued this statement today:

AFC Statement on Weingarten-Edelman Op-Ed

The American Federation for Children, the nation’s voice for educational choice, released the following statement in response to the Los Angeles Times op-ed from Randi Weingarten and Jonah Edelman.

Statement from Kevin P. Chavous, founding board member and executive counsel for the American Federation for Children:

Today’s op-ed by American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten, and Stand for Children President Jonah Edelman is a disservice to millions of parents and children across the nation who want nothing more than equal access to a quality education.

The op-ed is full of hyberbole and outright inaccuracies.

First, the headline is rich with irony. It is school choice–directly empowering parents to choose the best educational environment for their child–that is the most democratic of ideas. Rather than undermining public schools, choice helps public schools by virtue of having to compete with other options. Only among the K-12 establishment would competition be considered undermining public schools.

Second, the Administration’s FY 2018 budget proposal does not “siphon billions of dollars from public schools to fund private and religious school vouchers.” It is not “diverting $1 billion into voucher programs.” These are completely false statements. The Administration’s budget proposes $1.4 billion for school choice–$1.15 billion of which is for public school choice. Moreover, all but $250 million of these proposed resources would remain in public schools.

Third, the op-ed states “facts show that where vouchers have been into practice on a meaningful scale, they hurt student learning.” The op-ed also cites a recently released study of first year data from the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute for Education Sciences saying it “adds to a growing body of education research that concludes vouchers may harm rather help student achievement.” These too are completely false statements.

Leaving aside the obvious fact that parents themselves have chosen to participate in private school choice programs, the body of research on these programs proves they work for children fortunate enough to participate.

Prior to the IES report, there have been 15 empirical studies examining academic outcomes for students participating in private school choice using random assignment, the “gold standard” of defensible social science:

• 10 found improved test scores for school choice participants
• 3 found no significant effect for school choice participants
• 2 found negative impact in the early years of study for school choice participants

21 studies examined school choice and how it impacts academic outcomes in public schools:

• 20 found that school choice improved public school academic outcomes
• 1 found no significant effect on academic outcomes from school choice

Finally, the School Superintendents Association “research” into states with existing tax credit scholarship programs and how some “donors have been able to make a profit off the backs of taxpayers and ultimately kids.” Perhaps Weingarten and Edelman are unaware of how tax credit scholarship programs work. Corporate and individual donors pay state taxes. They make a contribution to a local non-profit that provides scholarships for eligible children to attend a private school of their parents choice. They get a tax credit, they don’t make a profit. Parents and children across the nation would be fortunate indeed if the Administration and Congress were to adopt a federal tax credit because it would facilitate access to a quality education for another 1 million students–most of whom will graduate and go on to college as the body of research into these programs clearly demonstrates.

Take away the hyperbole and inaccuracies, what Randi Weingarten and Jonah Edelman truly oppose is giving parents, especially low-income parents, the ability to choose something other than their neighborhood traditional public school. While some of these neighborhood schools may be terrific schools, many are clearly not, which is why millions seek other options. The teachers’ unions oppose choice in education–period. The fact that organizations like Stand for Children and Democrats for Education Reform prefer to stand with the teachers’ unions rather than standing with the 3.5 million children in charter schools and private choice programs, and the millions more who desperately want access to better options, speaks volumes.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Vouchers

How Millionaires Make Money by Paying into Voucher Fund

By dianeravitch
May 31, 2017 //
7

The currently popular means of establishing vouchers in the states where the state constitution forbids them is called an “education savings account.” The way it works is otherwise known as money laundering. Suppose Daddy Warbucks owes the state $200,000 in taxes. He gives the money to an independent organization that gives out money for private and religious schools. He gets a state tax credit and may actually make money on the deal if he also gets a federal tax credit.

Very clever. Daddy Warbucks makes a generous gift of money that should have gone to the state treasury to pay for public services. The independent organization collects millions of dollars to hand out as vouchers.

This particular game was created in Florida, where the state courts ruled vouchers unconstitutional, and the voters rejected an effort by Jeb Bush to alter the state constitution.

Now it is happening in Missouri, where the richest man in the state is Rex Sinquefield.

Rex has long been a hater of public schools. He stands to achieve his dream, undermining the public schools, and getting a hefty tax deduction too.

Categories Billionaires, Florida, Missouri, Privatization, Vouchers

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
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