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Good News! Looks Like Vouchers Are Dead This Year in Texas, Again!

By dianeravitch
March 5, 2017 //
5

Here is some good news: “State Rep. Dan Huberty, a Houston Republican and chairman of the House Public Education Committee, said Tuesday morning that school choice legislation has no path forward in the House during the current legislative session.”

The Texas Senate, under the fat thumb of former radio talk show host Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, is gungho for vouchers. Patrick is also pushing a bathroom bill, modeled on North Carolina’s HB 2, to keep transgender girls or boys out of the bathroom of their choice. He has not suggested who will be in charge of monitoring genitalia in every public bathroom.

The Texas House of Representatives is not as eager to pass voucher legislation as the state senate. . The voucher bills so dear to Dan Patrick may not even get out of committee in the House.

This is what the Texas Tribune says:

State Rep. Dan Huberty, a Houston Republican and chairman of the House Public Education Committee, said Tuesday morning that school choice legislation has no path forward in the House during the current legislative session.

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has called Senate Bill 3 one of his top priorities. The bill would create two separate public programs to subsidize private school tuition and homeschooling, including one giving parents debit cards backed by taxpayer money.

“Yes, this is dead to you as an issue?” Texas Tribune CEO Evan Smith asked Huberty as a Tribune event Tuesday morning.

“I believe so, yes,” Huberty said.

School choice advocates are having a hissy fit and they want to censure Rep. Huberty.

School choice is an issue that divides Republicans; battle lines are often drawn more along rural-urban lines than party lines. Last session, the House did not take up the leading private school choice bill for a vote. In the past couple of months, Patrick has called on the House to at least take a vote on this session’s Senate Bill 3, which would create two public programs subsidizing families’ private school tuition and homeschooling expenses.

“We want a vote up or down in the Senate and in the House this session on school choice. It’s easy to kill a bill when no one gets to vote on it,” he said at January’s “National School Choice Week” rally.

On a talk radio show Monday, Patrick said the school choice bill would have the 76 votes needed to pass in the House if it made it out of committee.

Smith asked Huberty on Tuesday to weigh in on Patrick’s comments: “Do you believe you can get the 76 in the House on the floor if you let this go out of committee?”

“Your responsibility as chairman is to protect your membership,” Huberty replied.

When Smith asked what Huberty was protecting them from, Huberty said, “We’ve had a vote count over many sessions about where these numbers lie. I look at the committee and I know where the membership is on this particular issue and where we stand. Why don’t we focus on the things that we can do?”

We can thank House Speaker Joe Straus (R-San Antonio) for selecting Rep. Dan Huberty as the new chair of the House Committee on Public Education. The retiring chair, Jimmie Don Aycock (R-Killeen) was a supporter of public schools, and so is Rep. Huberty.

Huberty understands that no one ever got criticized for a bill that never made it out of committee. Rep. Huberty is protecting his fellow legislators from the wrath of the voters by strangling the voucher bills in committee.

Texans are divided about vouchers. A large association of home schoolers called Texans for Homeschool Freedom oppose vouchers, because they fear that government money will be followed by mandates about textbooks and testing, and they will lose the freedom they treasure.

Ross Ramsey, writing for the Texas Tribune, warns that the battle is far from over:

Elected officials who want vouchers have never been able to get them through the Texas Legislature. And if Huberty holds, it’s probably not going to happen in 2017, either.

One of those truisms borne of experience: Nothing is dead in the Texas Legislature while lawmakers are still in session. Resurrection is part of the game.

Vouchers could turn up as an amendment to another education bill, to legislation that rewires funding for public schools, to anything that has a similar enough subject to justify that sort of an attachment.

It would be weird, but Straus could always decide to send the vouchers bill somewhere other than Huberty’s committee for consideration. The members of the House could express an overwhelming change of heart and demand the opportunity to bring vouchers to the floor for a vote — either to pass it along to Gov. Greg Abbott, who has said he would sign such a bill, or to kill it outright to make a statement.

Categories Texas, Vouchers

The Disappointing Results of Vouchers in Louisiana: An Evaluation of the First Two Years

By dianeravitch
March 5, 2017 //
13

A team of researchers associated with the University of Arkansas studied the first two years of the Louisiana Scholarship Program. Their report was released in late February. For those hoping to see a validation of the transformative power of vouchers, the results were disappointing, to say the least.

“The Louisiana Scholarship Program (LSP) is a statewide private school voucher program available to moderate- to low-income students in low-performing public schools. The LSP is limited to students with family income at or below 250% of the federal poverty line. Children in these families also have to either be entering kindergarten or be attending a public school that was graded C, D, or F for the prior school year. In the program’s rst year, 9,809 students were eligible applicants, with a majority of them located outside of Orleans parish. This group of students, the 2012-13 LSP applicant cohort, is the focus of our evaluation.

“The voucher size is the lesser of the amount the state and local government provides to the local school system in which the student resides or the tuition charged by the participating private school that the student attends. Average tuition at participating private schools ranges from $2,966 to $8,999, with a median of $4,925, compared to average per pupil spending of $8,500 in Louisiana’s public schools.

“To participate in the program, private schools must meet certain criteria related to enrollment; nancial practice; student mobility; and health, safety and welfare of students. Participating schools are prohibited from being selective in their enrollment of voucher students and must administer the state accountability test (LEAP and iLEAP) annually to voucher students in grades 3-8 and 10.

“Nearly 60% of applicants received scholarships for the 2012-13 school year. Of the students who received voucher awards, 86% used their voucher to enroll in a private school in the rst quarter of 2012- 13.

“Roughly 87% of the students in this cohort are black; with 8% white, and 3% Hispanic. Prior to applying for the LSP, students in the 2012-13 cohort performed below the state average in English Language Arts (ELA), math, science, and social studies by around 20 percentile points on the LEAP and iLEAP in 2011-12. Applicants to the program in 2012-13 were concentrated in the earlier grades, with a third entering Kindergarten through 3rd grade.”

As noted in the report, the students who received the voucher were already low-performing. Over two years, their test scores declined significantly. Even though some of the academic losses were reduced in the second year, the students nonetheless lost ground. The academic losses were significant.

Looking for other results, the researchers sought to measure non-cognitive skills like “grit,” self-esteem, “locus of control, and “political tolerance.”

The report says:

“The differences between the two groups are minuscule and not statistically significant. We find little evidence to suggest that, after two years, students receiving an LSP scholarship had noticeably different non-academic skills or political tolerance than students who did not receive a scholarship. Moreover, given the limitations in our measures, we stress that our results are largely inconclusive.”

The researchers conclude that the scholarship program improved integration because the public schools that students left became somewhat less segregated, while the private schools became somewhat less integrated. Thus, “When we combine the largely integrating effects of the program on students’ former public schools with its slightly segregating effects on their new private schools, the overall effect of the LSP is to improve the racial integration of Louisiana Schools.”

The researchers also examined what they believed were the competitive effects of vouchers on nearby public schools:

“We find no effects across both math and ELA overall, but find large positive effects on math and ELA test scores when we restrict the sample to those public schools with a private competitor in close proximity. In sum, our analysis of the competitive impacts of the LSP show that public school performance in Louisiana was either unaffected or modestly improved as a result of the program’s expansion.”

Overall, these are might slim pickings. The students who received a voucher experienced large academic losses, which might or might not rebound in years ahead. There was no change in their noncognitive skills, to the extent these can be measured. Highly segregated public schools became less segregated when black students left for private schools, but this was not the purpose of the program, and it is certainly a roundabout and inefficient way to increase racial integration. As for the supposed benefits to public schools, this seems awfully speculative. And again, the purpose of the program is to “save poor kids trapped in failing schools, not to raise test scores of students in public schools that low-performing students leave.

Bottom line: getting a voucher had negative effects on the test performance of those who received the vouchers.

Please review the bios of the authors:

Patrick Wolf, who has conducted numerous voucher evaluations, is part of the Department of Educational Reform at the University of Arkansas, where he is “Distinguished Professor of Education Policy and 21st Century Endowed Chair in School Choice at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville.” He earned his Ph.D. at Harvard where his mentor was Paul Peterson, the nation’s leading academic proponent of school choice. Jonathan Mills received his Ph.D. at the University of Arkansas in 2015. Anna Egalite received her Ph.D. from the University of Arkansas and postdoctoral work at Paul Peterson’s program at Harvard.

This is a team predisposed to find the bright side. But they are honest scholars and the bright side was hard to find.

Categories Louisiana, Vouchers

Martin Carnoy: Vouchers Will Not Help the Neediest Students

By dianeravitch
March 5, 2017 //
55

Martin Carnoy is a professor at Stanford University who has studied education systems around the world.

Carnoy wrote a report for the Economic Policy Institute about the efficacy of vouchers, or their lack thereof. The report is titled “School Vouchers Are Not a Proven Strategy for Improving Student Achievement.” Carnoy reviews the longest-running voucher programs in the U.S. and other countries and finds little evidence that they improve student achievement.

Here is his summary:

“This report seeks to inform that debate by summarizing the evidence base on vouchers. Studies of voucher programs in several U.S. cities, the states of Florida, Indiana, Louisiana, and in Chile and India, find limited improvements at best in student achievement and school district performance from even large-scale programs. In the few cases in which test scores increased, other factors, namely increased public accountability, not private school competition, seem to be more likely drivers. And high rates of attrition from private schools among voucher users in several studies raises concerns. The second largest and longest-standing U.S. voucher program, in Milwaukee, offers no solid evidence of student gains in either private or public schools.

“In the only area in which there is evidence of small improvements in voucher schools—in high school graduation and college enrollment rates—there are no data to show whether the gains are the result of schools shedding lower-performing students or engaging in positive practices. Also, high school graduation rates have risen sharply in public schools across the board in the last 10 years, with those increases much larger than the small effect estimated on graduation rates from attending a voucher school.

“The lack of evidence that vouchers significantly improve student achievement (test scores), coupled with the evidence of a modest, at best, impact on educational attainment (graduation rates), suggests that an ideological preference for education markets over equity and public accountability is what is driving the push to expand voucher programs. Ideology is not a compelling enough reason to switch to vouchers, given the risks. These risks include increased school segregation; the loss of a common, secular educational experience; and the possibility that the flow of inexperienced young teachers filling the lower-paying jobs in private schools will dry up once the security and benefits offered to more experienced teachers in public schools disappear.

“The report suggests that giving every parent and student a great “choice” of educational offerings is better accomplished by supporting and strengthening neighborhood public schools with a menu of proven policies, from early childhood education to after-school and summer programs to improved teacher pre-service training to improved student health and nutrition programs. All of these yield much higher returns than the minor, if any, gains that have been estimated for voucher students.”

Carnoy published a shorter version of the report for a popular audience. He wrote an article for the New York Daily News explaining why Trump and DeVos are wrong about school choice, specifically vouchers.

He reviews recent research in plain language. Kids don’t benefit. In some places, they actually lose ground.

As I have often written in this space, if vouchers, charters, and school choice were the solution to the problems of urban education, Milwaukee would be the model district of the nation, as it has had choice since 1990. That’s two full generations of students.

He writes:

If the President and his new secretary of education, Betsy DeVos, were right about choice, Milwaukee would be among the highest-scoring urban school districts in the nation. Milwaukee’s private students would be outscoring those in public schools, and students in public schools would have made large gains because of the intense competition from private and charter schools.

None of that is the case. Research over a four-year period that compared the gains of voucher and public school students in Milwaukee showed that the voucher students did no better. And it’s African Americans, who make up roughly two-thirds of Milwaukee’s student body, who are the main recipients of vouchers and also most likely to attend charter schools.

When we compare the National Assessment of Educational Progress scores — that’s the gold standard of achievement tests — of black students in eighth-grade math and reading in 13 urban U.S. school districts, black students in Milwaukee have lower eighth-grade math scores than students in every city but Detroit — notably, another urban district with a high level of school choice.

In reading, Milwaukee’s black eighth-graders do even more poorly. They score lower than black eighth-graders in all other 12 city school districts.

How many billions will we waste on this failed free-market ideology? As Carnoy points out, investing in proven strategies in public schools with credentialed teachers would have long-term benefits.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Milwaukee, School Choice, Vouchers

Teacher: What Mike Pence Did to Schools and Teachers in Indiana

By dianeravitch
March 4, 2017 //
58

A retired teacher shared the story of Mike a Pence’s role in transforming the schools of Indiana:


Our former governor, Mike Pence, absolutely loves vouchers.Under his “leadership” Indiana became a national leader in giving vouchers to students and families. In fact, we have the dubious reputation of being one of the fastest-growing voucher states. We have a ridiculous merit pay system where highly-effective teachers in the wealthy Carmel-Clay school system received a bonus check of $2422, whereas highly-effective teachers in the poorer school system of Wayne Township a few miles away received $42. Because of Pence and the Republican legislature, many schools in areas of high poverty are struggling financially. I retired from Muncie Community Schools where I was offered an early retirement incentive of staying on the teacher health insurance plan until I turned 65. Hundreds of other employees and I took the “bait” and were promptly dropped from the plan, leaving us without health insurance. Now because of the inequitable funding to schools (and because of a new local superintendent who doesn’t appear to like teachers much), the school board has made its final contract offer to teachers (as reported in our local newspaper, the Star Press):

• A 10 percent reduction in salary for teachers making between $36,005 and
$61,006 for 2015-16.

• A 28 percent cut, including a 20 percent reduction in salary retroactive to July 1,
2016 and the cancellation of two pay checks in the 2016-17 contract.

• Contributing a fixed total to insurance premiums, equal to about 68 percent to the
health insurance option

• Eliminating sick bank contributions

• Eliminating additional pay for teaching a sixth period

• Eliminating the $150 professional development stipend for teachers

• Eliminating retiree benefits

• A one-time salary raise to the minimum of $37,000 for any teacher currently
making less

Thank you, Vice-President Pence, for ruining the teaching profession in Muncie and in the entire state of Indiana.

Categories Education Reform, Indiana, Teacher Pay, Teachers, Vouchers

Oklahoma: School Vouchers Dead for This Legislative Session

By dianeravitch
March 3, 2017 //
6

Vouchers died in the Oklahoma legislature, for now. The sponsor of voucher legislation pulled the bill, saying he didn’t want it to squeak through. Probably, he didn’t have the votes.

No reference was made, apparently, to the research showing that vouchers don’t improve academic performance and often depress it.

“A divisive school-choice proposal that would create state-funded education savings accounts allowing students to attend private schools is off the legislative agenda, at least for now.

“Sen. Rob Standridge, R-Norman, pulled Senate Bill 560 from consideration on Wednesday, which appears to eliminate the possibility of school vouchers becoming law this session.

“The move was a bit of a surprise. Five senators had signed on as co-authors, and Standridge had collected letters of support from political groups and religious leaders.

“Up against the committee deadline, though, Standridge felt he didn’t have the votes.

“I don’t want to pass it by a thin margin,” Standridge told senators in an appropriations committee meeting Wednesday morning. “I want us to feel good about this.”

“The bill had squeaked through the education committee Feb. 20 by a vote of 9 to 7.

“An education savings account – or education scholarship account, as SB 560 called it – gives parents a portion of the state funding used to educate their child, and the parents can spend the money on private school tuition or other qualifying expenses. Critics of education savings accounts and other forms of school choice say such programs siphon money from district schools, hurting public education, and channel it to private schools, often religious ones.

“Oklahoma City Public Schools Superintendent Aurora Lora, in a written statement, urged senators to reject the proposal because it would compound budget cuts that public schools have already endured.

“Vouchers are not the answer to improving educational outcomes for all students, especially in the current budget crisis,” she wrote.

“The Oklahoma State School Boards Association also opposed the measure.

“I appreciate the Senate for not moving forward with a divisive bill that distracts from the most important issues facing Oklahoma’s nearly 700,000 public school students: a historic teacher shortage and severe budget cuts,” Executive Director Shawn Hime said.

“Standridge, however, said he’s not giving up, and like-minded legislators have encouraged him to reintroduce education savings accounts through another avenue, such as in the budget negotiation process. “We’ll see what tomorrow brings,” he said.

“Standridge’s proposal would have varied students’ fund amounts based on their families’ household income, and the total number of participants would have been capped at 1 percent of all public school students.

“Based on those parameters and others, Senate staff estimated public schools could see an estimated net loss of $16 million the first year. More than $5 million would have remained in the school funding formula for 7,000 students who were no longer in public school.

“The School Boards Association ran its own fiscal analysis, finding that the proposal would divert from public schools up to $30 million in the first year and $1.6 billion over a decade.”

Categories Budget Cuts, Education Reform, Funding, Oklahoma, Vouchers

Jeff Bryant: Trump and DeVos Want Vouchers to Promote Religious Fundamentalism

By dianeravitch
March 2, 2017 //
78

This is an alarming post. Read at your own peril.

Trump gave a shout out to the glories of vouchers when he spoke to Congress. DeVos, a religious zealot, smiled with gratification as her 30-year crusade to transfer public funds to religious schools now appears near accomplishment.

Trump pointed to a young woman who had achieved success because of receiving a voucher funded by a tax credit in Florida. Her accomplishments are considerable.

But what kind of school did she attend?

“Over the past three years, Merriweather has had the opportunity to tell her story in numerous media outlets including the Wall Street Journal, The Hill, the Tampa Bay Times, and The 74 (a pro school choice media site funded by charter school and voucher advocates such as the Walton Family Foundation and the Dick & Betsy DeVos Foundation). She’s also been the subject of pro school choice profiles in politically conservative news outlets. And after Merriweather was highlighted at the Trump’s speech, she was interviewed by Fox News.

“None of this is to take away from the sincerity of Merriweather’s writing or the validity of her lived experience. But it needs to be noted that few public school students have had such prominent venues to repeatedly tell their success stories.

“Further, the school Merriweather attended through the school choice program Trump champions is no ordinary school.

“Religious Fundamentalism At Taxpayer Expense

“The private school Merriweather attended and graduated from is the Esprit De Corps Center for Learning in Jacksonville which she has described in testimony she gave last year to a U.S. House Committee as “a church based school, a church that I actually attended.”

“According to the Esprit de Corps website, the “vision for the school was birthed from the mind of God in the heart of Dr. Jeannette C. Holmes-Vann, the Pastor and Founder of Hope Chapel Ministries, Inc.” The education philosophy guiding the school is based on “a return to a traditional educational model founded on Christian principles and values. In accordance with this vision, each component of the school was purposefully selected and designed.”

“A significant “component” of the Esprit de Corps school is its adherence to a fundamentalist Christian curriculum. Its official listing in a Jacksonville directory of private schools describes its education program as a “spiritual emphasis and Biblical [sic] view, which permeates the A-Beka curriculum.”

“A Beka is one of the most widely used K-12 curriculum series for home schooling and private Christian schools,” Rachel Tabachnick explains to me in an email. “This includes many private schools receiving public dollars through voucher and tax-credit programs.”

“Tabachnick has collected textbooks used by voucher and corporate tax-credit schools for over ten years, including curriculum from A Beka Book and Bob Jones University Press.

“In an investigative article for Alternet in 2011, Tabachnick writes, “Throughout the K-12 curriculum, A Beka consistently presents the Bible as literal history and science. This includes teaching young earth creationism and demeaning other religions and other Christian faiths including Roman Catholicism.”

“An A Beka history text she reviews teaches that “socialist propaganda” exaggerated the Great Depression “so that Franklin Delano Roosevelt could pass New Deal legislation” and that the Vietnam War “divided the country into the ‘hawks who supported the fight against Communism, and doves, who were soft on Communism.’”

“Tabachnick quotes a fourth-grade A Beka text that celebrates President Ronald Reagan’s presidency under a banner of “A Return to Patriotism and Family Values.” In describing President Bill Clinton’s administration, an A Beka high school history text calls First Lady Hilary Clinton’s effort to overhaul health care as a “plan for socialized medicine” and describes Vice President Al Gore as “known for his radical environmentalism.”

“Christ Is History, Africans Are Inferior

“In her emails to me, Tabachnick shares excerpts from a newer edition of A Beka’s textbook on “History and Civil Government” that teaches, “The first advent of Jesus Christ to earth – His incarnation, birth, life, death, resurrection, and ascension – is the focal point of history. History began with God and His act of Creation. I climaxed with Gods’ act of redemption.” (emphasis original)

“In the current edition of A Beka’s 10th grade history text “World History and Cultures in Christian Perspective” Tabachnick shares with me, “modern liberalism” is described as “the desire to be free from absolute standards and morals, especially the Scriptures.”

“From this text, high school students like Denisha Merriweather learn, “The beginning of the 20th century witnessed a cultural breakdown that threatened to destroy the very roots of Western civilization. The cause of this of this dissolution was the idea or philosophy known as liberalism.” (emphasis original)

“The curriculum used by Esprit de Corps also taught Merriweather and her African American classmates about the innate inferiority of the African continent and its people.

“The textbooks teach the narrative that the people of African nations descended from Noah’s son Ham and that Ham’s descendant Nimrod led the rebellion against God by building the Tower of Babel,” Tabachnick tells me. This Biblically supported lesson is often referred to as “the curse of Ham,” which has historically been a primary justification for slavery among Southern Christians, according to numerous sources.

“In the A Beka text “History and Civil Government,” Adam and Eve are referred to as “the parents of humanity” and racial variations in human kind are described as the result of “recessive traits” due to “(1) a rapidly changing environment, (2) a small population, (3) and extensive inbreeding.”

“Current A Beka texts also falsely claim that only ten percent of the population of Africa is literate and that literacy rates may drop further because of communists shutting down mission schools,” Tabachnick tells me.”

Read the entire article. Ask yourself whether religious fundamentalism provides the kind of education that our nation’s children need to prepare for a complex world.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Education Reform, Religion, Separation of church and state, Trump, Vouchers

Who Is Trump’s Poster Girl for Vouchers?

By dianeravitch
March 1, 2017 //
40

During his speech to Congress last night, Teump singled out a young woman in the audience as an exemplar of the benefits of vouchers. He said:

“Joining us tonight in the gallery is a remarkable woman, Denisha Merriweather. As a young girl, Denisha struggled in school and failed third grade twice. But then she was able to enroll in a private center for learning, with the help of a tax credit scholarship program. Today, she is the first in her family to graduate, not just from high school, but from college. Later this year she will get her masters degree in social work.”

Mitchell Robinson, professor of music at Michigan State University, sent the following comment:

“Denisha Meriweather is not simply “an intelligent, dynamic and motivating individual whose life was changed by the school choice policies promoted by Betsy DeVos.” She’s an employee of “Step Up For Students”, a state-approved nonprofit scholarship funding organization that helps administer the very Florida Tax Credit Scholarship Program she benefitted from. [My note: Step up for Students has more than $500 million in assets. https://www.stepupforstudents.org/wp-content/uploads/2012.13-SUFS-Form-990.pdf]

“Ms. Meriweather has also been writing versions of this article at least since she graduated from college in 2014. So, to date, the only job Ms. Meriweather has secured as a result of receiving her voucher is working for the organization that gave her the voucher, and trying to influence public opinion on the worth and value of vouchers.”

Why we must NOT give Betsy DeVos and school choice “a chance”

Categories Betsy DeVos, Florida, School Choice, Trump, Vouchers

Amazing Tape of Texas Sen. Huffines Yelling at Students Who Disagreed with Him about Vouchers

By dianeravitch
February 28, 2017 //
27

First thing this morning I posted the story about Texas State Senator Don Huffines debating middle-schoolers about vouchers. I thought they were in grades 7-12, but they were actually grades 7-8.

Texas Kids Whup State Senator From Dallas in Debate About Vouchers

I just received a copy of the tape. Huffines berates the students for challenging him. He is rude and condescending.

This man is a disgrace to his district. He should be laughed out of his office. Or voted out, whichever happens first. The students are far better informed than he is.

This is the best part of the exchange:

“Critics of the voucher program Huffines is pushing say the amount of the vouchers will not be large enough to actually help students attend some costly schools that will be benefiting from taxpayer dollars. One student specifically asked that question, with more grace and decorum than her adult senator could muster up.

“The student asked, “Excuse me Senator, I don’t mean to offend you but you are speaking on behalf of the students, and as a student of public education I disagree with this completely. I’ve gone to a private school before…with these vouchers, what are you going to get — $5000 a year? The majority of these private schools are $5000 a semester. How are lower income families supposed to pay for the rest of the school year?” Huffines, with a very combative and condescending tone answers, “Oh, so it doesn’t pay for all their education. It doesn’t pay for all their education, does it? The $5000 won’t pay for it, right? So you’re saying since we’re not giving them enough money to pay for all their education, screw ’em they can’t go to private school! Do you want me to give them $15,000? Is that what you want? So they can all go to Hockaday or St. Mark’s? That’s the most selfish thing I’ve ever heard.”

I propose a debate between Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos and the middle school students of Richardson ISD. I would pay to see that!

Categories Texas, Vouchers

Texas Kids Whup State Senator From Dallas in Debate About Vouchers

By dianeravitch
February 28, 2017 //
27

A Texas State Senator debated a group of students from Richardson ISD, and as they say in Texas, the kids gave Sen. Don Huffines a whupping. The students were in grades 7-12.

He tried to persuade them they needed vouchers so they could go to private schools, and a student told him it wouldn’t work because the vouchers would never be large enough to get them into the best schools.

He got testy and snapped at her:

“Huffines countered by asking: “Do you want me to give them $15,000 so they can go to Hockaday or St. Mark’s? That’s the most selfish thing I’ve ever heard.”

Huffines got hot under the collar when the students took issue with him. He lost his cool. His spokesman said “he was ambushed.”


“But Meredyth Childress, a PTA member and mother of one of the students at the meeting, said the students were not political operatives looking to “ambush” Huffines. They were given articles to review about private school vouchers before meeting with the senator. “We’re very proud of the students,” Childress said. “Both sides were passionate. One side displayed the proper respect and decorum. One side did not.”

During one heated exchange, a woman told Huffines that it wasn’t right to send money to private schools that was meant to help public schools.

“What makes you think it’s your money?” Huffines responded, adding that businesses were taxpayers. “Sixty-two percent of all taxes are paid by businesses,” he said.

At one point, Huffines barked at the group: “What are you all afraid of?”

Richardson ISD Superintendent Jeannie Stone said she was proud of how the students responded and grateful they attended the event with her and the PTA.

Bottom line: the high school students were better prepared and more thoughtful than Sen. Huffines.

They knew their stuff. He was outsmarted and outclassed.

Is Sen. Huffines as smart as a seventh-grader from Richardson ISD? What do you think?

Categories Education Reform, Students, Texas, Vouchers

Mercedes Schneider: Betsy DeVos Will Use D.C. Power to Force Vouchers Down Your Throat

By dianeravitch
February 27, 2017 //
51

Here is a paradox. Congress wrote a new law called “Every Student Succeeds Act,” late in 2015, loaded with limits on the power of the Secretary of Education. Both parties were fed up with Arne Duncan’s overweening reach into every school in the nation, going far beyond what Congress intended. Perhaps they knew that all the boasting about his great successes was empty, as a recent evaluation proved.

But along comes Betsy DeVos, never having ever attended or worked in a public school, and knowing nothing of federal policy or federal programs, who has decided to impose her personal ideology on the schools of America. She knows nothing of evidence, and when it flatly contradicts her ideology, she ignores it. This is the definition of a closed mind.

DeVos wants vouchers. The research says that vouchers haven’t improved student test scores.

Mercedes Schneider says we will learn the details later, stuff like the cost. DeVos claims that every child will be able to attend the same quality school as the most affluent but she knows that no voucher will be large enough to put every student (any student) into an elite private school, that such schools don’t have empty seats, nor do they want the kids with disabilities and a host of other issues. She is peddling empty promises. Does she know it? Does she believe what she is saying?

What we do know is that DeVos’s personal desire to bust up public schools and use federal funds for vouchers has been tried for 25 years without any evidence of success. Indeed, there is a growing body of research showing that children who use vouchers may actually lose ground compared to students in public schools. If vouchers were the solution, as she insists, we would be looking now to Milwaukee and Cleveland as the lodestars of American education. Sadly, they are not. Milwaukee has had vouchers since 1990, Cleveland since 1995. Researchers pore through data looking for the promised gains. They can’t find them.

Why is Congress allowing Trump and DeVos to foist their failed ideas on public schools? If NASA were run like the U.S. Department of Education, every space mission would explode on launch.

When will they learn? Schools need well-prepared, certified educators who are able to do their work as professionals, unencumbered by the petty whims and interventions of politicians. Students need healthcare, food security, and the basic essentials of life. Students and teachers need reasonable class sizes and adequate resources. What they don’t need is disruption and the demonstrably failed policies of a rightwing religious extremist.

Tim Slekar, the dean at Edgewood College in Wisconsin, summarizes the research consensus about the effect of vouchers: Vouchers suck. http://bustedpencils.com/2017/02/busted-pencils-trending-news-vouchers-suck/

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Vouchers
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