Archives for category: Vouchers
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Myra Blackmon: Georgia Doesn’t Need Vouchers

By dianeravitch
February 15, 2017 //
2

Myra Blackmon writes for Online Athens in Georgia.

In this post, she explains why vouchers are not needed in Georgia.

 

With the confirmation of Betsy DeVos as U.S. secretary of education, we can expect to see a flurry of new “initiatives” designed to address the so-called education problem in our country. For the moment, let’s set aside the relationship of poverty and poor academic achievement. Ignore for a moment the fact that our schools are actually performing pretty well.

“We will likely see a renewed push for voucher programs, where parents can supposedly take the tax money allocated for their children and use it to enroll them in private, religious or charter schools, many of which are combinations of those categories.

“If I believed vouchers would improve educational outcomes for Georgia’s poorest children, I would be the first to jump on that bandwagon. The reality is that even vouchers aren’t likely to improve the lives of the 600,000 Georgia children who live in poor or low-income families, despite efforts of reformers to convince us otherwise.

“First, it will be almost impossible to set a fair amount for a voucher. I spent over an hour looking at websites of private schools in all parts of the state. I found tuition ranges from around $4,000 a year to $26,000 a year. One site says the average elementary school tuition is almost $9,000, and high school almost $11,000. How do you determine an amount that would give children “the best education?”

“Second, not all non-public schools are open to all children. The majority of private schools in Georgia are religious schools, many of which set very strict standards for admission that have little or nothing to do with academic potential. They would exclude children from families of same-sex couples, or families whose moral standards are, in the judgment of the school, not consistent with the school’s values. That might exclude children whose parents are not married, or who were behavioral problems at their previous school.

“Third, few private schools provide special education. Of those that do, many limit that special education to mild learning disabilities, or limit them to mild ADHD or other learning differences. The private special education schools I found charged tuition upward of $25,000 a year, and even they don’t address severe or complex disabilities. Only public schools are required to meet all those needs.”

There is more. Read it all.

 

 

Categories Education Reform, Georgia, Vouchers

Texas: The Fight Against Vouchers Begins Again

By dianeravitch
February 15, 2017 //
12

Texas has a Lt. Governor named Adan Patrick who hates public schools. Before he was elected to the legislature, he was a radio talk show host, a small-time rightwing shock jock. Patrick’s favorite cause is vouchers and defunding public schools. He needs to be reminded that “school choice” originated as the battle cry of white segregationists after the Brown decision of 1954. But maybe he knows that.

In this legislative session, vouchers will once again be debated. The Texas Senate, dominated by the hard right, will support them. The House will wage a spirited battle over them. In the past, vouchers died in the House because of a coalition of urban Democrats and rural Republicans who treasure their public schools. Under the leadership of the House Speaker Joe Strauss, vouchers have not been approved. But the potential for passage is always there.

One of the most effective opponents of vouchers is the group Pastors for Texas Children, led by Rev. Charles Foster Johnson. It has 2,000 members across the state of Texas and is helping to organize similar groups of pro-public school clergy in other states.

Here is his most recent statement in response to Governor Greg Abbott’s endorsement of vouchers.

This is what he wrote:

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said today that school choice voucher programs constitute “a civil rights issue” and said he would sign a school choice bill if one comes to him.

With all due respect to Gov. Abbott, voucher-type schemes are the antithesis of civil rights.

“School choice” voucher programs re-segregate our schools according to race.

“School choice” vouchers are not for poor children, as they are purported to be, because they don’t begin to cover the cost of a private school education.

“School choice” vouchers underwrite the private education of families affluent enough to send their children to private schools.

“School choice” vouchers violate religious liberty by establishing and advancing religious schools with public tax dollars.

“School choice” vouchers are unconstitutional because they do not “make suitable provision for the support and maintenance of an efficient system of public free schools” as the Texas Constitution mandates the Texas Legislature to do.

“School choice” vouchers deplete the funding of the public schools that do not screen or discriminate, but accept and love all children regardless of race and class.

“School choice” vouchers destabilize and overburden the traditional neighborhood public school.

“School choice” vouchers expand and extend government into the sacred and private spheres of our home and church schools.

“School choice” voucher programs do not improve the education of children who receive them.

“School choice” vouchers are not a real “choice” at all, except for those who would privatize the public trust of education for all children, making commodities of our kids and markets of our classrooms.

The American civil rights tradition was forged by values of human dignity and equality taught and modeled for our children every day in traditional public schools. Hijacking the term “civil rights” to advance the narrow private interest of “school choice” vouchers is morally wrong, and we call upon Gov. Abbott and other Texas state leaders to cease doing so now.

Categories Education Reform, Resistance, Texas, Vouchers

Julian Vasquez Heilig: The Sordid Truth About Vouchers

By dianeravitch
February 12, 2017 //
15

Julian Vasquez Heilig is a scholar of education who is devoted to the advancement of equity. His pathbreaking work aims to strip away rhetoric and fake claims and to show which policies help or harm children of color. His blog, “Cloaking Inequity,” is always provocative.

In this post, he explains why vouchers were created: for profit and for segregation.

He is right. Vouchers and school choice intensify and facilitate segregation–by race, class, religion, and socioeconomic status.

In the Deep South, vouchers and school choice were the rallying cries of hardline segregationists (for more detail, read Mercedes Schneider’s fine new book, “School Choice.”

I was recently on an NPR show (Warren Olney’s “On Point), with a panel that included Emma Brown of the Washington Post, Randi Weingarten, and Matt Frendewey, a spokesman for Betsy DeVos’ American Federation for Children. Randi said that vouchers were originated in the South by segregationist politicians. The DeVos guy became furious and said that Randi was making it up., it wasn’t true, just union propaganda.

 

When I finally got my turn, I said that my field is the history of American education. I pointed out that the history of voucher advocacy was indisputable: it began with white segregationists trying to block desegregation.

 

 

 

 

 

Categories Education Reform, Privatization, School Choice, Segregation, Vouchers

What I Said in Texas

By dianeravitch
February 10, 2017 //
18

On Monday, I was in Commerce, Texas, to speak at Texas A&M’s campus there. I met some wonderful Texans and was treated royally by President Ray Keck and Vice President Noah Nelson.

I had a Q&A with the education faculty, then had an interview with the local NPR station, then lectured to the campus community.

The big issue in Texas right now is that Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick is pushing for vouchers. I explained that vouchers have consistently failed and that they will draw resources from the public schools that most children attend, which are already underfunded.

This link has the short interview and a summary of my talk.

http://ketr.org/post/diane-ravitch-texas-senate-bill-means-less-money-public-schools

Categories Funding, Texas, Vouchers

Barbara Miner: If You Care about Public Schools and Democracy, Beware of DeVos’ Vouchers

By dianeravitch
February 10, 2017 //
27

Barbara Miner is a veteran journalist based in Milwaukee, where she writes often about the stat’s disastrous voucher plan. In 2013, she published a book called “Lessons from the Heartland: A Turbulent Half-Century of Public Education in an Iconic American City.”

In this article in the Los Angeles Times, Miner warns that the public must keep watch on DeVos because her goal is to legitimize vouchers for religious schools across the nation.

She warns:

“DeVos, now confirmed as secretary of Education, is not just another inexperienced member of the president’s Cabinet. She is an ideologue with a singular educational passion — replacing our system of democratically controlled public schools with a universal voucher program that privileges private and religious ones.

“If you care about our public schools and our democracy, you should be worried.”

Miner describes how Milwaukee and Wisconsin were taken in by bait and switch.

“Milwaukee’s program began in 1990, when the state Legislature passed a bill allowing 300 students in seven nonsectarian private schools to receive taxpayer-funded tuition vouchers. It was billed as a small, low-cost experiment to help poor black children, and had a five-year sunset clause.

“That was the bait. The first “switch” came a few weeks later, when the Republican governor eliminated the sunset clause. Ever since, vouchers have been a divisive yet permanent fixture in Wisconsin.

“Conservatives have consistently expanded the program, especially when Republicans controlled the state government. (Vouchers have never been put to a public vote in Wisconsin.) Today, some 33,000 students in 212 schools receive publicly funded vouchers, not just in Milwaukee but throughout Wisconsin. If it were its own school district, the voucher program would be the state’s second largest. The overwhelming majority of the schools are religious.

“Voucher schools are private schools that have applied for a state-funded program that pays tuition for some or all of its student body. Even if every single student at a school receives a publicly funded voucher, as is the case in 22 of Milwaukee’s schools, that school is still defined as private.

“Because they are defined as “private,” voucher schools operate by separate rules, with minimal public oversight or transparency. They can sidestep basic constitutional protections such as freedom of speech. They do not have to provide the same level of second-language or special-education services. They can suspend or expel students without legal due process. They can ignore the state’s requirements for open meetings and records. They can disregard state law prohibiting discrimination against students on grounds of sex, pregnancy, sexual orientation, or marital or parental status.”

Since 1990, the people of Wisconsin have paid more than $2 billion for vouchers, mostly to religious institutions. This has been an expensive experiment.

“Privatizing an essential public function and forcing the public to pay for it, even while removing it from meaningful public oversight, weakens our democracy.”

Categories Betsy DeVos, Funding, Milwaukee, Privatization, Vouchers, Wisconsin

Today the Fight to Save Our Public Schools Begins

By dianeravitch
February 8, 2017 //
39

The Network for Public Education will watch what Betsy DeVos does and report it to you immediately.

We will keep you informed about what the privatizers are doing in your state and community.

We will help you connect with other people in your state who are mobilizing to stop privatization.

The fight to save public education will happen in communities and districts, at the grassroots level.

We ask you to join us, become active, send us action alerts about meetings, protests and demonstrations in your district or town or city so we can help you get the news out.

Here is information you can use:

Get everyone you can to join NPE. Sign them up

http://networkforpubliceducation.org/become-a-member/

Tell others on Facebook to join. We will be mobilizing in the months ahead.

Create a local group in support of public schools. Use Facebook or create a website. Then join our Grassroots Network.

http://networkforpubliceducation.org/grassroots-education-network-3/

Read our emails. We will be regularly launching campaigns at the national and state level.

Make a donation. If we are to fight this we will need funds. http://networkforpubliceducation.org/about-npe/donate/

Together, we will build a movement so powerful that we can beat Donald Trump, Betsy DeVos, and all others who aim to privatize our public schools. Together we can keep the for-profit privateers and frauds out of our schools.

Work with us. We need your help.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Democracy, For-Profit, Fraud, Network for Public Education, Networkfor Public Education Action Fund, Privatization, Trump, Vouchers

Steven Singer: Why Are So Many Democrats in Pennsylvania Supporting Vouchers?

By dianeravitch
February 7, 2017 //
32

It is baffling that there is a sector of the Democratic Party that aligns with far-right Republicans on education issues. The Republicans want nothing more than to turn education into a free market, a strategy that has no evidence behind it.

Steven Singer bemoans the fact that a group of Democratic legislators in his state of Pennsylvania are supporting the Republican push against public schools.

He writes:

“Democrats are supposed to be liberals, progressives.

“That means upholding the Constitution and the Separation of Church and State.

“So why are so many Pennsylvania Democrats sponsoring an expansion of the state’s de facto school voucher bill?

“A total of 11 out of 84 sponsors of HB 250 are Democrats. The bill would expand the Educational Improvement Tax Credit (EITC) and Opportunity Scholarship Tax Credit (OSTC) programs.

“The Commonwealth already diverts $200 million of business taxes to private and parochial schools. That’s money that should be going to support our struggling public school system.

“The new bill would add $50 million to each program for a total of $100 million more flushed down the drain.

“Pennsylvania has a budget deficit. We’ve cut almost $1 billion a year from public schools. We can’t afford to burn an additional $300 million on private and church schools.

“We expect Republicans to support this regressive nonsense. Especially in gerrymandered Pennsylvania, they’ve gone further and further right to please their Tea Party base and avoid being primaried.

“But the few Democrats left in the House and Senate are likewise in districts that would never vote Republican. You’d expect them to get more and more progressive. Instead, even here we see them taking steps to the right!

“Democratic sponsors of the bill are almost exclusively from the state’s urban centers – Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.”

He lists the Democrats who support corporate giveaways.

Don’t vote for them.

Categories Budget Cuts, Democrats, Funding, Hoax, Pennsylvania, Privatization, Vouchers

Detroit Free Press Editorial: Say NO to DeVos

By dianeravitch
February 6, 2017 //
33

The Detroit Free Press knows Betsy DeVos well. The editorial board published a blistering editorial urging the Senate to reject her nomination for Secretary of Education.

http://www.freep.com/story/opinion/editorials/2017/01/30/devos-nomination-senate-vote/97243810/

Here is an excerpt:


Make no mistake: A vote to confirm Betsy DeVos as U.S. Secretary of Education is a vote to end public education in this country as we know it.

This isn’t conspiracy theory, or ideologically driven slander. Look at DeVos’ own words and actions, over her long career advocating against traditional public schools; her funding of an ideologically driven pro-charter lobby; her willingness to spend whatever it takes to ensure her policy preferences become law.

DeVos is unqualified in every respect to serve as head of this critical department, and the U.S. Senate must vote Tuesday to reject her nomination.

West Michigan billionaire DeVos hasn’t worked in public education, public administration, or even in mainstream education reform. She’s demonstrated a refusal to value outcomes over ideology. But she’s contributed millions to the Republican Party and Republican candidates, to the pro-school-choice lobby she essentially founded, and to like-minded candidates whose careers she has financed.

All at the expense of public school students, mostly black, mostly in Detroit — children a world away from the Grand Rapids area where the DeVos family makes its home.

But nor has she spent her considerable wealth and influence advocating for better schools outside of Detroit; report after report shows Michigan schools are falling dangerously behind, that serious investment and course correction are required to stop this slow slide to the bottom.

DeVos has called traditional public schools a “dead end,” a government “monopoly.” Husband Dick DeVos said the couple bemoans the role public schools have played at the heart of American communities — replacing, they believe, the church as the central institution of American life. She has advanced or lobbied for programs that draw taxpayer dollars from those schools, always to those schools’ great detriment, to fund unregulated charter schools or to provide public-money vouchers for private education.

There’s nothing inherently destructive about charter schools. Properly managed charters can be a viable alternative for parents with few options. But that’s not the kind of charter school DeVos has championed — and nor can an education secretary’s educational advocacy be so one-sided. In Michigan, charter schools can be run by for-profit operators. Charter schools can siphon public money for decades, taking taxpayer dollars without making good on the promise of better results.

DeVos’ defenders are quick to claim Detroit, where charter schools have proliferated at a record pace, as a victory for her pro-school-choice ideology. They’re wrong. A Michigan State Reform Office plan to close failing schools may be stymied, in Detroit, by a dearth of high-quality educational options citywide. Look no further than a map of Detroit schools ranked by academic outcomes — the same neighborhoods served by failing traditional public schools are also home to failing charters. The problem is not insufficient choice. It’s an obstinate refusal on the part of DeVos and her lobby of ideologically driven reformers to acknowledge that school choice is meaningless if all choices are bad.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Privatization, Vouchers

Richard Kahlenberg: School Integation is More Effective than Vouchers or Closing Schools

By dianeravitch
February 5, 2017 //
16

Richard Kahlenberg of The Century Foundation notes that the Obame education reforms failed, with a price tag of $7 billion.

Advocates of school choice treat that failure as a rationale for school choice.

But, says Kahlenberg, the research is clear that racial integration produces significant gains, whereas school choice, especially vouchers, has none.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Privatization, Segregation , Racial Isolation and Integration, Vouchers

Capitol & Main: How Betsy DeVos Crushes Moderate Republicans Who Get in Her Way

By dianeravitch
February 4, 2017 //
11

Danny Feingold writes in Capitol & Main about Betsy DeVos’ hardline education ideology and the ruthless way she uses her family money to smash those who don’t go along with her wishes.

How Betsy DeVos Ignored and Targeted Michigan Republicans to Advance Her Hardline Education Ideology

DeVos wants choice. She loves vouchers but thus far has been able to impose them in Michigan because the state constitution prohibits spending public money for religious schools.

So charters are her favorite route to a free market of schooling in Michigan. When s bipartisan coalition tried to pass a bill to impose accountability on charters, the DeVos money machine went into high gear to block it.

Contrary to what DeVos told the Senate HELP Committee, she believes in accountability for public schools but not for charter schools. She certainly opposes accountability for religious schools that accept vouchers.

She doesn’t believe in separation of church and state, nor does she think that public schools have a greater claim on public dollars than for-profit charters or backwoods one-room schools run by uneducated preachers without certified teachers.

Wouldn’t it be ironic if DeVos gets her way, sends federal funds to church schools, and a future Secretary of Education and Congress declares that all schools receiving federal funds are subject to the same tests, the same mandates, and the same regulations as public schools?

Religious leaders will regret that they mingled church and state.

Some religious leaders recognize the importance of separating church and state and are fighting against privatization, such as Pastors for Texas Children and Pastors for Oklahoma Kids. May their movement spread across the land.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Michigan, Religion, Republicans, School Choice, Separation of church and state, Vouchers
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