Archives for category: Vouchers
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Charles Foster Johnson: Why Texas Pastors Oppose Vouchers

By dianeravitch
October 26, 2016 //
7

In the annual fight in Texas over school vouchers, one of the strongest, most consistent defenders of public schools is an influential group known as zpastors for Texas Children. They believe in the importance of public education as a democratic right and they strongly support the separation of church and state.

At recent legislative hearings in Austin, their executive director Charles Foster Johnson testified against a voucher bill that was passed in the State Senate. This battle occurs every year. Thus far, a coalition of rural Republicans and urban Democrats has managed to defeat vouchers in the House. Pastor Johnson and his colleagues have been a powerful group in staving off privatization.

[If you want to watch Pastor Johnson’s testimony, which was “from the heart,” and diverged from his written statement, watch here:

[Start the video at the 3:50 mark– that’s 3 HOURS and 50 MINUTES– move the cursor just shy of the left side of the middle. http://tlchouse.granicus.com/MediaPlayer.php?view_id=37&clip_id=12360 ]

Testimony Before House Public Education Committee

By Charles Foster Johnson of Pastors for Texas Children

October 17, 2016

Chairman Aycock, thank you for the opportunity to testify before you and your committee today about what we have witnessed in our fine neighborhood and community public schools throughout our great State. My name is Charles Johnson, pastor of Bread Fellowship, Fort Worth. I am also executive director of Pastors for Texas Children, a statewide organization mobilizing the faith community for public education support and advocacy. We do two things: we minister to children in our local schools and we advocate for just policy for our children with our legislators. We were birthed out of the Baptist General Convention of Texas three years ago and now have over 1900 faith leaders of all denominations in churches all across Texas.

We are in our schools every day and see children from every ethnicity, every socio-economic background, and all walks of life succeeding beautifully on their path to productive citizenship in our society. We see children discovering their God-given talent and giftedness at the hands of dedicated teachers answering the call of God to pursue careers as educators. We witness daily the sheer moral power of public education as a building block of our society. This is why we are compelled to deliver the message to whoever will listen that universal public education is God’s will for all people—not a “choice” accorded to a few through a school choice voucher. I’d like to share several reasons why:

Public education is a moral duty. Education is a gift of God for all people. Just like the first human did in the Bible story so long ago, every person gets to name God’s world. Just as God brought all the creatures to the human to see what he would name them, so classroom teachers in schools all across our land teach our children to name God’s world. It’s the only way we can fulfill the first commandment of God to “be fruitful and multiply, replenish the earth and subdue it.” Education is a core component of the public interest. It is God’s common good for all God’s children—not just for those who are smart and stable and economically secure enough to pay for it with a school choice voucher.

Public education is a democratic duty. The founders of this nation determined at the outset of our Republic that in order to have a democratic society, we must educate all our children—not just a few children from families affluent enough to pay for it. Public education is a cornerstone of our American way of life. It is what has made America great. Our neighborhood and community schools are the places where our American history is taught, where our children learn basic civics, where the Pledge of Allegiance is said every day, where citizens are made. In America, citizenship is for all people—not just those few fortunate enough to be chosen by a school choice voucher.

Public education is a societal duty. It is incorrect for some of our friends to say that the money should follow the child because it is “my money.” With all due respect, it is not “my money” in a just society. We have a responsibility to participate in the well-being of all people. Do I get to have my own private security guard subsidized by the public through a “safety choice voucher?” Do I get to have my private swimming pool underwritten by the people of Texas because I don’t use the public pool? In a just and equal society, do I get a “transportation voucher” because I walk or ride a bicycle? The love of neighbor has founded our social order in these United States. We practice that love of neighbor through our taxation to support investments in that societal infrastructure.

Public education is a constitutional duty. The Constitution of the State of Texas says this in Article 7, Section 1: “A general diffusion of knowledge being essential to the preservation of the liberties and rights of the people, it shall be the duty of the Legislature of the State to establish and make suitable provision for the support and maintenance of an efficient system of public free schools.” The members of this legislative body swore a Bible oath to uphold that provision. There is zero authorization for this body to do anything with private schools.

Public education is a spiritual duty. We believe wholeheartedly in religious liberty as a gift of God from all people. Thomas Jefferson and James Madison did not make it up. It is the principle upon which our nation is founded. So, we affirm that no overt religious instruction or activity should be advanced or established with tax dollars in our public schools. All faith is voluntary. It belongs in the home and the church—not in our public institutions. This government has no authority to advance religion in our public schools. Nor, on the other hand, does this government have any authority to meddle in our private and home schools through a school choice voucher. Any money that is diverted from the public trust to a private entity will be publically accounted for, thus inserting and intruding government into the voluntary associations of religious schools. God does not need Caesar’s money to do the Lord’s work. Never has. Never will.

But, faithful teachers take the love of God with them into our classrooms each and every day, ministering long hours at low pay while serving the poorest children in our midst. They instill moral character. They teach respect across the wide diversity of our population. They show unconditional love to all kids. They do this because they are called before God. This is why the dynamics that govern our capitalistic system do not operate in an educational environment. Market forces such as competition and cost benefit analysis simply do not apply in the formation of a human being. A classroom is a holy place of learning—not a marketplace of financial gain. To make commodities of our kids and markets of our classrooms is to misunderstand—and profane—the spirituality of education.

PO Box 471155 – Fort Worth, Texas 76147
http://www.pastorsfortexaschildren.com

Categories Accountability, School Choice, Separation of church and state, Supporting public schools, Texas, Vouchers

Texas: Here Comes the Voucher Fight Again

By dianeravitch
October 23, 2016 //
10

Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, former talk show host, really wants vouchers for the millions of students in Texas. Fortunately, he has been defeated year after year by a coalition of rural Tepublicans and urban Democrats.

The battle is on again this year. Patrick and his fellow ideological zealots are headed for a showdown on the issue. There is no evidence that vouchers “work,” and much evidence that they don’t. In a state like Texas, the voucher proposal is strongly opposed by a brave group called Pastors for Texas Children. (Make a donation if you can to help them.)

Supporters of vouchers insist that the schools that receive public funds should be exempt from state tests or any other accountability measures, which might limit their “freedom.”

“A bipartisan group of state representatives hammered private school choice proponents at a heated legislative hearing on Monday, signaling an enduring uphill battle in the Texas House for proposals that would use taxpayer dollars to help parents send their kids to private or parochial schools, or educate them at home.

“Rural Republicans and Democrats in the lower chamber have long blocked such programs — often referred to in sweeping terms as “private school vouchers,” although there are variations. Passing one has emerged as a top priority in the Texas Senate for Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who unsuccessfully pushed a private school choice program when he was a Republican state senator from Houston and chairman of the Senate Education Committee.”

Of course, the proposal for vouchers is a pathetic excuse for failing to restore the $5 billion cut to the public schools in 2011.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Funding, Privatization, Resistance, School Choice, Separation of church and state, Texas, Vouchers

Mike Klonsky: The Trump Plan to Eliminate Public Education

By dianeravitch
October 23, 2016 //
20

Mike Klonsky reports on the Trump plan to get rid of public education, as described by Carl Paladino, a Trump surrogate and far-right extremist who owns charter schools in Buffalo, New York.

http://michaelklonsky.blogspot.com/2016/10/trump-plans-to-do-away-with-public.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+mikeklonsky+%28SmallTalk%29

“If there was any doubt, Trump surrogate Carl Paladino made it perfectly clear that if his boss is elected his goal will be nothing less than the elimination of public education and complete liquidation of the nation’s teacher unions.

Paladino ran for governor against Cuomo and lost. He is the Trump of upstate New York.

Home

Klonsky writes:

“Paladino, Trump’s N.Y State co-chairman told a group of urban school superintendents yesterday, that Trump would seek to do away with “corrupted, incompetent” public school systems in America’s cities, replacing them with charter schools and vouchers for private schools.”

Clinton may or may not continue Obama’s disastrous education policies, but she will listen when we push back.

“

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

Larry Lee: Public Education is Under Attack in Alabama: Help Us!

By dianeravitch
October 10, 2016 //
2

Larry Lee is one of the staunchest supporters of public schools in Alabama. A few years ago, he criss-crossed the state and identified 10 rural schools that were doing everyday miracles for their children and their communities because of the hard work and dedication of teachers, principals, and families, all doing their best for their children.

He sent me the following urgent message:

These are dark days for public education in Alabama. Since the legislature changed hands in 2010, things have gone steadily downhill.

Take a look:

* A bill to have A-F school grades, a practice intended solely to be punitive and a practice that research does not support.

* The Alabama Accountability Act that has now diverted $72 million from the Education Trust Fund for vouchers for private schools. A law that failed utterly in its stated mission to “help; poor students stuck in failing schools by their zip code.

* A bill to establish charter schools which cuts into already under-funded public schools funding.

* A bill known as the RAISE Act that would have forced teachers to be evaluated with the highly controversial Value Added Model.

* A bill intended to set up Education Savings Accounts that would have diverted more funding from the Education Trust Fund.

Instead of seeking input from professional educators, legislators are listening to the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the Jeb Bush foundations and Alabama special interests. In fact, the Senate majority leader boasted after passing the Accountability Act in 2013 that this bill was purposely hidden from educators because “they would have opposed it.”

Now, to add insult to injury the state board of education, the body that should be the first line of defense for public education, has turned its back on our children by hiring an attorney from Massachusetts to be state school superintendent. They ignored Alabama code and even their advertised required qualifications and put their own ideology and political ambitions ahead of the 740,000 children in Alabama public schools

Because of this, a group of 40 plaintiffs, including former local superintendents, principals, teachers, school board members, parents, local elected officials, a former college president and a former U.S. Congressman have joined together to seek legal action against the state school board.

They have said ENOUGH IS ENOUGH and formed the Alabama Public School Defense Fund to wage this battle.

Please join in standing up for our children by going to this site and contributing today.

https://www.gofundme.com/2t2r6mpy

—
Larry Lee
334-787-0410

http://www.larryeducation.com (blog)

Education Is Everyone’s Business

Categories Accountability, Alabama, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization, Teachers and Teaching, Vouchers

Thomas Ultican on Mercedes Schneider’s Wonderful New Book about School Choice

By dianeravitch
October 9, 2016 //
8

Mercedes Schneider has written a book every summer for three years in a row, during her break from teaching high school English. Thomas Ultican reviews her latest book, School Choice: The End of Public Education?

The book traces school choice to libertarian economists Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman. Mercedes shows the centrality of school choice to the segregationist diehards in the South in the 1950s and 1960s.

There is a terrible irony in the fact that today’s advocates of school choice claim to be fighting for civil rights when they are promoting racial segregation. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., would not have allowed them to get away with this deceptive rhetoric.

Ultican notes that school choice has encouraged not only racial segregation, but class segregation as well. He tells this anecdote:

“Around 2003, a friend tried to convince my wife and I to send our daughter to High Tech High. This mother did not want her daughter to be exposed to all those bad influences at Mira Mesa High School. Mira Mesa High School is a quality school that graduates amazingly gifted students every year and sets them on to a course of academic and social success. But the new charter school that Bill Gates and Irwin Jacobs had put so much money into surely would not have all those feared “bad kids.””

Schneider’s book is the go-to book to understand the current vogue for vouchers and charters, as well as public ignorance of the ways that charter operators scam public funds. The most lucrative angle is in real estate; the charter operator buys the building, rents it to his charter school, charges double the going rate, and passes the bill to taxpayers.

Ultican urges you to buy the book, read it, and share it with friends.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Reform, School Choice, Segregation, Vouchers

What Jeb Bush’s Group Said About the Nevada Voucher Decision

By dianeravitch
September 30, 2016 //
18

In the previous post, I pointed out that the Nevada Supreme Court overruled the funding of vouchers.

Jeb Bush’s Foundation for Excellence in Education hailed the same decision as a major step towards educational “freedom,” meaning no more public schools.

Since there is zero evidence that choice produces better education but ample evidence that it intensifies inequity and segregation and destabilizes communities, you can consider the press release either an affirmation of rigid free market ideology or lunacy:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

September 29, 2016 Contact: Press Office
850-391-4090
PressShop@excelined.org

Nevada Families One Step Closer to Educational Freedom

Today, the Nevada Supreme Court ruled that Education Savings Accounts (ESA) are constitutional. Nevada’s ESA program is the most expansive educational choice program in the nation.

Specifically, the court agreed with the state that the primary constitutional arguments brought by plaintiffs against ESAs are without merit. Although the court ruled against the state on a funding issue, it laid out a clear blueprint for addressing the funding technicality so that the 8,000 parents who have applied for an ESA are able to take advantage of greater educational opportunities for their children.

“The court’s ruling that ESAs are constitutional is a significant victory for Nevada families,’’ said Foundation for Excellence in Education (ExcelinEd) CEO Patricia Levesque.

“I look forward to Governor Brian Sandoval and the legislature addressing the funding mechanism for the state’s ESA program so that all Nevada parents have the right, as well as the resources, to choose the best education option for their children.”

ExcelinEd filed an amicus brief in the Nevada Supreme Court in support of the state’s position in the Duncan vs. State of Nevada case. The amicus curiae was prepared by Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP.

Learn more about Education Savings Accounts:

Nevada’s Education Savings Account (ESA) legislation, which passed in 2015, provides parents of up to 450,000 eligible students in the state with the funding to select schools, tutors and other approved education services for their children, including necessary therapies for students with disabilities.

Since the first Education Savings Account (ESA) program was introduced in 2011 in Arizona, this policy has been changing education as we know it.

ESAs place state dollars designated for a child’s education into an account that parents can direct in a manner that is best for a child’s unique needs.

Account funds can cover multiple education options, including private school tuition, online education, tutoring and dual enrollment, and unused funds can be saved for future K-12 or higher education costs.

ESAs create an entirely flexible approach to education, where the ultimate goal is maximizing each child’s natural learning abilities.

Categories Nevada, Vouchers

Breaking News: Nevada Supreme Court Blocks Funding of Voucher Program

By dianeravitch
September 30, 2016 //
10

The Nevada Supreme Court blocked the funding of the state’s sweeping voucher program, which would have given money to every student to spend anywhere. Despite the total absence of any evidence for the efficacy of such programs, the Nevada legislature undoubtedly will go back to the drawing board to devise another voucher giveaway that won’t improve education but will divert funding from the state’s underfunded
Unlicensed schools.

The Nevada State a Constitution has explicit prohibition against sending public money to sectarian schools, but that hasn’t stopped the anti-constitutional impulses of the Republican majority.

What part of the Nevada constitution does the legislature not understand?

The Constitution of the state of Nevada clearly states in Article 11:

Sec: 9.  Sectarian instruction prohibited in common schools and university.  No sectarian instruction shall be imparted or tolerated in any school or University that may be established under this Constitution.

Section Ten.  No public money to be used for sectarian purposes.  No public funds of any kind or character whatever, State, County or Municipal, shall be used for sectarian purpose.
[Added in 1880. Proposed and passed by the 1877 legislature; agreed to and passed by the 1879 legislature; and approved and ratified by the people at the 1880 general election. See: Statutes of Nevada 1877, p. 221; Statutes of Nevada 1879, p. 149.]

I was just in Nevada. I was taken aback by the luxurious hotels and promiscuous spending in Las Vegas. An additional 1% sales tax would be a boon to the public schools. But the legislature offers choice instead of resources.

Why won’t the legislature fund the education of the kids in public schools, as the Constitution commands?

Is it because they don’t care about the kids, the kids whose parents clean the hotels and wash dishes in the restaurants?

Or are they protecting the 1% who own the casinos, hotels, and restaurants?

Or they just don’t give a damn about the Nevada state constitution?

Categories Education Reform, Nevada, Vouchers

Jeb Bush Will Lecture at Harvard This Fall

By dianeravitch
September 29, 2016 //
45

Jeb Bush has been advocating everything related to corporate reform for many years. As Governor of Florida, he imposed high-stakes testing, charters, simplistic accountability measures, letter grades for schools, and did whatever he could dream up to promote competition and choice. He tried to get vouchers, but was only able to get vouchers for special education (a program once described in a prize-winning article as a “cottage industry for graft”). He sought a constitutional amendment to make vouchers possible, and Michelle Rhee joined him to promote vouchers. But in 2012, voters said no by 58-42.

This fall, this hater of public schools will teach at the Harvard Program on Education Policy and Governance, which is supervised by voucher advocate Paul Peyerson. Students will no doubt learn that public schools must be replaced by a free market. They will learn that choice will create Mira Les. They will learn that families should schools just as they choose milk in the grocery store: whole milk, 2% milk, 1% milk, chocolate milk, buttermilk. No one will tell Jeb about Sweden and Chile.

Saddest of all is that he is giving the annual Godkin Lecture, an honor once reserved for distinguished scholars.

As the evidence piles up that choice is no panacea, do you think he will apologize for the schools and communities he has disrupted?

Categories Accountability, Bush, Jeb, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Florida, Privatization, Testing, Vouchers

Texas: What is Behind the Drive to Privatize Public Education in Texas

By dianeravitch
September 20, 2016 //
7

Glenn W. Smith, an experienced journalist in Texas, gives his analysis of the politics of school funding and the renewed drive for vouchers.

Smith wonders:

Is it just a coincidence that private school funding schemes are gaining steam as a far more diverse bunch of kids are sitting in our public classrooms? Less than 29 percent of our public school children are white, down more than a third from the year 2000. Hispanics now make up 52 percent of the Texas school population. African-Americans are 13 percent and Asians 4 percent of students.

The advocates, led by Lt. Governor Dan Patrick, claim they want vouchers so “poor kids can escape failing schools,” but these people have never shown any interest in saving kids or their families.

These same policymakers refused to accept billions in federal Medicaid reform dollars, leaving millions of the less fortunate without adequate health care. Now we discover that the maternal death rate in Texas has skyrocketed, especially among poor African-American women. In addition, as the Houston Chronicle reported last week, the state abandoned hundreds of thousands of special needs children by arbitrary cuts to special education.

Also, we shouldn’t forget the refusal of Patrick, Gov. Greg Abbott and other Republican leaders to entertain statewide increases in the minimum wage. Low-wage workers should be happy to eat the stale cake their superiors deign to give them.

The policymakers responsible for these atrocities are the same ones telling us their school privatization plans are intended to help the very people they are punishing in every other major policy area — from health care to political representation to economic opportunity.

Smith predicts that Patrick’s voucher plans will fail, mainly because of resistance by rural Republicans:

In 2017 Patrick might push some of his schemes through the state Senate that he controls. But this is one issue in which rural lawmakers, many of them conservative Republicans, are allied with moderate or liberal urban representatives.

Public schools remain critical centers of life in many rural communities. Folks there lived through the “Wal-Marting” of their towns as the giant retailer drove the mom and pop stores out of business. They aren’t about to let that happen to their schools. They aren’t going to sit by as the Little Red Schoolhouse is turned into the Great Big Red State Profit Center.

Patrick’s plans appear to call for the creation of two K-12 school systems, one public, and one private. This is also giving many conservatives pause. Texas can’t afford that. Various estimates put the tab in the billions.

Let’s hope that Smith is right, and that the good sense of rural Republicans and urban Democrats will save public education in Texas.

Categories Texas, Vouchers

Texas: Voucher Proponents Want to Put Lipstick on a Pig and Call it “Education Savings Accounts”

By dianeravitch
September 20, 2016 //
10

Right-wingers in Texas want vouchers, but they have been stymied again and again by a coalition of rural Republicans who support their community public schools and urban Democrats who don’t want to destroy public education.

So now the right-wingers want “education savings accounts,” so parents can use public money to pay for other options, such as private school.

Advocates of the so-called school choice movement want the state to give each Texas student who no longer wants to attend public school an education savings account. The student would use the account to pay for other education options, such as private schools, tutors, curriculum for home schooling or college credit courses, giving students more choice in their education, according to proponents.

Public school supporters aren’t buying it. They say education savings accounts are masquerading as private school vouchers, diverting money from cash-strapped school districts to private schools without holding them to the same standard of accountability.

“You can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig. You can call a voucher something else, but it’s still a voucher,” said Charles Luke of the Coalition for Public Schools, which opposes using public funds to support private and religious schools. “We need to invest in our community schools rather than create a completely separate, parallel system and expand government.”

What the Republican right fringe doesn’t realize is that when everyone has his or her own choice, no one is responsible any more to support all children. Taxpayers won’t pass bond issues. Why should Mr. Brown pay for Ms. Jones’ son to go to private or religious school?

Categories Accountability, Texas, Vouchers
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