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Brookings Institution: A View of Education in the Republican and Democratic Platforms

By dianeravitch
September 30, 2024 //
25

Jon Valant, head of the Brown Center at the Brookings Institution, reviewed the education sections of both parties.

He writes:

K-12 education has captured its share of headlines over the last few years. Schools—and, specifically, local school boards—became a lightning rod for anger about the disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. From the first weeks of the pandemic, Republicans accused Democratic leaders of being too slow to reopen schools. That accusation gained potency as evidence mounted that schools hadn’t been the vectors of COVID-19 transmission that experts initially feared. Sensing vulnerability, Democrats became reluctant to engage on K-12 issues, and Republicans such as Glenn Youngkin showed that Democrats wouldn’t put up much of a fight if education became a battlefield for culture war conflicts. The result was a dizzying, maddening stretch where schools were embroiled in controversies over critical race theory and transgender students’ rights when education leaders needed to focus on pandemic recovery.

Now, as memories of the pandemic recede, the politics of education are changing. Democrats are talking more about schools, emboldened by the selection of a former schoolteacher, Tim Walz, as Vice President Harris’s running mate. Republicans, for their part, have harnessed discontent with public schools into an aggressive push for private school voucher programs that threaten America’s public education systems.

The platforms of the Democratic and Republican parties, along with the education-related portions of Project 2025, provide a glimpse of where K-12 education might be headed.

The Democratic platform

The Democrats’ 2024 platform is light on specifics, with more attention to the current administration’s accomplishments and the would-be Harris administration’s support for some broadly defined goals (e.g., reducing chronic absenteeism). To some extent, the lack of specifics stands in contrast to both the Democrats’ 2020 platform—which, for example, pledged a tripling of Title I funds for high-needs schools—and more detailed 2024 proposals for early childhood education (e.g., free, universal pre-K) and higher education (e.g., free community college). 

The 2024 platform does contain relevant, specific ideas outside of its “Education” section. For example, Democrats propose rebates for school districts that purchase electric school buses—an idea grounded in research on the harms of students’ exposure to toxins. They also offer specific proposals to reduce gun violence (amid a scourge of school shootings) and to strengthen civil rights protections for LGBTQ+ children and students of color (frequent targets of culture war attacks).

Notably, some of the platform’s clearest statements on education describe what Democrats oppose. That includes private-school voucher plans and policies hostile to transgender youth that have become increasingly popular among Republican leaders.  

The Republican platform

Republicans’ 2024 platform is also light on policy specifics. The platform has a few ideas that have long been cornerstones of GOP education politics. That includes ending teacher tenure—an idea that would require local or state action and confront fierce opposition from teachers’ unions.

The platform has language about resisting political indoctrination in schools—while seeming to propose some indoctrination of its own. This includes proposals to “support schools that teach America’s Founding Principles and Western Civilization” and “promote Fair and Patriotic Civics Education.” Along similar lines, former President Trump recently described a bewildering plan to create a credentialing body to “certify teachers who embrace patriotic values, support our way of life, and understand that their job is not to indoctrinate children.”

Substantively, the most important part of the Republican education platform might be its support for universal school choice. In about a dozen states, Republicans have recently created or expanded education savings account (ESA) programs that make public funds available to pay for private school or other educational expenses. Critics of these programs—myself included—argue that they violate our basic traditions, benefit the wealthy at the expense of others, and are not well supported by research.

Project 2025

If the Republican platform is light on policy proposals, Project 2025 certainly is not.

Along with my colleagues Rachel Perera and Katharine Meyer, I recently wrote a more detailed piece that analyzes Project 2025’s education proposals. Project 2025 proposes severe cuts to the resources and protections available to the country’s poorest, most marginalized children. For example, it proposes to eliminate the Head Start program (for young children in poverty), discontinue federal Title I funding (for schools that serve low-income children), and kneecap IDEA (federal legislation that supports students with disabilities). It’s especially harsh on transgender children, with proposals aimed at reorienting civil rights enforcement around “rejecting gender ideology and critical race theory” and stripping Title IX protections from transgender students.

In other words, Project 2025 sets its sights on the programs that serve America’s neediest students. It would essentially terminate the federal government’s long-running role in addressing inequities that arise in locally governed school systems.

Notably, many key Project 2025 proposals would require an unlikely degree of congressional cooperation. This includes some of the highest-profile proposals, such as eliminating the U.S. Department of Education (a vaguely defined idea that’s unlikely to materialize in its most extreme form). Still, a second Trump administration couldenact some Project 2025 proposals unilaterally. That includes rolling back civil rights protections and replacing civil servants in the U.S. Department of Education with political appointees after reinstating Schedule F.

Taking stock

It’s fair to say that Democrats’ plans for federal education policy are modest. Democrats aren’t proposing a markedly stronger role for the federal government. On K-12 education, Democrats remain in a mostly defensive posture as they offer a more “conservative” agenda that protects against the GOP’s increasingly radical efforts.

Just what those GOP plans might be—and just how radical they are—depends on whether the true Trumps X administration plan is the Republican platform, Project 2025, or some combination of the two. That remains to be seen

Categories Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Democrats, Education Industry, Elections, Extremism, Privatization, Republicans, School Choice, Vouchers

Peter Greene: Will Colorado Voters Be Wise Enough to Oppose This Ballot Measure?

By dianeravitch
September 23, 2024 //
6

Peter Greene examines a proposed amendment to the state constitution in Colorado and its whacko implications. He urges voters to say NO.

He writes:

While other states are stumbling over constitutional language that aims public dollars at public schools (e.g. South Carolina and Kentucky), voucher fans in Colorado have proposed a constitutional amendment that comes up for a vote soon. And it is a ridiculously ill-conceived and hastily crafted mess.

The language is simple enough– here’s the whole text, originally known as Initiative 138 and now as Amendment 40. 

SECTION 1. In the constitution of the state of Colorado, add section, 18 to article IX as follows: Section 18. Education – School Choice

(1) PURPOSE AND FINDINGS. THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF COLORADO HEREBY FIND AND DECLARE THAT ALL CHILDREN HAVE THE RIGHT TO EQUAL OPPORTUNITY TO ACCESS A QUALITY EDUCATION; THAT PARENTS HAVE THE RIGHT TO DIRECT THE EDUCATION OF THEIR CHILDREN; AND THAT SCHOOL CHOICE INCLUDES NEIGHBORHOOD, CHARTER, PRIVATE, AND HOME SCHOOLS, OPEN ENROLLMENT OPTIONS, AND FUTURE INNOVATIONS IN EDUCATION.

(2) EACH K-12 CHILD HAS THE RIGHT TO SCHOOL CHOICE.

The proposal comes from Advance Colorado, a right wing anti-tax, let’s shrink government until we can drown it in the kitchen sink, kind of outfit. They’re headed up by Michael Fields, who previously headed up the Colorado chapter of the right wing Koch brothers astroturf group Americans for Prosperity, then became AFP’s national education policy leader. Then on to Colorado Rising Action where he kept his interest in education. Back in 2012-14 he spent two whole years as a Teacher For America product in a charter school. 

Advance Colorado was founded in 2020. Their leadership team also includes former state GOP chairwoman Kristi Burton Brown.

The amendment has also drawn support from House Minority Leader Rose Pugliese, who is also a “fellow” with Advance Colorado. The actual filing came from Fields and Suzanne Taheri, a former official with the Secretary of State’s Office, a former candidate, and former Arapahoe County GOP chair.

Why does Colorado, a state that has long offered many forms of school choice, even need this? Supporters of the amendment are arguing that they are trying to enshrine and protect choice, just in case those naughty Democrats tried to roll it back some day (Colorado’s Dems once tossed out the pro-choice, not-really-Democrats Democrats for Education Reform). And though they aren’t saying this part out loud, the amendment would be a great set-up for school vouchers.

The language proposed is, however, strictly bananapants. And I’ll bet you dollars to donuts that the people who would most regret passing this amendment would be those who support it.

Let’s say I want to send my low-achieving, non-Christian child to a top-level Christian school. Let’s further presume that I can’t afford even a fraction of the tuition cost. Does this amendment mean that the school has to accept them, and that the state has to foot the entire tuition bill? Wouldn’t any answer other than yes be denying my constitutional to equal opportunity to access a quality education and my constitutional right to direct my child’s education? Does this mean that to have full access the state must also transport my child anywhere I want them to go to school?

What if East Egg Academy has far more applicants than it has capacity? Must it scratch its entire admissions policy and use a lottery instead? 

The major obstacles to school choice are not state policies. The major obstacles are, and have always been, cost, location, and the school’s own discriminatory policies. Virtually all voucher policies are set up to protect those discriminatory policies. Wouldn’t an amendment like this require those to be wiped out? 

Wouldn’t this language amount to a state takeover of all charter and private schools? 

And that’s not all. Wouldn’t this amendment also allow parents to intrude into every classroom. If I have a constitutional right to direct my child’s education, does that not mean that I can tell my child’s science teacher to stop teaching evolution? Or start teaching evolution? Can I demand a different approach to teaching American history? How about prepositions? And how will a classroom teacher even function if every child in the classroom comes with a parent who has a constitutional right to direct their education?

You can say that’s silly, that “obviously” that’s not what the amendment means. But that’s what it says, at least until some series of bureaucrats and courts decide what exactly “direct the education of their children” means.

Kevin Welner (National Education Policy Center)has it exactly right— “It’s really a ‘full employment for lawyers’ act.”

Supporters say this doesn’t establish a right to public funding of private schools, and I suppose they’re sort of correct in the sense that this does not so much establish a right to public funding of private schools so much as it establishes an obligation for public funding of private schools as well as obliterating private school autonomy. Unless, of course, some judge steps in to find that the language doesn’t mean what it says, which is, I suppose, not impossible.

Nobody on any side of the school choice debate should be voting for this amendment. It’s exactly the kind of lawmaking you get from people who have wrapped meaning in particular rhetoric for so long that they have forgotten that the words of their rhetoric have actual meanings outside the meanings that they have habitually assigned them. Here’s hoping the people of Colorado avoid this really bad idea. 

Categories Colorado, Education Industry, Elections, Parents, Privatization, Propaganda, Republicans, Vouchers

Ohio Is Funding the Construction and Renovation of Religious Schools

By dianeravitch
September 19, 2024 //
4

In an unprecedented move that shatters the historic wall of separation between church and state, Ohio has passed legislation to fund the construction and renovation of religious schools. It also directly violates the explicit language of the Ohio state constitution.

ProPublica reports on the latest move to defund public schools and divert money to religious schools.

The state of Ohio is giving taxpayer money to private, religious schools to help them build new buildings and expand their campuses, which is nearly unprecedented in modern U.S. history.

While many states have recently enacted sweeping school voucher programs that give parents taxpayer money to spend on private school tuition for their kids, Ohio has cut out the middleman. Under a bill passed by its Legislature this summer, the state is now providing millions of dollars in grants directly to religious schools, most of them Catholic, to renovate buildings, build classrooms, improve playgrounds and more.

The goal in providing the grants, according to the measure’s chief architect, Matt Huffman, is to increase the capacity of private schools in part so that they can sooner absorb more voucher students.

“The capacity issue is the next big issue on the horizon” for voucher efforts, Huffman, the Ohio Senate president and a Republican, told the Columbus Dispatch.

Huffman did not respond to ProPublica’s requests for comment.

Following Hurricane Katrina and the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, some federal taxpayer dollars went toward repairing and improving private K-12 schools in multiple states. Churches that operate schools often receive government funding for the social services that they offer; some orthodox Jewish schools in New York have relied on significant financial support from the city, The New York Times has found.

But national experts on education funding emphasized that what Ohio is doing is categorically different.

“This is new, dangerous ground, funding new voucher schools,” said Josh Cowen, a senior fellow at the Education Law Center and the author of a new book on the history of billionaire-led voucher efforts. For decades, churches have relied on conservative philanthropy to be able to build their schools, Cowen said, or they’ve held fundraising drives or asked their diocese for help.

They’ve never, until now, been able to build schools expressly on the public dime.

“This breaks through the myth,” said David Pepper, a political writer and the former chairman of the Ohio Democratic Party. Pepper said that courts have long given voucher programs a pass, ruling that they don’t violate the constitutionally mandated separation of church and state because a publicly funded voucher technically passes through the conduit of a parent on the way to a religious school.

With this latest move, though, Ohio is funding the construction of a separate, religious system of education, Pepper said, adding that if no one takes notice, “This will happen in other states — they all learn from each other like laboratories.”

The Ohio Constitution says that the General Assembly “will secure a thorough and efficient system of common schools throughout the state; but no religious or other sect, or sects, shall ever have any exclusive right to, or control of, any part of the school funds of this state.”

Yet Troy McIntosh, executive director of the Ohio Christian Education Network — several of whose schools received the new grants — recently told the Lima News that part of the reason for spending these public dollars on the expansion of private schools is that “we want to make sure that from our perspective, Christian school options are available to any kid who chooses that in the state.”

Ohio started funding vouchers in Cleveland only. They were supposed to “help poor kids escape failing public schools.” Initially, vouchers were only for kids already enrolled in public schools and only for kids from low-income families.

When they were implemented in the 1990s, vouchers in Ohio, like in many places, were limited in scope; they were available only to parents whose children were attending (often underfunded) public schools in Cleveland. The idea was to give those families money that they could then spend on tuition at a hopefully better private school, thus empowering them with what was called school choice.

Over the decades, the state incrementally expanded voucher programs to a wider and wider range of applicants. And last year, legislators and Gov. Mike DeWine extended the most prominent of those programs, called EdChoice, to all Ohio families.

Now, vouchers subsidize the children of families who never attended public schools, including affluent families. They have become a welfare program for families who previously paid their full tuition. As in every other voucher state, most students who take vouchers were already enrolled in private and religious schools.

Encouraged by Americans for Prosperity, a Koch brothers political advocacy group, the Ohio legislature added the religious school funding bill to the state budget.

Led by Huffman, Republicans slipped at least $4 million in grants to private schools into a larger budget bill. There was little debate, in part because budget bills across the country have become too large to deliberate over every detail and, also, Republicans have supermajorities in both chambers in Ohio.

According to an Ohio Legislative Service Commission report, the grants, some of them over a million dollars, then went out to various Catholic schools around the state. ProPublica contacted administrators at each of these schools to ask what they will be using their new taxpayer money on, but they either didn’t answer or said that they didn’t immediately know. (One of the many differences between public and private schools is that the latter do not have to answer questions from the public about their budgets, even if they’re now publicly funded.)

The total grant amount of roughly $4 million this year may seem small, said William L. Phillis, executive director of the Ohio Coalition for Equity & Adequacy of School Funding. But, he noted, Ohio’s voucher program itself started out very small three decades ago, and today it’s a billion-dollar system.

“They get their foot in the door with a few million dollars in infrastructure funding,” Phillis said. “It sets a precedent, and eventually hundreds of millions will be going to private school construction.”

The total grant amount of roughly $4 million this year may seem small, said William L. Phillis, executive director of the Ohio Coalition for Equity & Adequacy of School Funding. But, he noted, Ohio’s voucher program itself started out very small three decades ago, and today it’s a billion-dollar system.

“They get their foot in the door with a few million dollars in infrastructure funding,” Phillis said. “It sets a precedent, and eventually hundreds of millions will be going to private school construction.”

The only statewide evaluation of Ohio’s EdChoice voucher program was published in 2016. The evaluation was funded by the choice advocacy group, The Thomas B. Fordham Foundation. TBF has a special relationship to Ohio Republicans in the legislature because it originated in Ohio and maintains an office in Ohio. It also authorizes charter schools in Ohio.

The evaluation concluded that students who left to use vouchers in a private school performed worse than their peers who remained in public schools.

So, the Republican supermajority has known for at least eight years that vouchers don’t “save” poor kids; in fact, those kids are likely to fall farther behind. Now that the Republicans have adopted universal choice, they know that they are helping kids who are already enrolled in private and religious schools. So now, it’s a logical step to throw in millions more for construction and renovation of voucher schools.

Categories Budget Cuts, Education Industry, Ohio, Privatization, Religion, Separation of church and state, Vouchers

NCPE: Voucher Costs Are Rising Dramatically Above Budget Projections

By dianeravitch
September 18, 2024 //
5

The National Coalition for Public Education published valuable information contrasting the actual cost of vouchers to overly optimistic projections by their advocates. In every state that has adopted vouchers, most vouchers are used by students already enrolled in private schools. In states such as Florida and Arizona, vouchers are “universal,” meaning there are no income limitations or other restrictions on their accessibility. In essence, vouchers provide public dollars to subsidize the tuition of students in private and religious schools. They are a welfare program for the affluent.

The NCPE concluded:

When lawmakers consider expanding or creating private school voucher programs, their projections often drastically underestimate the actual costs. They sell a false promise that vouchers will save money, do not budget adequate funds, and then wind up with million dollar shortfalls, necessitating cuts from public education and even tax increases. 

Some voucher advocates incorrectly claim that if the amount of the voucher is less than the average expenditure spent to educate a student in public school, the state will save money. Existing voucher programs prove this false.  

First, it costs less than the average expenditure to educate some students, and much more to educate others who need additional support and services–like those with disabilities, English language learners, and low-income students. The students who are most expensive to educate, however, tend to remain in public schools  because they cannot find a private voucher school willing to accept them. Yet, because of the voucher program, the public schools are left with fewer resources. Furthermore, in a voucher program, the state now pays tuition for private school students who never attended public schools, which is an altogether new cost for taxpayers.

This all adds up to more, not less, spending.

Here are several examples of the skyrocketing costs of voucher programs:

ARIZONA’S VOUCHER IS COSTING 1,346% MORE THAN PROJECTED, CONTRIBUTING TO A $400 MILLION BUDGET DEFICIT.

  • The fiscal note attached to Arizona’s universal voucher program projected the program would cost the state about $65 million in 2024 and $125 million in 2025. But once students’ applications started to come in, state leaders realized these estimates were woefully inadequate. The Arizona Governor’s Office now estimates that the price tag is more than 1,346% higher at a cost of $940 million per year. This is one of the main causes of a $400 million budget shortfall in the state’s general fund, which funds the state’s public schools, transportation, fire, police, and prisons.

THE FLORIDA VOUCHER IS ALREADY MORE THAN $2 BILLION OVER BUDGET IN YEAR ONE.

  • The Florida Senate projected that its voucher expansion would cost $646 million. But independent researchers estimated that the program would actually cost almost $4 billion, and actual costs are already approaching that amount—$3.35 billion in the first year. In just one county, Duval, school officials report a $17 million budget shortage due to funds lost to the vouchers.

WEST VIRGINIA’S VOUCHER DRAINS MORE THAN $20 MILLION FROM PUBLIC SCHOOLS PER YEAR.

  • During the 2024 – 2025 school year, the West Virginia voucher program is expected to funnel $21.6 million away from the state’s public schools–enough to pay the salaries for 301 professional teachers and 63 school service workers. As a result of the voucher and other declines in enrollment, multiple school districts are already warning residents that they need to impose property tax increases in order to continue to pay current teachers’ salaries.

Categories Accountability, Arizona, Budget Cuts, Disruption, Education Industry, Florida, Funding, Religion, Separation of church and state, Vouchers

North Carolina: Republicans Pass “Massive” Voucher Expansion

By dianeravitch
September 14, 2024 //
12

Public Schools First NC posted the following statement about the passage of additional funding for the state’s voucher program. The General Assembly has a veto-proof majority in both houses, thanks to the defection of one Tricia Cotham, who ran as a Democrat who opposed abortion and vouchers, then changed parties. The bill raises voucher spending to over $600 million this year and to nearly $1 billion annually in a decade.

Here is the statement:

This week the House and Senate majority passed House Bill 10 “Require ICE Cooperation & Budget Adjustments” in a process that allowed no adjustments to any part of the bill. The new bill added a number of budget items to the previous bill, including massive increases in North Carolina’s voucher programs. 

The bill added millions in OS vouchers and ESA+ vouchers, bringing the total for 2024-25 to $616.1 million. The new appropriations were made to ensure that all voucher applicants this year received a voucher regardless of their income. As described in our September 7 newsletter, the majority of OS applicants on the waitlist have incomes too high to have been eligible for vouchers before the income cap was removed this year. 

In 2024-25, the OS vouchers pay up to $7,468 toward the private school tuition for each student. The voucher amount is tied to state per-pupil funding and increases each year. 

The wealthiest applicants—those making more than $260,000/year for a family of four—will receive $3,360 per child from the state. 

The bill does not increase teacher pay, so veteran teachers in their 15th through 24th years of teaching will receive a raise of only $820 in 2024-25.

The bill also sets out additional increases for both voucher programs through 2032-33 and establishes spending “for each fiscal year thereafter.” The result, as shown in the chart, is a whopping $937.6 million scheduled to be spent in 2033-34 alone. This is stunning and a total disregard for our underfunded public schools.

North Carolina will have spent a total of nearly $9 billion on private school vouchers by 2033-34. Those dollars would have fully funded the Comprehensive Remedial Plan (Leandro) to provide a sound basic education for all public school students—and much more. In November 2022, the North Carolina Supreme Court ordered the legislature to appropriate funds according to the Leandro plan, but legislative leaders are still fighting the ruling. 

Taxpayers may wonder whether the billions spent on private schools are helping students learn. We do know, based on national data, that private schools do not outperform public schools. Taxpayers won’t get answers—at least not yet – about NC students since private schools are not required to publicly report information on student achievement, unlike traditional public schools and charter schools.

Last year’s budget bill required private schools to administer the ACT to 11th grade students whose tuition was at least partially funded by vouchers starting this school year (public school 11th graders already take the ACT). It also required the Superintendent of Public Instruction to recommend a test to be administered in 3rd and 8th grade to both public school students and private school voucher students. There has been no word yet on what test Superintendent Truitt recommended and whether it will be administered this spring. 

Governor Cooper has signaled that he will veto House Bill 10 this week due to the massive voucher increases and other provisions in the bill that he has previously come out against such as the ICE requirement. 

It’s NOT TOO LATE to take action to STOP HB 10!

Legislators will be back in session on October 9. Governor Cooper is expected to veto the bill this week. Legislators will then be asked to vote to override his veto. What can you do to make sure the veto holds?

  • Contact legislators to urge them to reject this voucher expansion.
  • Contact all other elected officials and local business leaders to let them know how harmful the voucher expansion is to communities. They should contact legislators too. 
  • Encourage your local school board to submit a resolution rejecting vouchers (see examples here).
  • Support your local PTA as they advocate for public schools.
  • Sign our petition urging legislators to reject HB 10 and support the VETO.

PSFNC’s Statement on Voucher Expansion

Legislators, when sworn in, pledge to uphold the NC state constitution to provide a free public education. They should not be sending nearly a billion dollars of our tax money to private school vouchers while starving our public schools as they ignore the NC Supreme Court’s ruling to fully fund Leandro. By adding school voucher funding to clear the voucher waitlist of mostly wealthy families, this bill gives our hard earned tax dollars to wealthy families who can afford to pay their own tuition bills. In contrast, salary increases for teachers with 5 or more years of experience were less than $950, which amounts to pay cuts given cost of living increases. 

This bill prioritizes private schools over public schools, urban families over rural families, and wealthy families over our teachers and the nearly 1.4 million children who attend our public schools. Now, with no income limits to determine eligibility and no prior public school attendance required, it has become a handout to wealthy families to underwrite their private school tuition. This is the wrong path for our state. It undermines the social and economic fabric of our state–a state that used to be known nationwide for putting our public schools first- we need to do it again.

Categories Education Industry, Extremism, North Carolina, Privatization, School Choice, Segregation, Separation of church and state, Vouchers

North Carolina Alert! GOP Plans to Slip in $248 Million for Vouchers on Monday

By dianeravitch
September 7, 2024 //
6

Public Schools First, North Carolina’s premier parent-advocacy group, warns that the GOP-controlled legislature plans to expand the state’s voucher program on Monday. It asks parents and concerned citizens to sign a petition and get active to stop the ongoing campaign to defund public schools.

Public Schools First NC writes:

In a familiar move, voucher supporters in the legislature are adding a $248M voucher expansion to an existing bill instead of proposing a stand-alone bill that can be debated and voted on separately. 

House Bill 10 “Require Sheriffs to Cooperate with ICE” has been newly branded “Require ICE Cooperation & Budget Adjustments.” This is where they have included an additional $248 million for private school vouchers in 2024-25.

With the school year underway, parents have already had to make schooling decisions for their children. This means that the $248 million is primarily for private school tuition for students who are already enrolled in a private school this year. In other words, families that can already afford private school will simply receive a tax-funded tuition rebate. 

Left out of the ICE/Budget Adjustments bill are any additional funds for teacher pay, which leaves the average pay increase at 3% for teachers this year. Due to inflation increases, the 3% raise is effectively a pay cut unless local communities add salary supplements large enough to make up the difference. Even worse, teachers with more than 4 years of experience received increases of less than 2% this year.  

Why aren’t legislators spending the $248 million boosting teacher salaries so they’re not getting a pay cut?

Put into specific dollar amounts, the proposed voucher expansion would give $4,480 to families (of 4) making up to $259,740 per year and $3,360 to millionaires, while teachers with 10 years of experience make just $49,350 per year and are stuck with a skimpy $920 salary increase. Is this fair? Is this how we strengthen and support our public schools?

Also missing are dollars to support early childhood education or fund North Carolina Pre-K. Currently just 53% of eligible children are enrolled in NC Pre-K, leaving nearly 24,000 low-income children without an adequate pre-k option. 

Instead of clearing the private school voucher waitlist to fund wealthy families, perhaps the legislature should spend the $248 million to clear the NC Pre-K waitlist and support low-income families.

There are many, many more important issues the legislature should be addressing during their time in Raleigh than adding dollars to a program that harms public schools and sends dollars to private schools that are completely unaccountable to the public.

It is critical that you act now! The NC Senate will open their session at noon. Join us if you can.

Please sign our petition to let legislators know you want them to OPPOSE THIS THREAT TO OUR PUBLIC SCHOOLS – TELL THEM VOTE NO TO ANY PRIVATE SCHOOL VOUCHER EXPANSION!Sign the Petition

Need help explaining this to your neighbors and friends? Public Schools First NC just released a short video explaining vouchers in NC. Please share it widely!

video

Categories Accountability, Democracy, Education Industry, Extremism, North Carolina, Religion, Separation of church and state, Vouchers

Mercedes Schneider: The Great Arizona Dune Buggy Fiasco

By dianeravitch
September 7, 2024 //
6

Readers know that the State Board of education in Arizona actually turned down a parent’s request to use voucher money to buy three dune buggies. Amazing!

Mercedes Schneider digs deeper. In this post, she transcribes the discussion about the vote at the State Board meeting. She includes a list of eight dune buggies at different price points, from about $600 to $$18,000 each. Which did the parent choose?

And she closes with this pertinent question:

If the state of Arizona approves an educational program that involves riding a dune buggy purchased with state money, does the state then open itself up to liability if something happens to the child while operating that state-purchased dune buggy?

Categories Arizona, Education Industry, Ethics, Funding, Vouchers

Arizona: Should Taxpayers Pay for Trampolines, LEGO Sets, and Dune Buggies?

By dianeravitch
September 7, 2024 //
0

Laurie Roberts, a columnist for The Arizona Republic, asks a sensible question that has probably occurred to most voters in Arizona, but not to Republican legislators. What expenditures should be disallowed with state voucher money? Until recently, the sky was the limit. But then the state board turned down a parent who paid for three dune buggies (each of which costs thousands of dollars).

Under former Governor Doug Ducey, a Republican, the legislature kept expanding the state’s voucher program. Parents and educators organized a state referendum on voucher expansion in 2018, and the voters overwhelmingly opposed it. But the Republicans pushed forward and made vouchers universal, available to every student in the state. And of course, the state board was extremely lax in allowing dubious expenditures.

Roberts wrote:

Good news for taxpayers, especially the ones who think public money ought to go to public schools.

The state is drawing the line at paying for dune buggies.

Kayaks, apparently, still are allowed as an acceptable educational expense under the state’s universal school voucher program, as are $900 Lego sets, trampoline sessions, Broadway tickets and espresso machines.

But isn’t it nice to know we absolutely are digging in our heels at the ridiculous notion of taxpayers shelling out for dune buggies?

So far, anyway.

Dune buggies fail the ‘reasonableness’ test

The Arizona State Board of Education on Monday rejected a parent’s appeal to use her kids’ state school Empowerment Scholarship Accounts to buy three dune buggies.

“At some point, I think the question of reasonableness comes to mind,” Board President Daniel Corr said, in voting to order the woman to pay for her own darn dune buggies.

If you’re inclined to reply, “duh,” know that Monday’s vote overturns the ruling of an appeal hearing officer who recommended that we foot the bill for the buggies.

And the Department of Education, which at first denied the expense then approved it — “mistakenly,” it claims.

DOE in March suspended the family’s school voucher accounts and requested reimbursement for the dune buggies, prompting the mother to appeal and decry “crass incompetence.”

“Telling us months later that we have to pay back something that was approved by the department has to be illegal in 50 states and a few territories,” she wrote in the appeal.

Yeah, and trying to sucker the state into paying for dune buggies ought to be galling in 50 states and more than a few territories.

In this case, the system worked … so far. Though I’ve got to wonder how a dune buggy ever got approved in the first place.

And how the state plans to recover our money.

According to The Arizona Republic’s Nick Sullivan, the parent got an occupational therapist to testify that her kids learn better after a trek through the desert, allowing them “to engage in movement before returning to more traditional learning environments.”

So, buy kids some bikes. With your own funds, not ours.

Or take them to the park.

Save Our Schools Arizona has been sounding the alarm about the state’s runaway ESA program all year, pointing to more than $100 million in non-educational spending approved without any academic justification.

Curiously, those fiscal hawks over at the Legislature had no concerns.

Vouchers shouldn’t leave taxpayers high and dry

Fortunately, Attorney General Kris Mayes does.

In July, she opened an investigation into the ESA program. Specifically, into Superintendent Tom Horne’s well-used rubber stamp — the one his department employs to approve “supplemental” educational expenses like $900 Lego sets and ninja training and ski passes.

Jenny Clark, an ESA parent who runs an organization to help parents get vouchers and was appointed by then-Gov. Doug Ducey to the state Board of Education, cast the only vote Monday to approve the dune buggy boondoggle. She noted that it’s the first time since she joined the board in 2022 that it has rejected a hearing officer’s recommendation in a voucher appeal.

Corr, meanwhile, indicated the parent could appeal the board’s decision.

If ever there was a case that illustrates the need for better oversight of ESAs — something the Republican-run Legislature refuses to consider — surely, this is it.

It shouldn’t have taken a trip all the way to the state Board of Education to declare that you don’t need a recreational vehicle to chase down a good education.

Categories Arizona, Education Industry, Ethics, Funding, Vouchers

Arizona: Surprise! State Board Says Parent May Not Use Voucher $$ to Buy Dune Buggies

By dianeravitch
August 31, 2024 //
3

Arizona is truly the Wild West of privatization. Its voucher program started small and grew fast. Parents and teachers organized a state referendum on vouchers in 2018, and the voters overwhelmingly rejected their expansion, by 65-35%.

But the Republican legislature ignored the public smack down and opened the nation’s first universal voucher program. Anyone can get a voucher, even if they are rich, even if they have never attended a public school.

The state’s voucher money could be used for a vast variety of products and services. But a few days ago, the State Board of Education drew a line: voucher money could not be used to buy dune buggies.

ArizonaCentral.com reported:

The Arizona State Board of Education on Monday struck down a parent’s appeal to use state school voucher money to finance three dune buggy purchases.

The parent sought reimbursement for the recreational vehicles through the Empowerment Scholarship Account program, citing her children’s need for interactive learning. Since 2022, the school voucher program has allowed any child in Arizona to receive public money to pay for education expenses such as private school tuition, supplies, tutoring and supplemental materials.

The board’s near-unanimous decision broke from an appeal hearing officer’s recommendation this spring that the family should be reimbursed. Several board members suggested the purchases were needlessly extravagant, even under the broad statute governing the ESA voucher program.

Board member Jennifer Clark, who cast the sole dissenting vote, said the board had voted in line with the hearing officer’s recommendation in every voucher appeal case since she joined in 2022. She said the board should defer to the officer.

The family can appeal the board’s decision, said Board President Daniel Corr.

“Regardless of your feelings on ESA — and I think they range along a spectrum — at some point, I think the question of reasonableness comes to mind,” Corr said. “And this particular purchase, purchases, exceeds my definition of reasonableness.”

The Arizona Department of Education first denied the parent’s request for reimbursement in December. The parent appealed, according to board meeting agenda materials, and then the department “mistakenly approved” her reimbursement request in January. 

The department suspended the family’s school voucher accounts in March and requested repayment for the dune buggies. The parent appealed again to the Education Board and described the department’s handling of her case as “crass incompetence.” 

“Telling us months later that we have to pay back something that was approved by the department has to be illegal in 50 states and a few territories,” she wrote in the appeal.

The department testified during the May hearing that the dune buggies “are not primarily education items, are disallowed by the ESA Parent Handbook, and are not items funded in a public-school setting,” according to the board agenda materials. Textbooks and supplemental materials, such as dune buggies, must be tied to a curriculum for a purchase to be justified under the voucher program, according to the department. 

This interpretation was affirmed by the Attorney General’s Office in a July 1 letter alleging the department had allowed expenditures not supported by curriculum and directing the department to stop approving those expenses. 

The parent later provided a curriculum plan that was “narrowly tailored” with help from an occupational therapist, according to agenda materials. The therapist testified during the hearing that the students engaged more effectively with learning materials that involved physical interaction, such as dune buggies, which allowed them “to engage in movement before returning to more traditional learning environments.”

Categories Accountability, Arizona, Education Industry, Funding, Vouchers

Pierre Tristam: The Great Florida Voucher Swindle! Welfare for the Rich!

By dianeravitch
August 29, 2024 //
7

Pierre Tristam is the editor of FlaglerLive in Flagler County, Florida. In this brilliant article, he describes vouchers as welfare for the rich, a new kind of state socialism. He points out that vouchers are destroying public schools.

I want to acknowledge that I cribbed the article from the blog of the Network for Public Education, which you should subscribe to. It’s free, and it’s curated by the great Peter Greene. If you have a passion for public schools, sign up.

Tristam writes:

It would be absurd, I think we can all agree, if Paul Renner, our esteemed Speaker of the House and Flagler’s chief pork slabber, were to champion a bill entitling every citizen to take out $2,000 from their local policing budgets so they can have their own private security and call it “Police Choice.” After all, don’t we all pay taxes? Shouldn’t we have a choice how that money is spent? Don’t we free Floridians know best? Sheriff Rick Staly would be the first to tell Renner he’s out of his mind. 

It would be absurd, I think we can all agree, if Renner, claiming that taxpayers shouldn’t have their park choices limited to Holland and Ralph Carter Park, were to champion a bill entitling every household to take out $1,000 from the parks and rec budget so they could help subsidize their Disney and Universal experiences and call it “Park Choice.” Even Renner’s chamber of commerce courtesans would tell him he’s out of his mind. 

But not too many people told Renner he was out of his mind when he did exactly that to public schools: he championed a bill entitling every child in Florida to $8,000 a year to spend on private education, at the public school system’s expense, and called it “school choice.” The few who did were themselves told they’re out of their mind. 

“School choice” is an orchestrated demolition of public schools and the social contract. The focus-group euphemism masks the thieving of tax dollars to subsidize private schools, transforming what was once an aspiration of  fringe Christian and anti-government militants into state doctrine. “I hope to see the day when, as in the early days of our country, we won’t have public schools,” the televangelist and founder of the Moral Majority Jerry Falwell said in a 1979 sermon. “The churches will have taken them over again and Christians will be running them. What a happy day that will be.” Falwell lived long enough to see Jeb Bush’s Florida reopen that door. Renner swung the wrecking ball. 

Flagler County schools are losing close to $11 million this year to “choice,” siphoned out so 1,250 students can get their $8,000 either for private school or home school. True, not every one of these students was attending Flagler schools before, so it’s not a net loss of 1,250 students. But very few of these students were either qualifying or getting taxpayer subsidies before. Exactly 136 did in Flagler just four years ago, costing the district less than $1 million. Now anyone qualifies, including millionaire families, and every dollar going to them is a dollar diverted from public education. 

That figure of 1,250 students is for the first full year of this “choice” being in effect. Coming years will only accelerate the drain on public schools, because if you have children you’d be out of your mind not to take the $8,000-per-child handout, especially since most of you aren’t paying anywhere near $8,000 in school taxes each year. The rest of us, and even more so businesses and renters, are subsidizing the swindle. 

Advocates of the swindle have come up with a couple of defenses: first, that they’re taxpayers who should choose where their money is spent–the untenable argument that would then support “police choice” and “park choice,” and if you push that logic far enough, “war choice,” as in: you may spend my money on the Ukraine war but not the genocide of Palestinians. But in our social contract how our taxes are spent is not an a-la-carte option, though Boomer narcissists who can’t see past the hedge of their gated community think it should be.

Second, the advocates claim the dollars “follow the child,” as if public money going to private subsidies were new money that doesn’t affect public school budgets. It’s excellent propaganda. But it’s a double-barreled lie–double-barreled, because not only is every student lost to the public schools a loss of $8,000, but every student who was never enrolled in  public school but is now getting the $8,000 compounds that loss, since these are public dollars that would have otherwise been allocated to public schools. 

Incidentally, we don’t say that people receiving food stamps are on “food choice.” We don’t say that people getting Temporary Assistance for Needy Families are on “poverty choice.” When people get free money from the government, we call it welfare. Ditching the ordurous school-choice euphemism and applying the language’s proper definition–school welfare–exposes the state’s fabrications.

Facts do the rest. The welfare kings and queens this time are much richer than those on food stamps. As the Miami Herald reported Sunday, “Last school year, the average income of families who provided income data and received scholarships for a family of four was $86,000.” (To be eligible for food choice this year a family of four can’t have a household income above $62,400.) 

According to Step Up for Students, the state’s arm administering school welfare, 82 percent of handouts went to students attending religious schools–madrassas–like one in Palm Coast that boasts of “raising champions for Christ” and still sports a crusader for a mascot, which is no less offensive to a few hundred million people than if it flew the Confederate or Nazi flags. Our tax dollars are subsidizing that kind of bigotry. 

More perniciously: When Bush started the welfare-to-school wagon he limited it to the disabled and the needy. Minorities benefited disproportionately. It was a form of segregation in reverse, like affirmative action. Renner’s scheme, like so much under Gov. Ron DeSantis, revives pre-Brown v. Board of Education segregation. By eliminating eligibility barriers, wealthier families use the subsidy as a bridge to very expensive public schools whose tuition keeps the riff raff out, even with $8,000 subsidies. A family might’ve afforded a $9,000 school but couldn’t afford a $15,000 school. So clever schools adjust their tuition just so as a barrier to undesirables and to make extra profit, thus cashing in twice over: in dollars and in whitening their own “choice” of who gets in. Et voilà. Jerry Falwell’s jolly jowly ideal realized. 

Finally, to make sure the dagger cuts deeply and fatally, the state makes it mandatory for school districts to advertise school welfare on their websites. Districts like Flagler must make it as easy as possible for parents to apply for the money and get out of the district, while the state provides a detailed list of private schools to choose from, including, of course, every madrassa under the sky. State and districts could not be shouting louder: Public schools suck. Here’s $8,000. $16,000. $24,000. Now leave.

As students continue to be bribed out, public schools will be left with less money, all the responsibilities for higher standards, more challenging students, crumbling buildings and, revoltingly, school board members and superintendents in full Stockholm Syndrome mode. You hear them in board meetings not only talking about school welfare but praising it, pandering to it, the way the condemned suck up to their executioner. 

There are exceptions. Our own Colleen Conklin for years has been sounding the alerts about the swindle, starting with the charter schemes. She thankfully kept a few of those out of the district, back when local school boards had a say. They no longer do. And Conklin is leaving in November. Our remaining board members love the school welfare swindle and are probably trying to figure out how to cash in with their own kids without looking like public school traitors. 

But as Jerry Falwell implied, it’s a matter of time before those school board members are surplus property, like public school buildings, like buses, for that matter like teachers, counselors, paraprofessionals, bus drivers and administrators, all of whom are already treated like disposable obstructions in the way of school welfare and the cult known as “parental rights.”

Categories DeSantis, Education Industry, Extremism, For-Profit, Fraud, Hoax, Privatization, Vouchers
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