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Peter Greene: A Voucher By Any Other Name Is Still a Voucher and a Hoax

By dianeravitch
April 11, 2024 //
11

Peter Greene writes here about two basic facts: 1) vouchers are unpopular; and 2) because they are unpopular, their supporters call them something else, not vouchers. There have been more than 20 state referenda on vouchers. None passed. So voucher advocates had to become creative and come up with new names for them.

In Florida, the state constitution forbids spending public money on religious schools. So Jeb Bush, a fervent voucher guy, became creative. He proposed a referendum to remove that wording from the state constitution in 2012. The referendum was titled “The Religious Freedom Amendment.” Opponents of vouchers cried foul, but the misleading title remained. Others had to vote against “religious freedom” to oppose vouchers. Some were undoubtedly fooled, but the Religious Freedom Amendment was defeated anyway; only 44% supported it. Nonetheless, the Florida legislature enacted vouchers, ignoring the referendum failure, and in the past year, removed all income limits. As in every other state with universal vouchers, the majority of students applying for vouchers were already enrolled in private and religious schools.

Peter Greene writes:

Voucher supporters have one major problem: school vouchers are unpopular.

The term doesn’t test well. Measure of public support is iffy– if you ask people if they would like every student to have the chance to ride to a great school on their own pony, people say yes, but if you ask a more reality-based framing (“should we spend education dollars on public schools or subsidies for some private schools”) the results look a bit different. 

But one clear measure of public support for vouchers is this; despite all the insistence that the public just loves the idea, no voucher measure has ever been passed by the voters in a state. All voucher laws have been passed by legislators, not voted in by the public. 

Voucher supporters have developed one clear strategy– call them something else.

The basic school voucher idea is simple– the state takes money that it was going to spend on public education (either after that money has been paid in taxes, or by having someone trade a “contribution” to a voucher fund in exchange for tax credit) and giving it to parents, who in turn can go out and buy education services on their own. 

They’re not taxpayer-funded vouchers–they’re “tax credit scholarships.” They’re not vouchers– they’re an Education Freedom Account. And if you want to get in a twitter battle, go ahead and call education savings accounts “vouchers,” because part of the whole point of education savings account was to create an instrument that was both a super-voucher and not-something-we’ll-call-a-voucher-at-all-so-stop-doing-that-dammit.

I expect that behind the curtain there have been folks fervently doing messaging testing on other names for vouchers, and from the results around the nation, we can deduce that words that tested well were “education” and “freedom” and “scholarship.” Also, “empowerment” is coming on strong. States with education savings accounts have the chance to play with the initials ESA. 

So what pops out of the branding machine is Empowerment Scholarship Accounts (Arizona), Education Freedom Account (Arkansas, New Hampshire), Family Empowerment Scholarship Program (Florida), Choice Scholarship Program(Indiana), Opportunity Scholarship Program (North Carolina), Education Choice Scholarship (Ohio), and, of course, who could forget Betsy DeVos’s national tax credit scholarship voucher program, the Education Freedom Plan. 

You can mad lib your way to a voucher program of your own. Education Freedom Scholarship Opportunity Program! Family Freedom Education Scholarships! Family Freedom Empowerment Education Scholarship Opportunity Choice Program Plan! Just don’t call it a voucher.

Bonus credits to Louisianna, where someone took the trouble to write a bill pushing the Louisiana Giving All True Opportunity to Rise– LA GATOR. And in California, legislature voucherfiles are trying “Education Flex Account” for their latest attempt to pass an ESA voucher.

But a voucher by any other name still smells the same. It’s a payoff to parents so that they’ll exit public education, a false promise of education choice, a redirection of public taxpayer dollars into private pockets, an outsourcing of discrimination, a public subsidy for private religious choices, a means of defunding and dismantling public education as we understand it in this country, a transformation of a public good into a market-based commodity. Call it what you like. There isn’t enough air freshener in the world to make it smell like a rose.

Categories Bush, Jeb, Education Industry, Ethics, Fake, Florida, Hoax, Vouchers

Bob Shepherd: A Review of a Review of “Slaying Goliath”

By dianeravitch
April 9, 2024 //
16

Forgive me for posting two reviews of my last book, which was published on January 20, 2020.

As I explained in the previous post, I did not see either of these reviews until long after they appeared in print. Slaying Goliath appeared just as COVID was beginning to make its mark, only a few weeks before it was recognized as a global pandemic. In writing the book, I wanted to celebrate the individuals and groups that demonstrated bravery in standing up to the powerful, richly endowed forces that were determined to privatize their public schools through charters or vouchers.

America’s public schools had educated generations of young people who created the most powerful, most culturally creative, most dynamic nation on earth. Yet there arose a cabal of billionaires and their functionaries who were determined to destroy public schools and turn them into privately-managed schools and to turn their funding over to private and religious schools.

Having worked for many years inside the conservative movement, I knew what was happening. I saw where the money was coming from, and I knew that politicians had been won over (bought) by campaign contributions.

Publishing a book at the same time as a global pandemic terrifies the world and endangers millions of people is bad timing, for sure.

But the most hurtful blow to me and the book was a mean-spirited review in The New York Times Book Review. The NYTBR is unquestionably the most important review that a book is likely to get. Its readership is huge. A bad review is a death knell. That’s the review I got. The reviewer, not an educator or education journalist, hated the book. Hated it. I found her review hard to read because she seemed to reviewing a different book.

I was completely unaware that Bob Shepherd reviewed the review. I didn’t see it until two or three years after it appeared. He wrote what I felt, but I, as the author, knew that it was very bad form to complain, and I did not.

So I happily post Bob Shepherd’s review of the review here.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Civil Rights, Common Core, Corporate Reform, Corruption, Curriculum, Dark Money, Democracy, DFER, Disruption, Education Industry, Failure, History, Hoax, Lies, Network for Public Education, Parent Groups, Privatization, Propaganda, Race to the Top, Racism, Religion, Segregation, Unions, Virtual Charter Schools, Vouchers, Walton Foundation

Josh Cowen Warns Pennsylvania: Beware the Voucher Hoax!

By dianeravitch
March 27, 2024 //
4

Josh Cowen of Michigan State University is a veteran voucher scholar. He has been doing voucher research for nearly two decades. For years, he was hopeful about the outcomes for students. He recently realized that the results were appalling. Students who took vouchers and left their public school actually lost ground academically. The real benefits of vouchers went to students who were already enrolled in private schools; their family, which could afford the tuition, won a subsidy from the state. In some states, even wealthy parents won a state subsidy for their children. vouchers do not help poor students; instead, they are harmed.

Josh Cowen has a new book coming out in September: The Privateers: How Billionaires Created a Culture War and Sold School Vouchers.

Cowen wrote in The Philadelphia Inquirer:

If you’ve ever run a small business or talked to a business owner, you might have heard the phrase “under promise, over deliver” as a strategy for customer service.

Unfortunately, when it comes to school voucher plans like those being considered by Pennsylvania lawmakers this spring, what happens is the opposite of a sound investment: a lot of overpromising ahead of woeful under-delivery.

As an expert on school vouchers, I think about the idea of what’s promised in the rhetoric vs. what actually happens when the realcost sets in. To hear voucher lobbyists tell it — usually working for billionaires like Betsy DeVos, or Pennsylvania’s own Jeff Yass — all that’s needed to move American education forward is a fully privatized market of school choice, where parents are customers and education is the product.

As I testified to Pennsylvania lawmakers last fall, however, vouchers are the education equivalent of predatory lending.

One promise that never holds up is the idea that states can afford to create voucher systems that underwrite private tuition for some children, while still keeping public school spending strong.

Other states that have passed or expanded voucher systems have rarely been able to sustain new investments in public schools. Even when those voucher bills also came with initial increases in public education funding. Six out of the last seven states to pass such bills have failed to keep up with just the national average in public school investment.

But for children and families — especially those who have been traditionally underserved by schools at different points in U.S. history — the cost of school vouchers goes beyond the price for taxpayers.

Although most voucher users in other states (about 70%) were, in fact, in private schools first, the academic results for the kids who transfer are disastrous. Statewide vouchers have led to some of the largest academic declines in the history of education research — drops in performance that were on par with how COVID-19 or Hurricane Katrina affected student learning.

Although school vouchers have enjoyed fits and starts of bipartisan support from time to time, today’s push for universal voucher systems across the country is almost entirely the product of conservative politics. All 12 states that created or expanded some form of a voucher system in 2023 voted for Donald Trump in 2020. Of those that passed voucher laws since the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020, only two (Arizona and New Hampshire) voted for Joe Biden that election year.

In states like Arkansas and Iowa, voucher laws either immediately followed or immediately preceded extreme new restrictions on reproductive care, a weakening of child labor laws, and other conservative policy priorities.

And this isn’t just about electoral politics. The right-wing origins of school vouchers have real day-to-day implications for who gets to use them and who is left out. We know from states like Florida, Indiana, and Wisconsin that the latest voucher bills allow schools to discriminate against certain children if schools can claim they do so for religious reasons.

Who pays that particular price? Examples include students with disabilities and children and parents from LGBTQ families, who may be asked to leave or not even admitted at all. And that’s because when it comes to vouchers, it’s not really school choice at all. Families don’t get their choice of schools; instead, schools get their choice of which families to admit.

And the price tag for all of this usually comes in wildly over budget anyway. The big culprit for those cost overruns goes back to who actually gets a voucher. Because most voucher users were in private schools first— paid by the private sector before — voucher costs are actually new expenditures taxpayers have to make. In the worst-case scenario, Arizona, vouchers cost more than 1,000% beyond what their advocates first promised.

Despite claims some supporters make that vouchers are part of an efficient education market, the result is really the opposite of any strategy a successful business would recognize.

To put it plainly: The promises rarely pan out, and eventually, the check comes due.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Failure, Funding, Hoax, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Privatization, Vouchers

Ohio: The Facts are In. Vouchers Should Not Subsidize the Affluent

By dianeravitch
March 20, 2024 //
7

The editorial board of Cleveland.com and the Plain-Dealer were taken aback by the facts reported about vouchers by their reporter Laura Hancock (posted in previous time slot). The Ohio legislature expanded vouchers so almost every family is eligible, even if they never sent their child to public school. The editorial board believed that vouchers were supposed to help poor kids escape low-performing schools, and they urge the legislature to return to the original purpose.

What is disappointing about this editorial is that it fails to recognize that the original purpose of vouchers has already proven to be a disaster. In the only statewide evaluation of vouchers, sponsored by the choice-friendly Thomas B. Fordham Institute, poor children who took vouchers fell even farther behind their peers in the public schools they left. (See summary, on p. 7, concluding that students who left public schools for voucher schools performed worse than if they had remained in their public school).

This finding—that voucher students who leave public schools perform worse—has been replicated in every voucher program. Voucher students don’t go to elite private schools. Typically they go to voucher schools that do not have certified teachers and that are allowed to discriminate on any grounds.

Voucher scholar Josh Cowen of Michigan State University has assembled the powerful negative effects of vouchers on kids who transfer from public schools. The results in Ohio are the worst.

I wish the editorial board of Cleveland.com and the Plain-Dealer had seen these data before they wrote the following editorial. The facts are in: Vouchers don’t help poor kids who leave struggling public schools.

The editorialists wrote:

Last June, when the Ohio House passed Amended Substitute House Bill 33, the two-year state budget, sending it to Gov. Mike DeWine’s desk for his signature, House Majority leadership celebrated the “landmark” expansion of EdChoice school vouchers, loosening income caps to make voucher benefits available to all Ohio families.

“Along with funding public education, the budget makes a landmark investment in school choice with a universal voucher program,” the statement from House Republican leadership said. “This program is designed to safeguard lower-income families and offers options beyond traditional public schools. By expanding access to vouchers, Ohio ensures parents can make the best decisions for their children’s education.”

But data from implementation of this “landmark investment in school choice … designed to safeguard lower-income families” suggest it did very little to provide school choice or to help low-income families.

Instead, parents in affluent communities like Rocky River, Westlake and Bay Village with kids already in private and parochial schools appear to have taken immediate advantage of the new eligibility rules. Families of four up to 450% of poverty levels (that is, earning up to $135,000 a year) now qualify for full taxpayer-funded vouchers, and those making more money qualify for partial vouchers.

Ohio’s legislature, to be true to its stated school-choice motive, should rewrite the rules to guarantee that this money goes to children in underperforming schools, possibly relying on state report cards to set the standard.

Cleveland.com’s Laura Hancock looked at before-and-after numbers and found that students on EdChoice vouchers shot up from 16 to 309 in the Rocky River school district; 41 to 581 in Westlake; and 13 to 229 in Bay Village.

Hancock then compared public-school enrollment trends to judge if this was primarily a move out of public schools, or a subsidy for kids already in private and parochial schools.

The evidence points strongly to the latter. Rocky River public school enrollment dropped by only 22 students, not 309. Bay Village enrollment dropped by 30 students, not 229. Westlake schools recorded 19 fewer students this year compared with last academic year — not 581. Similar patterns were seen in other affluent school districts, from Strongsville and North Royalton to Brecksville-Broadview Heights.

By contrast, in the Cleveland public schools, where more than 8,000 students now get school vouchers through the much-older Cleveland school voucher program, which dates to 1996, those on EdChoice vouchers increased only slightly, from 9 to 28.

In even more impoverished East Cleveland, EdChoice recipients dropped from 12 last academic year to less than 10 this year.

And the money is now almost gone.

“The legislature budgeted $397.8 million for EdChoice-Expansion this year,” Hancock reports. “As of Feb. 26, the state had spent $387.5 million.”

Advocates of the universal voucher program suggested to Hancock that, as word gets out, more people will use the vouchers as intended next school year, to switch from low-performing public schools to a private or parochial option.

But it seems unlikely those now on the EdChoice expansion vouchers would be displaced to make room for lower-income students.

In other words, lacking conscious, targeted efforts to make sure low-income Ohioans in poor-performing schools primarily benefited, Ohio’s EdChoice expansion as implemented was not the school-choice program Statehouse leaders promised.

The data suggest instead it became just a big taxpayer subsidy for those students already in private schools.

That should outrage every Ohio taxpayer — and every parent of students in struggling districts who were supposed to benefit.

Also raising red flags were the absence of reciprocal obligations on the part of private and parochial schools taking these taxpayer-funded vouchers to show they are a higher-quality alternative to public schools.

The lack of transparency and data-reporting guardrails forces parents making “school choice” for academic reasons, rather than out of religious or other motivations, to blindly assume that a private or parochial school is the best choice, without actual data on educational performance.

This is particularly troubling given Ohio’s history of funding for-profit charter schools without such guardrails. That’s how the now-shuttered Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow managed to make off with $117 million in wrongly paid taxpayer funds, based on a 2022 state audit — mostly for falsely reporting students ECOT never had.

The General Assembly needs to revisit its universal vouchers program to ensure that this nearly $400 million in Ohio taxpayer money is buying true school choice as promised for students mired in poor-performing public schools who most need quality alternatives.

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Ethics, Fake, Fraud, Hoax, Ohio, Vouchers

Ohio’s Multi-Million $$$$ Voucher Scam

By dianeravitch
March 20, 2024 //
9

Laura Hancock wrote at Cleveland.com about the expansion of Ohio’s voucher program. The state now offers a voucher to everyone, but most vouchers are claimed by students who never attended public schools.

COLUMBUS, Ohio – The number of Cuyahoga County students receiving state-funded scholarships to attend private schools has skyrocketed this year after state lawmakers expanded a voucher program, but state data suggests that doesn’t necessarily mean more kids have opted out of public schools.

Across the county’s 31 districts, the number of students receiving tuition payments in the EdChoice-Expansion scholarship — one of five school voucher programs run by the state, and the one lawmakers expanded over the summer to give at least partial tuition payments to families of all income levels— has increased nearly four-fold, from about 2,500 students last year to nearly 9,200 this year.

Those districts, however, have not seen a corresponding loss in student population, indicating that most of the families newly benefitting from the vouchers were already enrolled in private schools, rather than fleeing a school district besieged by violence or bullying, mediocre test scores or other problems.

The data cut against arguments lawmakers and advocates have made over the years that vouchers are necessary to give families a chance to choose private schools over the public school district where they live.

In Rocky River, EdChoice-Expansion scholarships were nearly 20 times higher on Feb. 1 than last year. In Bay Village, they increased 17 times. Westlake’s increase is 14 times higher, according to an analysis of state data by The Plain Dealer / cleveland.com.

The number of students across Ohio who are attending private schools on state-funded scholarships spiked this year because the legislature — in the two-year budget bill signed by Gov. Mike DeWine — removed income eligibility caps for EdChoice-Expansion. Last year, the cap was 250% of the federal poverty level for a scholarship, or $75,000 for a family of four. Now, there are no income caps, although families only get partial scholarships when they earn above 450% of the poverty level, or above $135,000 for a family of four.

Full scholarship amounts are $6,167 for grades K-8 and $8,407 for grades K-12.

Enrollment losses in Cuyahoga County district classrooms, however, are more modest than the jump in private school vouchers. State data shows that families that live in the boundaries of suburban district schools— some of which are among the best performing in the state — but may have never set foot in a public school now are receiving vouchers.

Enrollment in Rocky River City School District fell by just 22 students between last year and this year, even though the number of kids receiving vouchers shot up from 16 to 309. In Bay Village City School District, there are 30 fewer students, despite a voucher jump from 13 to 229. Westlake City School District has 19 fewer students; vouchers in the district spiked from 41 to 581.

In the Cleveland Metropolitan School District, the number of kids receiving EdChoice Expansion vouchers increased from nine to 28 this year, a miniscule number compared against its student population of more than 32,000. But students in Cleveland also are eligible for the Cleveland Scholarship, which has no income caps, and is the oldest in the state, having been established in 1995. As of Feb. 26, there were 8,218 students in the Cleveland Scholarship program.

Open the link to finish the article.

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Ethics, Failure, Ohio, Privatization, Religion, Separation of church and state, Vouchers

Garry Rayno: New Hampshire’s Issues Go National

By dianeravitch
March 19, 2024 //
3

Garry Rayno writes about state politics for InDepthNH, a subject he has covered for the past three decades. Here he explains how the old adage that “all politics is local” has been reversed. Now, with the advent of big money, all local politics is influenced by national agendas. Read what he has to say about vouchers. As in every other state, most vouchers are claimed by students already enrolled in private and religious schools. There has been no mass exodus from public schools. In fact, there has been almost no decline in public school enrollment. Taxpayers are now subsidizing families who can afford private schools on their own.

Rayno writes:

CONCORD – You can expect partisan politics to play a larger role in the legislature during the second year of a two-year term.

It is an election year and both parties are hard at work appealing to their bases and defining the other party as the bad guy.

However, the ill-will appears to be growing over the last decade and there is a reason or two for what is occurring.

More and more state legislatures are put in the middle of national issues that once were the purview of the political professionals.

One of the major reasons for the national attention is the US Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision swinging open the doors of the Brinks Trucks to let millions of dollars of outside money pour into a small state like New Hampshire to sway the outcome of elections.

The $1.3 million of campaign funds spent in 2022 on the New Hampshire Legislature by groups affiliated with the Koch Foundation would have been unimaginable before the court’s decision giving corporations first amendment rights as if they were individuals.

The national parties are also reaping the rewards of the decision and in turn spend rigorously to elect their candidates.

All that money investment does not come free as the people contributing expect a hefty return on investment.

Consequently many national wedge issues find their way into the legislative agendas of both parties.

The last few sessions of the House this month reflect some of what there was little of in years past.

For example House Bill 1156, which targets the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control over their guidance during the pandemic and its future guidance coming in a couple of months on pandemics to come.

The contention is that the two organizations put the state’s sovereignty at risk while revisiting the shutdown and masking debates from the pandemic’s greatest impact.

On its own, given the political philosophy of the majority of the Republican House members, it does not appear to be unusual.

But if you Google state sovereignty and WHO and CDC you will see that many other state legislatures have similar if not identical bills before them this year.

The national battle over electronic vote counting machines made it all the way down to town meeting votes this year, although the ban was not very successful, the push has been ongoing since the “Big Lie” over voter fraud in the 2020 election.

The National Republican Party had touted “voter integrity” which really means disenfranchising as many voters as possible before the 2024 election.

House Bill 1569 would do away with the affidavit exemption allowing a person to vote if a registered voter forgot a photo Id or the proper paperwork for same-day registration. That in itself will disenfranchise thousands of voters, and essentially does away with same-day registration, which New Hampshire adopted so it would not have to have motor-voter registration under the Help America Vote Act. 

This change is likely going to court if it passes the Senate and the governor signs it.

The bill also expands the challenged voter provision, which puts the onus on the challenged voter to go to superior court to prove otherwise which means thousands more will be disenfranchised.

Other bills approved by the House last week would shorten the time period for voter purges from the checklist.

On the other side, the House killed House Bill 1364 which would have resulted in criminal charges if someone intimidated an election official, exerted improper influence over the election process or tampered with electronic ballot counting devices.

While that has not been an issue in New Hampshire as it has in some other states, mostly in the south and southwest, you have to wonder why the House killed the bill unless some of what would be illegal is planned for the next election.

Democrats also pushed a bill to have the state join the Election Registration Information Center, which has not interested the state in the past, and was killed last week.

Democrats proposed a series of House resolutions, which indicate the wishes of the legislature, but do not have the weight of law that included universal health insurance, and differentiating between individual and corporate rights (sound familiar).

Perhaps the most costly example of New Hampshire following a national agenda is the Education Freedom Account program, which began three years ago following other nearly identical programs in places like Arizona, Florida, Wisconsin and Louisiana.

A recent study by the Cleveland Plain Dealer of the program in Ohio which greatly expanded its program last year, noted that despite the number of new students in the program, the enrollment in the public schools did not decline, meaning most of the students benefiting from the expansion were already in private schools meaning it’s ultimately a subsidy for parents who already could afford to pay the tuition. 

The study found that about 65 percent of the total grants were private school grants and most were to religious schools.

Those numbers also reflect what the New Hampshire program has seen, that most of the students enrolling in the program were already in private or religious schools, or homeschooling when the program began with 1,635 students in the 21-22 school year and growing to about 4,500 students for the 23-24 school year.

The year before the program began there were 164,918 students in public schools, according to data on the Department of Education’s website, and the first year of the program there were 164,950 students in public schools, the second year, 163,681 and this school year 165,082. [Emphasis added]

That too would indicate that most of the students receiving EFA grants are not leaving public schools to join the program.

The program’s income cap is expected to increase to 500 percent of the federal poverty level, next school year — the House has passed the bill, it is expected to pass the Senate and the governor has said he would sign it.

Parental rights are another issue that has been targeted nationwide by Republicans while Democrats continue to push for raising the minimum wage, which is a national issue since the state did away with its own minimum wage in the 2011-2012 term and moved to the federal rate.

And transgender issues have been before the legislature, particularly for minors, as they have been in many other states.

All the same issues surfacing at the same time would certainly indicate that some groups or organizations are behind the efforts.

And the political parties are also using state legislatures to continue what they hope will be the dividing lines in the upcoming election.

Oh for the days of clashes over education funding and shoreline protection.

But we are still fighting over education funding, but it’s at least our own fight.

Garry Rayno may be reached at garry.rayno@yahoo.com.

Categories Education Industry, Funding, New Hampshire, Privatization, Religion, Separation of church and state, Vouchers

Arizona: Grand Canyon Institute On Voucher Ripoff

By dianeravitch
March 19, 2024 //
3

The Grand Canyon Institute is a nonpartisan nonprofit research organization in Arizona. Its latest report concludes that charter schools are more accountable than vouchers. Vouchers suck up nearly $1 billion a year in public money and are completely unaccountable. Oucher schools are subject to no financial audits, do not have to comply with the state curriculum, and are not audited for academic performance.

Step right up and get your free money, grifters! Courtesy of Arizona taxpayers and GOP legislators!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Charters are Accountable, Independent Private Schools are Not Yet nearly a billion public dollars flow to unaccountable private schools

Phoenix —On Monday, the State Board for Charter Schools, a public body, voted unanimously to issue a notice of intent to revoke the charter contract for ARCHES Academy, currently located in Apache Junction.


The school appears to have both academic and financial problems and recently addressed an issue with a fire marshal. This action represents the kind of responsible oversight of charter schools that serves to protect the interests of students, parents and taxpayers.


In sharp contrast, independent private schools are required to have no such oversight, even though they currently receive nearly $1 billion in state public funding. That nearly matches the state general fund support for the state university system. Public funds that support private schools come from redirected general fund dollars through tax credit donations to Student Tuition Organizations and by funds from Empowerment Scholarship Accounts (ESA)/vouchers directly from the General Fund. Last year GCI estimates private school tax credits cost $285 million (the formal report is due by March 31) and ESA/vouchers cost $592 million, so, collectively, nearly $900 million in public support for unaccountable private schools (note: this figure includes an amount for ESA homeschooling). 

The table below uses the case of ARCHES Academy to  contrast charter schools (which are privately owned public schools) with private schools that operate independently with the level of oversight and accountability required.

Please open the link to see the table comparing Arches charter school and private schools receiving vouchers.

For more information, contact:

Dave Wells, Ph.D., Research Director

602.595.1025, Ext. 2, dwells@azgci.org

Categories Arizona, Budget Cuts, Curriculum, Education Industry, Ethics, Extremism, Failure, Funding, Privatization, Vouchers

Maine: Federal Court Says Religious Schools Must Obey State Bias Law if They Get State Money

By dianeravitch
March 18, 2024 //
4

In 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Maine must pay the tuition of children at religious schools if it pays any private school tuition. Maine has a historic system of paying for students to go to private high schools if their own district does not have a public high school.

The state of Maine insisted that it would not pay tuition to schools that violate the state’s anti-discrimination. The two Christian schools that won the case did not accept LGBT students or students who practice a religion different from that of the church.

The state refused to pay Bangor Christian Academy for violating its human rights law. BCA sued. The court barred then from receiving public funds.

The Christian Post reported:

A Christian school in Maine must adhere to the state’s LGBT antidiscrimination policy to qualify for a state tuition assistance program while the lawsuit against the state continues, a federal judge has ruled.

U.S. District Judge John Woodcock, a George W. Bush appointee, denied a preliminary injunction Tuesday requested by Bangor Christian Schools run by Crosspoint Church, concluding that the church’s lawsuit against assorted state officials is not likely to succeed.

He ruled that Bangor Christian Schools must follow all the Maine Human Rights Act provisions.

“The Court determines that the educational antidiscrimination provisions do not violate the Free Exercise Clause because they are neutral, generally applicable, and rationally related to a legitimate government interest,” wrote Woodcock.

“The Court concludes further that the educational provisions do not violate the Free Speech Clause because they regulate conduct, not speech. Finally, the Court concludes that the employment provisions do not proscribe any constitutionally protected conduct.”

First Liberty Institute Senior Counsel Lea Patterson, who represents Crosspoint, denounced the decision and expressed plans to appeal the ruling.

“Government punishing religious schools for living out their religious beliefs is not only unconstitutional, it is wrong,” said Patterson, as quoted by Bangor Daily News.

In 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in Carson v. Makin that Maine cannot lawfully stop parents from using a state tuition program to send their children to Christian private schools.

The lawsuit that led to the Supreme Court ruling was driven by parents from Bangor Christian School who sued Maine over the ban on state tuition assistance for families sending their children to a private school that includes sectarian aspects in its curriculum.

Categories Bigotry, Ethics, Maine, Privatization, Religion, Vouchers

Kentucky: GOP Passes Bill to Nullify Parts of State Constitution to Allow Vouchers

By dianeravitch
March 14, 2024 //
7

State Senator Tina Bojanowski, teacher and legislator (@TinaforKentucky), tweeted:

KY House passes HB2, a bill to change our Constitution to allow vouchers and charters by creating an amendment that allows future legislation to disregard SEVEN sections of our Constitution.
@kyhousedems

Categories Budget Cuts, Disruption, Education Industry, Extremism, Funding, Kentucky, Republicans, Vouchers

Houston Chronicle Editorial: Greg Abbott is the Captain Ahab of Texas

By dianeravitch
March 12, 2024 //
18

The Houston Chronicle’s editorial board excoriated Texas Governor Greg Abbott for making war on Republican legislators who opposed Abbott’s voucher proposal, and at the same time failing to meet his constitutional obligation to fund public schools.

The editorial board wrote:

Our own Captain Ahab, otherwise known as Gov. Greg Abbott, managed to plunge his harpoon into the belly of the great whale last week. After Super Tuesday, our public-school leviathan lists but is not dead yet. 

The captain’s uber-wealthy allies — lWest Texas oilmen who are avowed Christian nationalists — must be giving thanks to God for Super Tuesday’s results and preparing for the death blow the next time the Texas Legislature meets. In 2022, they funded Abbott’s primary opponent and now their obsession with school vouchers has become the governor’s. 

The aim of these “tycoon evangelicals” — to borrow Bekah McNeel’s label, writing in Texas Monthly — is to get their grappling hooks into our public schools, bleed them out and redirect public resources into private Christian education. So what if our hemorrhaging public school system washes ashore, a blanched skeleton left to the screeching gulls? As long as West Texas billionaires Tim Dunn of Midlandand the Wilks brothers from Cisco are for knocking down the wall — the one between church and state, that is, not the border between Texas and Mexico — how could their agent in the governor’s office be against it?

Abbott is more than halfway there already. Vowing revenge on members of his own party who helped deep-six school vouchers last fall, he relied on a $6 million donation from a Philadelphia billionaire, as well as overlapping donations from Dunn and Wilks, to knock off nine mostly rural representatives of his own party who opposed his obsession. More were forced into a runoff. Based on votes for the House voucher bill during multiple special sessions last fall, he needed to pick up 11 pro-voucher votes. The captain’s likely to reach his ocean’s 11 in the November general election.

“Republican primary voters have once again sent an unmistakable message that parents deserve the freedom to choose the best education pathway for their child,” Abbott said in a statement Tuesday evening. “We will continue to help true conservative candidates on the ballot who stand with the majority of their constituents in supporting education freedom for every Texas family.”

You’ll forgive dedicated public school teachers and administrators, as well as parents of school-age children, if they forgo standing. While Abbott exults, schools around the state — large and small, urban and rural — are grappling with massive budget deficits, thanks to Abbott’s voucher obsession and a Legislature diverted during four sessions last year from meeting its constitutional obligation to adequately fund public schools. 

Remember January of last year? Lawmakers convened in Austin for their regular session almost giddy with the prospect of writing the 2024-25 state budget with an astounding cash balance to work with of $33 billion. They staggered home nearly a year later, having for the most part stiffed the school children of Texas (and by extension, the state as a whole). Rather than using that massive surplus to increase base-level funding, they approved $18 billion in property tax cuts. Meanwhile, school districts were left to grapple with inflation, the loss of federal funding designed to help schools weather the COVID-19 pandemic and no new monies to increase teacher pay, hire additional teachers and make needed investments. 

Nearly every school district in Harris County is underfunded and in crisis, a recent Kinder Institute study determined. Cypress-Fairbanks ISD, for example, is facing a budget shortfall of $73.6 million. For Spring ISD, the budget gap is an estimated $25 million. Spring Branch ISD announced recently that it plans to close two schools and charter programs in the face of a $35 million budget deficit.

Meanwhile, lawmakers continued their streak of penury last year: The last time they increased education funding was in 2019. 

They had the best of intentions, it seems, setting aside nearly $4 billion for public education, but those dollars were never allocated. The school finance bill passed by the House ended up in the drink when the Senate added Abbott’s (and the tycoon evangelicals’) voucher scheme, a scheme that would benefit a relative handful of students around the state (and practically none in rural and small-town Texas).

To be clear, school choice or vouchers or education savings accounts — whatever the label of choice — is a legitimate policy issue. It deserves vigorous debate. But we’ve had that debate. Abbott lost on the merits. Wide-scale voucher programs in other states, such as Arkansas, have failed to produce strong academic improvements while draining public schools of funding.

What’s disturbing about the governor’s voucher obsession is his naked obeisance to wealthy special interests who manifestly do not have the best interests of the people of Texas at heart. Their ultimate aim, even if it’s not necessarily the governor’s, is to transform Texas into a Christian-dominated, biblically based state. Those 21 House Republicans who joined with 63 Democrats to block last year’s voucher proposal understood who benefited and who didn’t. And on Tuesday, many paid the political price. It’s of little consolation, we realize, but we salute their courage. 

There will come a time when Texans have had enough of the mean-spiritedness and ideological narrowness of the current governor and his far-right cohorts, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Attorney Gen. Ken Paxton. There will come a time when they demand more from their elected public servants (emphasis on servants). 

Given our long history with Abbott, it’s hard to imagine that other states do have elected governors, Republicans and Democrats, who acknowledge that they represent every citizen of their state, not only those who voted for them, who seek to unite not divide. In the words of New York Times columnist Frank Bruni, “they focus intently on the practical instead of the philosophical, emphasizing issues of broad relevance and not venturing needlessly onto the most divisive terrain.” 

Bruni was writing about Democratic governors, among them Andy Beshear of Kentucky, Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania and Gretchen “fix the damn roads” Whitmer of Michigan, but the inclination toward moderation and practicality describes a handful of Republican governors, as well. Phil Scott of Vermont and Spencer Cox of Utah come to mind. 

Of course, that’s not Texas — not today’s Texas, that is. Our obsessive Ahab remains at the helm, steering ever more to the starboard, ignoring the risk to his fellow Texans that he’ll one day run aground. We can do better.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Cruelty, Education Industry, Elections, Supporting public schools, Texas, Vouchers
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