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Indiana: Private and Religious Schools May Lose Independence

By dianeravitch
January 19, 2013 //
7

A report from Indiana:

Vic’s Statehouse Notes #106– January 17, 2013

Dear Friends,

Yesterday’s committee vote on Senate Bill 184, the voucher expansion bill, was delayed until next Wednesday’s meeting. This gives us all more time to send additional messages of opposition before the vote.

Voucher Expansion

Senator Kruse announced at the beginning of yesterday’s Senate Education Committee meeting that the vote on SB 184, the voucher expansion bill, as well as on two other bills would be taken at the January 23rd meeting. The only bill voted on as scheduled was Senate Bill 189, which was passed 9-0 with bipartisan support after being amended.

I have no inside information about SB 184, but sometimes bills are delayed in this manner because the sponsor doesn’t have the votes lined up to pass the bill and wants more time to try to find the votes. Whether this is true in the case of the sibling voucher bill is up to speculation, but the net result is that the bill still has not passed the committee and public school advocates have until January 23rd to reach more Senators, especially those on the Education Committee, to share your deep opposition to sending more public money to private schools through an expansion of vouchers for siblings. In many legislative districts, this weekend will be the first “Third House” or “Crackerbarrel” meetings in which legislators meet with constituents back home. I hope public school advocates will show up at such meetings with the message that public schools need more support and supporting private schools with more vouchers is the wrong priority. Go to it!

Common Core

Senator Kruse then turned yesterday to a hearing on SB 193, the Common Core bill, subject of two rallies and much debate prior to the hearing. Many of us in fighting the voucher bill in 2011 argued that private schools should not want vouchers because the strings that come with public dollars will take away the independence of private schools. That is exactly what has happened in this case and should prompt a reassessment of the full consequences of the voucher law.

As I listened to the story of how the fight against the Common Core began in Indiana, I learned that private school independence has already been corrupted by the voucher program. Senator Schneider, in introducing his bill to take Indiana out of the Common Core program, described how two parents in his district came to him greatly concerned that their voucher-accepting parochial school was changing its textbooks and curriculum to comply with the Common Core curriculum and the new assessments to come, since voucher schools must take the state assessments. These parents were greatly distressed by the changes they traced back to the Common Core curriculum, especially in math, and thus, a movement to overturn the 2010 decision of the Roundtable and the State Board was born.

Without the voucher program requirement that schools accepting vouchers must take the state tests, the private school could have ignored the Common Core and used textbooks and tests that fit its preferred curriculum. Now this huge public policy debate with national implications is being driven by private and parochial school parents and the outcome will impact every public and private school in Indiana. The voucher law has thus entwined public and private schools in an unanticipated way through the Common Core curriculum battle.

The hearing, which Senator Kruse noted began at 1:37, went on until 7:00pm last night. The Senate Chamber and gallery were standing room only and some 50 chairs were filled in the hallway outside the Senate Chamber. The vote on SB 193 is scheduled for the next meeting, January 23rd.

House Education Committee

The first meeting of the House Education Committee was held this morning at 8:30am. House Bill 1012 amending the law governing the transfer of surplus buildings to charter schools was passed 12 to 1. The bill reduces the four year waiting period to sell a building to two years and includes a 30-day fast track procedure when a ready buyer is available. House Bill 1060 amending the law governing criminal background checks on teacher applicants was passed 12 to 0.

Chairman Behning announced that House Bills 1005, a complex bill regarding high school remediation, and 1295 regarding the IU School of Public Health would be given hearings at the next meeting on Tuesday, January 22nd. The new schedule for the House Education Committee is to meet every Tuesday and Thursday from 8:30 until the House convenes around 10:30.

Contact Senators

Senators need to hear again this week from the grassroots about Senate Bill 184. Please let them know of your opposition to expanding the voucher program in a way that will for the first time add new and expensive fiscal costs to the program. Other voucher bills have been announced, and strong resistance to this first one, SB 184, will help us fight the others down the road. The Senators on the committee to contact are as follows:

Chair: Sen. Kruse

Republican Members: Senators Yoder, Banks, Buck, Kenley, Pete Miller, Leising and Schneider

Democrat Members: Senators Rogers, Broden, Mrvan, Taylor

Thanks for all you are doing to support public education!

Best wishes,

Vic Smith vic790@aol.com

ICPE is working to promote public education in the Statehouse as efforts are made to take public money away from public schools through an expansion of vouchers. We are well represented by our lobbyist Joel Hand, but to keep him in place we need all members from last year to renew and we need new members who support public education.

Go to http://www.icpe2011.com for membership and renewal information.

Some readers have asked about my background in Indiana public schools. Thanks for asking! Here is a brief bio:

I am a lifelong Hoosier and began teaching in 1969. I served as a social studies teacher, curriculum developer, state research and evaluation consultant, state social studies consultant, district social studies supervisor, assistant principal, principal, educational association staff member, and adjunct university professor. I worked for Garrett-Keyser-Butler Schools, the Indiana University Social Studies Development Center, the Indiana Department of Education, the Indianapolis Public Schools, IUPUI, and the Indiana Urban Schools Association, from which I retired as Associate Director in 2009. I hold three degrees: B.A. in Ed., Ball State University, 1969; M.S. in Ed., Indiana University, 1972; and Ed.D., Indiana University, 1977, along with a Teacher’s Life License and a Superintendent’s License, 1998.

—
Julian M.Smith
4th Grade
Scipio, Elementary

Categories Common Core, Indiana, Vouchers

Milwaukee: No Model for America

By dianeravitch
January 19, 2013 //
30

Recently I wrote a post maintaining that choice had failed in Milwaukee, and that the city would be better off if it had a single public school system, doors open to all, receiving public support and public funding and civic energy. Uniting behind public education makes more sense than supporting three separate systems, none of which do well for studnts.

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel published my post as an opinion piece. So far, my views have been critiqued by two other opinion pieces. One is by the research director of a free-market organization that advocates for vouchers, who says (ironically) that my call for unity around public schooling is “divisive.” This article gave me a hearty laugh.

The other article, by Patrick Wolf and John Witte also took exception to my blog post. They responded in an article in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel and maintained that choice was a great success in Milwaukee and far better than public schooling.

This is my response to Wolf and Witte.

Milwaukee’s choice program is a failure. There are now three
separate systems—the public schools, with about 80,000 students; the
voucher schools, with about 23,000 students, and the charter schools,
with about 20,000 students.

There is very little difference among the three sectors in
terms of student achievement.

Patrick Wolf and John Witte do not agree. They think the
voucher and charter programs have been successful. They say that the
voucher schools have higher graduation rates, but critics who reviewed
their study say that about 75 percent of the original 9th graders were
not still enrolled in a voucher high school by the end of senior year.
With such high attrition from voucher schools, the graduation rates
are meaningless.

When the voucher and charter movements were first launched in the
early 1990s, advocates insisted that competition would cause the
public schools to improve. Governor Scott Walker still says so.

Advocates also said they wanted public funds to flow
to private and religious schools, because it would help minority
children.

But this has not happened. On the latest federal tests of math and reading, Milwaukee was one of the nation’s lowest performing urban school districts. Its performance was similar to the very lowest performing districts: Cleveland, D.C., and Detroit.

After twenty years of choice, the test scores of black
students in Milwaukee are similar to those of black students in
District of Columbia, Cleveland, Mississippi and Alabama.

Wolf and Witte claim that the choice schools do not skim the easiest
to educate students. When choice schools skim, it leaves the public schools worse off, with the most expensive students to educate

Wolf earlier admitted that 19% of the students in the Milwaukee
public schools have disabilities, compared to somewhere between 7 and
14.5 percent in the voucher schools. As Wolf told Education Week,
voucher schools typically accept students with mild to moderate
disabilities, which leaves the most severely disabled to the public
schools.

It is inefficient to run three separate school systems. Not only does
it triplicate costs, but it divides civic energy. All the people of
Milwaukee should work together to build a school system that meets the
needs of all the children.

Twenty years of experience with choice in Milwaukee demonstrates that
it is not effective or efficient to run three school systems. It does not meet the needs of children.

We should have learned that in 1954, when the U.S. Supreme Court declared
a dual school system to be unconstitutional.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Reform, U.S. education, Vouchers, Wisconsin

Key Republicans in Wisconsin Halt Voucher Expansion UPDATE! LINK ADDED!

By dianeravitch
January 19, 2013 //
7

Two key Republican state legislators in Wisconsin said they would not permit an expansion of vouchers unless there was a local vote.

Voucher proponents oppose local referenda.

No wonder. Vouchers are very unpopular and have never won a popular election.

Supporters say children need choice to go to a better school, but there is no voucher program in the US where vouchers have unequivocally outperformed the public schools.

And yes, vouchers drain money from the public schools and cripple the community schools.

Everyone is hurt when public funds are divided into two or three competing sectors. And no one wins.

Categories Vouchers, Wisconsin

Wake the Town and Tell the People

By dianeravitch
January 18, 2013 //
3

If we all speak out based on our knowledge and experience, we can turn this privatization movement around. It is led by people who know nothing about teaching or children. They are obsessed with data and incentives and punishments. Their bad ideas keep failing.

From a reader:

Hi Diane.

This is the first time I have commented on your blog but I have been reading your posts since the blog’s inception. Please know that you inspire me and keep me going. The reason being, you give me hope that we, as public school teachers, have a voice out there fighting for us.

I have been teaching for 12 years in a small upstate New York city school. We are ravaged with 75% poverty and developmentally innappropriate expectations for our kids from the Common Core. There is no “soft bigotry” of low expectations, just expectations WAY out of the zone of proximal development (Vygotsky).

I have seen the corporate reform agenda taking shape for years and have seen main stream media’s narrative of it’s benefits. It’s demonization of us public school teachers. It frustrates me to such a degree that it is hard to have hope for change. You give me that hope. You inspire me to get the message out to my collegues. To speak up at meetings and generally be the voice of dissent in this otherwise brainwashed, “duped” society. Thank you for that. And thank you for continuing this fight against the monster that is the pritization movement. Enjoy your break. It is well deserved.

Categories Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Closing schools, Corporate Reformers, Teacher Evaluations, Vouchers

Bush and Rhee Double-Team Tennessee

By dianeravitch
January 17, 2013 //
11

Jeb Bush and Michelle Rhee are working Tennessee, with grandiose claims about the great results that charters and vouchers can accomplish.

The good news is that the reporter shows skepticism about thei claims.

Why don’t they tell their audiences about Milwaukee, which has had vouchers and charters for 20+ years? On the NAEP, Milwaukee is one of the nation’s lowest scoring cities, and state scores show no difference between the public schools, the charters and the voucher schools.

Saddest of all is that the performance of black students in Milwaukee is very low.

Remember that line about “the civil rights issue of our time”?

Vouchers and charters are not it.

Categories Bush, Jeb, Charter Schools, Rhee, Michelle, Tennessee, Vouchers

Tennessee Legislature Purges Voucher Opponent

By dianeravitch
January 17, 2013 //
4

Yesterday I posted a comment from Linda Whittington, a member of the state Legislature in Mississippi who was removed from her assignment on the House Education Committee because she opposes charters.

Today a reader in Tennessee posted a comment with these links from Memphis:

http://schoolingmemphis.blogspot.com/2013/01/tn-state-rep-fitzhugh-forced-off.html
http://schoolingmemphis.blogspot.com/2013/01/harwell-shenanigans-confirmed-in.html

You will learn here that Tennessee House Democratic leader, Craig Fitzhugh, was removed from his position on the education committee because he opposes vouchers.

Bottom line: The privatization steamroller is moving fast in those states. The privatizers don’t like local control.

Their goal is to hand public money over to nonpublic schools, out-of-state corporations, businesses, and religious schools, with minimal or no supervision. They don’t care if they destroy the public schools.

By the way, StudentsFirst, which is registered as a nonpolitical 501(c)4, poured about $900,000 into the legislative races in Tennessee to assure a Republican super-majority. But please don’t forget that it’s all “for the children” and of course, bipartisan. Oh, and if you read the article linked here, you will see that Rhee claims to be a resident of Tennessee, even though she is married to the mayor of Sacramento. Where does she live? Where is she registered to vote? It’s mysterious.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Privatization, Separation of church and state, Tennessee, Vouchers

Over 300 Schools Teaching Creationism with Public Funding

By dianeravitch
January 16, 2013 //
80

Zack Kopplin was honored earlier by this blog for his efforts to expose the teaching of creationism in voucher schools in Louisiana. He is a student at Rice University. He is not letting up on his efforts to expose the abuse of science by schools receiving vouchers.

Here is a press release sent by him:

Over 300 Schools Teaching Creationism on the Taxpayer Dime

Over 300 Schools Teaching Creationism on the Taxpayer Dime
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Zack Kopplin
These schools are in nine states (Florida, Indiana, Georgia, Ohio, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Colorado, Utah, Wisconsin) and the District of Columbia and were put in a database on creationistvouchers.com.
A few of these creationist voucher schools are:
  • Liberty Christian School, in Anderson, Indiana, teaches from a creationist ABeka and ASCI curriculum.  They also take trips to the Creation Museum.
  • Rocky Bayou Christian School, in Niceville, Florida, in its section on educational philosophy, says “Man is presumed to be an evolutionary being shaped by matter, energy, and chance… God commands His people not to teach their children the way of the heathen.”
  • Creekside Christian Academy, in McDonough, Georgia, says, “The universe, a direct creation of God, refutes the man-made idea of evolution. Students will be called upon to see the divine order of creation and its implications on other subject areas.”
These schools that have been discovered are only the tip of the iceberg.  Hundreds more schools in these programs, across the nation, are undoubtedly also teaching creationism and receiving public money.
Researcher and science advocate Zack Kopplin partnered with MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry Show to discover and publish this information.
###
Contact Zack Kopplin at 225-715-5946 or zsk1@rice.edu
Categories Indiana, Louisiana, Separation of church and state, Vouchers

New Legal Challenge to Tax Credits in New Hampshire

By dianeravitch
January 16, 2013 //
12

Americans United for Separation of Church and State, the New Hampshire Civil Liberties Union, and the American Civil Liberties Union have filed a lawsuit challenging a state law that allows tuition tax credits, saying it subsidizes religious schools.

Where are the lawsuits in Indiana, Ohio, Wisconsin, and Louisiana to challenge voucher programs that directly fund religious schools with public money?

Categories Separation of church and state, Vouchers

Indiana Legislature Plans to Expand Vouchers

By dianeravitch
January 15, 2013 //
7

Vic Smith sends out bulletins about statehouse politics in Indiana. This is his latest, which includes a good summary about the current plan to expand vouchers in Indiana.

 

Dear Friends,
The Senate Education Committee will vote on the voucher expansion bill, Senate Bill 184, on Wednesday afternoon, Jan. 16th.  Please contact the Senators on the committee before the vote to express your
opposition.
 
The hearing on Senate Bill 184 sponsored by Senator Yoder revealed a division within the committee.  Even before public testimony on the bill began, Senator Kenley expressed his continued support of the position the Senate took when the voucher bill was passed, that is, that students should try public schools first.  Eligibility for vouchers required a year in public schools for that reason.  Then if students move to a private school, there is a cost savings. Under Senate Bill 184, the cost savings disappear when siblings who have not been in public schools receive a voucher and a new fiscal cost must be funded in the budget.
Senator Kenley, as quoted in Scott Elliott’s story in the January 12th Star, said it well:  “We passed the original bill on the assumption that you go to public school first.  This changes the premise.  It’s a pretty fundamental change.”
Fiscal Cost for Indiana Taxpayers
 
Scott Elliott’s story also quoted the testimony of ICPE lobbyist Joel Hand citing the extra fiscal costs that a sibling voucher expansion would bring: “Based on the $3932 average voucher, he said, if just one in 10 of the 9,130 students in the program had a sibling not in public school who used a voucher next year it would cost Indiana about $3.5 million annually. If a quarter of the students had a sibling who used a voucher it would cost Indiana nearly $9 million a year.”
The extra fiscal cost in the millions of dollars is clear and substantial, in a state that in the last budget zeroed out state funding for professional development, which in the previous budget was given $5.5 million a year.  Is helping private school parents pay tuition a higher priority than professional development?
Financial Relief for Private School Parents
 
Keep in mind that the biggest impact of SB 184 would be financial relief for private school parents.  With the exception of incoming kindergarten and first graders, it would allow no new students to go to a private school.  The older students covered by this bill are already in private schools.
Instead for all older siblings, this bill is about giving financial relief to the parents of current private school students, parents who happen to have another younger child who has qualified for a voucher.
 
Giving a voucher to an older sibling who is already in a private school does nothing to expand school choice.  The choice was already made. Now this bill helps parents pay for their previous choice with your tax money.
Giving financial relief to parents of private school students would be a generous thing for the state to do, but other parents would wonder why they aren’t being favored by the state with financial relief as well.  Public school parents have been asking for financial relief for school textbook rental for over a decade.  Why, they should ask, are private school parents getting relief when we are not?
 
Testimony on the Bill
 
In public testimony on Senate Bill 184 last Wednesday, five speakers spoke in favor of the bill followed by eight speaking against the bill.  Karen Combs of Lafayette in her testimony against the bill gave a timely reminder to the Senators that Gov. Daniels himself in a speech given at Harvard explained to his audience how Indiana did it right by having families go to public school first before they are eligible for a voucher.
No additional testimony will be taken, but the committee vote on SB 184 is scheduled for this Wednesday, January 16th in the Senate Chamber, along with votes on three other bills, including the cursive writing bill.  Then the rest of the afternoon is scheduled for testimony on SB 193, the Common Core bill.  Apparently a large crowd is expected which accounts for scheduling the hearing in the Senate Chamber.
As of Monday evening, no meeting has yet been scheduled for the House Education Committee.
Contact the Committee Members
 
It is time to contact Senators on the committee on Tuesday and Wednesday before the vote to express your opposition to expanding the voucher program in a way that will for the first time add new and expensive fiscal costs to the program.  That this bill was taken up first in the session shows the wrong priority.  The Senators to contact are as follows:
Chair:  Sen. Kruse
Republican Members:  Senators Yoder, Banks, Buck, Kenley, Pete Miller, Leising and Schneider
Democrat Members: Senators Rogers, Broden, Mrvan, Taylor
You should also add your own Senator to the contact list.  If you made contacts last week, it would not hurt to send another email or note before the vote.  They need to know that public school advocates are watching every step of the way.  One strong advocate opposing Senate Bill 184, Patricia Logan, had an excellent letter to the editor printed in the Indianapolis Star just this morning, January 14th.  Thanks, Trish!  Let’s all turn up the volume!
Thank you for speaking up for public education!
Vic Smith      vic790@aol.com
ICPE is working to promote public education in the Statehouse as efforts are made to take public money away from public schools through an expansion of vouchers.  We are well represented by our lobbyist Joel Hand, but to keep him in place we need all members from last year to renew and we need new members who support public education.
Go to www.icpe2011.com for membership and renewal information.
 
 
Some readers have asked about my background in Indiana public schools.  Thanks for asking!  Here is a brief bio:
I am a lifelong Hoosier and began teaching in 1969.  I served as a social studies teacher, curriculum developer, state research and evaluation consultant, state social studies consultant, district social studies supervisor, assistant principal, principal, educational association staff member, and adjunct university professor.   I worked for Garrett-Keyser-Butler Schools, the Indiana University Social Studies Development Center, the Indiana Department of Education, the Indianapolis Public Schools, IUPUI, and the Indiana Urban Schools Association, from which I retired as Associate Director in 2009.  I hold three degrees: B.A. in Ed., Ball State University, 1969; M.S. in Ed., Indiana University, 1972; and Ed.D., Indiana University, 1977, along with a Teacher’s Life License and a Superintendent’s License, 1998.
Categories Indiana, Vouchers

Vouchers Do Not Reduce Educational Inequity

By dianeravitch
January 11, 2013 //
43

Vouchers were once thought to be a dead issue in US education. Voters have turned them down again and again. The public dislikes them so much that even Republicans are afraid to use the V word. Instead, voucher programs–always enacted by legislation, not by voter referendum–are always called, euphemistically, “opportunity scholarships.”

When GOP governors like Mitch Daniels in Indiana and Bobby Jindal in Louisiana promote vouchers (er, excuse me, “opportunity scholarships”), they claim they are doing it to “save poor minority students from failing schools.” Who knew the GOP had become the party devoted to poor minority kids while slashing the budget for education and social programs?

It turns out that vouchers are antithetical to equity. They do not save poor minority kids. They increase segregation. Schools choose and skim. Vouches exacerbate inequality.

So sayeth Julian Vasquez Heilig.

Categories Vouchers
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