Julian Vasquez Heilig of the University of Texas is beginning an investigation of the effectiveness of vouchers.
He writes here about Texas but his conclusions would apply to any other state as well.
He examines whether vouchers are cost-efficient and how they affect the public schools.
Until the past few years, vouchers were a dead issue.
Since the Republican sweep of statehouses in 2010, they are back.
This is well worth reading.
I disagree with this post by a faithful reader. But I think it deserves discussion.
There are many reasons to object to privatization.
One is that there is no evidence that privately managed firms that operate public services provide more efficient or less costly service. Another is that privately managed firms, when operating for profit, extract public dollars for investors that taxpayers intended for children, for educational programs that directly benefit children, for reduced class sizes, —and not to enrich shareholders. Privately managed nonprofits often pay salaries that would be unacceptable in the public sector. Privately managed firms tend to exclude the costliest clients to minimize their own costs, thus leaving the hardest cases for the less well funded public sector agency. And last, to destroy public education, which is so inextricably linked to our notions of democracy and citizenship would be an assault on the commonweal. Let us not forget that public education has been the instrument of the great social movements for more than the past half century–desegregation, gender equality, disability rights, and the assimilation of immigrants. Once it is gone, it is gone, and that would be a crime against ourselves.
The reader writes:
“Ladd and Fiske correctly identify the four risks to the public education system of the privatization movement, but they assume that the public education system is an unqualified “good.” What if privatization produces different and better goods? Public education implements mainly a “progressive” philosophy of government. By the word “democracy” it means government control of education and almost everything else it can get its hands on. “Social justice” is the well-worn substitute term for ‘redistribute the wealth.’ I mean no name calling to point out that has been the communist agenda from the beginning and remains the communist agenda.
“The whole point of privatization, then, is to free American education from the statist agenda (which implies ‘community’ responsiblity for every individual and submission of every individual to the tyranny of the community). Most here see public education as an unmixed good. It’s opponents think otherwise, and their motives are clear.
“What is most surprising, however, is to find the Obama Education Department so staunchly behind the measures that we ALL agree are destroying the public school systems. NCLB? RTTT? CCSS? What true educator can support that testing to extinction? It baffles me why Obama/Duncan want to eliminate the public school systems when their objectives in every other area of life, especially health care, is anti individual freedom.
“Ladd and Fiske, then, are totally correct in saying that the privatization movement sees public goods as merely the sum of the individual goods arising from education. I say that is the way it should be in America. What are claimed as social goods lost by privatization are, in my view, really social “bads.” They are mainly accustoming citizens to acquiesce in state control of their lives. There’s been enough of that already.”
2012 was a year in which supporters of public education–parents, educators and concerned citizens–won some huge victories against the privatization movement.
Let’s begin with the elections of 2012.
Reform idol Tony Bennett was booted out by the voters of Indiana, who elected veteran educator Glenda Ritz as State Superintendent of Education.
Idaho was a great victory for supporters of public education. Idaho voters decisively repealed the Luna laws, which would have committed the state to spend $180 million for laptops while imposing merit pay, crushing the unions and tying every educators’ evaluation to test scores.
Voters in Florida rejected an effort to amend the state constitution to permit vouchers.
Voters in Bridgeport, Connecticut, voted against the mayor’s effort to take control of their public schools by eliminating the elected board of education.
Voters in Santa Clara County, California, re-elected Anna Song, whose opponent outspent her by about 25-1. She was targeted for defeat by the California charter school lobby after she opposed a bid by Rocketship to open 20 new charters. Rocketship will get the charters but Anna Song proved that big money was not enough to beat a supporter of public education.
The big push for “parent trigger” laws ran into two stumbling blocks:
In Florida, Jeb Bush and Michelle Rhee put on a full-court press to persuade the state legislature to pass a law allowing parents to vote to hand their public school over to a charter operator. But they overlooked the parents of Florida! Every Florida parent group turned out in Tallahassee to oppose the “Parent Empowerment” bill. In reformese, when they talk “parent empowerment,” that means parents are about to lose their voice and their local neighborhood school. Florida PTAs, Fund Florida Now, Testing Is Not Teaching, 50th No More, and every other grassroots group spoke out against the “parent trigger.” A bloc of Republican state senators turned against the bill, and the bill died in the state senate on a tie vote of 20-20. It will be back this year, but so will Florida’s parents.
The billionaire libertarian Philip Anschutz, in league with billionaire media mogul Rupert Murdoch, released a film called “Won’t Back Down,” that was intended to teach the American public that the only way to save their children was to hand their public school over to a charter operator. The film was heavily promoted at NBC’s “Education Nation,” on the Ellen show, and at a “Teachers Rock” concert sponsored by CBS. Michelle Rhee sponsored free showings at both national political conventions, so that every Democrat and Republican could have a chance to see how important it is to turn public schools over to private management, whether for-profit or non-profit. But then Parents Across America sprung into action. They put out a fact sheet about who and what was behind the movie. A few of them actually demonstrated at the Democratic National Convention. When the film was released in late September, it was pegged as anti-teacher and anti-public education and anti-union. It got terrible reviews. It didn’t sell many tickets. It flopped. Within a month after its grand premiere, it had disappeared. The free market is not kind to idlers, even when the guy who produced the movie is one of the biggest theater owners in the nation.
The movement against high-stakes testing roared into high gear:
More than 80% of the local school boards in Texas passed resolutions opposing high-stakes testing. Prominent Texans like state board member Tom Ratliff spoke out against the misuse of tests.
Superintendent Joshua Starr of Montgomery County, Maryland, called for a three-year moratorium on high-stakes testing. He said that the schools were inundated with too many changes at the same time.
Superintendent Heath Morrison of Charlotte-Mecklenburg, North Carolina, said that the national obsession with high-stakes testing had to stop. He said, “we can teach to the top, but we can’t test to the top.” Last spring, Morrison was chosen as Superintendent of the Year by the American Association of School Administrators.
Superintendent John Kuhn of the Perrin-Whitt Independent School District in Texas continues to be an eloquent spokesman for children.
The voucher program in Louisiana became an international embarrassment and its funding was declared unconstitutional:
Earlier this year, Governor Bobby Jindal pushed through sweeping voucher legislation for Louisiana that would give vouchers for more than half the children in the state to attend private and religious schools with money taken from the public school budget. Because several of the voucher schools are religious schools that teach creationism, the Louisiana plan was mocked by media around the world, who laughed at the idea that children would be taught that men and dinosaurs co-existed and that the Loch Ness monster is real, and other nonsense. Just weeks ago, a Louisiana judge struck down the funding of the vouchers, because the state constitution says the money is dedicated to elementary and secondary public schools. The language is clear. The state may not raid the public school’s minimum foundation budget to pay for vouchers.
Oh, and the anti-voucher vote in Florida continued a longstanding tradition: No state has ever voted to approve vouchers.
Local school boards continue to support their public schools with vigilance:
In addition to the many local school boards in Texas and elsewhere that have passed high-stakes testing resolutions, school boards have fought off other intrusions.
In North Carolina, the school boards won a battle to keep the for-profit virtual charter corporation K12 Inc. out of their state.
The Austin Independent School Board, after an election that brought in new members representing the community, severed its contract with the IDEA charter chain.
In Nashville, the Metro Nashville school board turned down Great Hearts Academy four times because Great Hearts wanted to locate their charter in a mainly white neighborhood and had inadequate plans for diversity. The board stood firm despite the fulminations of the governor, the legislature, and the state commissioner of education, who are so determined to open the way for Great Hearts that 1) Commissioner Kevin Huffman withheld $3.4 million of public funds from the children of Nashville to punish the school board for its refusal to follow his orders; and 2) the legislature plans to authorize a state commission to override the local school boards’ wishes. This accords with ALEC legislation.
Bad news for ALEC:
For years, ALEC has been under the radar. The shooting of Trayvon Martin in Florida made the public aware of ALEC’s “Stand Your Ground” legislation, invoked by the man who killed the teen. Then the media starting paying attention to ALEC and discovered its agenda of privatization (see ALEC Exposed) and learned about the model laws written by ALEC for charter schools, vouchers, online charter schools, union-busting, uncertified teachers, and an array of other corporate-friendly legislation.
The Chicago Teachers Union went on strike and said, “Enough is enough!”
Teachers have watched in dismay as state after state has whittled away or hacked away their right to bargain collectively, their tenure rights, their academic freedom, and their pensions. They have seen state after state pass legislation requiring merit pay (even though it has never worked anywhere) and tying their evaluations and their careers to student test scores (even though research says that value-added assessment is inaccurate and unstable and punishes teachers who teach children with high needs).
Teachers and principals alike have watched in dismay as rightwing legislatures and governors have slashed spending for public schools while paying more for testing.
Educators have been appalled by cuts in basic services to students.
And the CTU said, “No more.”
CTU was not allowed to strike about anything that mattered, but they made clear in their words and deeds that they were striking for their students. They were striking to protest the lack of teachers of the arts, of librarians and social workers, and of basic resources for students. They were protesting overcrowded classes. They were protesting school closings.
CTU had the support of parents of Chicago’s students. They had the support of police and firefighters.
The national media never understood what was at stake, but almost every educator in America did.
And to educators, CTU were heroes. Every educator wished they too had one of those cool red CTU tee-shirts.
2012 was the beginning.
Teachers, principals, superintendents, local and state school boards are speaking up.
Parents and students are speaking up.
The friends of public education dominate social media.
We dominate Twitter and Facebook because we have millions of supporters.
The corporate reformers have millions to buy TV ads and to buy media outlets.
But they don’t own us.
And they are failing. Everything they advocate is failing.
That is why we are winning.
2012 is the beginning.
We will take back public education for the public, not for profit, not for private interests.
For the public.
Pro publica.
To be exact, why does TFA need $907 million?
That is the amount that TFA raised from 2006-2010.
EduShyster has done the numbers and explains it all here.
During that time, TFA groomed some 28,000 teachers.
But more important, it groomed leaders like Kevin Huffman, state commissioner of education in Tennessee, now planning for vouchers; and John White of Louisiana, now implementing vouchers; and Michelle Rhee, now raising millions to give to candidates who support vouchers. That’s what really matters.
A stunning editorial in the Statesman, a Louisiana publication, raises an important question about Governor Jindal’s voucher program: Why do conservatives remind everyone about the importance of adhering faithfully to the literal meaning of the state constitution except when they choose not to?
The Jindal voucher plan is funded by the Minimum Foundation Funding dedicated specifically in the state constitution to “public elementary and secondary schools.” Private and religious schools do not fit that definition. There is no loophole. They are not public.
A state judge (a Republican, by the way) struck down the funding for vouchers a few weeks ago, declaring that it violated the plain language of the state constitution.
But, say Jindal’s defenders, “it’s for the children.” Who cares about the constitution when the children “need” to attend a private or religious school using money that is taken away from public schools? Why be so picky about the literal meaning of the words?
One conservative quoted here says that since the state is using the same public funding for charter schools, which are not really public schools, why not bend the constitution a bit more to fit those private and religious schools in too?
A good question, and an argument that could be used to argue (in his words) that charter schools are also private and should not take money away from the minimum budget dedicated to public schools.
Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote many years ago that “a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds,” but the very least conservatives could do is be consistent with their fundamental belief that the constitution means what it says. In the case of the Louisiana constitution, there is no wiggle room, no room for ambiguity.
Helen Ladd and her husband Edward Fiske are distinguished observers of American Education. Ladd is a Professor of Economics at Duke University. Fiske was education editor of the anew York Times.
Together they describe a fork in the road for our nation’s public school system.
Will we continue towards free-market privatization or will we revitalize public education?
This is what they see ahead as the risks in the privatization agenda:
“First, it severs the connection between public schools and the civic purposes for which they were established and that justify the use of taxpayer dollars to fund them. Implicit in this vision is the notion that the benefits of education accrue first and foremost to individuals and that public benefits are simply the sum of private ones.
“Second, it rejects the notion of an education system. Those who view education primarily as a collection of independent schools serving private interests have few incentives to assure that multiple stakeholders — students, teachers, administrators, policy makers, the business community and others — work together through democratic institutions in pursuit of common goals.
“Third, the private education vision leaves little room for principles of social justice and the commitment to equal educational opportunity for all children. By emphasizing privatization and competition rather than community and cooperation, it trivializes the whole notion of “public” education. Nor does it take responsibility for addressing the special challenges that disadvantaged children bring with them when they walk through the schoolhouse door.
“Public schools in the U.S. have always operated at the intersection of two sets of legitimate rights: those of individuals, including parents, to pursue their own best interests and those of society as a whole to perpetuate democratic values and to promote collective prosperity.
“By and large Americans have found ways to strike a balance between these two objectives. Public schools have served as engines of upward mobility for millions of individuals, including waves of immigrants, while driving economic growth by providing an educated workforce. By emphasizing private interests almost entirely at the expense of public ones, the private vision, with millions of dollars behind it, threatens to undermine this historical balance.”
Governor Rick Perry of Texas told a gathering of Tea Party faithful that he felt bad about what happened in Connecticut but warned that people should not have a “knee-jerk reaction” by trying to restrict guns. he made clear that Texas had no intention on changing its gun laws, which allow a person with a license to carry a handgun anywhere in the state.
The meeting was picketed by 30 members of the Save Texas Schools group protesting the cuts of $5.4 billion in state funding in the last legislative session.
In the new session this coming spring, the Legislature plans to restore some cuts but will increase the burden of testing and will take up vouchers.
Save Texas Schools plans a massive rally at the state Capitol in Austin on February 23.
I will be there to speak as will the great Texas superintendent John Kuhn.
If you care about public education in Texas, please join us.
Why do Republicans like Mitt Romney and Bobby Jindal fear to use the V word?
Why do they say “opportunity scholarship” when they really mean Voucher?
As with most everything else (as Gail Collins said in her latest book), the answer may be found in Texas.
Texas, as we all know, is a red red red state.
The next legislature is planning to take up the voucher issue.
It should be a slam-dunk, right, because Texas is a red state and Republicans love school choice.
But not so fast. It turns out, in a recent poll, that most Texans don’t want vouchers.
Most Texans want more money for public schools.
Even Republicans in the poll, by a 2-1 majority, want more money for public schools, not vouchers.
And that, dear readers, is why Republicans will not use the V word.
Even Republican voters don’t want vouchers.
They don’t want to blow up public education and hand it over to profiteers and religious institutions.
Democrats and Republicans alike want better public schools.
Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal gained a valuable national platform at the Brookings Institution in Washington, where he explained that vouchers were the path to excellent education for all.
Of course, he didn’t use the V word. Like all Republicans pushing a stealth agenda, he calls them “opportunity scholarships.”
Here is a video of his presentation, and Valerie Strauss’s discussion of the “alternate universe” in which Governor Jindal lives.
Under his program, children in Louisiana may attend religious schools where they are taught creationism and learn that dinosaurs and people lived at the same time and that God created the world in only six days. They can attend little fundamentalist schools that will use DVDs to instruct them and will use religious textbooks to learn about math, history and science form a religious perspective.
This will prepare Louisiana for the nineteenth century. And create an excellent education for all, or so says Governor Jindal.
Will the Brookings Institution also provide a national platform for a governor with a 21st century perspective?
In this video, a father tells a scary story to his little girl as he tucks her in at night.
It is about the greedy Fatcats who are trying to close Chicago’s public schools and take them private.
This is a creative use of social media to educate the public.
