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National Education Policy Center: Are ESAs as Bad as Vouchers—Or Worse?

By dianeravitch
November 30, 2023 //
3

The National Education Policy Center published this valuable analysis of the difference between “education savings accounts” and vouchers.

Termed “education savings accounts” (ESAs) these vouchers on steroids were the subject of 79 percent of the 111 voucher-related bills introduced in state legislatures in 2023. Five states enacted new ESAs (AR, IA, MT, SC, and UT). In addition, four states expanded existing ESA programs (FL,IN, NH,TN).

In most ways, ESAs are similar to traditional vouchers that parents have used for decades to pay for private schools at public expense. It’s just that they go a step farther, permitting parents to use the funds not just for private school tuition but for other education-related expenses such as school uniforms, homeschool curricula, and gym memberships.

In a recent article in the Brown Center Chalkboard, a publication of The Brookings Institution, a Washington, DC-based think tank, NEPC fellow Joshua Cowen of Michigan State University writes that he already sees signs that ESAs are following in the footsteps of traditional vouchers, which studies suggest lead to a flood of new providers, many of which quickly close, as well as tuition hikes at existing voucher schools.

“Unfortunately, the voucher research literature suggests that even with new schools opening, there simply are not enough effective private schools to go around,” he writes. “This might explain the dismal academic results over the last decade—and suggests a very real risk in today’s ESA initiatives if they produce large increases in private school enrollment.”

Drawing upon past research on traditional vouchers, Cowen predicts that ESAs will lead to lower student achievement. Evidence on traditional vouchers’ impact on rates of high school graduation and college enrollment is more mixed—but when positive effects were found, they were associated with students spending all four years of high school in a private school. However, private high schools that accept vouchers often experience high rates of churn. In Milwaukee, which Cowen has studied, 20 percent of voucher students left private schools annually. Academic improvements occurred once students returned to public schools.

Voucher advocates disappointed with academic results have blamed over-regulation for the poor outcomes.

Yet Cowen writes that “the only empirical evidence of the effects of accountability on a voucher program found that once voucher schools were required to use the same testing and reporting requirements as their public counterparts, voucher performance improved substantially.”

He added: “The lack of accountability is already raising problems in newer programs. In Arizona, for example, families had a number of questionable expenses approved, and in North Carolina, some private schools are claiming more vouchers than students actually enrolled.”

Unlike earlier traditional voucher programs, today’s vouchers are more likely to be universally available rather than to be offered to certain populations-such as students from low-income families.

“How these new, expanded programs will function is perhaps the key open question for research moving forward,” Cowen writes.

Data from traditional voucher programs has indicated that the larger the program, the worse the results tend to be. In the best case, that’s because there are too few effective private schools to serve expanded voucher programs; in the worst case, there are inherent limits to the choices parents can make when vouchers allow private schools to choose their students as well.

For example, private schools that accept vouchers may implement admissions criteria that screen out students with disabilities, students with low test scores, or emerging bilinguals.

Voucher-accepting schools are also permitted to refuse to accept LGBTQ+ students or families, and to fire or refuse to hire LGBTQ+ staff.

“[I]t remains to be seen how the new expansion of private school choice programs will ultimately affect educational opportunity,” Cowen writes. “But research on traditional vouchers suggests extreme caution when expecting new, favorable results simply because parents of children outside of public school can now spend public dollars on costs beyond tuition.”

Categories Bigotry, Disruption, Education Industry, Research, Separation of church and state, Vouchers

The Network for Public Education Needs YOU!

By dianeravitch
November 28, 2023 //
7

The Network for Public Education is the largest organization of volunteers and a tiny staff working every day to stop privatization of our public schools. The following is a message from our executive director, Carol Burris. Unlike the billionaire-funded advocacy groups for charters and vouchers, we need you! Contributions of any size are welcome!

What keeps NPE going are donors like you–friends of public education who are willing to make a one-time or monthly donation to invest in the continuance of our public schools.

We operate on a shoestring. But our reports, action alerts, advocacy, conferences, and webinars with Diane put us at the forefront of saving public education. Behind the scenes in fighting vouchers in Texas or making the case for Charter School Programs reform, NPE is the organization with a tiny budget but a mighty voice.

So please give to NPE this holiday season. You can make an online donation here, or, if you prefer to send a check, our address is:

The Network for Public Education, PO BOX 227, New York City, NY 10156.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Network for Public Education, Privatization, Supporting public schools, Vouchers

Arkansas Recruits Students to Enroll in Fundamentalist Christian School

By dianeravitch
November 22, 2023 //
9

Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders has wasted no time in pushing her evangelical, fundamentalist Christian views and diverting public money to religious schools that teach her views. Sanders, who was Trump’s press secretary, is the daughter of fundamentalist pastor Mike Huckabee, who also was governor of Arkansas.

Sanders pushed through a voucher law, and now the state will pay tuition for students at private and religious schools. As in other states, the overwhelming majority of vouchers were claimed by students already enrolled in nonpublic schools.

The state education department went a step beyond making vouchers available. It’s now using taxpayer money to advertise on behalf of a fundamentalist school that does not admit LGBT students, and is certainly not likely to enroll students who are Jewish, Muslim, Catholic, or modern Protestants.

David Ramsay of the Arkansas Times wrote:

Last week, we noted that the Arkansas Department of Education had released a video promoting Cornerstone Christian Academy, a K-12 private school in the southeast Arkansas town of Tillar.

It’s not unusual for a state agency to promote a new law or policy initiative, which this video does by highlighting the voucher program available under Arkansas LEARNS, the state’s new education overhaul. But what is unusual is for the state’s education department to use public resources to create such an explicit advertisement for a private school. As Josh Cowen, a professor at Michigan State University and a nationally prominent expert on education policy, told us: “[U]sually they pretend it’s about parental choice more broadly. What’s less common — what I’ve yet to see, in fact — is a state agency leaning this heavily into promotion of private education. And Christian education at that.”

The publicly funded promo for a private school is made even more awkward given the religious affiliation: Cornerstone uses a Bob Jones University curriculum known for teaching “young-Earth creationism,” the belief that the planet and universe are only a few thousand years old. It requires students to take a Christian studies class and attend chapel. The application asks parents about church affiliation and about their child’s “personal experience and faith in Jesus Christ.”

The application also asks about whether a student has ever been involved with “sexual immorality” and requires that parents agree to “maintain the basic principles of biblical morality in my home.”

I left a message with the school’s administrator to find out whether its admissions policies explicitly discriminated against LGBT students. I never heard back, but after a little further digging on their website, I found a student handbook that directly states LGBT students are not allowed to attend the school:

The significance the Bible places on the severity of sexual immorality, and our commitment to a “Christ-centered” environment demands certain standards for admittance to CCA. Therefore, students will NOT be permitted to attend CCA who professes any sort of sexually immoral lifestyle or an openly sinful lifestyle including but not limited to: promiscuity, homosexuality, transgenderism, etc.

This sort of policy is not uncommon at some Christian private schools, but it raises some thorny questions about the state’s voucher program. LEARNS vouchers are  funneling somewhere in the neighborhood of $419,000 in public funds to Cornerstone this school year, part of $32.5 million projected to be spent on private school vouchers across the state. It remains unclear whether the Cornerstone promo video was made directly or funded by the education department, which has not responded to questions.

The video sells vouchers as a vehicle of parental choice, but ultimately it’s the schools themselves that decide who can — or cannot — attend. The only obligation these schools face in terms of admission is that they cannot discriminate based on race, color or national origin, which would violate federal law. But unlike traditional public schools, they are under no obligation to take all comers. 

They are free to discriminate against LGBT students. They are free to impose religious requirements. They do not have to admit students who struggle academically or have behavior problems. They do not have to offer necessary services for disabled students. We have no way of knowing how many students might be rejected from applying to a school, or what the reasons were. There is no transparency and there are almost no rules. To receive a publicly funded voucher under Arkansas LEARNS, a student must gain admission to a private school — but the entire admission process is an unregulated Wild West. 

Kicking a student out of a private school likewise leaves wide latitude to the schools. To expel a voucher student, a private school must follow clear, pre-established disciplinary procedures. But so long as they don’t discriminate based on race, color or national origin, schools are free to follow their own policies.

Among the 94 private schools participating in the voucher program, many are Christian. It’s likely that a significant number, like Cornerstone, close their doors to LGBT students. That has been found to be the the case in voucher programs in Wisconsin and Indiana. The vouchers are publicly funded, but not all schools are open to the public: The vaunted principle of school choice is, in fact, the school’schoice, and some families may find themselves shut out.

Categories Arkansas, Bigotry, Curriculum, Education Industry, Extremism, Freedom to Read, Funding, Gender, Ignorance, Religion, Separation of church and state, Vouchers

Brilliant! Houston Chronicle: Gov. Abbott, Give Up on Vouchers!

By dianeravitch
November 21, 2023 //
3

The Houston Chronicle editorial board advised Governor Abbott to abandon his determined fight for vouchers. Fund the public schools instead. Abbott tried and failed to pass vouchers in the regular session. He then called four special sessions and failed every time to pass vouchers, despite threats and bribes. Abbott refused any increase for public school funding or teachers’ salaries. The Educatuon of the more than 5 million children in public schools meant far less to him than the chance to subsidize the tuition of the tens of thousands of children already enrolled in private and religious schools.

The Chronicle wrote:

If at first (and second, and third, and so on) you don’t succeed, try strong-arming and threats.

That was Gov. Greg Abbott’s strategy to try to pass school vouchers in the fourth special session so far. He’ll need to find another trick.

Tucked inside an omnibus school spending bill in the House, vouchers made it the farthest yet this year: all the way to a floor debate Friday. Once again, however, a bipartisan alliance stood in Abbott’s way, passing an amendment 84-63 that removed vouchers from the bill.

In the first full House discussion on the issue in decades, voucher advocates repeatedly appealed to the needs of the most disadvantaged students who they claimed would be most impacted by such a program: low-income students, bullied kids, sexual assault victims and students with special education needs. House Bill 1 author Rep. Brad Buckley, R-Killeen, promised the bill would prioritize “the most vulnerable,” including those with learning challenges.

We’ve seen the failures of such promiseselsewhere. But consider the numbers here in Texas.

While most private schools say they serve students with some sort of special education need, only 63 across the entire state actually cater to those students, according to testimony from Andrea Chevalier, director of government relations with the Texas Council of Administrators of Special Education.

Those 63 schools, identified by the online database Private School Review, serve approximately 4,510 students in Texas. That’s compared to 700,000 students in the public school system currently enrolled in special education services.

Those private schools are mostly in urban centers, have an average tuition of more than $19,000 and can, of course, reject anyone they want based on their own screening criteria.

“Do you think even 5% of special ed kids that we’re proposing to do the most for would qualify or that there would be a place in a private setting for them?” asked state Rep. Ken King, R-Canadian, during a committee hearing on the bill.

Special education experts know vouchers won’t help the neediest. By now, lawmakers should know better too.

Still, it gets worse. The governor has also held hostage desperately needed increases to public special education budgets until he gets what he wants. As part of an omnibus bill, vouchers were mixed with badly needed boosts to public education funding — fine arts dollars, more per-student funding, new teacher stipends and raises and more.

King asked several witnesses how much sugar might be enough for them to swallow his poison pill?

“There is no dollar amount for us that would justify the long-term damage,” said Chevalier.

In the proposed program’s first wave, some 40,000 students would get $10,500 each at an estimated cost of $461.8 million in fiscal year 2025. But the costs balloon, especially, as many fear will happen, if the Legislature looks to expand the program after getting a foot in the door. Importantly, students currently attending private schools would be eligible for those dollars, betraying the promise made repeatedly Friday that vouchers offered a lifeline to low-income families stuck in their failing zoned school.

We’ve complained — as Abbott has given us ample opportunity to do — about the financial ramifications of vouchers, the lack of accountability and clear, persuasive data showing achievement boosts. But we also oppose vouchers because of the absolute disservice they would do to many students with special needs, students who, even if accepted to a pricey private school, surrender their federal protections against discrimination when they leave public schools.

Friday, Buckley told heart-rending stories of hard-working families struggling on behalf of their special needs students. The government does offer those families not well served by public schools an option: they can challenge their school district in a due process hearing before a state education official, seeking to either force the district to provide appropriate accommodations or to pay for the cost of private schooling. For too many parents, that rare option is still out of reach and requires time and legal savvy to be successful. We’d rather see access to that process strengthened than a sham of a private-school handout.

If Buckley and others really want to help our special education students, they should fully fund our public school system. No poison pill required.

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Extremism, Failure, Funding, Privatization, Texas, Vouchers

Jeff Bryant: Vouchers Are Busting State Budgets

By dianeravitch
November 20, 2023 //
6

Jeff Bryant writes frequently about education issues. He is based in North Carolina but writes about controversies across the nation. Jeff Bryant is the chief correspondent for Our Schools, a project of the Independent Media Institute. In this post, he explains how universal school vouchers—vouchers for all students, regardless of family income—is wrecking state budgets. The marquee example of vouchers’ fiscal impact is Arizona, where the voucher program is now nearly $2 billion a year.

He wrote:

In 2023, Republican state governors went to unprecedented lengths to enact universal school voucher programs in legislative sessions across the country and made support for these programs into rigid party ideology. Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott, for instance, went so far as to recall the state’s legislature for a fourth special session, a historically unprecedented action in the Texas Legislature’s 176-year history, according to a November 7 article in the Texas Tribune. According to the report, “[t]he biggest point of contention” is a universal school voucher bill that House Republicans have repeatedly rejected. Previously, Abbott warned any Republican holdouts that they would be challengedfrom within the party in the 2024 primary elections if they didn’t get in line and extend their support for vouchers.

Abbott calls his voucher plan “education freedom,” echoing a term favored by former President Donald Trump’s Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, who used her office to push for a federally funded nationwide school voucher program.

School vouchers can take on many forms, including tax credit programs—which give tax credits to anyone who donates to nonprofits that provide school vouchers—and so-called education savings accounts (ESAs), which allow parents to withdraw their children from public schools and receive a deposit of public funds into an account that they can tap for education expenses. Abbott is attempting to push through an ESA in Texas.

When voucher programs were initially enacted in early adopting states, such as Florida and Arizona, eligibility was limited to low-income families or to children with special needs or circumstances.

When voucher programs were initially enacted in early adopting states, such as Florida and Arizona, eligibility was limited to low-income families or to children with special needs or circumstances. But the trend over the last few years has been to make these programs open to all or nearly all families. What Abbott is proposing, in fact, would allow all families to apply for vouchers.

Nine states have enacted universal school vouchers as of November 2023, including Arizona, Arkansas, Iowa, Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Utah, and West Virginia, according to State Policy Network, a school choice advocacy group. Indiana’s voucher program is “near universal,” as 97 percent of families are eligible under the scheme.

Republicans who oppose universal school vouchers, in Texas and elsewhere, have expressed concerns about diverting tax dollars from public schools, especially in rural communities, to private education providers that have little or no accountability for how they spend the money. They’ve also questioned the constitutionality of giving parents public funds to spend on private religious schools.

But Republican state lawmakers who claim to be strict watchdogs on government purse strings should also be concerned about another consequence of enacting these programs—their potential to quickly run through estimated costs and produce sizable deficits.

According to multiple reports detailed below, states that have been among the earliest to adopt universal voucher programs are finding that their costs are far exceeding estimates primarily due to the high numbers of families taking advantage of the programs. These families mostly never had their children enrolled in public schools.

In state after state, the number of families using vouchers to “escape” so-called failed public schools—an original argument for vouchers—is dwarfed by a larger population of families who already had their children enrolled in private schools and are using voucher money to subsidize their private school tuition costs.

Another large percentage of voucher users are parents who homeschool their children and use voucher funds to cover expenses they would previously have been shouldering themselves. Vouchers also appear to be incentivizing parents with rising kindergartners to choose private schools instead of their local public schools.

Other reports have raised concerns about the financial wisdom of giving parents free sway over how they use voucher money, citing evidence that parents have used the funding to make extravagant purchases or buy products and services that have dubious educational value.

In the meantime, policy leaders and experts alike warn that universal voucher programs are sending states, which are constitutionally obligated to balance their budgets, into uncharted financial waters.

‘It Depends on the State and Is Hard to Know’

Where will funding to cover cost overruns of voucher programs come from?

“It depends on the funding mechanism in the voucher law,” according to Jessica Levin, an attorney and director of Public Funds Public Schools, an organization that opposes efforts to redirect public funds for education to private entities.

“For programs that divert funds earmarked for public schools… the voucher funding would dip further into public school funds and/or appropriations,” Levin explained in an email to Our Schools. “For vouchers that are funded with general revenue funds, more money would come out of the state general fund.”

Funding for Abbott’s proposed voucher plan, for example, draws from the state’s general revenue rather than the main source of funding for K-12 education.

Levin added that there could be other mechanisms to prevent cost overruns, including spending caps written into the voucher law and separate appropriations laws that could limit the total funding.

But in terms of what a state might cut to balance out the impact of voucher costs, Levin said, “It depends on the state and is hard to know.”

So far, Republican lawmakers have either denied the existence of these cost overruns, or they’ve been unclear about where money to cover the deficits will come from.

“I haven’t seen coverage of that question,” said Joshua Cowen, a professor of education policy at Michigan State University, who replied to a query from Our Schools.

Cowen has been an outspoken critic of voucher programs primarily because of their tendency to have a negative impact on student achievement.

Cowen has also expressed concerns about the potential financial impacts of these programs, noting in an April 2023 interview, that “[T]he real issue is that you’re getting the state standing up new budgetary obligations to prop up private school tuition where otherwise [those costs] have been borne by the private sector.”

And he has warned of the dangers of vouchers to incentivize a market for “sub-prime” private schools that would quickly open to get the money but then prove to be unsustainable and just as quickly close.

On the issue of voucher program cost overruns, Cowen told Our Schools, “I assume states have different rules about what amounts to deficit spending. But I’m not sure. Arizona is obviously the massive one.”

‘Arizona… the Massive One’

In Arizona, the first state to pass a universal school voucher program, according to the New York Times, Democratic Governor Katie Hobbs has raised an alarm about the enormous cost overruns coming from ESAs, according to KTAR News.

In a memo issued from her office, Hobbs declared that the voucher program “may cost taxpayers up to $943,795,600 annually, resulting in a potential $319,795,600 general fund shortfall in FY 2024.”

It would appear that these cost overruns would have to eventually be covered by the state’s general fund. According to Common Sense Institute Arizona, an organization that advocates for school vouchers, “The ESA program is fully funded by the state’s general fund.”

For that reason, Hobbs maintained that the impact of these costs will go beyond funding for public schools, KTAR reported. “Public safety, all the big budget priorities are going to be impacted if [the cost overrun] continues to grow at this pace,” she said.

In May 2023, Andrés Cano, who was then the Democratic state representative and House Minority Leader, seemed to agree with Hobbs and told ABC15 Arizona, “We’ll either have to tap into the rainy day fund, or we’ll have to cut core state priorities.”

Despite these unplanned costs, “Republicans who have the majority in the state legislature refused any attempt to cap or cut ESAs,” ABC15 Arizona reported. Arizona’s universal voucher program was created by the state’s former Governor Doug Ducey who called it the “gold standard of educational freedom,” according to the Washington Examiner.

Please open the link to finish this important article.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Education Industry, Extremism, Funding, Vouchers

Mothers Against Greg Abbott Celebrates Defeat of Voucher Bill!

By dianeravitch
November 18, 2023 //
2

Mothers Against Greg Abbott is celebrating because Governor Gregg Abbott’s voucher proposal—his highest priority—was defeated for the fifth time this year. Once, in the regular legislative session, then again and again and again and again in four special sessions.

Abbott offered bribes: more funding for public schools, a pay raise for teachers—but the bribes didn’t persuade the rural Republicans who saw vouchers as a threat to their small community public schools.

Abbott threatened to primary Republicans who didn’t vote for vouchers. That didn’t work either. Now the Moms (MAGA!) have to go back to work to get their public schools funded.

This is their message, issued within hours after vouchers went down for the fifth time:

From Mothers Against Greg Abbott:

The Texas House has just voted down school vouchers.

This is a huge victory for Texas public schools… and for mothers, and others, like us. Today’s victory  wouldn’t have been possible without the help you provided over the last several months. We asked you to help us support public schools, and you stepped up time and again.

Our hard work paid off. 

I don’t want to spike the football to celebrate our success. Not least because our public schools might not have a football to spike if the voucher plan had succeeded. (Yes, I know that spiking the football in a high school game is a 15-yard penalty, but let’s go with the metaphor...)

The same people who tried to strip our public schools of funding, and to give that money to rich private schools instead, aren’t going away. They will be back. 

And so will we: We defended our public schools today, and we will defend them again.

At Mothers Against Greg Abbott, we believe in high quality, free public education for our children. We support our public school teachers and our public school children. And we won’t let a handful of anti-school activists steal our children’s futures from us.

We’re here in support of public education, and we aren’t going anywhere. The next time public education is on the legislative table, we’ll be there to defend it. 

We won’t spike the football then either. We’ll celebrate because our public schools will still be there — to educate our children, to help them become our future leaders, to create the civic engagement that we all need.

And, yes, to give our kids a football, a softball, a volleyball, a tennis ball, a baseball, a basketball, arts programs, orchestra, school plays, reading specialists, school counselors, beloved school librarians, and so much more. 

With love for our public schools and our public school educators,

Nancy Thompson, Founder
Mothers Against Greg Abbott

This week, our Mothers For Democracy Institute shares the mic with YOU this week on the newest episode of The Voucher Scam! 

Hosts Claire O’Neal and Nichole Abshire ask listeners this week to share their love of public schools and their worries about vouchers. With today’s VICTORY on school vouchers in the Texas House, there is no better time to start streaming. Tune in to the conversation, here ›››

And, if you like what you hear, shoot over a donation and help support our podcast series.

Mothers for Democracy Institute is a 501(c)(3) and
donations are Tax Deductible. We just launched our podcast series The Voucher Scam, but we more planned for 2024 to further support democracy and civics education. And we
would love your support.
https://bit.ly/voucherscam

Mothers For Democracy / Mothers Against Greg Abbott is the largest coalition dedicated to defeating the extremist MAGA movement in Texas. While we don’t agree on every topic, we all agree the Texas GOP isn’t Texas values.

Since 2021, we’ve been helping lead the Democratic resistance in Texas, we’ve organized thousands of local voters and our public issue campaigns have reached millions of Texans in key battleground areas. Now, we’re backed by thousands of Texas parents who are mobilizing in their own neighborhoods to ensure the Texas we hand over to the next generation is better than the one we’ve inherited. 

We’re sick and tired of being linked to a handful of extremist MAGA spokesmen—divisive politicians like Ken Paxton and Ted Cruz. We know it’s going to take all of us to defeat them this election cycle. The power of mothers and others like us means we know we can do it: It’s time for democracy to prevail. 

100% of our work is powered by individual donations and our average donation is just $23. We can’t stop until our children have the future they deserve. So this election cycle, we’re taking down Ted Cruz and dozens more of his Texas MAGA cronies. With you by our side, we’ll deliver the kind of leadership everyone living in Texas can be proud of. 

Support Our Work

Categories Accountability, Disruption, Education Industry, Funding, Lies, Parents, Privatization, Republicans, Resistance, Rural Schools, School Choice, Supporting public schools, Texas, Vouchers

BREAKING NEWS: Vouchers Defeated in Texas Again!

By dianeravitch
November 17, 2023 //
5

The Texas House of Representatives met in special session for the fourth time, called together by Governor Greg Abbott specifically to pass voucher legislation. The House voted to strip vouchers out of HB1.

Rural Republicans sunk the voucher program, joined by every Democrat.

The vote to kill vouchers passed by 84-63.

Those opposed to vouchers included 21 Republicans, which was 25% of all Republicans in the House.

The vote for vouchers was 63 Republicans and 0 Democrats.

Will Governor Abbott understand? Vouchers will not pass. Rural Republicans support their public schools.

Categories Republicans, Resistance, Rural Schools, Supporting public schools, Texas, Vouchers

Sweden: Education Minister Declares For-Profit Schools a Failure

By dianeravitch
November 16, 2023 //
14

Is it possible that we might learn from other countries’ experience of “school reform”? Why not start with Sweden?

The Swedish education minister just called for a major overhaul of Sweden’s all-choice system. Critics of the Education Minister believe that her reforms will have no effect “because it proposes that only when new, privatized schools have proved good effects/results for some years they would be able to take out a profit for owners/shareholders. But no one gets the money back the first years. So what?” (Sara Hjelm)

The consequences of widespread “marketization”have been bad for education and bad for Swedish society.

The Guardian reports:

Sweden has declared a “system failure” in the country’s free schools, pledging the biggest shake-up in 30 years and calling into question a model in which profit-making companies run state education.

Sweden’s friskolor – privately run schools funded by public money – have attracted international acclaim, including from Britain, with the former education secretary Michael Gove using them as a model for hundreds of new British free schools opened under David Cameron’s government.

But in recent years, a drop in Swedish educational standards, rising inequality and growing discontent among teachers and parents has helped fuel political momentum for change.

A report by Sweden’s biggest teachers’ union, Sveriges Lärare, warned in June of the negative consequences of having become one of the world’s most marketised school systems, including the viewing of pupils and students as customers and a lack of resources resulting in increased dissatisfaction.

Now Lotta Edholm, a Liberal who was appointed schools minister last year during the formation of Sweden’s Moderate party-run minority coalition, has launched an investigation into the issue which, she said, would oversee her plans for reform.

“It will not be possible [in the reformed system] to take out profits at the expense of a good education,” she told the Guardian at the ministry of education and research in Stockholm.

Edholm said she planned to “severely limit” schools’ ability to withdraw profits and to introduce fines for free schools that did not comply.

“It can’t be that the state pumps in lots of money so that you can improve your business and at the same time a portion of that money goes out to you as profits. That we will put a stop to,” she said.

The largest profits were made by upper secondary schools, known in Sweden as gymnasieskola, she said. “There it has been easier to make profits through having bad quality.”

There are thousands of friskolor – directly translated as “independent schools” but known as “free schools” – across Sweden, with a higher proportion in cities. About 15% of all primary schoolchildren (six- to 16-year-olds) and 30% of all upper secondary school pupils (16- 19-year-olds) go to a free school.

Edholm said she could not put a number on how many schools were experiencing these issues but said the problem lay in the system itself. “It’s not just a problem that it is a number of schools, but it becomes a system failure of everything.”

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Failure, For-Profit, International, Vouchers

A Useful Guide to the Privatization Movement: Please Add Your Nominees!

By dianeravitch
November 15, 2023 //
5

Maurice Cunningham, a retired professor of political science and an expert on dark money in education elections, prepared A CITIZEN’S GUIDE TO SCHOOL PRIVATIZATION.

It is posted on the website of the Network for Public Education.

It is a glossary of the organizations and individuals who lead the effort to privatize education.

Please open the guide and see if you have names and groups to add. The GUIDE is meant to be built on the foundation created by Cunningham. Please send your suggestions. Are there groups active in your community that were not included? Send them to the Carol Burris at the Network for Public Education.

cburris@networkforpubliceducation.org.

Carol will forward your tips to Maurice Cunningham for review and possible inclusion.

Categories Corporate Reformers, Dark Money, Disruption, Education Industry, Extremism, Fake, Privatization, Propaganda, School Choice, Vouchers

Texas: Gov. Abbott Calls 4th Special Session to Offer Bribes for Vouchers

By dianeravitch
November 13, 2023 //
2

The Texas legislature is reconvening for a fourth special session, where Governor Gregg Abbott will twist arms and offer bribes, all in hopes of getting Republican votes for vouchers in the House. Rural Republicans have steadfastly opposed vouchers because their districts don’t want them or need them. Will they resist his bait again? In the election just concluded, Governor Abbott awarded a $13 billion property-tax cut to homeowners, but not a penny to raise teachers’s salaries. Texas has a $33 billion surplus due to the rising price of oil and gas, but nothing for public schools unless they agree to fund religious schools with public money.

Edward McKinley of The Houston Chronicle reports:

As the fight over school vouchers drags on to another special session, the Texas House’s top education policymaker has been thrust into a Frankensteinian role: trying to breathe life into the once-dead bill by melding it with stacks of loosely related education policies and members’ pet priorities.

Thursday was set to give the first glimpse of whether Rep. Brad Buckley’s creation will live when his committee began a public hearing for the controversial package. Gov. Greg Abbott called lawmakers back to Austin this week for renewed negotiations after the Texas House never took up his priority plan to subsidize private education with public dollars.

“I’ve been striving to strike the right balance between the viewpoints of those that support parental choice, and those that are just as passionate about our public schools,” Buckley, R-Salado, said at the start of Thursday’s hearing.

Besides giving families approximately $10,500 to spend on private school tuition or expenses, Buckley’s House Bill 1 would give public school teachers, nurses, counselors and librarians a $4,000 raise and lift the base level of per-student funding by more than $500, a significant jump but one that falls short of amounts requested by education groups. It would also create automatic future public school funding increases tied to inflation.

Capitol insiders see the grab-bag approach as a way to entice hesitant members who may be willing to get on board with vouchers in exchange for the right mix of concessions. 

For instance, the bill boosts per-student funding for smaller school districts, which could appeal to rural members or Democrats who support charter schools. The bill also creates funding for fine arts programming favored by Rep. Ken King, R-Canadian, a longtime voucher opponent who’s recently been working behind the scenes to broker a deal on vouchers.

READ MORE: What ‘Friday Night Lights’ shows about one rural Republican’s resistance to private school vouchers

Rep. Harold Dutton – a Houston Democrat who opposes school vouchers but has said he would be open to negotiations – said two measures he pushed for previously are included in the catch-all voucher bill: funding for an early literacy program and one for teacher residency.

Still, he said on Tuesday those tweaks won’t be enough.

“The Legislature has spoken on this issue,” Dutton said. “From my standpoint, this has gotten to be less about students and less about bills and more about Abbott. And that’s a losing proposition for me.”

The governor’s office did not respond to a request for comment. 

Other components in Buckley’s latest bill are aimed at making changes favored by public school teachers, including making it easier for schools to rehire retirees and increasing a statewide merit-based pay program. Public schools would see a dramatic increase in special education funding and several tweaks to Texas’ labyrinthian system of school finance formulas. Under the proposal, the controversial A-F accountability system used by the state to grade public school districts would also be put on hold amid complaints that it doesn’t accurately capture a school’s performance.

Even charter schools would see benefits, including a boost to their per-student funding through changes to state formulas and quintupling the dollars for new buildings from $50 million to $300 million. The Texas Charter School Association is neutral on the bill despite those boons, spokesman Brian Whitley said on Tuesday. Although the group has long pushed for increased facility funding, Whitley said it doesn’t have a public position on vouchers.

Bob Popinski, senior director of policy for Raise Your Hand Texas, a research and advocacy group that supports public education, said it’s not unusual for school finance bills in Texas to become grabbags of related policies.

“Everyone is trying to get their provisions in there to fix a perceived or real problem,” he said, which is typical when the Legislature opens up the state’s school finance system to changes. 

The House committee, comprised of members picked by Speaker Dade Phelan over the summer to “develop a workable roadmap for legislation in the House,” is expected to ultimately vote on the bill by the end of the week. If it wins support, the proposal would then be considered by the full House – where it may be met with some pitchforks.

An alliance of Democrats and rural Republicans in the House have long blocked any bill containing a voucher plan, and those members show no public sign of budging en masse. They contend vouchers would divert money from public schools and say the money would amount to a taxpayer-funded discount for families already attending private schools. 

If the bill falls short in a climactic House vote, it would be a major thumb in the eye of the governor and could spell the end of his efforts to pass a voucher program with this Legislature. 

Phelan has said he’s “hopeful” a bill could pass, describing it as “maybe the most difficult piece of legislation in the history of the state of Texas.”

“My members need to vote their districts. They need to represent their districts, as they’re elected,” he told Hearst Newspapers in an interview earlier this week.

Although the Senate has already passed a handful of voucher bills this year, the cost of the latest proposal could become a problem if it continues to grow, said Sen. Paul Bettencourt, R-Houston.

The Legislature is $6 billion away from reaching a spending limit set in the state Constitution. Lawmakers could vote to exceed the threshold, but that would set a new, higher floor for future spending and would be a difficult vote for fiscally conscious members.

Categories Accountability, Disruption, Education Industry, Extremism, Funding, Texas, Vouchers
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