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Virginia: State Democratic Party Denounces Attacks on Public Schools

By dianeravitch
July 8, 2023 //
54

The Virginia Democratic Party took a strong and well-informed stand in opposition to attacks on public schools.

It issued the following statement:

The Democratic Party of Virginia

Condemns the Right-Wing, Dark Money-Funded, Republican Agenda to Dismantle Public Education, Divert Public Education Funding to Private Education Management, and

Eliminate Critical Thinking and Evidence-based Curricula from America’s Public Schools

Whereas, 

GOP leaders have for decades sought to dismantle public education by reducing public support to facilitate moving  public funds from public to for-profit schools. 

Rather than focusing explicitly on promoting privatization, the coordinated, right-wing, special-interest-bankrolled,  decades-long effort has established such schemes as the annual “National School Choice Week” event and deployed  “parent” groups such as “Moms for Liberty,” “Parents Defending Education” and the “Independent Women’s Forum”  to make it appear that there is wide opposition to public school policies. Their current tactics are to attack public  schools by opposing masking policies, remote learning, and evidence-based curricula; harassing school board  members, administrators, and staff; and threatening to burn books. “School choice” is rooted in efforts to keep  schools segregated by race, class, and disability. 

Truthout wrote, “’Shock Doctrine author Naomi Klein predicted in March 2020 that COVID-19 presented an ideal  opportunity for ‘disaster capitalism,’ a tactic pushed by school privatizers in the wake of the last financial crisis. She  identified the global pandemic as a ‘shock,’ or disruptive event that global elites often use to introduce free-market  ‘solutions’ that redistribute wealth upwards.” Vindicating Klein’s prediction, since the pandemic, a Koch-funded  group produced an “Opportunity on Crisis” report listing numerous school privatization schemes. 

Education is a multibillion-dollar market, and the private sector is eager to get its hands on those dollars. Shrinking  public education also furthers the overarching Republican Party goal of drastically reducing the public sector overall.  Privatization also significantly undermines teacher unions, thereby reducing the voice and power of teachers to  affect the terms and conditions of their workplace. Unions are also a strong and active part of the Democratic base  and hobbling them hobbles their capacity to support Democrats. 

Corporate-focused extreme-right Republican leaders want to censor, control, and narrow the exposure of most  students to the broad knowledge base that would enable them to analyze, understand and accurately evaluate, and  manage the forces that affect their lives. They want to consign the masses of America’s children to for-profit,  unregulated, unaccredited, tax-funded “schools,” with large classes of inexperienced staff or digital platforms with  no teachers at all, designed to supply a less-educated, malleable citizenry and subservient labor pool. Meanwhile,  the children of the financial and corporate elite are to be taught a broad, rich curriculum in small classes led by  experienced teachers in exclusive private schools. 

Preparing people for democratic citizenship was a major reason for the creation of public schools. The Founding  Fathers maintained that the success of American democracy would depend on the competency of its citizens and  that preserving democracy would require an educated population that could understand political and social issues,  participate wisely in civic life, and resist tyrants. Early leaders proposed the creation of a more formal and unified  system of publicly funded schools. 

Thomas Jefferson wrote: “Above all things I hope the education of the common people will be attended to; convinced  that on their good sense we may rely with the most security for the preservation of a due degree of liberty.” Jefferson  further explained: “The object is to bring into action that mass of talents which lies buried in poverty in every country,  for want of the means of development, and thus give activity to a mass of mind, which, in proportion to our  population, shall be double or treble of what it is in most countries.” 

In the 1830s, Massachusetts legislator Horace Mann advocated for the creation of public schools that would be  universally available to all children, free of charge, and funded by the state. He emphasized that a public investment  in education would benefit the whole nation by preparing students to obtain jobs that will strengthen the nation’s  economic position and promote cohesion across social classes. Proponents later reasoned that public schools would  not serve as a unifying force if private schools drew off substantial numbers of students, resources, and parental  support from the most advantaged groups. To succeed, a system of common schooling would require children from  all social classes, and educating children from different religious, and European ethnic backgrounds in the same 

schools would also help them learn to get along. Despite its founding ideals, throughout the historical development  of early public education, there was discrimination against access for girls, children of color, new immigrants, minority religious groups, children with disabilities and others. However, the founding rationale has guided the  evolution of the public-school mission to promoting equity of access to all in the mid-20th century, addressing social  needs after WW II and ensuring that all students receive a high-quality education in the 21st century. 

The original reasons for public schools — preparing people for jobs and citizenship, unifying a diverse population,  and promoting equity–remain relevant and urgent today. The Republican agenda to dismantle public education will  reverse all of these. 

Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin is facilitating this ongoing right-wing scheme of school privatization and blocking  of evidenced-based curricula with his executive orders allowing parents to opt out of mask mandates in Virginia  schools, and ending “the use of divisive concepts, including critical race theory, in public education.” Meanwhile,  Virginia’s Democratic legislators are introducing and protecting legislation that supports and promotes public  schools with enriched and broad curricula to prepare students for citizenship and work in the 21st century. 

Most American parents, students, and teachers do not agree with this privatization and curricula-limiting scheme,  and many are standing up for schools that protect kids’ health, teach the truth, and promote equality for all. Our  democracy 

requires informed citizens. Public education enables its citizens to develop their full potential, which enables our  democracy to flourish. It enables individuals to learn and grow and creates a successful and prosperous society. 

Therefore, be it resolved that the Democratic Party of Virginia: 

1. Calls on local, state, and federal officials, within the purview of their offices and roles, to: 

a. Investigate, expose, and prosecute all individuals and groups who deploy intimidation tactics, threats of  violence and violence against school board members, administrators, teachers, and others; 

b. Initiate a public campaign, including forums, social and other media, etc., to highlight the historical  compact establishing universal primary and secondary public education as a necessity to prepare an  informed citizenry for their role in a democracy; illuminate the accomplishments of many decades of public  education and the benefit to our country’s democracy; and provide a platform for people, including doctors,  scientists, business leaders, and religious leaders, to relate their stories of the public school teachers who  were instrumental in their success; 

c. Increase funding and support for public schools and educator, administrator, and staff compensation;  and 

d. Introduce legislation and support an enriched, broad, public-school curricula for all students in liberal  arts, science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), and career and technical education. 

2. Commends Officials at all levels, including democratically elected school boards, who implement and parents  who support an enriched, broad, public-school curricula for all students in liberal arts, science, technology,  engineering, and mathematics (STEM), and career and technical education. 

3. Calls on grassroots activists and organizations to launch a campaign to expose the right-wing, special-interest funded, Republican agenda to dismantle public education, divert public education tax dollars to private management  of public schools, and to eliminate critical thinking and evidence-based curricula from America’s public schools. 

4. Calls on grassroots activists, organizations, community and faith groups, parents, and the public to support increased funding for public schools and educator, administrator, and staff compensation, and to support an enriched, broad, public-school curricula for all students in liberal arts, science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), and career and technical education.

Categories Accountability, Censorship, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Cruelty, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Privatization, School Choice, Virginia, Vouchers

Arizona: Vouchers Might Bankrupt the State

By dianeravitch
July 7, 2023 //
45

Arizona is a typical voucher state. The program started small, then grew almost every year. Vouchers for the students with special needs, vouchers for the poor, vouchers for children of the military, on and on.

Parents and teachers put a referendum on the ballot in 2019, much to the consternation of the Koch machine; the public overwhelmingly rejected vouchers. The vote was 65-35 against vouchers.

The legislature, buoyed by money from DeVos and Koch, ignored the referendum and expanded vouchers to the ultimate. Now Arizona has a universal voucher program. Every student in the state, whatever their family income, can claim a voucher. But the state is now worrying whether the cost of vouchers will plunge Arizona into bankruptcy. The Staye Superintendent, a hard-right Republican, says there’s no problem.

Public school advocates predict that the voucher program will eventually cost $1 billion a year.

Currently, 75% of those who claimed vouchers never attended public school. They are the biggest drain on the budget.

Mary Jo Pitzl of the Arizona Republic writes:

Backers of Arizona’s universal school voucher program have widely touted it as a money saver for the state. But for most potential participants, the program adds to the state’s costs, a new analysis shows.

The finding comes as legislative budget officials reported a surprising and steep decline in tax collections in May, raising questions about whether the state can sustain the booming price of the voucher program in coming years.

The analysis from the Arizona Association of School Business Officials broke down the different categories of students eligible for the Empowerment Scholarship Account program and showed savings come only when charter school students transfer into the program.

In every other situation — whether the student comes from a public school district, a private school, a homeschool or micro school environment — there is an extra cost to taxpayers for the ESA voucher, the analysis shows. The costs can range from $425 if a student leaves a district public school to $7,148 if the student already attends a private school or home school.

The idea that vouchers save the state money is based on a law that makes each universal voucher worth 90% of what the state pays for a child in a public school, presumably resulting in a 10% savings. The more children who leave the public school system for a voucher, the theory goes, the greater the savings to the education budget.

But the 90% equation isn’t so simple. That percentage is pegged to what the state pays for students in public charter schools, which is higher than for students in public district schools. For example, the basic state aid for a K-8 student in a district public school is $6,339, while it’s $7,515 in the charter system.

At 90% of the charter rate, the average ESA scholarship for an elementary-aged student this past year was $6,764. That saves the state $751 for charter students, but it adds $325 in costs for the state for each public school student who moves to the voucher program.

For high school students, the figures are higher: A $1,380 savings to the budget if a charter student transfers, but a $543 loss per each student who leaves a district public school.

Charter schools account for a minority of students in Arizona’s public school system: 19% in the last school year, according to figures from the Arizona Department of Education.

Voucher expenses are markedly more if a student was never in the public school system, or if a student transfers from one of the two dozen public school districts that get no basic state education aid, such as the Scottsdale Unified School District or Cave Creek Unified School District, because they have wealthy property-tax bases.

In both those cases, the $6,764 for an elementary school voucher (or $7,532 for a high-school voucher) is drawn entirely from the state’s general fund, creating a new education expense…

In the ESA program’s first year, those in private schools or from home-schooling environments are widely believed to have fueled most of the program’s four-fold growth to more than 61,000 students. With the families of these students eligible for state aid when previously they were paying out of pocket, lawmakers had to allocate an extra $376 million from the general fund to cover the higher-than-expected growth of the universal voucher program in its inaugural year.

In late May, state schools superintendent Tom Horne released a report estimating enrollment would climb much higher, hitting 100,000 students by June 2024, at an overall cost of $900 million.

Most of that enrollment growth will come from the district public schools, he predicted at the May news conference, arguing it will save the state money because of the 90% formula….

As the universal voucher program enters its second year, supporters and critics alike are watching to see what enrollment trends emerge and how they will affect state spending….

Some see the state barreling toward a budget crisis, given the onset of the flat income tax, which caused state revenues to drop dramatically in May. Others are less concerned, noting the ESA program takes only a fraction of the state’s K-12 budget.

Lawmakers have repeatedly noted they are obligated by the Constitution to fund education. But if there isn’t enough money to do that and keep the rest of state government running, hard choices could lay ahead.

Categories Accountability, Arizona, Disruption, Education Industry, Funding, Privatization, Vouchers

Pennsylvania: Governor Shapiro Agrees to Scuttle Vouchers in Budget

By dianeravitch
July 6, 2023 //
48

Governor Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania announced that he would drop his support for vouchers in order to pass a state budget. Republicans who control the State Senate want vouchers. Democrats, with a slim majority in the House, are opposed to vouchers.

HARRISBURG — Gov. Josh Shapiro says he plans to scrap his push for private school vouchers in Pennsylvania’s state budget in order to close a deal with the commonwealth’s divided legislature five days after the deadline.

The Democrat issued a statement Wednesday acknowledging that talks had deadlocked over a $100 million voucher program, which he had supported and which state Senate Republicans passed as part of their budget proposal last week. Pennsylvania House Democratic leaders oppose vouchers and had refused to act on the Senate’s bill.

Shapiro’s solution, he said, was to promise state House Democrats that if they pass the Senate’s budget, he will then line-item veto the vouchers from the $45.5 billion spending plan.

“Our Commonwealth should not be plunged into a painful, protracted budget impasse while our communities wait for the help and resources this commonsense budget will deliver,” Shapiro said in a statement.

Spotlight PA had previously reported the existence of Shapiro’s plan to cut vouchers out of the budget deal.

In his statement, Shapiro said that over the weekend, state House Democrats requested a legal memo from his administration that confirmed that any voucher program passed as part of the budget could not be implemented without separate enabling legislation — legislation that House Democrats might be able to block.

“Knowing that the two chambers will not reach consensus at this time to enact [the voucher program], and unwilling to hold up our entire budget process over this issue, I will line-item veto the full $100 million appropriation and it will not be part of this budget bill,” Shapiro said.

In a letter to state Senate Republicans viewed by Spotlight PA, House Majority Leader Matt Bradford (D., Montgomery) wrote Wednesday that his chamber plans to take Shapiro at his word.

“With the Governor’s assurance that he neither has the legal authority nor intention to move forward with [vouchers] at this time, the House will consider [the Senate budget bill] on concurrence later today,” Bradford wrote.

The voucher program would fund private school scholarships for students in low-achieving public school districts.

The deal that included it, which passed the state Senate 29-21 on Friday, included key Democratic priorities like increased education funding, universal free school breakfast, and the commonwealth’s first-ever funding for public legal defense. However, Democrats viewed the vouchers as a poison pill.

When they passed their plan last week, state Senate GOP leaders made it clear that their support was contingent on vouchers being included, with Senate President Pro Tempore Kim Ward (R., Westmoreland) telling reporters that any plan that didn’t include vouchers would have to have “a different number.”

This new maneuver from Shapiro, assuming continued support from state House Democrats, would not require the proposed plan to go back to the Senate, thus circumventing Republicans there. Republican leaders did not immediately return a request for comment.

While Bradford has said House Democrats are on board with Shapiro’s plan, members of the caucus expressed doubts throughout the day Wednesday about any plan that would require them to approve a budget with vouchers and rely on the governor to then eliminate them.

“There’s not a lot of trust amongst [Democratic] members and the administration,” one House Democrat, who requested anonymity to discuss ongoing budget negotiations, told Spotlight PA.

Categories Democrats, Elections, Pennsylvania, Privatization, Republicans, Vouchers

Steven Singer: Absurd Voucher Proposal Stalls Penn. Budget

By dianeravitch
July 6, 2023 //
1

Steven Singer describes the budget mess in Pennsylvania. The legislature is under court order to change state funding for education to make it equitable. But the Republican-dominated State Senate inserted a voucher proposal, encouraged by the support of Democratic Governor Josh Shapiro. And the State House, with a tiny Democratic majority, opposes vouchers.

Singer writes:

How do you stop the other team from making a goal when you aren’t even sure your own team’s goalie will try to block the shot?

Pennsylvania House Democrats find themselves in that uncomfortable position as they refuse to pass a Republican supported 2023-24 budget on time.

The problem? School vouchers.

Democrats generally oppose them and Republicans love them. But in the commonwealth, new Gov. Josh Shapiro, ostensibly a Democrat, has let it be known that he likes vouchers under certain conditions.

So Republicans designed a bill exactly along those lines hoping that if they can get it through both legislative bodies, the Governor will give it his signature. (Under the previous Democratic administration, Gov. Tom Wolf blocked the worst the GOP could throw at him, stopping all kinds of horrible policies from getting through.)

A budget encrusted with voucher giveaways passed the Republican-controlled Senate on Thursday, but the House – where Democrats now hold a slim majority – refused to go along with it.

So Republicans are holding the entire budget hostage. As usual.

In a time when the state is flush with cash from inflation-juiced tax collections and federal pandemic subsidies, legislators still couldn’t pass a budget on time.

And it all comes down to our schizophrenic education policies.

Fact: the Commonwealth shortchanges public school students.

The state Supreme Court said so after an 8 year legal battle.

Now lawmakers in Harrisburg are rushing to fix the problem by tearing public schools apart and giving the pieces to private and parochial schools.

It’s called the Lifeline Scholarship Program – throw a lifeline of $100 million to failing edu-businesses and religious indoctrination centers on the excuse that that will somehow help kids from impoverished neighborhoods.

You could just increase funding at the poorest public schools – but that would make too much sense.

Better to give taxpayer money to private interests with little to no accountability or track record and just hope it works!

During the election, Shapiro admitted he liked the concept of these kinds of vouchers, but back then the only other choice was Doug Mastriano, a raving MAGA insurrectionist Republican. The Democrat could have said he had developed a taste for human flesh and he would have been the better alternative.

This means only the slim Democratic majority is left to uphold public schools over this wrongheaded policy nightmare.

House Democrats swear the bill is destined to fail.

House Majority Leader Matt Bradford, D-Montgomery, put it this way:

“There are not the votes for it. It’s not coming up, and if it comes up, it will be defeated.”

This seems to be the case. Yesterday, the House Rules Committee voted against sending the tuition voucher bill to the full House for a vote. So it is not scheduled for a vote at all.

However, now that the June 30th deadline has been blown, lawmakers probably will try to use this newest school voucher bid as a bargaining chip to get a spending plan – any spending plan – passed. This could drag on for months – it certainly has in the past.

The current voucher iteration is a taxpayer funded tuition subsidy for students attending private schools.

Under this bill, students in the lowest 15% of schools in the commonwealth (as determined by standardized test scores) would be eligible.

So what’s wrong with school vouchers?

Open the link to learn what’s wrong with vouchers and also to see links that you can use to establish that vouchers are a disastrous policy. Most will be used to subsidize kids from well-off families who never attended public schools.

Categories Bigotry, Democrats, Education Industry, Funding, Pennsylvania, Religion, Vouchers

Pennsylvania: State Senate Passes Voucher Bill, with Help from Democratic Governor Josh Shapiro

By dianeravitch
June 30, 2023 //
3

Peter Greene writes here about the latest news from Pennsylvania, where he lives. The Republican-dominated state senate passed a voucher bill. Newly elected Democratic Governor Josh Shapiro has said he supports vouchers. He’s getting lots of kudos from Rightwingers. Is this why we was elected? It’s now up to House Democrats, who have a sliver majority, to stop this giveaway to private and religious schools.

Peter Greene writes:

Choicers in Pennsylvania are so close they can taste it, and everyone has come off the bench to help push this newest bill past a governor who has said he likes vouchers just fine—under certain condition. This is from my piece from Forbes.com this morning.

Democrat Josh Shapiro made no secret of his support for school vouchers when he was campaigning for the Pennsylvania governor’s seat. Now conservatives are pushing him to put that support to work.

The Senate passed the newest school voucher bill Thursday night; House Democrats say that it will not advance. Supporters are still hoping that it can be saved in the budget process.

The Lifeline Scholarship Program has been kicking around Harrisburg in a variety of bills that presented a variety of school voucher formats as voucher supporters looked for a version that would garner enough support to pass. The current iteration is a traditional school voucher, essentially a taxpayer funded tuition subsidy for students attending private schools.

Under this bill, students in the lowest 15% of schools in the commonwealth (as determined by standardized test scores) would be eligible.

The vouchers, named a top priority by Pennsylvania’s GOP, have become a key part of the current budget negotiations in the state that is already under a court order to fix its funding system for public schools.

The voucher system would be a chance for school voucher proponents to get their foot in the door, an especially tasty victory in a state with a Democratic governor. To add to the pressure to pass, a coalition of right wing voucher fans has sent Shapiro a letter arguing for the voucher program.

Open the link to the article to find the link to the entire article in Forbes.

Categories Accountability, Democracy, Education Industry, Pennsylvania, Privatization, Religion, Separation of church and state, Vouchers

North Carolina: Some Voucher Schools Get More Vouchers Than Students

By dianeravitch
June 23, 2023 //
8

Kris Nordstrom of the North Carolina Justice Center reports on a shocking study of the state’s voucher program. It found that a significant number of voucher schools receive more vouchers than they have students. Most of those profiting by the state’s negligence are religious schools.

Will anyone care?

He wrote:

This session, General Assembly leaders have placed a massive expansion of the state’s voucher program at the top of their education agenda. Legislative leaders in both the House and the Senate want to triple the program’s size by opening it to wealthy families who have already enrolled their children in private schools. But new data shows that the existing program lacks adequate oversight and is potentially riven with fraud.

Data from the two agencies charged with overseeing private schools and North Carolina’s Opportunity Scholarship voucher program show several cases where schools have received more vouchers than they have students. Several other private schools have received voucher payments from the state after they have apparently closed.

The Department of Administration’s Division of Non-Public Education (DNPE) compiles annual directories of active private schools. The North Carolina State Education Assistance Authority (SEAA) publishes data showing the number of voucher recipients at each private school.

An analysis of this data shows 62 times where a school received more vouchers than they had students.

For example, Mitchener University Academy in Johnston County reported a total enrollment of 72 students in 2022. That same year, the state sent them vouchers for 149 students. Based on this data, either every student received two vouchers, or the school pocketed about $230,000 of state money for students that never existed….

The actual number could be higher. Since 2015, 449 vouchers have been awarded to schools that failed to report their enrollment to DNPE.

In addition, 23 schools continued to receive vouchers after they stopped reporting to DNPE altogether. It’s unclear whether these schools were operating in the years they received vouchers. For example, Crossroads Christian School of Statesville submitted reports to DNPE from 2009 through 2019. They stopped reporting to DNPE in 2020. Yet that same year, the school received $57,300 for 15 voucher students, even though it’s unclear whether the school was operating for the entire school year.

These data discrepancies should represent a major red flag for lawmakers pushing voucher expansion. These discrepancies could represent innocent mistakes, or they could represent massive fraud. Unfortunately, lawmakers have failed to equip either DNPE or SEAA with the staff or authority to determine the reason for the discrepancies.

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Fraud, Funding, Lies, North Carolina, Privatization, Scandal, Vouchers

Josh Cowen: To a Reformer Who Supports Vouchers

By dianeravitch
June 22, 2023 //
15

Josh Cowen is a Professor if Educatuon Policy at Michigan State University who spent nearly two decades involved in studying the effects of vouchers. In this post, published here for the first time, he responds to a school choice advocate, Chad Aldeman, who recently made his case for his views.

Josh Cowen writes:

Can’t we all just get along?

That’s the question underlying a new column by education reform specialist Chad Aldeman.

Although he avoids saying so directly, he’s talking about the latest rush to expand school vouchers in state legislatures during the current lawmaking cycle. It’s mostly happening in red states, and supporters have broader names including the all-encompassing “school choice,” which Aldeman uses, to the more jingoist “education freedom.”

It’s worth reading and considering. I’ve done so in part because, as Peter Greene has pointed out, Aldeman is among the more serious thinkers on education reform issues and because he hints at questions I get myself a lot from journalists covering reform: what would it take to get me to support voucher programs today?

Aldeman lays out what he calls the “progressive vision” for these programs. And by merging vouchers in that vision with charters and inter-district choice, he makes it difficult to distinguish meaningful differences between each in both origin, intent, and policy result.

But if you read my own stuff, most recently in Time Magazine,you know I’m concerned above all right now with vouchers—much as I have other critiques too, such as the increased Christian Nationalism of the charter school movement that Carol Burris and others have recently noted.

The focus of Aldeman’s vision is the idea that a.) public schools aren’t so strong on academic outcomes, or in their history of discrimination and that b.) it’s possible to acknowledge that while backing reasonable restraints on voucher-like programs to prohibit discrimination with public funds and to safeguard educational quality.

There are two overarching blindspots in that vision. Active discrimination against children is fundamental to the voucher movement. Today it’s LGBTQ children, but 60 years ago it was against Black children as vouchers popped up in places like Texas to avoid desegregation orders. Now, tens of millions of dollars already go to private schools that exclude gay families. And a recent report from Wisconsin carefully details how voucher schools work the system to avoid what anti-discrimination rules do exist, not just for LGBTQ kids but students with disabilities too. In short: they admit all students (as Aldeman recommends) but then expel them, because legal protections are much stronger on the front end than the back end.

Most current legislation protects schools’ right to maintain their “creed” (do a word search on whatever state code you want, you’re likely to find it). That’s an all-encompassing word that allows schools to hide behind religious beliefs when it comes to excluding certain kids. Removing that word, as Aldeman’scolumn rightly implies would have to be done for an equitable voucher system, is politically impossible.

And that gets to the second blindspot in Aldeman’s vision. The education freedom movement, with school vouchers at its core, has been a Right-wing political operation for 30 years. It’s more than Betsy DeVos. It’s Charles Koch. It’s the Bradley Foundation, which has funded nearly every academic study to find positive school voucher effects, funds groups like the Heritage Foundation’s education arm, and helped fund election denial in the post-2020 months.

Kenneth Starr, of Clinton/Lewinsky fame, was actually the lead counsel defending vouchers in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, the original Supreme Court case that ruled vouchers constitutional way back in 2002. Vouchers are that ingrained in Republican Party politics—both the old guard establishment that Starr came from, and the MAGA wing today that’s carrying on the legacy.

Aldeman’s case would have progressives simply ignore the political realities of the voucher movement. In essence, in the spirit of compromise, we’re to ignore decades of efforts to divert tax dollars toward unregulated markets, fundamentalist religious organizations, and anti-labor movements in the interest of moving education policy forward.

(The last point itself ignores substantial evidence that vouchers fail on academic terms in the first place).

But so-called “educational freedom” is too existential a question. Not for nothing, but this latest push comes on the heels of the Supreme Court’s removal of reproductive freedom among our constitutional protections. In my state, the same political operatives fighting to pass school vouchers in 2022 were also fighting to keep reproductive rights off the ballot. That’s not an accident.

On the voucher-backing Bradley Foundation’s board of directors is a lawyer named Cleta Mitchell. Mitchell was on the phone with Donald Trump during his infamous Georgia phone call, and all over the January 6th report. More recently she suggested that young citizens should lose the vote, and has been active in other voter suppression efforts. Speaking of January 6th, a vice president at Hillsdale College—the same Hillsdale so active in education freedom and Christian Nationalism more broadly—was partly behind the Michigan chapter of the fake electors scheme. Again: not an accident.

So when Aldeman suggests that progressives are being a bit overdramatic by worrying about threats to democracy, he’s either ignoring this evidence or he’s asking us to engage in a thought experiment that pretends that evidence doesn’t exist.

Here’s my own thought experiment: in a world in which none of us is perfect, and all of us are wrong some of the time, how would you rather be wrong?

For my part, I’d rather be too worried about LGBTQ exclusion, too worried about the loss of reproductive freedom, too worried about the ties between voucher backers and voter suppression. If I’m wrong, the worst that would happen is a few extra people already in private school would have to keep paying for it on their own.

But if the danger is real, then the erosion of civil liberties, of human rights, and—yes—democracy will have happened not just because of MAGA Republicans or Charles Koch or Betsy DeVos. It’ll happen because the progressive vision, as Alderman calls it, was either blinded or simply asleep at its post.

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Privatization, Vouchers

Wisconsin: Governor Evers Betrays His Public School Supporters

By dianeravitch
June 22, 2023 //
8

Tony Evers ran for Governor of Wisconsin on a pro-public education platform. He had been the State Commissioner of Education, and he pledged to reverse the damage done by Republicans to the state’s once-eminent public schools. After years of Republican governors who supported privatization, Evers portrayed himself as a champion of public schools.

The Network for Public Education did not support him. One of our allies in Wisconsin warned that he was two-faced. When we did not support him, other Wisconsin friends were shocked and told us we were wrong about Evers. They said he would be a great friend to public schools.

Sadly, Governor Evers turned out to be a traitor. He just signed a bill giving more funding to voucher schools than to the state’s woefully underfunded public schools.

He betrayed his campaign promises and his supporters. Shame on Tony Evers!

The Wisconsin Public Education Network sent out the following bulletin:

Dear friends of Wisconsin students and their public schools,

You have likely heard the news that Gov. Evers signed into law today both the shared revenue bill and SB330/AB305, a bill that gives a bump to spending authority for low revenue districts while dramatically expanding state funding to private schools and independent charters. Combined with a gap-widening budget omnibus proposal that provides woefully inadequate and inequitable resources to public schools, the move is part of a larger deal that fails to meet any of the priority needs of students in Wisconsin’s public schools, marking 16 YEARS of preK-12 budgets that fail to keep pace with inflation. 

All day, our phones have been buzzing with messages of outrage, frustration, and betrayal.

Earlier today, our board of directors issued a public plea to the governor to reject this deal. The excerpts below sum up their concerns and what the passage of these bills means to Wisconsin kids.

From the Wisconsin Alliance for Excellent Schools board of directors:

The action taken by the Joint Committee on Finance falls well short of the state’s constitutional responsibilities in the area of K-12 education and must be dramatically improved by the state legislature. If not, the budget must be vetoed by the governor and recrafted in order to pass Constitutional muster.

Our chief concerns with this budget deal: 

  • Public school students have been defunded relative to inflation for fourteen years and the per pupil adjustments proposed by the Joint Committee on Finance will extend that defunding streak to 16 years.
  • During that period of time, funding for students with disabilities was frozen for a decade and the promised, but not guaranteed, 33% reimbursement rate for special education will continue to keep Wisconsin near the very bottom of all states in that category.
  • Local property tax payers will be forced to cover the costs of a massive expansion of the unaccountable voucher program.
  • Private schools will be provided more direct aid from the state than most public schools are even allowed to spend (see fiscal memo here).
  • Shared revenue deal usurps the authority of the MPS board by requiring reinstatement of police officers on school property.

We call on the state legislature to fix this budget bill by restoring special education reimbursement to a minimum of 60%, providing an inflationary increase in spendable aid to all students in public schools, and removing irresponsible provisions to expand spending on private education. We urge Governor Evers to veto any bill that arrives at his desk that fails to meet these critical needs of Wisconsin students.

Unfortunately, 15 minutes after our board of directors issued their statement on these fast-tracked proposals, we learned Gov. Evers had already signed into law the largest stand-alone voucher aid expansion in state history and a shared revenue bill that undermines Milwaukee Public Schools, so we issued this response. We hope you will share it widely, as it details some of the most harmful and gap-widening provisions of the “compromise”:

  • This deal will provide private voucher schools more guaranteed state aid than the average public school is even allowed to spend per student,
  • while public schools will see a less-than-inflationary increase to state aid and a less than 2% increase to special education, cementing funding discrimination for kids with disabilities.
  • Raising the low revenue limit ceiling by $1000 is a nice gesture, but it doesn’t even bring those districts up to the state average in spending authority.
  • Public school students and local property taxpayers will pay the price, while private schools that can legally discriminate and pick and choose their students get a blank check from the state.
  • With voucher enrollment caps set to come off entirely in 2 years, this is the most reckless and irresponsible thing Wisconsin could do with its massive surplus, especially when we consider that the nearly 80% of students participating in the statewide voucher program never attended a public school.

The three top concerns of the public at all four of the budget hearings (preK-12 public schools, higher ed, and childcare) were all put on the chopping block to reach this “compromise” and nearly $2 BILLION of Gov. Evers’ original budget proposal for public schools was exchanged for this massive, unconscionable, unconstitutional voucher expansion. The state is already not meeting its obligation to its children, and this budget demonstrates a refusal to use the biggest surplus we’ve ever seen to make a meaningful start toward doing so. It’s time to hold Wisconsin accountable for doing better.

The good news: it’s not too late to fix this.

CALL ON LAWMAKERS TO FIX THIS BUDGET SO THAT PUBLIC SCHOOL STUDENTS’ NEEDS ARE MET BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE, AND CALL ON GOV. EVERS TO VETO THE ENTIRE BUDGET BILL IF IT DOESN’T. 

And let them know: we are watching every single vote that betrays Wisconsin students. 

Find your lawmakers here or call 800-362-9472 for the Wisconsin legislature hotline. Contact Gov. Evers at (608) 266-1212 or online here. 

Every single lawmaker has a vote on this bill, and needs to hear from us. Don’t assume you know how they’ll vote – let them know what local kids need!

We know Governor Evers has pledged to do what’s best for kids, and it’s not too late for him to back out of a deal that has gone way too far in selling out students in the public schools we are morally and constitutionally responsible to support. He needs to hear from you!

We continue to advocate for the following to meet the needs our kids have now: 

  • no less than $1,510/per pupil in new spendable funds to their districts to catch up with inflation; 
  • 60% reimbursement of special education costs to begin closing the gap between the state’s special ed. support for public and private schools;
  • prioritizing funds where needs are greatest; 
  • and putting a moratorium on the use of public dollars on unaccountable private and privately-operated schools.

It’s not too late to deliver a budget that meets these needs.  Our kids are counting on us to do it.

Stay tuned for additional action steps and details on how you can get involved, and please continue to follow WisconsinNetwork.org/budget for updates!

– Your friends at Team Public

LOCAL LEVEL ACTION. STATEWIDE IMPACT. Wisconsin Public Education Network is a project of the Wisconsin Alliance for Excellent Schools, a nonprofit, nonpartisan public education advocacy organization. To support our work, donate here!

Categories Education Industry, Lies, Privatization, Shame, Vouchers, Wisconsin

Texas: Why Rural Republicans Oppose Vouchers

By dianeravitch
June 21, 2023 //
7

Joe Holley, a columnist for The Houston Chronicle writes here about why rural Republicans in Texas vote against vouchers. The public schools in their home districts are in deep financial trouble. They can’t pay enough to attract teachers. They lack the funding for physical improvements. The public schools are the heart of their communities. Most rural districts don’t have any private schools. Those that do don’t want to lose their funding to pay for kids to go to private schools.

Holley writes:

MARATHON – One afternoon not long after Laura and I bought The Wee House, our home away from home in this small, unincorporated community west of the Pecos, I decided to go run the bleachers at the high school football field a block up the street. I didn’t know it at the time, but the long-abandoned field, dry grass giving way to patches of hard dirt and scraggly weeds, had been home in years past to arguably the most formidable six-man football dynasty in Texas history.

Between 1967 and 1976, the Mustangs compiled a record of 100-6, including a 42-game winning streak that stretched from October 1968 until November 1971. Fans from all over the trans-Pecos made the long drive to Marathon on Friday nights to watch the mighty Mustangs beat up on both six- and 11-man teams. The Mustangs were twice state champions.

It quickly became obvious that my ambitious exercise regimen was foolhardy. The spindly-looking bleachers were only eight rows high, the rows so far apart I almost had to climb from one to the next. I decided instead to investigate the rusted sheet-metal press box perched on the top row, so small that maybe three Howard Cosell-wannabes, no more, could squeeze in. I thought I might find an old program, a yellowed memento from the Mustangs’ glory days. Opening the squeaky door into the dark interior, I set off a clamorous tumult. Then came a whoosh. Powerful wings grazed the top of my head and almost sent me tumbling backward down the steps. I had disturbed a great horned owl.

Marathon’s Friday-night lights were extinguished in 2007, but as in every small Texas town I know, the school remains the heart of the community. The school is where town kids and ranch kids get to know each other. It’s where the well-off and the not-so-well-off mix and mingle; where Hispanic kids and Black kids and white kids work out their differences and discover their similarities; where members of the Parent Teacher Organization man the concession stand for basketball games in the venerable gym.

Money is a perennial problem. With a total K-12 enrollment of 53 in the school year that just ended, consolidation with nearby Alpine or Fort Stockton is always a possibility. If that happened, though — if the stately rust-colored brick high school and the low-slung elementary school across the street were left to the great horned owls — Marathon would not be Marathon.

That fact of small-town Texas life is something Gov. Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and voucher-peddling legislators either don’t understand or refuse to admit. This legislative session, while they toyed like Scrooge McDuck with a mountainous pile of cash — an unprecedented $33 billion budget surplus — they left rural school districts across the state to grapple with ever-increasing operating costs, deteriorating facilities, teacher shortages, and an unfair funding system. New requirements for security upgrades are only partially funded.

HB 100, the Legislature’s primary education bill, would have raised the state’s basic allotment, but even a modest increase — not to mention the $900 needed to match inflation — was held hostage to getting vouchers passed. The governor promises that education will be the focus of another special session later this summer, but so far, rural schools have received next to nothing. Meanwhile, administrators for schools large and small are trying to craft a budget for the coming school year without knowing what the Legislature has in store.

Instead of dipping into that enormous budget surplus to ease the hardships of small-town schools, Abbott, Patrick and friends are distracted by a different mountain of money. They covet an Everest of campaign cash from a trio of West Texas oil and fracking billionaires — people who had just as soon put public schools out of business in favor of private schools funded, at least in part, by taxpayer money.

Because Texas public schools get by on a complicated system of local tax revenue and state dollars — with state money distributed on a per-student basis — private-school vouchers are a threat to already precarious districts such as Marathon’s. If local students take their vouchers and leave, those districts would lose funds. (Some voucher plans would compensate rural districts for these lost students, but only temporarily.) Despite Abbott’s and Patrick’s assurances, one way or another, state funds could be diverted to cover private and home-schooling expenses. That would leave less per-student funding for every district, large or small.

Small-town Texans, most of whom cannot even imagine voting for a Democrat, know that vouchers are a threat. That’s why their lawmakers, even the most conservative, have fought the voucher ambitions of the GOP leadership with the ferocity of yesteryear’s Marathon Mustangs. Marathon, Alpine, Fort Davis and Marfa — the little West Texas towns I know best — need every resource the state can provide, as do their counterparts across Texas. Rural lawmakers beat back Abbott and vouchers yet again during the regular session, but the governor, like a wily old boxer, keeps probing round after round for weak spots….

Alpine is 30 miles west of Marathon. Home to Sul Ross State University, the attractive little town is much larger than Marathon, but not so big that it manages to avoid lawmaker neglect. The Legislature’s inaction during the regular session was “a dereliction of duties,” Michelle Rinehart, superintendent of Alpine ISD, told the Big Bend Sentinel.

This year, Rinehart told me a few days ago, should have been our chance to boost Texas education funding — to move the state from 42nd in per-pupil spending to something like the national average. “We were expecting at least modest pay raises for teachers,” she said.

New teachers in oil-blessed Midland start at $60,500, while her new teachers start at $33,000. But instead of helping Alpine with salaries, maintenance and other basic needs, the state’s arcane and inequitable funding formulas end up taking money away. Rinehart has to finish her budget for the next school year by July 1. Unless the Legislature changes something in the special session, the deficit will grow from $300,000 to $1 million….

Rinehart has ample reason to be frustrated. Public education spending is lower now than when Abbott took office in 2015. Given a $321.3 billion budget, our lawmakers — so far, anyway — are starving one of the basic building blocks of a self-governing nation.

Abbott doesn’t listen to educators or the people in rural districts. He listens to the billionaires who fund him.

Abbott listens to the likes of oilmen Tim Dunn and the Wilks brothers, Farris and Dan, who insist that government and education should be guided by fundamentalist Christian principles.

Dunn, a lay preacher at the Midland mega-church he and his family attend, has given more than $18 million to Abbott, Patrick, all 18 GOP state senators, now-suspended Attorney General Ken Paxton, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz and assorted ultra-conservative political action committees. He also serves on the board of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a powerful voucher champion.

Farris Wilks, a native of Cisco, near Abilene, has given more than $11 million to GOP candidates and officeholders. He’s also a minister with the Cisco church his father founded, the Assembly of Yahweh 7th Day.

The superintendent of the Marathon public schools is Ivonne Durant. Holley interviewed her. She was upset that the state hasn’t increased teacher pay.

As superintendent of a rural school, Durant is constantly in touch with parents about their children’s well-being, in touch as only a small-school educator can be. They sit together at church, run into each other at the grocery store in Alpine. She teaches the Spanish class and tutors kids on Saturday morning. (One in particular: If that girl fails a class, the five-person junior high basketball team will have to disband.) Durant makes sure her seniors have definite plans — college, the military or a good job — before they graduate.

“I love my children,” she said. “They know, and their parents know, that everybody here cares. They know we’re going to be there for them.”

If only Greg Abbott and the Texas Legislature could say the same.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Budget Cuts, Education Industry, Funding, Injustice, Rural Schools, Texas, Vouchers

Texas: Governor Abbott Threatens to Veto Every Bill Until He Gets What He Wants

By dianeravitch
June 19, 2023 //
33

Governor Greg Abbott is having a temper tantrum. He called a special session to push for vouchers, which failed in the regular session. But now he’s feuding with his Lt. Governor Dan Patrick over what to do about property taxes.

The state is sitting on a $33 billion surplus. Abbott has vowed to veto every bill until he gets vouchers and his own property tax plan. Abbott wants all property taxes reduced, while Patrick wants the biggest breaks to go to businesses.

Gov. Greg Abbott has continued to follow through with his perceived threat to veto a large number of bills in the absence of a House-Senate compromise on property taxes. As of Saturday afternoon, the governor had vetoed 47 bills in the past five days, most of which originated in the Senate, adding fuel to his feud with Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick.

The common theme in his many of his vetoes, 21 of which were announced Friday: The bills can wait until after lawmakers figure out property taxes.

“At this time, the legislature must concentrate on delivering property tax cuts to Texans,” Abbott said in multiple veto proclamations Friday.

He vetoed more than a dozen bills Saturday, which included a new objection tied to school vouchers, another one of Abbott’s legislative priorities this year. In explaining why he rejected a bill setting new training rules for fire alarm technicians, Abbott said the legislation “can be reconsidered at a future special session only after education freedom is passed.”

During the regular legislative session, Abbott spent significant political capital traveling across the state to promote education savings accounts, a voucher-like program that allows parents to use taxpayer dollars to pay for their kids’ private schooling. The Texas Legislature failed to pass such a bill, mostly because of staunch opposition from Democrats and rural Republicans in the House, who argue that vouchers will hurt public schools’ finances. Abbott has said he’ll call a special session specifically to discuss vouchers again.

On Wednesday during a bill-signing ceremony at the Capitol, Abbott raised the possibility of vetoing a significant number of the hundreds of bills that he hasn’t yet signed. With lawmakers still deadlocked on property taxes, Abbott said he “can’t ensure that any bill that has not yet been signed is going to be signed.”

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Funding, Rural Schools, Stupid, Texas, Vouchers
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