Archives for category: Vouchers
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Randi Weingarten On “”The War on Woke”

By dianeravitch
October 18, 2023 //
11

The New Republic convened a meeting to discuss Trump, book banning and the culture wars. Randi Weingarten described the attack on schools as a coordinated strategy to destroy public schools and promote vouchers. Edith Olmsted of The New Republic interviewed her. None of this is new to readers of this blog, but the American public needs to hear this message. Again and again.

Book Bans Are a Conservative Plot to Destroy Public Schools, Says Randi Weingarten, The teachers union head denounced the “extremist strategy,” which also includes voucher campaigns and manufactured outrage over critical race theory.

DANIEL BOCZARSKI/GETTY IMAGES FOR MOVEON

Teachers union head Randi Weingarten says that the campaign by conservatives to ban books isn’t about the books at all, but part of a broader strategy to destroy public schools—one that was supercharged by the pandemic.

“You take the agita and the anxiety that people had at Covid, that fear, and you combine it with a right wing who has wanted to kill public schools for years and take that money for vouchers, and you have the scenario we have,” Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, said Wednesday at The New Republic’s Stop Trump Summit.

Vouchers, which use public education dollars to fund private and religious school attendance, are just one pillar of the conservative campaign to “undermine, destroy, and defund” public schools, she said. The other two are book banning and manufactured outrage over critical race theory.

Weingarten pointed to conservative activist Chris Rufo and a comment he made at Hillsdale College, a Christian nationalist school, in which he admitted that focusing on these issues was all part of a master plan to promote universal vouchers: “To get to universal school choice, you really need to operate from a premise of universal public school distrust.”

In an interview with TNR after the event, Weingarten explained the “extremist strategy” Rufo and other conservatives have used to defund public schools. “The hook was trust. If you really create as much distrust as possible in public schooling, then parents will look at privatization as an option,” she said.

That’s where critical race theory comes in.

“[Rufo] tried to make a term that nobody knows so toxic, so that you can weaponize it and make fear,” she said. “Conversations about hard subjects became weaponized as indoctrination. Which is patently ridiculous, and dangerous.”

Race, as well as gender, is the subject conservatives have focused on in their campaigns to ban books in public schools and libraries.

“What [Republican Governor Ron] DeSantis is doing in the so-called ‘war on woke,’ is exactly part of their playbook—to make people afraid of books, and afraid of what we do in school,” Weingarten said. According to Pen America, Florida passed 15 “educational intimidation” bills in the last two and a half years.

The “parents’ rights” movement is made up of a loud minority, Weingarten said, and actively undermines what most parents want. “What we see in Florida is that 60 percent of the book banning has been done by 11 people,” she said.

The AFT has partnered with The New Republic in fighting back against such bans. TNR’s Banned Books Tour has been delivering thousands of banned books across the country this month, most recently in Florida.

Categories Bigotry, Billionaires, Censorship, Curriculum, Disruption, Education Industry, Extremism, For-Profit, Freedom to Read, Privatization, Racism, Vouchers

Charles Foster Johnson: Protect Our Public Schools! Block Vouchers!

By dianeravitch
October 13, 2023 //
5

Charles Foster Johnson is the founder of Pastors for Texas Children. He actively supports full funding of public schools and separation of church and state. He, along with other faith leaders, wrote the following article in The Dallas News.

Don’t Defund Public Schools

Voucher scheme wastes money, violates Constitution

The education community in Texas has remained patient and courteous throughout the spring general session of the Legislature despite the record $32.7 billion surplus. They have upheld the values of kindness and respect that society expects. However, there comes a point when patience wears thin, and the truth must be spoken: it is time to allocate the necessary resources to educators and school districts.

Simply put, it’s time to provide the funding our educators and school districts need. This funding is not a luxury; it is a necessity. It is essential for Texas teachers to keep pace with the rising cost of living. School districts must fulfill their role in shaping the future workforce of Texas, which boasts the ninth-largest economy in the world. It is imperative to honor the trust placed in you by Texas taxpayers, who expect their hard-earned money to be invested wisely in the education of over 5 million Texas students.

The time for political games and holding funds hostage for private schools must end. Public schools are the heart of our educational system and need their fair share of resources. Even after passing tax relief measures earlier this summer, there remains a surplus of $14 billion, not to mention the over $21 billion in the state’s rainy day fund. Moreover, inflation ensures that surplus funds will continue to accumulate in the foreseeable future. This is not the government’s money to wield for hardline negotiations; it belongs to the people of Texas.

Over 90% of Texas students attend public schools, yet the state has not increased funding to school districts since 2019. Operating costs have significantly risen during this period. Additionally, our teachers, who demonstrated unwavering dedication during the global pandemic, have yet to receive sufficient salary increases to keep pace with inflation.

It is high time to allocate the necessary resources to public schools to address these issues.

Due to legislative inaction during the spring, school boards across Texas were forced to approve deficit budgets merely to survive this academic year. For example, Dallas ISD approved a $186 million deficit budget, Garland ISD faced a $69 million deficit, and Plano ISD had to manage a $24 million shortfall. This approach is akin to depleting one’s savings to pay the electric bill — it is unsustainable and morally unacceptable.

What is most disheartening is the lack of significant funding for schools this year and the mounting frustration within the education community: educators, administrators and parents alike. It should not have come to this point.

Instead of prioritizing public schools, Gov. Greg Abbott has traversed the state promoting a program that redirects tax dollars to private schools, masquerading under the banner of “education freedom.” Comparable programs in other states have proven to be financially burdensome. Arizona’s private school subsidy program, initially allocated at $65 million, is estimated to cost $900 million next year. In Florida, a similar program has been used for non-educational purposes like theme park tickets, kayaks and televisions (https://www.firstcoastnews.com/article/news/verify/yes-school-vouchers-in-florida-can-be-used-for-tvs-skateboards-theme-park-tickets/77-49577639-1a29-4acd-86ac-af50efc107e9).

Voucher programs like these do not align with the principles of fiscal conservatism. Moreover, the effectiveness of private school subsidies in improving student achievement remains highly questionable. In other states, established private schools have yet to embrace these subsidies due to limited capacity and high costs. Consequently, makeshift private schools have arisen, unable to match the offerings of public schools, resulting in most students returning to the public system.

The notion that funding for Texas public schools has been delayed to channel resources to private schools should anger the parents of millions of children and the thousands of educators who tirelessly serve them. Our students have only one chance to experience their current grade level; they should not be made to wait.

In a disturbing breach of the American principle of separation between church and state, Abbott has called upon ministers and pastors to advocate for this subsidy program from their pulpits on Sunday, Oct. 15. Texans understand a fundamental truth that eludes the governor: Genuine faith must be voluntary and cannot be endorsed or supported by state authority. Using tax dollars to subsidize religious instruction is a violation of this principle.

Abbott’s threats against state representatives who support public education constitute a desperate attempt to intimidate them. The Texas House has consistently opposed private school subsidies for over two decades, and there is no reason for that stance to change now.


The time for delay has passed; enough is enough.


Charles F. Johnson is executive director of Pastors For Texas Children. George A. Mason is senior pastor emeritus at Wilshire Baptist Church. Victoria Robb Powers is senior pastor at Royal Lane Baptist Church. Andy Stoker is interim executive director at Interfaith Alliance Texas. Neil G. Thomas is senior pastor at Cathedral of Hope United Church of Christ. They wrote this column for The Dallas Morning News.

Categories Hoax, Texas, Vouchers

Denis Smith: What Ohio Can Learn from Texas

By dianeravitch
October 5, 2023 //
13

Denis Smith is a retired school administrator in Ohio who worked in the State Education Department’s office for charter schools. He writes here about the strong resistance to vouchers in Texas, compared to the collusion between legislators and religious leaders in Ohio.

You read that headline correctly.

It may come as a shock to readers to know that with all the issues confronting Ohio, it hasn’t been listed in recent surveys as the worst place to live and work. That honor, according to a new CNBC survey, goes to Texas.

The survey methodology targeted a range of issues facing the Lone Star State, with reproductive rights, health care, and voting rights identified as leading deficits that are adversely affecting the state’s citizens.

Noticeably absent from the CNBC list of top issues was education, which might come as a surprise to observers who have long deplored the low per-pupil spending for schools in one of the fastest growing states in the nation.

But there might be another reason why education didn’t pull Texas even deeper into the deficit column. As of now, and unlike Ohio, Texas does not have a universal education voucher program. In this year alone, Ohio joined 14 other states that have passed such legislation which allows taxpayers to pick up the tab for tuition at private and religious schools.

But universal vouchers haven’t happened yet in Texas, despite Gov. Greg Abbott’s strong advocacy of spreading public money around to unaccountable non-public schools.

Opposition to vouchers comes from the state’s vast rural areas, where there are few private and religious schools to choose from. That same anti-voucher argument was made in Ohio during the past legislative session, where families in rural counties would not have the same level of access for those living in metropolitan areas.

But if there is one person in the Buckeye State who almost singlehandedly pushed through the voucher bill despite spirited opposition, it would be Senate President Matt Huffman, whom Statehouse watchers have described as the bully- in-chief of Ohio politics and an aggressive champion of conveying public funds to religious schools.

By contrast, if there is one person in Texas who has been a principled leader in championing public schools and opposing vouchers for religious schools, the Rev. Charles Foster Johnson, leader of Pastors for Texas Children, would be that positive force.

What a contrast. In Ohio, we have a schoolyard bully in the person of Matt Huffman. In Texas, we have a principled pastor using a bully pulpit, a la Theodore Roosevelt, who popularized that term. But let’s not conflate the two terms, as Pastor Johnson respects constitutional limits, unlike the Ohio Senate President.

As a bully, Huffman respects nothing, and where the word principled is not followed by the term leadership. One specific example of Huffman’s lack of respect for societal norms and conventions is the Ohio Constitution and Article VI, Section 2, which clearly states a prohibition against the use of public funds to support private and religious schools:

The General Assembly shall make such provisions, by taxation, or otherwise, as, with the income arising from the school trust fund, will secure a thorough and efficient system of common schools throughout the state; but no religious or other sect, or sects, shall ever have any exclusive right to, or control of, any part of the school funds of this state.

By contrast, Pastor Johnson and his organization on September 19 released this statement opposing vouchers for religious schools in Texas. Here are some key excerpts from the statement of Pastors for Texas Children in opposition to vouchers:

Vouchers are a clear violation of the American ideal of separation of church and state.

In an unprecedented violation of God’s law of religious liberty and the American doctrine of the separation of church and state, Governor Greg Abbott this afternoon called on ministers and pastors to use God’s pulpit to push his private school voucher program.

The use of public tax dollars to subsidize religious instruction is a sin against God.

Pastors for Texas Children stands strong for the universal education of all God’s children, provided, and protected by the public trust. We oppose all attempts to privatize it for sectarian, religious, and political reasons.

As we examine the use of the bully pulpit by a Texas pastor in providing principled leadership compared to unconstitutional and unprincipled bullying by Ohio’s senate leader, the behavior of Ohio’s Catholic bishops in joining Republicans in supporting an assault on the Ohio Constitution through their advocacy of Issue One in the recent special election is a study in contrasts with the Texas pastors.

Those critical of the church’s role in trying to make it more difficult to amend the state’s constitution and thus block a popular abortion measure on the November ballot see its strong working relationship with Ohio’s Republican leadership. That relationship resulted in a gift, the universal education voucher program funding unaccountable religious schools, embedded in the new state budget.

And the constitutional prohibition for using public funds otherwise earmarked for public schools to support religious schools? Never mind Article VI, Section 2.

“We can kind of do what we want,” Huffman famously said in 2022.

And he does. Clearly these words depict the image of the bully-in-chief, intent on destroying public education regardless of a clear constitutional mandate to use public funds to support a “system[note the singular form] of common schools.”

So while it is true that Texas was ranked last in the recent CNBC survey, it has allowed us to view the contrasts with Ohio as seen in its political and religious leaders. Greg Abbott is clearly the bully in Texas, and Matt Huffman plays that role in Ohio.

But we also see differences in religious leadership, where a group of courageous Texas pastors has taken a position found in their organization’s vision statement:

Pastors for Texas Children believes that public education is a human right, a constitutional guarantee, and a central part of God’s plan for human flourishing. When this sacred trust and provision of God’s common good comes under attack by the forces of privatization, we respond with prayer, service, and advocacy.

This vision is in sharp contrast with that of Ohio’s Catholic hierarchy, which has been working diligently with the state Republican leadership to scoop up public money for private purposes.

Again, never mind Article VI, Section 2.

While Ohio does not have a faith-based organization like Pastors for Texas Children to advocate for the separation of public and private monies for schools, Vouchers Hurt Ohio, a group of nearly 200 Ohio school districts, has united to sue the state and stop the unconstitutional voucher scheme. Fair minded Ohioans should pray for the success of groups like VHO who wish to honor constitutional government.

In the meantime, the blatant sabotage of public education, a slow-motion trainwreck precipitated by Matt Huffman and his church allies, is underway in Ohio. In the name of the rule of law and the constitution, let us pray for their total and unmitigated defeat.

But let us also pray for the success of Pastors for Texas Children. Despite the likes of Greg Abbott, Dan Patrick, and Ted Cruz, there are good people of faith working hard to preserve and protect democracy and constitutional government, and in every neighborhood, the public school is the most visible form of community and democracy.

Ohio pastors, let us learn and model civic virtue as practiced by a group of Texas pastors.

Amen.

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Extremism, Ohio, Religion, Texas, Vouchers

Florida: New College Board Chooses DeSantis Crony as President

By dianeravitch
October 4, 2023 //
2

Since Governor Ron DeSantis engineered the hostile takeover of Florida’s progressive New College, the interim president was Richard Corcoran. Corcoran was a hard-right Speaker of the House of Representatives and Dtate Commissiober of Education, in which role he led the state’s attacks on public schools and the expansion of charter schools and vouchers. His wife founded a charter school and is now associated with the Hillsdale College Barney charter schools.

After a few months of deliberation, the hand-picked, stacked board decided to hire Corcoran as the permanent president of New College.

To be clear, he has no academic or scholarly credentials to be a college president.

He dropped out of the University of Florida and enrolled in St. Leo University, a Catholic college. After graduating, he received his law degree from Regent University, a private Christian university.

He has no previous experience as a professor, a college administrator, or a scholar. He is uniquely unqualified for a college presidency. Since he took charge of New College, one-third of the faculty has resigned, faculty have been denied tenure without reason, and students have protested the decisions of the board.

He has been successful in rightwing politics.

The original New College was founded as a school for creative, free thinkers, educated by faculty who were highly credentialed. The new DeSantis board intends to turn New College into the Hilllsdale of the South.

Corcoran claims to have boosted enrollment, which he did by recruiting athletes, not aesthetes or free thinkers.

Categories Academic Freedom, Accountability, Charter Schools, Corruption, DeSantis, Education Industry, Elections, Florida, Higher Education, Vouchers

Georgia: Report Warns that Costs of Vouchers Make Them Risky

By dianeravitch
October 3, 2023 //
3

The National Education Policy Center issued a report about the likely fiscal impact of vouchers, which finds that vouchers are a risky venture with no proven benefits. NEPC is noted for its peer-reviewed reports.

An NEPC Review funded by the Great Lakes Center

Key Takeaway: Tax-credit scholarship programs probably incur more costs than savings for state and school districts, placing financial strain on state budgets and driving the need for future budget cuts.

GRAND RAPIDS, MI (September 26, 2023) – A recent report from the Georgia Department of Audits and Accounts examines the monetary costs and benefits of the state’s Qualified Education Expense Tax Credit (QEEC), a voucher policy that provides a public subsidy for families to pay for private school tuition. A review of the report, however, contradicts its claim that the policy provides a net fiscal benefit to the state budget.

David Knight of the University of Washington reviewed Qualified Education Expense Tax Credit: Economic Analysis, and he found several methodological challenges that undermine the report’s conclusions and its usefulness.

One key claim in the report is that the tax credit results in $81 million of forgone state tax revenue per year. Another key claim is that the vouchers incentivize almost 20,000 students per year to choose private schools instead of public, thus removing the cost of educating those students from state and local budgets. Based largely on these two claims, the report concludes that QEEC provides a net fiscal benefit for Georgia’s state budget.

Professor Knight points to a lack of data about how many students per year do actually switch from public to private schools because of the voucher subsidy and incentive. In fact, existing private-school families have extremely strong incentives to accept the public subsidies. And if most of the vouchers are provided to support these students who were already planning to attend a private school, then the policy only subsidizes private school students with funding that could otherwise be returned to taxpayers or invested in the state’s public education system, which is open to all students.

While these calculations are all necessarily grounded in some speculation because of the unregulated elements of the voucher policy and the resulting lack of hard data, the most likely result of tax credit scholarship programs like QEEC is that the state and school districts incur more costs than savings, placing financial strain on state budgets that could require future cuts.

Because the report relies on unrealistic assumptions, its suggestion that program benefits outweigh costs is tenuous and risks misleading state education leaders. Instead, state leaders should invest educational dollars in policies that have a positive return on investment and therefore help, rather than harm, state and local budgets.

Find the review, by David Knight, at:
https://www.greatlakescenter.org

Find Qualified Education Expense Tax Credit: Economic Analysis, written by Greg S. Griffin and Lisa Kieffer, and published by the Georgia Department of Audits and Accounts, at:
https://www.audits.ga.gov/ReportSearch/download/29827

NEPC Reviews (https://nepc.colorado.edu/reviews) provide the public, policymakers, and the press with timely, academically sound reviews of selected publications. NEPC Reviews are made possible in part by support provided by the Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice: https://www.greatlakescenter.org

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Education Industry, Funding, Georgia, Privatization, Religion, Vouchers

James Talarico: Governor Abbott Wants to Kill Our Public Schools! Don’t Let Him!

By dianeravitch
September 29, 2023 //
13

James Talarico is a former teacher who was elected to the Texas State Legislature in 2018. Republicans tried to push him out by redistricting, but he moved to another district and was handily re-elected. He is a staunch supporter of public schools and serves on the House Public Education Committee. In this tweet, he announces his collaboration with Moms Against Greg Abbott. The good MAGA works tirelessly to evict the tyrant Greg Abbott, who boasts about his cruelty and is determined to defund public education in Texas. Governor Abbott has vowed to call as many special sessions as necessary to get vouchers. Of course he must know that most vouchers will be claimed by students already enrolled in private schools. This gambit is a way he can reward his religious voters, the evangelical and Catholic voters who would like to have a public subsidy for their private school tuition.

Categories Education Reform, Privatization, School Choice, Texas, Vouchers

Who Are the Billionaire Wilks Brothers of Cisco, Texas?

By dianeravitch
September 26, 2023 //
2

Dan and Farris Wilks are politically powerful billionaires who live in Cisco, Texas. They both finished high school but went no further. They got into fracking early on and sold their oil and gas business to the government of Singapore for $3.5 billion in 2011.

They are passionate evangelical Christians. They fund Christian nationalist groups. They fund anti-gay organizations and anti-abortion groups. They consider climate change a hoax. They are major funders of voucher advocacy. They would like to see every student enrolled in a private Christian school or home-schooled.

The brothers are closely associated with ALEC and the Koch network. They are big contributors to Senator Ted Cruz.

Dan and Farris Wilks are major funders of PragerU videos, which present history and economics from a rightwing perspective, echoing the views of Dennis Prager, the talk-show host who created the videos.

Read about Dan Wilks here.

Read about Farris Wilks here.

The Wilks brothers have been described as “the Koch brothers of the Christian right” for their funding of anti-abortion and anti-LGBTgroups. In addition to a variety of groups on the Religious Right, the brothers have funded organizations associated with the Koch brothers’ political network such as the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and the State Policy Network (SPN). Farris Wilks runs The Thirteen Foundation, which has been described as “one of the biggest and quietest anti-abortion donors in the United States.”

The Guardian summarized their negative influence here.

Experts who follow the influence of the Wilks brothers say their sprawling agendas and big checks spark strong concerns.Videos denying climate science approved by Florida as state curriculum

“Farris and Dan Wilks, who believe their billions were given to them by God, have spent the last decade working to advance a dominionist ideology by funding far-right organizations and politicians that seek to dismiss climate change as ‘God’s will’, remove choice, demonize the LGBTQ community, and tear down public education, all to turn America into a country that gives preference to and imposes their extreme beliefs on everyone,” said Chris Tackett, a Texas-based campaign finance analyst.

“The goal of [the] Wilks and those that share their ideology is to gain control of levers of power and control information. That’s why they invest heavily into politicians, agenda-driven non-profits and media organizations like PragerU and the Daily Wire. It is all connected.”

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Billionaires, Censorship, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Elections, Extremism, Funding, Racism, Religion, Republicans, Vouchers

Texas: Why Ken Paxton Was Acquitted

By dianeravitch
September 26, 2023 //
3

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton was impeached by the Republican-controlled House of Representatives on multiple charges of corruption. The charges were based on statements by deputies who worked in his office and resigned. They filed whistleblower complaints. Paxton, they said, was accepting gifts and favors from a real estate investor. That individual even gave a job to Paxton’s paramour.

The judge of the trial in the Senate was Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick.

The Texas Observer reported that Dan Patrick received a gift of $1 million and a loan of $2 million from billionaires Tim Dunn and brothers Dan and Farris Wilks, who were supporting Paxton. As it happens, the biggest supporters of vouchers in Texas are Dan Patrick and those billionaires, These billionaires want to help Dan Patrick in his next campaign, which occurs in 2026.

The Wilks brothers and Dunn are rabid evangelicals who think that all children should attend religious schools.

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who is presiding over the impeachment trial of suspended Attorney General Ken Paxton, received $3 million in campaign support last month from a top group campaigning against Paxton’s impeachment.

In a campaign-finance report published Tuesday, Patrick — who is not up for reelection until 2026 — reported a $1 million contribution and a $2 million loan from Defend Texas Liberty PAC. The political action committee was by far his biggest benefactor on the report, which covered Patrick’s fundraising from June 19-30. It was the first opportunity state officials had to fundraise since the House impeached Paxton in late May.

Meanwhile, impeachment trial over, the whistleblowers said they are not quitting but will pursue Justice in the courts:

The whistleblowers who helped trigger the impeachment trial of Attorney General Ken Paxton said Monday that they will continue the legal fight against their former boss in “real court” after the state Senate chose to acquit the Republican.

“The impeachment process is over, but we are not going away,” said Blake Brickman, the former deputy attorney general for policy and strategy initiatives under Paxton.

“For us, this case has always been about more than money,” he said. “It’s about truth. It’s about justice. And although political pressure may have thwarted justice this month, we will continue our fight.”

In their first public statement since the verdict, Brickman joined fellow former deputy attorney generals Mark Penley and Ryan Vassar at a news conference at the Texas Capitol on Monday. They sued Paxton’s office in late 2020, alleging they were fired for reporting him to the FBI for alleged corruption.

The sides had reached a tentative $3.3 million settlement agreement early this year, but the deal withered when the Texas House refused to fund it and instead launched its impeachment effort. The suit is now pending before the Texas Supreme Court.

Paxton, who was reinstated as attorney general last week, did not respond to a request for comment. On Monday, his office threatened legal action against the state’s comptroller for withholding Paxton’s salary while he was suspended from office awaiting trial.

At the news conference, the whistleblowers praised senators who voted to convict Paxton for not “wilting under political pressure” and criticized Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick for publicizing his disdain for the impeachment directly after the verdict. During the historic trial, they testified that they had no other option but to report Paxton to authorities and that their careers suffered as a result.

C’mon, when the staff you hired accuses you of corruption, but the Senate acquits you, the question naturally arises: is there Justice for public corruption in Texas? Can Justice be bought by the highest bidder? Will Paxton escape accountability? And will Tucker Carlson make him a national hero for beating the rap?

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Corruption, Extremism, Religion, Texas, Vouchers

Peter Greene on Chris Rufo’s Plans to Destroy Public Education

By dianeravitch
September 24, 2023 //
22

After I first listened to Chris Rufo’s infamous speech at Hillsdale College, something clicked. I saw the plan for the demolition of public education. Rufo spelled it out. He is a proponent of universal school choice, and he says the way to reach that goal is to create universal distrust of public schools. This is why we hear blarney about public school teachers “grooming” their students and indoctrinating them. It’s all part of the plan to create “universal distrust.” It’s a plan to privatize public education by disseminating lies and defaming teachers.

Peter Greene listened to Rufo’s speech and analyzes it closely. Please read to see the master plan, the hoax about “critical race theory,” and the rightwing plot to privatize public funding for education.

And though Peter says he summarized the speech to save you time, I urge you to listen to it. It’s scary.

Categories Education Industry, Hoax, Lies, Privatization, Propaganda, School Choice, Vouchers

Josh Cowen: The Truth About Vouchers in Milwaukee

By dianeravitch
September 22, 2023 //
9

Joshua Cowen, Professor of Education Policy at Michigan State University, has been researching and writing about vouchers for yearly 20 years. As you will read, school choice advocates were very angry about his criticisms of vouchers. They told him he was wrong. George Mitchell, a founder of School Choice Wisconsin wrote a comment on this blog, highly critical of negative judgments about vouchers. Here is Josh Cowen’s response.

Author: Josh Cowen

Affiliation: Professor of Education Policy, Michigan State University

Topic: Wisconsin Voucher Results

Recently, I made comments to the Wisconsin Examiner that were highly critical of Wisconsin’s system of school vouchers. The columnist for that piece had asked me as a researcher with 18 years of experience on the topic for my professional opinion about a new School Choice Wisconsin report purporting to show that Wisconsin vouchers are more cost-effective than the state’s public schools.

In response to my comments, the director of School Choice Wisconsin issued his second op-ed in one week, slamming both me and the Examiner columnist; a researcher from the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, which like School Choice Wisconsin is heavily subsidized by the voucher-advocating Bradley Foundation in Milwaukee, issued a similar social media thread; and George Mitchell himself, the co-founder of SCW, sent me not one but two angry and unsolicited emails trying to rebut me.

Among other things, I said to the Examiner: “If you took the report at its word, it’s possible to achieve exactly what they’re describing simply by exiting the children who are the most expensive to educate.”

I make similar assessments in other states, based on the large volume of data showing that voucher programs like Wisconsin’s have huge exit rates among the lowest scoring and lowest income students. I’m used to objections from conservative activists who are for ideological reasons supportive of vouchers, but the sheer volume in this case is frankly odd and warrants extra attention.

Wisconsin is also a bit different because that’s where I got much of my start on voucher research—and that’s where some of the more troubling patterns of student exits from voucher schools first emerged. As an early career analyst on the last official evaluation of vouchers—at the time, limited to the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program between 2005 and 2010—I helped study those data.

Here’s the thing: the Bradley Foundation financially supported that larger evaluation, and School Choice Wisconsin played an integral role in participant recruitment for the study.

What we found in not one but two papers published in the top education research journals in the country was that students left Milwaukee vouchers at high rates, roughly 15% of kids per year (in other states it’s above 20%), and did so in very systematic ways: the lowest scoring kids, lowest income children (even in a program targeted to lower income families to begin with) and students of color were far more likely to experience turnover out of the voucher program.

And crucially, those students did better once turning or returning to Milwaukee Public Schools. That last finding was important because kids who gave up their voucher did not enroll at the highest rated MPS schools, but they still appeared to have been better served there than when they had used a voucher.

That pattern alone can inflate the numerator in the fraction SCW used to claim voucher cost-effectiveness. By dividing the state’s accountability score by a simplistic calculation of the revenue schools receive per kid, SCW was able to claim more voucher bang for the buck. It’s simple algebra: “cost effective” can mean either a high score for a given dollar spent, or a smaller dollar spent for a given accountability score.

And if, as in our MPCP evaluation, students who leave voucher programs are especially low scoring on state exams, that would artificially push SCW’s voucher numerator high. Again, simple algebra.

That is not a particularly controversial statement among serious program evaluators who specialize in such data without an agenda. And while I’m not surprised that as the state’s chief voucher advocacy group, SCW took issue with my data-backed comments, I am surprised they’ve spent as much time as they have issuing new columns and sending me angry emails.

Of course, one way to settle lingering questions about Wisconsin’s voucher program would be to hold another multi-year evaluation, in which groups like School Choice Wisconsin, the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, and teacher stakeholder groups came together to agree on a third-party review of these programs.

That happened in 2005 Wisconsin Act 125, which helped create the data in our team’s reports that I cite above. But it has not happened since vouchers expanded statewide. If School Choice Wisconsin is as confident in their numbers as they claim, they should welcome such a new evaluation—just like they did back in the program’s early years.

If that happened, Wisconsin taxpayers wouldn’t have to take voucher advocates’ word for it—or mine for that matter. One of the findings from the last evaluation was that once DPI started reporting voucher results by school name (like public schools have to do), their performance improved. Voucher advocates should want new evaluations—if they don’t, what are they worried those new reviews will find?

Absent a new evaluation, what we know for certain based on what’s available to the research community is that voucher programs have extremely high rates of student turnover, and these rates are driven by particularly high rates among at-risk children. In that, the data are quite consistent with the startling report issued by journalists at Wisconsin Watch in May, documenting strategies that Wisconsin voucher schools use to select children out after admitting them originally.

In Wisconsin, as in other states, there is far more state oversight on entry into choice programs than on exits—and yet we know for a fact that exits are where modern voucher programs truly choose their students.

Either way, and based on the independent data we do have, when it comes to using vouchers it’s the school’s choice, not parental choice.

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Failure, Fake News, Milwaukee, Vouchers, Wisconsin
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »