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Peter Greene: The True Purpose of Vouchers!

By dianeravitch
April 29, 2023 //
9

It is well known that the idea of vouchers was launched in response to the Brown decision of 1954. Southern states wanted to avoid desegregating their schools, so they created voucher laws so that white students would not be forced to go to school with Black students. (A useful history is Steve Suitts’ Overturning Brown: The Segregationist Legacy of the Modern School Choice Movement.) Some “credit” libertarian Milton Friedman as the godfather of the voucher movement, but his 1955 essay advocating vouchers would have disappeared into the mists of time without the legislation passed across the South.

The voucher idea was stigmatized for many years because of its association with segregation. But it was revived in 1990 by a scholarly book by John Chubb and Terry Moe called Politics, Markets, and America’s Schools, in which they theorized that vouchers were actually a panacea. (Their word.)

We now know they were wrong. As multiple studies have reported, student academic performance is worse in voucher schools than in public schools. we also know that most vouchers are used by students who were already enrolled in private and religious schools, so vouchers are an expensive subsidy for families that like the subsidy but don’t need it.

So, why is there continued advocacy for vouchers? why do voucher advocates say that “all families should have the same choice as the rich” when the value of vouchers don’t pay for elite schools attended by the rich? Why are they sold as salvation for children when they are not?

Peter Greene sees a nefarious goal behind the voucher movement. He originally wrote this post two years ago, but recently reposted it because it was prescient.

The purpose of vouchers is to abandon public schools. As choice prevails, the community sees no reason to tax itself for private choices. Bond issues will lose. Parents whose children are no longer in school will not pay taxes for other people’s children. People without children will think, “that’s not my responsibility.” People will not want to pay for religious schools for those of a different faith. Schooling will become a personal responsibility, not a civic responsibility.

Peter writes:

We need to find another way to talk about vouchers.

As the GOP mounts a multi-state initiative to implement vouchers or super-voucher education savings accounts in many states across the country, it’s becoming increasingly clear that we’ve been looking at the voucher movement through the wrong lens (which is to day, the lens that voucheristas have promoted).

Vouchers are not about freeing or empowering parents. They are about empowering private interests to chomp away at the giant mountain of education money in this country. They are about dismantling any sort of oversight and accountability; it’s striking how many of these voucher bills/laws very specifically forbid the state to interfere with the vendors in any way, shape or form.

Think of voucher programs this way.

The state announces, “We are dismantling the public education system. You are on your own. You will have to shop for your child’s education, piece by piece, in a marketplace bound by very little oversight and very few guardrails. In this new education ecosystem, you will have to pay your own way. To take some of the sting out of this, we’ll give you a small pocketful of money to help defray expenses. Good luck.”

It’s not a voucher system. It’s a pay your own way system. It’s a you’re on your own system. The voucher is not the point of the system; it’s simply a small payment to keep you from noticing that you’ve just been cut loose.

Freedom and empowerment will come, as always, in direct proportion to the amount of money you have to spend.

The voucher amount will dwindle. That amount is based on what the public school system spends to educate a child, and taxpayers will shrink that amount going forward as the schools themselves shrink to holding facilities for students who can’t find a private vendor to accept them, or whose parents can’t afford what the voucher won’t cover. And remember, we’ve seen this movie before– after Brown v. Board of Education, white families in some states moved their children into private segregation academies, and then they cut public school taxes (because why keep paying taxes on the system that your child no longer used).

Vouchers are the tail, not the dog. They are the public-facing image of privatization– and not just privatization of the “delivery” of education. Voucherization is also about privatizing the responsibility for educating children, about telling parents that education is their problem, not the community’s.

We need another term for discussing this family of policies; “voucher” doesn’t begin to capture what’s truly at stake. I can imagine a world in which charter schools are a viable, even useful part of a robust pubic education system; it’s not at all the world we currently live in, but I can imagine it. But the system that voucher proponents want is absolutely incompatible with a functioning public education system. And it has nothing to do with freedom.

Categories Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Education Reform, Evil, Extremism, Inequality, Inequity, Injustice, Privatization, Propaganda, Vouchers

Texas: Why Is Governor Abbott Pitching Vouchers Only at Private Christian Schools?

By dianeravitch
April 26, 2023 //
7

The Texas Monthly asks the question: Why is Governor Greg Abbott pitching vouchers only at private Christian schools? Could it be that he knows that vouchers are a subsidy for the tuition the family is already paying? If tuition is $12,500 per child, a voucher of $8,000 is a nice chunk of change. Maybe he knows that in other states, 75-80% of vouchers are used by students already enrolled in private schools. He knows this is a reward to his evangelical base. He doesn’t give a hoot about the 5.4 students in public schools, most of whom are not white. He cares a lot about the 300,000 kids in private schools. He criticizes public schools for “indoctrinating” students. What does he think happens in religious schools? It is spelled I-N-D-O-C-T-R-I-N-A-T-I-O-N.

Who would school vouchers really benefit?

Governor Greg Abbott is helping to answer that question, not so much through his rhetoric, which is relentlessly on-message (“educational freedom,” “parental rights,” “school choice”) as through his actions. Over the last few months, the governor has been taking his case for school vouchers on the road, traveling around the state to talk up the benefits of education savings accounts, the wonky name for a program that would offer taxpayer dollars to parents who enroll their kids in private schools.

But it’s impossible not to notice that Abbott has only visited expensive private Christian institutions—all Protestant—in front of friendly audiences of parents who have opted out of public education. Of the seven schools the governor has visited on his “Parent Empowerment Tour,” not a single one has been a public school or a secular private school or a religious school affiliated with Catholicism, Islam, or Judaism. Not even a Montessori. If the goal was to reassure critics that Abbott’s embrace of vouchers wasn’t a recipe for draining the public school system while subsidizing the children of wealthy Christian conservatives in private schools of their choice, well, none of those critics were around to hear it. The governor was quite literally preaching to the choir.

A recent appearance, at Brazos Christian School in Bryan, is representative. Brazos Christian is a private school serving kids from prekindergarten through high school, whose mission is “training, equipping, and educating students to impact the world for Jesus.” Tuition costs more than $12,500 a year for high-school students. Applicants for seventh through twelfth grade at Brazos Christian “must evidence a relationship with Jesus Christ” and provide a reference from a pastor to have a shot at acceptance. When Abbott showed up in early March, he spoke at a dais emblazoned with a sign reading “Parents Matter,” the kind of focus-group-tested slogan beloved by politicians and marketers. Hovering behind the governor’s head was the school’s cross-centric emblem.

Imagine your tax dollars supporting a school that will not accept your child because he or she does not have a “relationship with Jesus Christ.”

Categories Bigotry, Curriculum, Democracy, Education Industry, Elections, Extremism, Freedom, Religion, School Choice, Separation of church and state, Texas, Vouchers

Jan Resseger: Ohio Republicans Want More Vouchers, Eroding Public Education

By dianeravitch
April 24, 2023 //
11

Jan Resseger foresees that the Republican-dominated Ohio legislature is determined to expand vouchers for private and religious schools.

They are determined to divert more money and students away from public schools despite the compelling evidence that vouchers are harmful to students, most of whom will attend schools that are lower in quality than their public school.

Jan explains why public education is essential to our democracy, not as a consumer good, but as a civic responsibility:

If you are a supporter of public education, and in your state you face proposed legislation for school vouchers, you are unlikely to convince conservative Republicans to vote against vouchers.

The issue has become purely ideological—a matter of core belief. The late political theorist Benjamin Barber almost perfectly characterizes the divide between supporters of public institutions and the radical marketplace individualists:

“Privatization is a kind of reverse social contract: it dissolves the bonds that tie us together into free communities and democratic republics. It puts us back in the state of nature where we possess a natural right to get whatever we can on our own, but at the same time lose any real ability to secure that to which we have a right. Private choices rest on individual power… personal skills… and personal luck. Public choices rest on civic rights and common responsibilities, and presume equal rights for all. Public liberty is what the power of common endeavor establishes, and hence presupposes that we have constituted ourselves as public citizens by opting into the social contract. With privatization, we are seduced back into the state of nature by the lure of private liberty and particular interest; but what we experience in the end is an environment in which the strong dominate the weak… the very dilemma which the original social contract was intended to address.” (Consumed, pp. 143-144)

Categories Democracy, Education Industry, Ohio, Religion, Research, Separation of church and state, Vouchers

TIME: How Voucher Programs Hurt Students

By dianeravitch
April 21, 2023 //
8

Joshua Cowen, Professor of Education Policy at Michigan State University, wrote the following article for TIME magazine:

In recent months, state legislatures across the country have broadened efforts to subsidize private school tuition with taxpayer dollars. New proposals for these programs—collectively called school vouchers—have appeared in more than a dozen states and passed as major priorities for Republican governors like Kim Reynolds in Iowa and Sarah Huckabee Sanders in Arkansas. Since 2021, Arizona, Florida, Utah and West Virginia have also created or expanded voucher plans. Meanwhile, a handful states like Indiana, Louisiana, Ohio and Wisconsin have run voucher programs for years. But do school vouchers actually work? We need to focus on what research shows, and what that means for kids moving forward.

As an analyst who has studied these and other forms of school choice for nearly two decades, I’m in a good position to give an answer. And based on data from existing voucher programs, the answer is almost unambiguously negative.

Let’s start with who benefits. First and foremost, the answer is: existing private school students. Small, pilot voucher programs with income limits have been around since the early 1990s, but over the last decade they have expanded to larger statewide initiatives with few if any income-eligibility requirements. Florida just passed its version of such a universal voucher program, following Arizona’s passage in the fall of 2022. In Arizona, more than 75% of initial voucher applicants had never been in public school—either because they were new kindergartners or already in private school before getting a voucher. That’s a problem because many voucher advocatesmarket these plans as ways to improve educational opportunities for public school children.

And what about the students who do leave public schools? Some plans, like the currently proposed bill in Texas, restrict eligibility to students in public school for at least one year. But for the children who do transfer using a voucher, the academic results in the recent scaled-up statewide programs are catastrophic. Although small, pilot-phase programs showed some promise two decades ago, new evaluations of vouchers in Washington, D.C.,Indiana, Louisiana, and Ohio show some of the largest test score drops ever seen in the research record—between -0.15 and -0.50 standard deviations of learning loss. That’s on par with what the COVID-19 pandemic did to test scores, and larger than Hurricane Katrina’s impacts on academics in New Orleans.

And these harmful voucher impacts from existing statewide vouchers lasted for years, with little else on balance to show for it.

What explains these extraordinarily large voucher-induced declines? Aren’t private schools supposed to be elite educational opportunities? When it comes to private schools accepting voucher payments, the answer is clearly no. That’s because elite private schools with strong academics and large endowments often decline to participate in voucher plans. Instead the typical voucher school is a financially distressed, sub-prime private provider often jumping at the chance for a tax bailout to stay open a few extra years.

In Wisconsin, 41% of voucher schools have closed since the program’s inception in 1990. And that includes the large number of pop-up schools opening just to cash in on the new voucher pay-out. For those pop-up schools, average survival time is just 4 years before their doors close for good.

Here’s another problem: for most students, using a voucher is a temporary choice to begin with. In states that have reported data on the question–Indiana, Louisiana, and Wisconsin—roughly 20% of students leave voucher programs each year, either because they give up the payment or because schools push them out. In Florida, where vouchers just expanded, that number is even higher: around 30% per year in pre-expansion data.

That kind of turnover is bad for kids, even when they’re leaving under-performing voucher schools. Not least because kids who leave voucher programs tend to be students of color, lower income children, and kids struggling academically in the first place.

And it’s not just the academic results that call into question any rhetoric around opportunities created by vouchers. Private schools can decline to admit children for any reason. One example of that is tied to the latest culture wars around LGBTQ youth, and strengthened in current voucher legislation. In Florida, a voucher-funded school made national news last summer when it banned LGBTQ children. In Indiana, pre-pandemic estimates showed that more than $16 million in taxpayer funding had already gone to voucher schools with explicit anti-LGBTQ admissions rules.

Voucher schools also rarely enroll children with special academic needs. Special education children tend to need more resources than vouchers provide, which can be a problem in public schools too. But public schools are at least obliged under federal law to enroll and assist special needs children—something private schools can and do avoid.

When we look at all the challenges to accessing education with these programs it’s clear that actually winning admission to a particular private school is not about parental school choice. It’s the school’s choice.

That is what research on school vouchers tells us. Vouchers are largely tax subsidies for existing private school families, and a tax bailout for struggling private schools. They have harmful test score impacts that persist for years, and they’re a revolving door of school enrollment. They’re public funds that support a financially desperate group of private schools, including some with active discriminatory admissions in place.

And public support for these programs is tenuous at best, highly dependent on state contexts. Recent media reports indicate that the latest voucher push is at least partly the result of well-funded campaigns led by Betsy DeVos, the conservative billionaire and U.S. Education Secretary under Donald Trump. DeVos has championed vouchers for decades as an alternative to traditional public education in what she, Trump, and other supporters call “government schools.”

But DeVos has acknowledged the poor track record for vouchers—at least when it comes to academic impacts. Asked about the dismal results of the Louisiana voucher plan while she was a public official, DeVos avoided detailed comment, but her answer back then was as good a summary as any that a voucher expert like me could provide. That program, she said, was “not very well-conceived.”

That goes for school voucher plans today, currently spreading across the country.

Categories Accountability, Civil Rights, Democracy, Education Industry, Failure, Hoax, Inequity, Privatization, School Choice, Students, Vouchers

Peter Greene: Idaho Rejects Voucher Expansion

By dianeravitch
April 17, 2023 //
6

The Idaho legislature turned down a voucher expansion that would have subsidized the tuition of rich kids. Behind the voucher defeat was a passionate network of parents determined to keep public dollars in public schools.

Peter Greene reports:

Last year, Idaho’s legislature passed a limited school voucher bill; this year school voucher supporters raised a more expansive proposal that was just defeated by Republicans.

Last year’s Empowering Parents Grant Program used $50 million of American Rescue Plan recovery money to give education vouchers to families. It limited the education savings account (ESA) vouchers to students who were already enrolled in public schools and whose families had an income equal to or less than 250% of the free or reduced lunch cut-off.

That program was established on a modest scale. This year voucher supporters proposed a larger, more universal form.

Senate Bill 1038 included no income limits and no requirements for previously attending public school. In other words, a wealthy family who had always enrolled their children in private school or home school would get $6,000 of taxpayer money, and that money would be pulled from the funding for schools that the students had never attended in the first place; the school’s funding would be reduced, but their operating costs would not.

Like most of the current boilerplate ESA bills, it not only failed to provide for oversight for those funds, but actively barred the state from exercising any oversight or authority over the education providers.

There was a huge price tag involved. While the bill’s sponsors estimated a $45 million price tag for the first year, other estimates suggested that the programwould quickly balloon to over $360 million. That expansion would match the experience of other states like New Hampshire, where the predicted cost of the program quickly grew by 5,800%.

As Senator C, Scott Grow (R-Eagle) put it, “I have absolutely no clue what the dollar amount on this is.”

It’s a huge amount of taxpayer money to be taken out of the public school system and distributed without oversight or accountability, and while conservative lawmakers in some states have not balked at that issue, some Idaho GOP members were not having it. Reported the Idaho Statesman:

“It’s actually against my conservative, Republican perspective to hand this money out with no accountability that these precious tax dollars are being used wisely,” said Sen. Dave Lent, R-Idaho Falls…

Three more voucher bills also failed.

Two GOP representatives, Greg Lanting and Lorei McCann, explained their no votes:

McCann and Lanting both said for every email supporting ESA legislation, they receive five opposing it. Lanting represents the same district as Clow.Rep. Mark Sauter, R-Sandpoint, said voting for the legislation would be equivalent to voting against his constituency.

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Idaho, Parents, Privatization, Resistance, Vouchers

Report: The Fiscal Consequences of Private School Vouchers

By dianeravitch
April 13, 2023 //
8

Samuel E. Abrams and Steven J. Koutsavlis wrote a fiscal analysis of private school vouchers, and it comes as several states have enacted new voucher programs without any realistic review of the financial consequences for their states. It is typical of voucher proponents to give a low-ball projection of the cost, then to say “Oops, sorry” when the actual cost is two or three times their projection. Whatever the limits or caps in the first legislation, you can be sure that those limits and caps will be lifted or erased in future legislative sessions.

Samuel E. Abrams is the director of the National Center for the Study of Privatization in Education, Teachers College, Columbia University, and the author of Education and the Commercial Mindset (Harvard University Press, 2016). He is serving during the current academic year as a Fulbright visiting professor at the University of Turku in Finland. Steven J. Koutsavlis is a Ph.D. candidate in education policy at Teachers College, Columbia University, and a veteran math teacher at MS 443 in Brooklyn.

In their analysis, they explain the three different types of vouchers: conventional vouchers; tax credit scholarship programs; and educational savings account vouchers.

They explain the dangers of these three types of vouchers:

The prevalence of all three types of vouchers described above has surged over the past decade. The number of students using vouchers in the fall of 2012 was 212,000.12 By 2021, that number had topped 600,000.13 While that sum in a country with nearly 50 million students in public PK-12 schools is small,14 the trend is significant. Indeed, although dozens of voucher proposals are rejected by state legislators and governors each year, many states continue to estab- lish or expand these programs, despite their consequences for
state budgets.15


With this growth come mounting concerns. As noted, voucher programs—of any type—send public dollars to private schools or companies, depleting the public treasury and shifting public resourc- es to private hands. The programs are expensive to operate, with studies showing they typically cost more per student than public schools.16 And many of the nation’s public schools remain chronically underfunded although they serve the vast majority of the nation’s children.17

States can ill afford to siphon scarce resources away from public education to private providers.
The claim that it costs less to educate students with private school vouchers than in public schools ignores numerous realities. Voucher programs shift key expenses to parents; often subsidize private tuition for families who would never have enrolled in public schools; do not dilute fixed costs for public education systems; and concen- trate higher-need, more-costly-to-educate students in already-un- derfunded public schools.18

As noted above, early voucher programs were explicitly discriminatory—providing white families with educational opportunities unavailable to Black children with the explicit intent to preserve segregation. Still today, data show that voucher programs exacerbate racial segregation.19 Moreover, private schools accepting vouchers are not subject to many of the anti-discrimination laws that protect students with disabilities, LGBTQ+ students, and other vulnerable groups, who may—sometimes unknowingly—give up their rights when they move to private schools.20 While public schools are required to serve all children, many private schools have a history of denying admission or pushing students out based on these and other characteristics. These discriminatory practices often apply to educators and staff, as well.

Private schools participating in voucher programs are generally not subject to the same regulatory standards as public schools. These may include standards for licensing of teachers, criminal background checks for employees, curriculum requirements, building safety codes, and more.21 Most states do not require private schools partici- pating in voucher programs to publicly report the results of state and national tests. Nor do they require public reporting of demographic data on participating students.22 A lack of fiscal transparency and oversight has resulted in incidents of fraud and mismanagement
of public funds, as documented in several states.23

Separate and apart from these troubling issues, numerous studies have failed to demonstrate that vouchers improve academic outcomes, particularly for low-income students and students of color. A range of studies on academic outcomes for students using vouchers have found that there is either no significant change in student test scores or that students actually perform worse than similar peers in public schools.24

The authors review the costs of vouchers in seven states.

They reach the following conclusions:

The pattern of education spending in these seven voucher states is unmistakable. Private school voucher programs are initially proposed as limited in size and scope, then grow as existing programs are expanded, and/or additional voucher programs are established. This results in greater and greater amounts of public funding diverted to private educational institutions and private corporations. At the same time, as noted, funding for public schools in these states has largely decreased.
Although direct cause and effect is difficult to prove, the bottom line is clear: As states transfer millions of dollars to private hands, there are fewer available state resources for projects that serve the public good, from mass transit to public parks, libraries, and schools.

Voucher programs, even with significant expansion during the last one to two decades, still serve only a small percentage of the nation’s children.82 Nearly 90 percent of PK-12 students in the U.S. continue to attend public schools. Yet this expansion in voucher programs is nevertheless cause for substantial concern, particularly in districts with heavy usage of vouchers. The financial consequences of vouch- ers in such districts can be severe. Even when students with vouchers leave public schools for private schools, the fixed costs involved in running public school systems remain virtually unchanged. In addition, the children with the greatest needs, who, in turn, require the greatest resources, in large part remain in the public schools.

In most states, public elementary and secondary education accounts for over a third of state general fund spending. Public schools were hit particularly hard by the 2007 Great Recession. Amidst the economic crisis, states made deep cuts in public education spending. Yet, as economies rebounded over the ensuing years, most states chose not to restore those investments. Education Law Center’s 2021 report $600 Billion Lost: State Disinvestment in Education Following the Great Recession found that public schools across the U.S. lost nearly $600 billion through state disinvestment in the decade following
the Great Recession.25 While economic activity, measured as gross domestic product (GDP), recovered, state and local revenues for public schools lagged far behind, despite increasing enrollment and, importantly, increases in the percentage of high-need students concentrated in public schools.26Over that same decade, state spending on vouchers nevertheless mounted considerably. In some states, spending on vouchers doubled during this time, and in the case of Georgia—one of the states profiled here—it increased by nearly 900 percent. Beyond expanding existing voucher programs, many states launched new ones.

In this report, we document rising spending on voucher programs in seven states from fiscal year 2008 through fiscal year 2019. As a point of comparison, we also provide data on these states’ spending on public education during the same period.

Over that same decade, state spending on vouchers nevertheless mounted considerably. In some states, spending on vouchers doubled during this time, and in the case of Georgia—one of the states profiled here—it increased by nearly 900 percent. Beyond expanding existing voucher programs, many states launched new ones.

This is an important study. Open the link and review the data. Then share it with your elected officials.


Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Funding, Privatization, Vouchers

“School Choice” Will Destroy Public Schools

By dianeravitch
April 12, 2023 //
51

A reader who identifies as “Retired Teacher” sees the school choice juggernaut as a deliberate plan to destroy our common good: public schools. Thomas Jefferson proposed the first public schools. The Northwest Ordinances, written by the founding fathers, set aside a plot of land in every town for a public school.

The origin of the school choice movement was the backlash to the Brown Decision of 1954. Segregationists created publicly-funded academies (charters) for white flight and publicly-funded vouchers to escape desegregation.

What replaces public schools will not be better for students, and it will be far worse for our society.

So much reckless “choice” will make the public schools the schools of last resort for those that have nowhere else to go. Choice is a means to defund what should be our common good. How are the schools supposed to fund the neediest, most vulnerable and most expensive students when so much funding is transferred to private interests? How will public schools be able to pay to maintain the buildings, hire qualified teachers and pay for all the fixed costs like insurance, transportation and utilities?

The billionaires and religious groups behind so-called choice would like to see public schools collapse. Choice benefits the ultra-wealthy and segregationists. Choice empowers the schools that do the choosing, not the families trying to find a school for their child. If public schools become the bottom tier of choice, they will become like the insane asylums of the 19th century where the unfortunate were warehoused, ignored and abused. This dystopian outcome would be the opposite of what the founding fathers envisioned. Their vision was one of inclusion where all are welcome, a place serves the interests of the nation, communities and individuals with civil, social and individual benefits. A tiered system of schools is neither ‘thorough or efficient.’ It is a nightmare, and nothing any proponents of democracy should be supporting.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Bigotry, Charter Schools, Community Schools, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Extremism, For-Profit, Funding, History, Hoax, Privatization, Racism, Religion, School Choice, Segregation, Separation of church and state, Supporting public schools, Vouchers

John Thompson: Which Brand of Republican Will Prevail in Oklahoma?

By dianeravitch
April 12, 2023 //
14

John Thompson, historian and retired teacher in Oklahoma, analyzes the behind-the-scenes infighting between extremist MAGA Republicans and traditional conservatives, who don’t use inflammatory rhetoric and prefer to know the cost of new programs before they pass them.

He writes:

Across the nation, voters are following the battles between former-President Donald Trump and Governor Ron DeSantis. There is no way to know how that conflict between extremist Republicans will play out, but I find it hard to believe it won’t damage their party’s chances in 2024. Even in Oklahoma, Trump’s unfavorable rating has grown to 47%, and conflicts between conservatives and MAGAs are becoming more public.

And as Oklahoma Republicans, such as State Superintendent Ryan Walters, Governor Kevin Stitt, and House Speaker Charles McCall, ramp up their irrational, inflammatory rhetoric, there seems to be both a growing behind-the-scenes and public responses by some traditionally conservative Republicans against the far right. This post will focus on two issues where it seems like the Republican leader of the Senate, Greg Treat is pushing back on the MAGAs.

To understand these disputes, however, a confusing aspect of the Oklahoma constitutional system must be understood. Oklahoma has two statewide education leadership positions; the Secretary of Education is appointed by the governor and confirmed by the Senate, and the Superintendent of Public Instruction, who is elected by the people.

The Oklahoman now reports on a behind-the-scenes issue that could be an important response to Walters. Walters was first appointed as Secretary of Education by Gov. Stitt, and was quickly confirmed by the Senate. Walters was then elected to the State Superintendent office, and reappointed by Stitt as Secretary of Education.

This time, however, there is no movement towards his reconfirmation to that position. The Oklahoman explains, “Walters is still waiting, and it there has been little or no work done to shepherd his nomination through the Senate, even though his previous term expired on Jan. 9.” It adds that the job is mostly to advise the governor and has “few legal responsibilities.” However, the confirmation delay “highlights the ongoing political conflict between the executive and legislative branches of Oklahoma’s government.”

Given the pushback by some influential Republicans against Walters’ bizarre rhetoric and overreach (not to mention his misuse of federal funds), the lack of movement toward confirming Walters is not good news for Walters and his rightwing allies. Whether or not Walters loses his Secretary of Education position is obviously unknown. It might just be a threat serving as a “bargaining chip” for advancing the Senate agenda, as opposed to the Walters’ and the Speaker of the Houses’ extremism. But, either way, the MAGAs’ agenda is threatened by such publicity.

Moreover, this happened as Walters, as the Tulsa World reported, emailed all legislators “images and text [that] depict gay sex and ambiguously gendered bodies. The email provides no context to the images.” The World also reported, “Some of those receiving the emails said Walters quickly tried to ‘unsend,’ or retrieve them.” Walters was invited to the Appropriations and Budget Subcommittee on Education to provide evidence for the email’s claims but he didn’t respond. Instead, as the Oklahoman reported, he sent “lawmakers a list of four books he deemed “pornographic,” four more ‘books in the marketplace to monitor’ and 190 children’s books focused on LGBTQ+ themes.” School system leaders denied Walters’ claims about four pornographic books that allegedly were in their schools. These continuing behaviors have made Walters more vulnerable.

Also during the week, Speaker Charles McCall, who apparently hopes to run for governor, doubled down on outrageous demands and claims against the Senate Republican leadership. Previously he demanded that the vote for his education funding bill, including vouchers (called tax credits), be passed without amendments, which the Senate refused to do. So when the Senate defied McCall and Gov. Stitt by putting an income cap of $250,000 on families for school choice tax credits, McCall called it “class warfare.” Sen. Treat replied, “The speaker seems to be intent on torpedoing meaningful education reform… It is unfortunate and I hope he comes to his senses.”

Then, illustrating the depth of the conflict between the Senate and House leaders, the Speaker’s office made the bizarre claim that under the Senate’s $285 million a year plan, “The Senate amendments to House Bill 2775 would only require public school districts following the state minimum salary schedule to give full teacher pay raises, neglecting over 43,000 teachers in over 400 districts.” (Oklahoma has around 45,000 teachers) Sen. Treat’s office replied “that every teacher in the state would get a pay bump based off years of service,” and that “The speaker is operating in a fantasy land.” Again, these behaviors are making the MAGAs more vulnerable.

And that leads to the second major story which seems to represent the best pushback by the Senate leadership against the behaviors of rightwing ideologues. As I explained previously,the Oklahoman’s Ben Felder reported, despite a $700 million incentive, Volkswagen chose to invest in Canada with its “strong ESG (environmental, social and governance) practices,” rather than Oklahoma where Gov. Stitt had said, “don’t expect support from us unless you reject ESG.”

I must stress that counter-attacks by conservative, pro-voucher Republicans are not an answer to continuing assaults on public education, and neither can we merely trust pro-corporate Republicans’ call for rethinking the reasons why corporations reject Oklahoma’s subsidies for investing here. But, Senate Pro Tem Treat and many or most Republican legislators must understand that such extreme rhetoric is making it harder to attract corporations that invest in Oklahoma.

Sen.Treat formed a panel to study why Volkswagen and Panasonic rejected subsidies up to $700 million, and he cited the lessons of recent history. After United Airlines rejected incentives for investing in Oklahoma City because it lacked the cultural institutions that its employees would want, in the early 1990s the city made a plan, raised taxes, and invested in social and educational institutions.

While I praise Treat’s initiative, I’ve wondered whether his predominantly Republican effort would be transparent and open-minded. I have been urging the panel members I know to listen to the leaders who succeeded in transforming Oklahoma City. Number 1 on my list has been Cliff Hudson who led the bipartisan MAPS for Kids which saved the Oklahoma City Public School System from collapsing. I have never participated in a greater, evidence-based process which truly listened to researchers, educators, students, parents, and the community. So, I was thrilled to see Hudson’s guest editorial in the Oklahoman.

Hudson explained that “many business leaders who aren’t from here” understand that “Oklahoma is committed to providing competitive financial incentives and that our tax policies are considered pro-business.” But, Hudson notes, “they also hear the hateful rhetoric that can make people feel unwelcome, either because of their gender, their religion, their skin color or their orientation.”

Hudson knows that “Oklahomans are, overall, kind, welcoming and loving.” But he rejects “the negative voices … [that make] things harder for all of us.” It “means fewer companies will want to bring their jobs here. It means the best and brightest may choose not move here — or that they grow up here and leave as soon as they can.” So, “we miss out on great executives, exciting creatives and dedicated medical professionals when we don’t make clear that everyone is valued and welcomed in Oklahoma.”

In other words, especially if Republican leaders listen to Hudson and others who transformed the Oklahoma City (and Tulsa) metropolitan areas, we can build on our strengths. But first, I believe, they must reject these hate-filled MAGAs and learn from our history, and the values we once praised as “the Oklahoma Standard.” And at some point, traditional conservatives, as is true across the nation, must explicitly condemn the rightwingers who are spreading hate, and threatening our democracy and its norms.

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Extremism, Oklahoma, Vouchers

Texas: House of Representatives Says “No” to Vouchers

By dianeravitch
April 7, 2023 //
14

Governor Gregg Abbott has said repeatedly that vouchers was a high priority for him. He has traveled the state, visiting private schools, to promote them. His party controls both houses of the legislature. Voucher legislation passed in the Senate. Yesterday, the House of Representatives passed a bill barring vouchers by 86-52.

Edward McKinley of The Houston Chronicle reported:

The Texas House voted Thursday to restrict public funds from subsidizing private education, a major rebuke of Gov. Greg Abbott and the state Senate, which was expected to pass a so-called voucher program later in the day.

Although past efforts have fallen short in the House, voucher programs have received more support this year than ever before. Gov. Greg Abbott named them a priority in his State of the State address earlier this year, and he has toured the state calling for enaction. Abbott argues that parents are currently deprived of options for their children’s education, and he also says that public schools have become tools for progressive indoctrination.

The margin on Tuesday was 86 to 52. House Public Education Chair Brad Buckley, R-Killeen, attempted to prevent the chamber from voting on the measure at all, saying it was inappropriate considering that his committee plans to hold public hearings for several voucher policies next week.

“This process with this amendment turns things really in the wrong direction. It is the proverbial cart before the horse,” he said. In past sessions, Buckley has voted for the same amendment. If Buckley had been successful, it would have allowed the House to avoid any provocation of the governor or lieutenant governor.

Buckley’s effort failed by a seven-vote margin, with about a dozen Republicans joining the Democrats to stop it.

The House’s measure still needs approval from the Senate and from Abbott, and members could still decide to ultimately approve a voucher program later this session – but it proves there’s not a strong desire in the House to go on-record as supporting vouchers.

“These are public funds for public schools, as outlined and stated specifically in the Texas Constitution,” said Rep. Abel Herrero, a Robstown Democrat and the author of the amendment calling for the ban. Herrero has offered the same amendment in past sessions, where it has often won more than 100 votes.

In past years, the Herrero amendment has been opposed by the state Senate and ultimately stripped out during negotiations between the two chambers.

edward.mckinley@houstonchronicle.com

Categories Education Industry, Privatization, Religion, Separation of church and state, Texas, Vouchers

Stuart Egan: Betrayal in North Carolina!

By dianeravitch
April 7, 2023 //
4

Stuart Egan teaches in North Carolina and blogs about the state’s politics. North Carolina has a Democratic Governor, Roy Cooper, but Republicans control both houses of the General Assembly. In the State Senate, they were one vote shy of a super-majority. And then—BOOM—a Democratic legislator switched parties, giving Republicans a super-majority, meaning they can override any vetoes by Governor Cooper.

Egan writes about the defector, Tricia Cotham, here and here.

Cotham was a teacher of the year. Her family was long involved in Democratic politics. She campaigned as a Democrat. She said she supported abortion rights. She said she was a strong supporter of public schools.

Yet now she has joined a party that is determined to ban abortion. That has spent the past dozen years attacking public schools, demonizing teachers, and introducing charter schools and vouchers.

Egan wrote in his open letter to Cotham:

Five previous terms in the NC General Assembly before running on a 2022 platform of pro-public education, pro-choice, and protections for all North Carolinians that got you elected in a heavily blue district and you…sold out.

And before you talk about that “well I had to go with my heart and my convictions” excuse, the very things you said you would champion on your campaign website just months ago seem not to be important any longer.

Many of us remember what you said on that campaign website. You seem to want to forget about it. In fact, just today that same website which talked about your “priorities” after five previous terms terms was gone. Erased.

Just like your integrity.

In an interview concerning the switch with abc11.com, you stated:

“The party wants to villainize anyone who has free thought, free judgement, has solutions and wants to get to work to better our state. Not just sit in a meeting and have a workshop after a workshop, but really work with individuals to get things done. Because that is what real public servants do. If you don’t do exactly what the Democrats want you to do they will try to bully you. They will try to cast you aside.”

Did you see whom you were standing with when you made your switch from those “bullies” to the NCGOP?

Ma’am, you just went to a party that is run by two people who happen to be right next to you: Sen. Phil Berger and Rep. Tim Moore. If you do not do what those two expect of you, then you don’t remain in Raleigh.

And you know that. You’ve been in the NC General Assembly long enough to know that you must “toe the line” with that party to remain in that party. You know exactly what is expected of you now.

You now become the vote that almost ensures that another 1.5 billion dollars goes to unproven school choice “reforms” that take more money away from traditional public schools. Remember your tenure as an educator in public schools? Sure you do. It was on your website before you erased it.

Tricia Cotham has betrayed her voters and her profession. She should be ashamed of herself.

Categories Accountability, Character, Charter Schools, Democrats, Education Industry, Elections, Hypocrisy, Lies, North Carolina, Privatization, Republicans, Vouchers
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