Anti-Voucher Rally in Jersey City, Wednesday Afternoon
Opportunity! Scholarships! Action! All of these things sound awesome, and even moreso when you string them together - "Opportunity Scholarship Act" - it just rolls off the tongue, like "Madoff Investment Securities," or "House Un-American Activities Committee." Still, everyone knows that the OSA, likely to rear its zombie-vampire head once again in the lame duck, is just a marketing name for school vouchers - a famously failed scheme with over two decades of pure bleh to show for itself - a misuse of taxpayer money and violation of civil liberties done in the interest of advancing an education "solution" that has not, in over 20 years, done anything to improve student achievement. Even voucher advocates now must concede that students who receive vouchers do no better than students in regular public schools. (You can see this defeat in action as many voucher advocates now no longer sell better test scores in their pitch, instead pivoting to a promise to boost parent involvement.) You have to wonder what else voucher advocates will suggest - a new VCR for every classroom in the state?