To ALEC in Texas: School Vouchers are Poppycock | Cloaking Inequity

To ALEC in Texas: School Vouchers are Poppycock | Cloaking Inequity:

To ALEC in Texas: School Vouchers are Poppycock

ALEC is meeting in Texas right now with a “shameless” agenda to privatize public education. Who is ALEC? In December 2012 Cloaking Inequity first profiled the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). ALEC is a national organization “composed of legislators, businesses and foundations” with great influence and connections to extreme think tanks and supported by funding from corporations that are seeking to drive a public policy agenda based on privatization and profit. At the time I relayed:

A recent flurry of legislation seeking to capitalize on public dollars into “parental choice” and “vouchers” were not inspired by legitimate, local, or a family “grass roots” base but from a national, well-funded effort from extreme think tanks modeled, written, and disseminated by ALEC. Diane Ravitch has extensively written on ALEC’s opinions and activities in the education sector here. Many state legislators have been provided training, technical assistance and handed the language for bills to direct the flow of public money into “parental choice.” As a consequence privatization and profit driving efforts in the education sector are growing as the public dollars are flowing. For example, see the 2012 ALEC Report on American Education. On pages 6 – 9 they summarize their successes in 2011 in regards to vouchers.

Notably, privatization and profit efforts in education have been tried elsewhere. A decade ago Chile decided that private (and non-democratic) organizations should provision schooling— education should be excluded as much as possible from a government’s budget. As a result their public system is shrinking rapidly and low-SES students are now more likely to be denied access to a high-quality education. If you are looking for model voucher legislation for privatization and profit, you have to look no further than Chile. While parental choice sounds attractive, those behind the legislative efforts for privatization are not interested in equity and social justice, despite their simple, impassioned, and convincing rhetoric otherwise. In their hands, our public system of education will continue to wither and 

To ALEC in Texas: School Vouchers are Poppycock | Cloaking Inequity: