Jersey Jazzman: School Choice Week's Alternative Facts

Jersey Jazzman: School Choice Week's Alternative Facts:

School Choice Week's Alternative Facts

Hey, look who it is: Rebecca Friedrichs, the anti-labor right's favorite teacher! Last time we saw Friedrichs she was merrily leading the fight to destroy teachers unions by overturning almost four decades of judicial precedent and insisting on her right to freeload off of dues-paying teachers union members.

Fredrichs' arguments against agency fees never made any sense, but she never, at least as far as I read, made up statistics to bolster her point of view. Alas, she's now spending her time promoting school vouchers, likely in anticipation of the DeVos privatization parade that's marching into Washington.*

And she's engaging in statistical malpractice of the worst order to sell school voucher schemes.

Here's a slick little video from the folks at PragerU featuring Friedrichs, where she explains that students who use school vouchers -- which allow families to use taxpayer monies to pay private school tuition, including religious schools -- get better academic results than if they attended their local public school.

According to researchers at the University of Arkansas – in the most comprehensive study done to date -- students in school choice programs saw their reading and math scores improve by 27 percent and 15 percent, respectively.

Sounds like something we should get behind, doesn’t it? But for millions of families in my home state of California and in many others, school choice is not a choice. [emphasis mine]

These numbers are alternative facts -- Friedrichs and the people who made Jersey Jazzman: School Choice Week's Alternative Facts: