Fewer and Fewer States Escaping School Privatization’s Reach
According to a 2017 national poll, a strong majority of public school parents give the traditional public schools in their neighborhoods either an A or a B – higher grades than they have given in years. The same survey also found that the majority of the public believes that lack of funding is the biggest problem facing schools today.
While creating and supporting great public schools should be the focus of lawmakers across the country, the reality is quite different. The commitment in state legislatures to the “great equalizer” that is public education has eroded quite dramatically.
That is the sobering conclusion of a recent report released by the Network for Public Education and the Schott Foundation titled “Grading the States: A Report Card on the Nation’s Commitment to Public Schools.”
While creating and supporting great public schools should be the focus of lawmakers across the country, the reality is quite different. The commitment in state legislatures to the “great equalizer” that is public education has eroded quite dramatically.
That is the sobering conclusion of a recent report released by the Network for Public Education and the Schott Foundation titled “Grading the States: A Report Card on the Nation’s Commitment to Public Schools.”
“Grading the States” examines the far reach of the school privatization movement and its impact on public schools and students. Across the nation, states have implemented and expanded charter schools that are unaccountable to the public and voucher programs that have siphoned off public taxpayer money to pay for private school tuition.
The proponents of these policies and the corporate interests that bankroll them insist their goal is to improve the quality of education – a dubious claim, the report states, “in the face of the reality that too often there is little to no public accountability, fiscal transparency, or maintenance of civil rights protections for students in privatized programs.”
Private schools and charters are not designed to serve all students, but this hasn’t stopped these programs from establishing a strong foothold in communities across the country. Every state except three have charter schools and 28 states have in place some sort of school voucher program. The trend – which shows little sign of letting up – has sown exclusivity and division into the educational system and depleted public schools of valuable resources.
“Although parents always have a right to send their children to private schools at their own expense,” the report states, “they are not and never can be the model for educating all of this nation’s children, nor should they be supported by public dollars.”
The State Report Card
The researchers assigned all 50 states and the District of Columbia with a letter grade, deducting points based on the presence of charter schools and voucher or “neo-voucher” programs (merely voucher programs tweaked to circumvent legal restrictions against giving public money to private schools through tuition tax credits and education savings accounts.)
Twenty-two states received overall grades between a C and a B+. Six states and the Continue reading: Fewer and Fewer States Escaping School Privatization's Reach
