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Monday, April 5, 2021

Cameron Vickrey: What’s the End Game with School Choice in Texas? | Diane Ravitch's blog

Cameron Vickrey: What’s the End Game with School Choice in Texas? | Diane Ravitch's blog
Cameron Vickrey: What’s the End Game with School Choice in Texas?




Cameron Vickrey is associate director of Pastors for Texas Children. In this opinion article published in the San Antonio Express-News, she asks the important question: What’s the end game with the privatization push? Texas has 5 million children in public schools, and about 356,000 in charter schools. The drive for vouchers has been blocked thus far by parents, the Pastors, and a legislative combination of rural Republicans and urban Democrats. But Texas is now ground zero for the charter lobby. Why? Betsy DeVos is one reason: As U.S. Secretary of Education, she poured hundreds of millions of dollars from the federal Charter School Program into corporate chains in Texas, such as IDEA and KIPP. And, Texas has its own home-grown billionaires and libertarians eager to destroy the public schools.

She writes:

Let’s have a serious conversation about the purpose of school choice.

A recent Senate Committee on Education hearing in the Texas Legislature revealed a fundamental divergence in CONTINUE READING: Cameron Vickrey: What’s the End Game with School Choice in Texas? | Diane Ravitch's blog