CURMUDGUCATION: Vouchers Are About Abandoning Public Education, Not Freeing Parents

CURMUDGUCATION: Vouchers Are About Abandoning Public Education, Not Freeing Parents

Vouchers Are About Abandoning Public Education, Not Freeing Parents

As the GOP mounts a multi-state initiative to implement vouchers or super-voucher education savings accounts in many states across the country, it's becoming increasingly clear that we've been looking at the voucher movement through the wrong lens (which is to day, the lens that voucheristas have promoted). 

Vouchers are not about freeing or empowering parents. They are about empowering private interests to chomp away at the giant mountain of education money in this country. They are about dismantling any sort of oversight and accountability; it's striking how many of these voucher bills/laws very specifically forbid the state to interfere with the vendors in any way, shape or form. 

Think of voucher programs this way.

The state announces, "We are dismantling the public education system. You are on your own. You will have to shop for your child's education, piece by piece, in a marketplace bound by very little oversight and very few guardrails. In this new education ecosystem, you will have to pay your own way. To take some of the sting out of this, we'll give you a small pocketful of money to help defray expenses. Good luck."

It's not a voucher system. It's a pay your own way system. It's a you're on your own system. The voucher is not the point of the system; it's simply a small payment to keep you from noticing that you've just been cut loose.

Freedom and empowerment will come, as always, in direct proportion to the amount of money you CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: Vouchers Are About Abandoning Public Education, Not Freeing Parents

What Is at Stake when ALEC, the State Policy Network, The Buckeye Institute and EdChoice Lobby for Vouchers? | janresseger

What Is at Stake when ALEC, the State Policy Network, The Buckeye Institute and EdChoice Lobby for Vouchers? | janresseger

What Is at Stake when ALEC, the State Policy Network, The Buckeye Institute and EdChoice Lobby for Vouchers?

As we begin 2021, there has been troubling coverage about new voucher programs popping up in state legislatures. This is despite that Betsy DeVos is gone and that President Joseph Biden is a strong supporter of the institution of public schools. And in states like Indiana, and Ohio, where privatized school vouchers have been in place for decades, we can also watch pressure for their expansion.

Earlier this week, Bill Phillis, Ohio’s longest and best informed proponent of public schools and the executive director of the Ohio Coalition for Equity and Adequacy of School Funding, sent around a troubling article from the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette describing a bill being considered by the Indiana House Education Committee for the radical expansion of an already enormous publicly funded private school tuition voucher program in Indiana, Ohio’s neighbor:

“The proposed bill expands the $172 million a year voucher program to allow a family of four earning as much as $145,000 a year to qualify for vouchers. Median household income in Indiana is about $60,000 a year. The bill also eliminates income limits on the size of the voucher awards. Currently, a family of four earning up to $48,000 a year is limited to a voucher worth 90% of per-student state funding for the school corporation in which the family resides. At $60,000 a year in household income, the voucher drops to 70%. Four-person families earning up to $96,000 a year qualify for 50% of per-student funding. But HB 1005 CONTINUE READING: What Is at Stake when ALEC, the State Policy Network, The Buckeye Institute and EdChoice Lobby for Vouchers? | janresseger

Schools Matter: Part 2: Red State Governors Pick Up Where DeVos Left Off

Schools Matter: Part 2: Red State Governors Pick Up Where DeVos Left Off

Part 2: Red State Governors Pick Up Where DeVos Left Off

More than 15 years before the Trumpers arrived in DC to initiate the latest "back to basic stupidity" era in all things social, cultural, economic, and intellectual, there was another Republican, George W. Bush, who had his own particular backwards fixation, which found its way into education policy in general and K-3 reading instruction in particular. 

Following his appointment to the Presidency by the Supreme Court in December 2000, Bush's first big initiative was No Child Left Behind, and reading instruction was the centerpiece of that legislation. 

In shaping NCLB reading policy, Bush leaned heavily on NIH neuropsychologist and self-declared reading guru, Reid Lyon, who viewed learning to read "the right way" as important for neural wiring as it was for academic success.  In a 2002 speech, Lyon told a group of Maryland teachers that "[w]e have to realize that education has to take on the same importance as medicine. . . . Teachers are the best brain surgeons around, the best at developing the nervous system." 

Lyon's enthusiasm for regimented phonics instruction as the best way to hard-wire receptive, convergent learners was matched by his animosity toward professional teacher preparation and research-based methods for teaching reading that go beyond . Just two months after Lyon spoke to Maryland teachers about the importance of their craft, he said this at a national policy forum:  "If there was any piece of legislation that I could pass it would be to blow up colleges of education."

Five years later, however, Lyon was helping to launch a for-profit college of education focused on preparing reading teachers the way God and Reid Lyon intended (my bolds): 

What I learned at NIH and what guides our course development at American College of CONTINUE READING: Schools Matter: Part 2: Red State Governors Pick Up Where DeVos Left Off

Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Researcher Says Law Hiding Fiscal Effects of ‘Tax-Credit Vouchers’ from Public View Undermines Valid Analysis | National Education Policy Center

Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Researcher Says Law Hiding Fiscal Effects of ‘Tax-Credit Vouchers’ from Public View Undermines Valid Analysis | National Education Policy Center

Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Researcher Says Law Hiding Fiscal Effects of ‘Tax-Credit Vouchers’ from Public View Undermines Valid Analysis

Earlier this week, two Kennesaw State University economists wrote about their study that suggests the private school tax credit program saves Georgia money. Today, another researcher questions their conclusions and their analysis, saying they relied on flawed assumptions to buttress their case.

Kevin G. Welner is a professor of education at the University of Colorado Boulder School of Education where he chairs the Educational Foundations Policy and Practice program area. Welner co-founded and is director of the National Education Policy Center. He has written extensively on vouchers and tax credits, including the book, “NeoVouchers: The Emergence of Tuition Tax Credits for Private Schooling.”

By Kevin G. Welner

In a guest column published here Monday by Heidi Holmes Erickson and Benjamin Scafidi, the two Kennesaw State University researchers contend that Georgia’s “Qualified Education Expense (QEE) Tax Credit Scholarship Program” generates economic benefits to the state. The QEE program uses tax-credited donations to generate vouchers that fund private school tuition.

The claims made by Erickson and Scafidi are eye-catching. But, upon closer examination, their study clearly lacks sufficient data and rigor for them to reach valid conclusions. Below, I explain just three fundamental problems with the study. In doing so, I do not mean to suggest that additional problems are not also present.

Let’s begin by accepting the underlying figures from 2018 used by Erickson and Scafidi: 13,895 students received a “scholarship” (voucher). The average taxpayer cost per voucher was $3,713 per student. The state average cost per pupil in public school was $5,717.

At this point, the Erickson and Scafidi study turns to speculation: “Using a cautious approach—that 90% of these students would have enrolled in public schools if these scholarships had not been available, the analysis found it would have cost almost $105 million to educate these students in public schools” (emphasis added). This is not a cautious approach. In fact, CONTINUE READING: Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Researcher Says Law Hiding Fiscal Effects of ‘Tax-Credit Vouchers’ from Public View Undermines Valid Analysis | National Education Policy Center