School Choice and Charter Proponents Target Public Education in Key States |

School Choice and Charter Proponents Target Public Education in Key States |

School Choice and Charter Proponents Target Public Education in Key States

But teachers and their allies are fighting back in Arizona, Kentucky and elsewhere.

Three years ago in West Virginia, roughly 20,000 educators went on strike and shut down public schools across the state, protesting low pay and high health care costs. Their historic nine-day labor stoppage led to a 5% pay increase for teachers and school service personnel. Inspired by the success in West Virginia, strikes in states including Oklahoma, Colorado and California soon followed.

The uprising sparked a wave of national attention, and the future of teacher organizing seemed more promising than it had in years. Their movement even had a name: “Red for Ed” — which referenced the red clothing educators and their allies wore each time they took to the streets for public schools. A year later, West Virginia educators walked off the job again in an effort to defeat a bill permitting charter schools to operate in their state. This time their success was more limited; teachers watered down the legislation, but lawmakers still rammed a version through in a special session, authorizing three charters to open by July 2023, with potential for more after that.

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Today, it’s school choice advocates who feel they have the momentum. Since the start of the year, two states that helped launch the national teacher uprising in 2018 — West Virginia and Kentucky — have passed some of the most expansive school choice policies in the country. And public education advocates in a third pivotal “Red for Ed” state, Arizona, have been fighting CONTINUE READING: School Choice and Charter Proponents Target Public Education in Key States |

Texas: Vouchers Lose Again! | Diane Ravitch's blog

Texas: Vouchers Lose Again! | Diane Ravitch's blog

Texas: Vouchers Lose Again!

Our friends in Texas, Pastors for Texas Children, report that a legislative proposal for vouchers was beaten again! They work closely with parent groups across the state.

PASTORS FOR TEXAS CHILDREN

VOUCHER REMOVED FROM BILL!

This week is evidence of what happens when you rally your voices in support of our children. If you remember, we started off the week letting you know that SB 1716 was coming before the House Public Education Committee without a public hearing. The bill was a special education voucher program that had no companion in the House, meaning the Public Education Committee had not heard testimony on this subject this session.

You raised your voice against the committee’s plans not CONTINUE READING: Texas: Vouchers Lose Again! | Diane Ravitch's blog

North Carolina: Voucher Zealots Want to Destroy Public Schools | Diane Ravitch's blog

North Carolina: Voucher Zealots Want to Destroy Public Schools | Diane Ravitch's blog

North Carolina: Voucher Zealots Want to Destroy Public Schools

The editorial board of the News & Observer, the state’s largest newspaper sharply criticized the Republicans in the General Assembly for rushing to expand the state’s voucher program. They plan to raise the income requirement so that many more families are eligible, and they expect to increase the size of the voucher.

Senate leader Phil Berger peddles the same lie that Betsy DeVos so often spewed: that the voucher program would give poor families the same educational opportunities as affluent families.

The current size of the voucher is $4,200. Even if that is increased by $1,650, as proposed, it will still be far less than the tuition at a first-rate private school.

The editorial board writes:

Senate leader Phil Berger has long described the school voucher program he pushed through in 2013 as a way to enable poor families to afford private school tuition. Now that claim is being dropped in favor of offering vouchers to families earning well over the state’s median income.

At a 2019 news conference, Berger, an Eden Republican, CONTINUE READING: North Carolina: Voucher Zealots Want to Destroy Public Schools | Diane Ravitch's blog

Lots of State Legislatures Are Launching New or Expanding Older School Voucher Programs | janresseger

Lots of State Legislatures Are Launching New or Expanding Older School Voucher Programs | janresseger

Lots of State Legislatures Are Launching New or Expanding Older School Voucher Programs

There is sadly no mystery about the damage befalling public schools when private school tuition vouchers are expanded: Vouchers suck millions of essential dollars out of state and local public school budgets. Usually state legislatures start with a small program and then, several years later, explode the number of students eligible and the size of each voucher. Even though we know that aggregate standardized test scores reflect primarily a school district’s economic level and are a flawed measure of school quality, voucher proponents regularly market their new product as an escape for the poorest children from so-called “failing” schools.

Vouchers originally started in two of the nation’s school districts that serve concentrations of poor children: Milwaukee and Cleveland. But in 2021, we are watching a new phase of nationwide growth and expansion of vouchers.

In 2017, economist Gordon Lafer explained: “From 2011 to 2015, eighteen states established some form of voucher program. Vouchers are typically introduced as a limited, targeted intervention aimed at helping the neediest families but then expanded gradually to cover the general population. The country’s oldest voucher program was established in Milwaukee in 1990 and was restricted to poor children in failing schools and capped at a limited number of participants. In 2011, Governor Walker removed the cap, raised the income eligibility threshold, and expanded the program to include students in suburban counties. In 2013 the program was expanded yet again, this time to cover the entire state. Indiana and Ohio were CONTINUE READING: Lots of State Legislatures Are Launching New or Expanding Older School Voucher Programs | janresseger

Ohio Legislature Heats Up Controversy by Making New Public School Funding Plan and Method of Funding School Vouchers All Part of the Budget | janresseger

Ohio Legislature Heats Up Controversy by Making New Public School Funding Plan and Method of Funding School Vouchers All Part of the Budget | janresseger

Ohio Legislature Heats Up Controversy by Making New Public School Funding Plan and Method of Funding School Vouchers All Part of the Budget

This week in my school district in Cleveland Heights-University Heights, Ohio, parents and public school supporters are going through a quiet ritual. People have been scrambling to write and submit legislative testimony. Some people are submitting written testimony; others are driving two and a half hours to Columbus, sitting in the hearing room and driving home in the dark. The Ohio Senate Primary and Secondary Education Committee is holding hearings on the state’s next biennial budget and considering a new—desperately needed—school funding plan that has now been folded into the budget bill, which must be passed by June 30.

What is happening is a big deal.  Last fall, a new $2 billion school funding plan was passed by the Ohio House by a vote of 87-9, but the Ohio Senate let the bill die at the end of the session. Now that plan has been folded into the state budget. The House has already passed the budget—including the Fair School Funding Plan—but the Senate is just now holding hearings. If you read some of the testimony being submitted, you might imagine what’s going on in Ohio would get coverage in the state’s big newspapers, but most of them have been bought out by Gannett-Gatehouse Media or Advance Media, companies that have reduced the number of reporters.  Right now not enough people are paying attention to a debate about whether the Legislature will repair the services our state is currently failing to provide for 1.6 million students in Ohio’s 610 public school districts at the same time the state continues to expand school vouchers at public schools’ expense.

I am going to share some of my own testimony and the testimony from others who are members of the Heights Coalition for Public Education. You can find copies of each of these documents in the Ohio Senate Education Committee’s document archive for May 4, 5, and 6.  I will date each reference.

My own testimony (May 6) summarizes the issues at stake in this particular Ohio budget CONTINUE READING: Ohio Legislature Heats Up Controversy by Making New Public School Funding Plan and Method of Funding School Vouchers All Part of the Budget | janresseger

Toolkit: School Privatization Explained - Network For Public Education

Toolkit: School Privatization Explained - Network For Public Education

Toolkit: School Privatization Explained

The Network for Public Education Toolkit: School Privatization Explained was first created in 2017 to alert the general public regarding the various forms that privatization takes and the consequences associated with each. We’ve updated the toolkit to ensure the information is up-to-date. This toolkit presents evidence of what we already know about charters, vouchers and other forms of privatization. It is organized around key questions, providing answers in clear language to the questions we at NPE are most often asked.

Each dropdown below contains a link to a pdf that we hope you will read, share and download.

Charter Schools

CONTINUE READING: Toolkit: School Privatization Explained - Network For Public Education

Missouri Times: Stop the Demolition of Public Schools: They Belong to the Public | Diane Ravitch's blog

Missouri Times: Stop the Demolition of Public Schools: They Belong to the Public | Diane Ravitch's blog

Missouri Times: Stop the Demolition of Public Schools: They Belong to the Public

The Misssouri Times is a generally right of center newspaper, But it believes in the promise of public schools and recognizes that the latest push for charters and vouchers is rank privatization funded by wealthy elites. After thirty years of pouring billions into charters and vouchers, there is no reason to believe that privatized schools produce better outcomes. We know they don’t.

Opinion: Public Schools are Public Goods

BY TERESA MITHEN DANIELEY ON APRIL 26, 2021

As the parent of three children enrolled in St. LouisPublic Schools, I am deeply dismayed that so many in the Missouri House — including some Democrats — voted in favor of HB 137, which will shift up to $17 million dollars a year from traditional public schools (specifically SLPS) to charter schools, which will not be required to provide the same services as public schools. We must make sure that HB 137 dies in the Senate.

I am also deeply concerned about the statewide ramifications of SB 55, an omnibus bill with many different privatizing provisions — including the Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) Program (aka vouchers), Charter School Funding modifications, establishing a Charter School Revolving Commission Fund to fund new charters, and changing provisions CONTINUE READING: Missouri Times: Stop the Demolition of Public Schools: They Belong to the Public | Diane Ravitch's blog

"Capacity-ism:" Florida spends $1 Billion per year on a fraudulent voucher marketplace that has created zero private education capacity. A documentary. - Public Enemy Number 1

"Capacity-ism:" Florida spends $1 Billion per year on a fraudulent voucher marketplace that has created zero private education capacity. A documentary. - Public Enemy Number 1

"Capacity-ism:" Florida spends $1 Billion per year on a fraudulent voucher marketplace that has created zero private education capacity. A documentary.

$1 billion per year has produced few -- if any -- products worth buying in Florida's voucher marketplace. That's because markets alone don't create capacity; and there is no equity without capacity.

Put aside what you think about Jeff Bezos and Amazon as person and company. This article isn’t about either; it’s about school vouchers. But I saw Bezos use a thought-provoking phrase in his annual stockholder letter. I find it quite helpful in assessing the catastrophic human and economic failures of Florida’s school voucher programs.

“If you want to be successful in business (in life, actually), you have to create more than you consume. Your goal should be to create value for everyone you interact with.” 

Again, put aside whether you think Bezos or Amazon do that. Put aside how easily that statement can lead you to eugenics if you follow its logic into human existence. Put aside the fuzzy definitions of creation and consumption. Let’s just take it on business/economics/marketplace terms.

Doug Tuthill’s schools and organization consume *infinitely* more than they create — here’s a documentary

No institution of any kind in America consumes more money and creates less value than Florida’s voucher school provider network. None. Florida’s failed voucher schools have the worst consumption-to-creation ratio of any large-scale business or private function I have ever seen. Step up for Students, as an organization, consumes so much more than it creates that it’s virtually impossible to quantify the disproportion. Here’s a taste, from an organization that provides zero active quality oversight of its schools or marketplace.

Step Up has the money to spend. It takes a 2.5-3% administrative fee on every CONTINUE READING: "Capacity-ism:" Florida spends $1 Billion per year on a fraudulent voucher marketplace that has created zero private education capacity. A documentary. - Public Enemy Number 1

More Money, More Privatization | Live Long and Prosper

More Money, More Privatization | Live Long and Prosper

More Money, More Privatization

INDIANA’s NEW BUDGET BILL — MORE PRIVATIZATION

The Indiana General Assembly has passed the 2021 budget bill, and once more, the Republican super-majority has done its best to line the pockets of religious schools with a large increase for unaccountable school vouchers.

This year, they have added money to the privatization piggy bank in the form of Educational Scholarship Accounts (ESAs), a plan fraught with fraud possibilities (and actualities) that have already been tried in various states across the country. ESAs allow parents to purchase unaccountable “educational services” from essentially anyone who says, “Here, buy my educational service” with no accountability for how the money is spent. Meanwhile, public schools must account for every penny of the public dollars they spend.

In order to pacify the Indiana State Teachers Association (ISTA) with the increase in vouchers, the legislature included a substantial pay increase for teachers. In their report, ISTA mentions the increase in vouchers without editorial comment but focuses on the pay issue. They also share the “positive” CONTINUE READING: More Money, More Privatization | Live Long and Prosper

Ohio: Voucher Students Are Not Required to Take State Exams | Diane Ravitch's blog

Ohio: Voucher Students Are Not Required to Take State Exams | Diane Ravitch's blog

Ohio: Voucher Students Are Not Required to Take State Exams

Apparently, the voucher schools were embarrassed by the Ohio study showing that kids who use vouchers lose ground academically.

There were two ways to respond to that finding: 1) improve instruction in the voucher schools by requiring them to hire certified teachers; 2) obscure the data.

The voucher lobby chose the second route.

The Republican-dominated legislature is now vastly expanding the state’s failing voucher program. But a few years ago, it decided that voucher schools would no longer be required to give the same exams that students in public schools are required to take. The conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute worried about the change, because it makes it difficult, if not impossible, to draw comparisons between students in public schools and their peers in private and religious schools.

That’s the goal.

Many other states that offer vouchers allow those schools CONTINUE READING: Ohio: Voucher Students Are Not Required to Take State Exams | Diane Ravitch's blog

West Virginia: The Great Charter School Swindle | Diane Ravitch's blog

West Virginia: The Great Charter School Swindle | Diane Ravitch's blog

West Virginia: The Great Charter School Swindle

State Senator Mike Romano of West Virginia wrote an article about the hoax of charter schools, which will cost the state’s public schools hundreds of millions of dollars without improving education.

He wrote:

In the shadows of Covid, bills have passed during the 2021 Legislative session that will move West Virginia backwards. From the weakening or elimination of state licensing for electricians, plumbers, crane operators, elevator technicians, among others, to the weakening of drinking water standards, to creating a new layer of government with an Intermediate Court that no one wants (except insurance companies), which will cost tens of millions of tax dollars every year.

As bad as those bills are, no bill has the potential to damage our collective future or waste more of our tax dollars than charter schools. The obsession of the Republican Majority with charter schools and private CONTINUE READING: West Virginia: The Great Charter School Swindle | Diane Ravitch's blog

Bob Braun Explains the Opposition to Billionaire-Funded “Reform” | Diane Ravitch's blog

Bob Braun Explains the Opposition to Billionaire-Funded “Reform” | Diane Ravitch's blog

Bob Braun Explains the Opposition to Billionaire-Funded “Reform”

Bob Braun was an education reporter for 50 years. After he retired from the New Jersey Star-Ledger, he began blogging and paid close and critical attention to the state takeover of Newark. This column, posted in 2014, is as timely now as it was when it first appeared.

Let’s get this straight. Those of us opposed to the structural changes to public education embraced by crusaders ranging from the billionaire Koch brothers and the Walton Family Foundation to Bill Clinton and Barack Obama—along with Governor Chris Christie and Microsoft founder Bill Gates—are not opposed to the reform of public schools. We oppose their destruction.

We do not oppose making schools more accountable, equitable and effective—but we do oppose wrecking a 200-year-old institution—public education—that is still successful in New Jersey.

Public schools give students from all backgrounds a CONTINUE READING: Bob Braun Explains the Opposition to Billionaire-Funded “Reform” | Diane Ravitch's blog

No Pause in Indiana’s Push for Privatization | Live Long and Prosper

No Pause in Indiana’s Push for Privatization | Live Long and Prosper

No Pause in Indiana’s Push for Privatization

Should we give a cheer that the Indiana Senate eased up on the offensive expansion of vouchers that the Indiana House passed in its 2021 Budget bill?

THE HOUSE VERSION

The House version gave nearly 40% of all new education money to the less than 5% of the state’s students in the form of increased voucher spending, including money for unaccountable ESAs (educational savings accounts).

It also provided an increase in voucher availability to a family of four making nearly $150,000 a year. This House plan was not the “save poor children” voucher plan that Mitch Daniels proposed ten years ago. It very definitely expanded voucher money for wealthier students.

It’s probably good that Indiana Republicans are no longer trying to pretend that their voucher program is so that “poor kids can escape from terrible schools.” Instead they’re all but admitting that public schools don’t interest them. Privatization is the goal no matter what that pesky state constitution says. At least now they’re being honest about it.

THE SENATE VERSION

The Senate still included an increase in vouchers so they’re not backing off CONTINUE READING: No Pause in Indiana’s Push for Privatization | Live Long and Prosper

CURMUDGUCATION: Charters vs. Vouchers

CURMUDGUCATION: Charters vs. Vouchers

Charters vs. Vouchers

While charter schools and vouchers are both members of the school choice family, they are cousins who only occasionally get along. And as a public school fan, I have a definite preferred cousin.

It may seem like a thousand years ago, but when Betsy DeVos first turned up as an education secretary candidate, some charter fans actually expressed concerns. DeVos felt the need to reach out to charter fans and offer an olive branch. That's because DeVos, like many fans of a pay-your-own-way voucher system, was content to back charters as a way to crack apart the public education system and get the school choice foot in the door. But now that the time seems ripe (conservative judges, GOP legislatures, Espinoza, etc), many erstwhile charter fans are dumping the poor old girl for their true love. 

There are many reasons that charters and vouchers are natural competitors. 

The obvious area is simple competition for market share. Both private voucher schools and charter schools are after the disaffected don't-want-to-go-to-public-school crowd. Voucher-accepting schools have an advantage in competing for the religious school market because they can be more direct and explicit about their religious content. And the super-voucher education savings account systems are aiming to bust things up even more--you don't even have to a "school," but can just pick various education odds and ends from various marketplace vendors. In the marketplace, charters (with their constant insistence that they are CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: Charters vs. Vouchers

2021 Medley #5 – Vouchers, Testing, and Reading | Live Long and Prosper

2021 Medley #5 – Vouchers, Testing, and Reading | Live Long and Prosper

2021 Medley #5 – Vouchers, Testing, and Reading

Vouchers, Testing, and Reading

VOUCHERS

Scholars show how to challenge voucher discrimination

How many ways can we say it? School choice is not about parents choosing the school for their child. It’s about schools choosing which students to allow through their doors. Private schools get to choose their clients.

The law may state that private and religious schools must not discriminate in order to receive state funds, but the actual real-world actions of schools accepting vouchers shows that private schools can, and often do reject certain students based on various characteristics such as religion or sexual preference (or the sexual preference of their parents). Under other circumstances, this discrimination wouldn’t be a problem. Religious schools should be allowed to require their teachers and students to follow certain theological teachings. However, it becomes a problem when public funds are used to further such discrimination.

The simple fact is that private schools, and religious schools in particular should not be allowed to use public funds because they are not required to accept all CONTINUE READING: 2021 Medley #5 – Vouchers, Testing, and Reading | Live Long and Prosper

Idaho: Vouchers Violate the State Constitution | Diane Ravitch's blog

Idaho: Vouchers Violate the State Constitution | Diane Ravitch's blog

Idaho: Vouchers Violate the State Constitution

Two prominent Idaho citizens, Jim Jones and Rod Gramer, warned that proposed voucher legislation violates the clear language of the Idaho state constitution and threatens the future of public schools.

Jim Jones is the former Chief Justice of the Idaho Supreme Court and former Idaho Attorney General and Rod Gramer is president of Idaho Business for Education.

They wrote:

Supporters of privatizing education are about to change the Idaho Constitution and 130 years of education policy without going to a vote of the people. Instead, those who want taxpayers to fund private schools should take their case to the people and let them decide as the Constitution requires.

Idaho’s founders were clear when they adopted the Constitution that the Legislature should support public schools. In Article IX, Section 1 they wrote: “The stability CONTINUE READING: Idaho: Vouchers Violate the State Constitution | Diane Ravitch's blog