Submitted by Elaine Magliaro Guest Blogger
In May, David Sirota penned an article for Salon titled Selling out Public Schools. In it, he said that Mitt Romney, President Obama, and both of our major political parties were “assaulting public education.”
Sirota wrote:
On the Republican side, the Washington Post reports Mitt Romney just unveiled “a pro-choice, pro-voucher, pro-states-rights education program that seems certain to hasten the privatization of the public education system” completely. On the other side, Wall Street titans in the Democratic Party with zero experience in education policy are marshaling tens of millions of dollars to do much of what Romney aims to do as president – and they often have a willing partner in President Barack “Race to the Top” Obama and various Democratic governors.
Funded by corporate interests who naturally despise organized labor, both sides have demonized teachers’ unions as the primary problem in education — somehow ignoring the fact that most of the best-performing public school systems in America and in the rest of the world are, in fact, unionized. (Are we never supposed to ask how, if unions are the primary problem, so many unionized schools in America and abroad do so well?) Not surprisingly, these politicians and activists insist they are driven solely by their regard for the nation’s children — and they expect us to ignore the massive amount of money their benefactors (and even the activists personally) stand to make by transforming public education into yet another private profit center. Worse, they ask us also to forget that in the last few years of aggressive “reform” (read: evisceration) of public education, the education gap has actually gotten far worse, with the most highly touted policies put in place now turning the schoolhouse into yet another catalyst of crushing inequality.
Sirota says that charter schools and vouchers are one of the five most “prominent” of these policies. I would agree. There has been an education movement afoot for a many years whose aim is less about reforming public schools and more about the privatization of public education. One of the first steps in the “reform” process is funneling public money away from traditional public schools to “privately administered” charter schools and to private schools via tuition vouchers.
A Look at the New Student Voucher Program in Louisiana
Stephanie Simon (Reuters) has reported that Louisiana is “embarking on the nation’s boldest experiment in privatizing public education.” She wrote, “Starting this fall, thousands of poor and middle-class kids will get vouchers covering the full cost of tuition at more than 120 private schools across Louisiana, including small, Bible-based church schools.” Louisiana’s voucher program, which is said to be the most sweeping in the country, will “shift tens of millions of dollars from public schools to pay not only private schools but also private businesses and private tutors to educate children across the state.”
Governor Bobby Jindal and State Superintendent of Education John White, both of whom pushed for the voucher program, “promised to hold the private schools accountable for student achievement.” Yet, it has been reported that “money will continue to flow to scores of private and religious schools participating in Louisiana’s new voucher program even if their students fail basic reading and math tests…”
Casey Michel (TPMMuckraker) reported in July that students in every public school in Louisiana are subjected to standardized testing, but “voucher students — who will bring an average of $8,000 in tuition from ‘failing’ public schools to many that are affiliated with religious denominations — will only need to face testing if their new school has taken an average of 10 students per grade, or if the schools have accepted at least 40 voucher students into the grades testing.”
Simon said that according to new rules, “schools will not be penalized for poor scores on state standardized tests if they have fewer than 40 voucher students enrolled in the upper elementary or secondary grades.” Even if their voucher students fail to “demonstrate basic competency in math, reading, science and social studies,” the private schools will continue to receive state funds. Superintendent White estimated that 75 percent of the 120 private schools participating in the voucher program would “fall into this protected category.”
Participating schools that have more than 40 voucher students will be given a “numerical grade from the state based on their voucher students’ test scores.” Schools that score less than 50 on a 150-point scale will not be allowed to enroll more voucher students. Those schools will, however, still “continue to receive public money indefinitely to serve students already enrolled.”
Opponents of the voucher program say that their biggest concern is “the fact that the students may be transferring, on the taxpayers’ dime, to a school that will score worse than the one from which they left. That is, a student can leave a public school if it scores a ‘C’ or below on state standardized testing — but if the new private school scores the minimum of 50, the equivalent of a D-minus, it could still recruit new voucher students.”
Some of those who are critical of the new voucher program have voiced concerns about accountability procedures. Donald Songy, a representative of the Louisiana Association of School Superintendents, questioned the provision “that a private school wouldn’t be in trouble unless it scored less than 50, whereas a public school is labeled a failure if it scores less than 65.”
Now millions of tax dollars originally earmarked for Louisiana’s public schools will go to pay for private school tuitions—even if the voucher students in those schools are not achieving academically. Does this voucher program look like it could be the solution to the problem of failing schools in Louisiana?
Regarding Education in Private and Religious Schools Participating in Louisiana’s Voucher Program
It has been reported that most of the 120 educational facilities that will participate in the voucher program are Christian schools. Should citizens of Louisiana be concerned about what is being taught in private and religious schools that their tax dollars are helping to subsidize?
In her article Louisiana’s Bold Bid to Privatize Schools, Simon told of New Living Word—a school in Ruston that is willing to accept the most voucher students—more than 300. The school has a top-ranked basketball team—but no library. Simon explained how the students spend most of their school days “watching TVs in bare-bones classrooms.” She said, “Each lesson consists of an instructional DVD that intersperses Biblical verses with subjects such chemistry or composition.”
Simon also wrote of another school that is planning to make room for potential voucher students: “At Eternity Christian Academy in Westlake, pastor-turned-principal Marie Carrier hopes to secure extra space to enroll 135 voucher students, though she now has room for just a few dozen. Her first- through eighth-grade students sit in cubicles for much of the day and move at their own pace through Christian workbooks, such as a beginning science text that explains ‘what God made’ on each of the six days of creation. They are not exposed to the theory of evolution.”
According to Simon, there are private schools in Louisiana that have been approved to receive state funds that “use social studies texts warning that liberals threaten global prosperity; Bible-based math books that don’t cover modern concepts such as set theory; and biology texts built around refuting evolution.” Many of the schools “rely on Pensacola-based A Beka Book curriculum or Bob Jones University Press textbooks to teach their pupils Bible-based ‘facts,’ such as the existence of Nessie the Loch Ness Monster and all sorts of pseudoscience…” (14 Wacky “Facts” Kids Will Learn in Louisiana’s Voucher Schools)
Here are some examples of the “historical facts” that children may learn in these religious schools in Louisiana–courtesy of The Society Pages:
• Humans and dinosaurs co-existed.
• God designed “checks and balances” to prevent environmental crises, so chill! After all, “Roses are red, violets are blue; they both grow better with more CO2.”
• “Rumors” of foreclosures, high unemployment, homelessness, and general misery during the Great Depression are just socialist propaganda.
• Unions just want to destroy the accomplishments of “hardworking Americans.”
• Mormons, Unitarians, and Catholics = bad.
• And then there’s the history of racial/ethnic relations: “God used the ‘Trail of Tears’ to bring many Indians to Christ” and “Through the Negro spiritual, slaves developed patience to wait on the Lord and discovered that the truest freedom is freedom from the bondage of sin.” No, seriously — I didn’t make those up.
Opinions on the School Voucher Program
Education expert Diane Ravitch wrote the following about the school voucher program in Louisiana:
Bear in mind that public education is level-funded, so all these millions for vouchers and charters and online schooling and tutoring will come right out of the public school budget, making classes more overcrowded, closing libraries, shutting down services for students that need them.
Ravitch also wrote about the American Legislative Exchange Council’s links to the movement to privatize public schools in the The Washington Post:
A recent article in the Newark Star-Ledger showed how closely New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s “reform” legislation is modeled on ALEC’s work in education. Wherever you see states expanding vouchers, charters, and other forms of privatization, wherever you see states lowering standards for entry into the teaching profession, wherever you see states opening up new opportunities for profit-making entities, wherever you see the expansion of for-profit online charter schools, you are likely to find legislation that echoes the ALEC model.
ALEC has been leading the privatization movement for nearly 40 years, but the only thing new is the attention it is getting, and the fact that many of its ideas are now being enacted…
Charles P. Pierce wrote the following on his Esquire blog in July:
One wave of education “reform” demands almost continual high-stakes testing. Another wave of education “reform” demands that public money go to private for-profit “schools.” Now, the new wave of education “reform” demands that the high-stakes testing not count in the new for-profit “schools.” But this never has been about education. It’s been about destroying the public schools and protecting the right of people to marinate in superstition and nonsense.
*****
What is your opinion about the movement to privatize public education? What is your opinion about public money being spent to pay student tuitions at religious schools? Do you think that some school “reformers” are out to destroy public schools in this country?
SOURCES
Both Obama and Romney are assaulting public education. Five threats, in particular, stand out (Salon)
Louisiana’s bold bid to privatize schools (Reuters)
Louisiana sets rules for landmark school voucher program (MSNBC/Reuters)
Vouching for Failure in Louisiana Schools (Esquire)
Louisiana sets rules for landmark school voucher program (Chicago Tribune)
Louisiana’s Voucher Standards Called Into Question (TPMMuckraker)
Louisiana vouchers going mainly to church-affiliated schools (The Town Talk)
Despite criticism, Louisiana OKs accountability plan for school vouchers (The Town Talk)
Vouchers and the future of public education (Washington Post)
Ravitch: A primer on the group driving school reform (Washington Post)
14 Wacky “Facts” Kids Will Learn in Louisiana’s Voucher Schools (Mother Jones)
Some of Christie’s biggest bills match model legislation from D.C. group called ALEC (New Jersey On-Line)
A Close Look at Some Evangelical Textbooks (The Society Pages)
School & Religious Freedom Dying in Louisiana
Odds are no process existed for Louisiana school voucher program: James Gill
Times-Picayune
August 12, 2012
http://www.nola.com/opinions/index.ssf/2012/08/odds_are_no_process_existed_fo.html
Excerpt:
How the state decided which private and parochial schools were qualified to receive public money is not for us to know.
Luckily, it isn’t too difficult. We know they couldn’t have been all that stringent. Two rinky dink schools had their applications rejected, but the other 119 were approved to take in about 5,600 kids at up to $8,500 a pop yearly. The influx will cause many of the schools to double in size.
It won’t take much to improve the lot of kids whose parents have jumped at the chance to rescue them from Louisiana’s lousiest public schools. Many will doubtless blossom in their new surroundings. But it won’t be all roses; not all the selected schools will have adequate capacity or faculty, for instance.
Such problems in the early days are only to be expected, but the state is inviting trouble on its own head by transferring plenty of kids to schools with an overtly religious agenda. Come September, Louisiana taxpayers will even be footing the bill for kids in many schools to be taught by creationist crackpots. Clearly, the criteria applied by White did not include adherence to the U.S. Constitution. This cannot conceivably survive court challenge.
The question may not be what criteria the state applied, but whether it applied any criteria at all. Public record requests for documentation that might throw some light on that have been stonewalled. An education department flack told the Associated Press that “providing outdated information may cause confusion to parents who are trying to make decisions around their participation the program.” Evidently the Louisiana education department hasn’t heard that “Don’t confuse them with the facts” is supposed to be a joke.
This is my scope of LA’s voucher knowledge fwiw.
It seems not that the school has to be or should be accredited but rather that the child’s parent have the ability to decide. The parents may and WILL make very poor choices at times (creationism etc). But overall the competition for the money will be the driving force for better schools. Putting additional pressures on the school via testing will waste resources and is govt just ensuring itself a seat at the table of indoctrination.
Both science and the classics didn’t survive because govt so decided. They survived all sorts of hogwash such as the earth as the center of the universe on their merits. So too will schools with the proper curriculum succeed as those with hogwash will fail.
Btw, which govt set’s Harvard’s agenda for them? And how do kids and parents decide which college is right – why aren’t they forced into specific colleges?
All in the name of union busting…….the private insurance companies want those insurance dollars…… Vouchers a bad ideal…..
Elaine,
According to what is said here this movement is not new on Alec’s agenda. But the push is rapidly expanding.
The role of the players is confusing as are their names.
The conservative forces seem always to seize the best “white hat” ones.
Specific question:
” Labor officials and other Washington-based liberal activists have, over the course of the last year, been publicly and privately pressing Change.org to draw a line that refuses business from anti-union groups, just as it currently rejects business from organizations with an anti-immigrant or anti-gay bias. They made little progress until Stand for Children launched an anti-union petition.”
What business?
Opinion.
Although I don’t know how it is formulated, any ties between studend grades/scores and teacher pay increases seem directly dangerous to integrity and correctness of the grading system.
There is so much to discuss here in terms of what kind of society does this lead to. Many here have pointed to those obvious ones (no TV homes, no true science, social science, history is taught). We have not even touched on future effects.
This is a 3-day subject. Will it be one?
Frankly, why did we allow relgion expression or forms in public schooling, and now PS replacement on a parity basis. Or rather non-parity if we see to the school rating scales with different grades of “passing” for public vs private ones.
Liberty has many hydraheads, some fatal when they bite.
Curious,
Speaking of Michelle Rhee:
Change.org Drops Michelle Rhee Group Under Pressure From Progressives (UPDATE)
By Ryan Grim
6/19/12
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/19/changeorg-michelle-rhee_n_1610760.html
Excerpt:
WASHINGTON — In a surprising reversal, Change.org, the progressive online powerhouse that channels grassroots energy into petition-based activism, has dropped** two anti-union clients, including Michelle Rhee’s StudentsFirst, according to multiple sources familiar with the decision.
The move comes after intense pressure from the labor movement and other progressive allies, who accused the for-profit company of betraying its liberal roots by partnering with Rhee, the former head of Washington, D.C., public schools, and the similarly aligned group Stand for Children headed by education advocate Jonah Edelman. The ouster of StudentsFirst and Stand for Children was confirmed by a Change.org spokesman.
Leaders of Rhee’s group were outraged. “We’re surprised at their decision,” Nancy Zuckerbrod, spokeswoman for StudentsFirst, told HuffPost. “When we spoke to them this afternoon, they couldn’t point to a single one of our petitions on their site that violated either the terms of use or spirit of their organization. Not a single one. In fact, they said they agreed that much of the work of our members were in line with the progressive values of the organization. And it’s clear that the Change.org community does as well, as tens of thousands of them signed our petitions fighting for the civil rights of all children to receive a high-quality education. For instance, more than 47,000 people signed our petition in support of the Dream Act, compared to fewer than 4,000 who signed the heavily organized protest petition on a different site against Stand for Children.”
Change.org’s meteoric rise has included a host of glowing profiles and the Time magazine stamp of approval when it named CEO and founder Ben Rattray one of the 100 most influential people in the world. It is staffed by some of the most talented progressive organizers in the country — many of whom are well known and liked in the tight-knit liberal community, making the feud that much more bitter. And Edelman is the son of liberal champions Marian Wright Edelman and Peter Edelman.
StudentsFirst and Stand for Children oppose teachers unions as obstacles to education reform, and advocate on behalf of tying teacher pay to test scores and other student metrics. Change.org started working with Rhee’s Students First in March 2011, five months after her resignation as Washington’s public schools chancellor, and with Jonah Edelman’s Stand for Children in October 2011.
Rhee’s group, aware of its reputation as an enemy of organized labor, has consistently avoided activism around union issues on Change.org’s platform, focusing instead on immigration reform, anti-bullying, and other issues that resonate with progressives and don’t alienate labor. Labor officials and other Washington-based liberal activists have, over the course of the last year, been publicly and privately pressing Change.org to draw a line that refuses business from anti-union groups, just as it currently rejects business from organizations with an anti-immigrant or anti-gay bias. They made little progress until Stand for Children launched an anti-union petition.
I believe the ENTIRE reason for the vouchers is to get rid of the unions. Next up: the post office. And the end result is the same – privitization. I expect Michelle Rhee will wind up a very wealthy woman.
Serious question…..Why/how is it legal to give vouchers to religious schools? Are we simply waiting for someone to bring suit?
Jindal’s voucher program called ‘bad for religious freedom’ by Interfaith Alliance
By Valerie Strauss
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/jindals-voucher-program-called-bad-for-religious-freedom-by-interfaith-alliance/2012/08/07/6300f2e2-e0bc-11e1-8fc5-a7dcf1fc161d_blog.html
Excerpt:
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal is getting new pushback on his school voucher program, which is now the biggest in the country.
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (Scott Olson — Getty Images) Opposition is coming from the Interfaith Alliance, a national, nonpartisan grassroots and educational organization based in Washington that has 185,000 members nationwide made up of 75 faith traditions as well as those of no faith tradition.
A letter sent to Jindal on Tuesday signed by the alliance’s president, the Rev. C. Welton Gaddy, says in part: “Your school voucher scheme is bad for religious freedom and bad for public education as well as a blatant attack on the religious freedom clauses in the United States Constitution.”
The program is a result of a new law that allows the state to offer vouchers to more than half of Louisiana’s public school students, and dozens of religious schools have been given permission to accept voucher students even though they have not shown that they have the resources to handle the influx.
Many of these schools use curriculum that promotes Young Earth Creationism, which holds the belief that the universe is no older than 10,000 years old despite definitive scientific evidence that it is billions of years old. And Jindal is supporting an “accountability” plan that says private schools in the program with fewer than 40 voucher students don’t have to show that those students have achieved basic competency in reading, math, social studies and science in order to keep receiving state funds. Some accountability, huh?
Odds are no process existed for Louisiana school voucher program: James Gill
By James Gill
The Times-Picayune
8/12/12
http://www.nola.com/opinions/index.ssf/2012/08/odds_are_no_process_existed_fo.html
Excerpt:
Such problems in the early days are only to be expected, but the state is inviting trouble on its own head by transferring plenty of kids to schools with an overtly religious agenda. Come September, Louisiana taxpayers will even be footing the bill for kids in many schools to be taught by creationist crackpots. Clearly, the criteria applied by White did not include adherence to the U.S. Constitution. This cannot conceivably survive court challenge.
The question may not be what criteria the state applied, but whether it applied any criteria at all. Public record requests for documentation that might throw some light on that have been stonewalled. An education department flack told the Associated Press that “providing outdated information may cause confusion to parents who are trying to make decisions around their participation the program.” Evidently the Louisiana education department hasn’t heard that “Don’t confuse them with the facts” is supposed to be a joke.
A second flack explained that the department was entitled to withhold records related to the choice of voucher schools under a “deliberative process privilege” identified by state courts in litigation unrelated to education. She allowed that the courts ruled such a privilege is necessary so that “people in government agencies” can “offer uninhibited opinions or recommendations without fear of later being subject to public ridicule or criticism.”
That was, perhaps, a plausible pretext for keeping the documents confidential in perpetuity. But White made nonsense of it when the AP pressed and he partially relented, agreeing to come clean after schools starts in September.
A delay of a few weeks is hardly likely to diminish any public ridicule or criticism the records might inspire. The suspicion will remain that the department cannot explain its criteria yet because it needs time to whip some up.
The education department’s solicitude for parents who might be discombobulated by the facts is also hard to square with the views of Gov. Bobby Jindal, progenitor of the voucher scheme. Asked why private schools receiving voucher money should not receive the same scrutiny as public schools, he declared that “parents are the best accountability system we have.” If they are so smart that they can keep the private schools up to snuff, maybe White could risk not keeping them in the dark about how the state chose them. Except, of course, that it is preposterous to suggest that parents are always the best judges of where their children will get the best schooling.
This coming year the state has allocated about 80 slots to a small New Orleans school run by Leonard Lucas, a former one-term state legislator who now styles himself “prophet” and “apostle.” When Lucas ran for City Council a few years back, he issued press releases bespeaking an indifference to grammar that ill becomes an educator. The parents who send kids to school such as his may wish they had left them where they were.
ARE,
This is a point on which we have total agreement. Information control is a subject very often neglected when discussing the hazards of privatizing schools. It is, however, just as potentially damaging to to society if not more so than the attacks on unions.
Great job, Elaine.
I agree lotta. The lowering of test score benchmarks for the private schools is preposterous and plain evidence of the intentions behind this “voucherization” of the public school system.
Raff, give it a while, it’ll be a dozen states- or more. I don’t understand how this can allowed, this reduces education to a travesty. That (test) standards have been lowered for these private schools is adding insult to injury.
You have to realize that one of the points of privatizing schools is to NOT allow the kids to meet different people with different points of view. My neighbors are Christian fundamentalists and they have NO TV in their home. I served as an election judge and found that my GOP counterparts had NO TVs either. Their whole life and what they knew of the world came from their ministers and fellow believers. It is this kind of thing that the school vouchers are designed to foster.
Elaine,
you are right that an aim or a by-product of the so-called school reform is to kill unions. I see it at my wife’s school when they negotiate terms and then after both parties agree to the new contract terms, the superintendant denies that the terms mean what they plainly mean.
Elaine,
Graci.
rafflaw,
I saw what happened in my state when school reform was enacted. I think one of its aims was to destroy teacher unions. School reform also brought us high stakes testing–and prepping students for the tests has become a major part of the educational process. I don’t think I would enjoy being a teacher these days.
Well done Elaine. It is truly amazing how backwards these private schools are and how the State of Louisiana will be paying private, religious schools to teach this crap!