Submitted by Elaine Magliaro, Guest Blogger
In August, I wrote a post about Louisiana’s new school voucher program (Stateside Louisiana: School Vouchers and the Privatization of Public Education) that would use tax dollars earmarked for public education to pay for students’ tuitions to private and religious schools. Last week, State District Judge Tim Kelley “declared the diversion of funds from the Minimum Foundation Program (MFP) — the formula under which per pupil public education funds are calculated — to private entities was unconstitutional.” The voucher program is funded by a block-grant program that “Judge Kelley ruled is restricted by the constitution to funding only public schools.”
“Nowhere was it mandated that funds from [the block-grant program]…be provided for an alternative education beyond what the Louisiana education system was set up for,” he [Judge Kelley] wrote. The state can legally fund vouchers, but the funding “must come from some other portion of the general budget,” Judge Kelley said.
The judge, however, did not issue an immediate injunction to stop the voucher program. “The 5,000 students currently receiving vouchers will be able to continue attending their private schools pending an appeal, state officials said.”
Governor Bobby Jindal, a champion of the voucher program, called the ruling “wrong-headed” and “a travesty for parents across Louisiana who want nothing more than for their children to have an equal opportunity at receiving a great education.” He promised to appeal the judge’s ruling. John White, the state superintendent of education, said, “We are optimistic this decision will be reversed.”
According to reports, Judge Kelley’s ruling is not the only challenge Louisiana’s new school voucher program faces. Last week, a federal judge in New Orleans “ruled that the program had the potential to disrupt the region’s court-ordered efforts to desegregate public schools. The federal judge issued a temporary injunction halting the use of vouchers in Tangipahoa Parish over concern that the program was siphoning off state dollars needed to implement the desegregation plan.” There are at least thirty more school districts in the state that are also under desegregation orders. Voucher opponents said they plan to “bring similar federal court cases in those districts.”
The Times-Picayune reported that the voucher “suit was brought by Louisiana Federation of Teachers (LFT), Louisiana Association of Educators (LAE), Louisiana School Boards Association and 43 local school boards.” In addition to the teachers’ unions and school boards, others have also criticized the program because some of the private and religious schools that receive voucher money “focus on so-called Young Earth Creationism over evolution.”
(Note: The Unites States Supreme Court has “affirmed the right of religious institutions to receive taxpayer funds through vouchers, as long as the state itself isn’t advocating a particular faith.”)
Another criticism of the program is that voucher students who attend many of the private and religious schools will not be subjected to the same standardized testing that students in Louisiana’s public schools are.
From my earlier post on the Louisiana school voucher program:
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.”
According to Simon[Stephanie Simon, Reuters], 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…”
Note: The Louisiana school voucher program not only siphons money away from the state’s public schools to private and religious schools—but also to private businesses and private tutors.
Creationist Textbooks: Darwin Is Wrong Because Loch Ness Monster Is Real
Louisiana Voucher Program Funds Horrible Private Religious Schools With Tax Payer Money
SOURCES
Jindal voucher overhaul unconstitutionally diverts public funds to private schools, judge rules (Times-Picayune)
Louisiana Voucher Program Ruled Unconstitutional (Huffington Post)
Blow Dealt to School Voucher Program (Wall Street Journal)
Bobby Jindal’s school voucher program ruled unconstitutional (Washington Post)
Judge blocks Gov. Bobby Jindal’s signature school voucher program (Christian Science Monitor)
Stateside Louisiana: School Vouchers and the Privatization of Public Education (Jonathan Turley)
nick,
Supervision of voucher schools that aren’t required by law to meet the same testing standards as the public schools? Who is going to write and pass a law that allows public school teachers to “monitor” what goes on in private schools?
*****
From the National School Boards Association:
Some private schools participating in Louisiana voucher program teach Creationism, not Evolution
http://legalclips.nsba.org/?p=15635
Excerpt:
Refusal to teach evolution or challenging it as refutable will not get a school booted from the voucher program. College student Zack Kopplin, an outspoken critic of teaching creationism in science classrooms, found at least 19 of the 119 mostly religious schools in the voucher program either promote creationism or teach with curricula from Christian textbook publishers that are known to challenge Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. The schools cited by Kopplin’s research have been approved to take in more than 750 voucher students and receive more than $4 million in taxpayer funding, in the first round of announced voucher assignments for the 2012-13 school year.
nick,
You’re the one who has been doing the lecturing. All I did was make a brief comment about homework and ask you a simple question. Evidently, you’re not a man of few words.
http://cathyduffyreviews.com/history-geography/world-history-abeka.htm
Being marketed to homeschoolers. this is a 10th grade history book.
http://wonkette.com/482983/fun-with-christianists-things-you-can-learn-in-a-christian-world-history-cultures-textbook-part-1
Shano, you scared the bejeebers out of me. Do you have the citation for that text book? (It should be called a “text boo” which is how I first typed it, thanks to a typo!)
This is not some “far out book” this is the textbook for Texas schools!
Elaine, When you said “I’m not your student” I said to myself, BINGO, and I’m not yours. It sucks when someone acts like a schoolteacher in this forum..nobody likes it and for good reason.
shano, I’ll stipulate there are some far out books and teaching. Supervison of schools receiving voucher money can monitor that. I’m certain union teachers would volunteer their time to audit classes in voucher schools. I know history teachers in public schools who play movies over 50% of the time. Now, they’re appropriate movies for the most part. And, I love movies and played some for discussion and essays to follow. Mississippi Burning, Glory, Schindler’s List, to name a few. But I’m talking about teachers playing movies and falling asleep..SNORING! It happens all the time. There’s educational malpractrice in virtually every school, private and public.
For nick, a smattering of reading from a real textbook for schools in Texas.
‘World History and Cultures In Christian Perspective’:
During the late-19th and early-20th centuries, several liberal philosophies arose in the name of science but were really “science falsely so called” (1 Tim. 6:20)
“These pseudosciences (Greek pseudo: “false”) and their founders all related to one another in their desire to strike down absolute truth and rebel against God.
The wicked influence of positivism, Darwinism, and religious liberalism caused people to lose confidence in the existence of a personal God and to turn instead to psychology (the study of the mind) for answers regarding human behavior. Sigmund Freud [1856-1939], a prominent Austrian psychiatrist, believed that man was a product of evolution and nothing more than a highly developed animal. He formulated a system known as psychoanalysis, which says that subconscious physical drives or irrational fears determine a man’s actions. According to Freud, man is not responsible for his behavior, and any guilt experienced by someone over his actions can be relieved by blaming his subconscious drives. Freud’s liberal claims denied the Biblical teachings that man is born with a sinful nature and is in need of salvation through Jesus Christ.
In contrast to these pseudoscientific ideas stand the genuine accomplishments of true science in the 20th century. While positivistic “scientists” tried to discover “laws” that set mankind drifting away from absolute truths, real scientists devoted their time and talent striving to understand the absolute order and harmony by which God designed and created the universe. True science follows God’s command to “subdue the earth and have dominion over it” (Gen. 1:27-28), rather than trying to subdue mankind with false philosophies. Indeed, true science’s view of absolutes has been the basis for all great scientific achievements throughout the ages.”
nick,
I’m not your student–and this isn’t school. BTW, it wasn’t an excuse–it was an explanation of how things work around here sometimes.
You have a funny way of “exuding” cool in print.
Elaine, You’ve used that excuse previously when we had this discussion. I would never accept that type of excuse from a student. And, maybe you’re projecting on the “lighten up.” I’m cool w/ all this. I really am. I don’t hide my emotions well, folks know w/o a doubt when I’m pissed. As I said @ the outset, we fundamentally disagree on this subject. I accept that and sincerely respect your passion, I merely disagree.
nick,
You’re the one who thought my question was a complaint. There you go–scolding me again!
Most people don’t sit at the computer hour after hour and read and write comments on this blog. We come and go. Sometimes a person may miss reading some comments on a post. Sometimes a person may respond to another person’s comment hours–and sometimes days–later. Comments can be all over the place on a post. That’s why it helps to be specific as to what you are making reference in a comment directed to someone.
I thought you were the guy who said he didn’t take these discussions too seriously. Lighten up, will ya?
Disagreement is not hostile, although you do like to attempt to manipulate that in instances such as this. Is saying something is “silly” hostile? If you can’t follow your own thread and make quite simple connections from one comment to another, that’s your problem, not mine. It’s akin to people who don’t know how to listen, just wait to talk and remember nothing that was said by the othe person a minute ago. You’re not one of those folks are you?
nick,
You’ve voiced your support for the Louisiana voucher program. You think that lack of homework will make kids stupid but you don’t think that children who attend private and religious schools that teach things like creation “science” won’t grow up to be stupid/ill-informed about the history of this planet and the universe, the origins of life, evolution, etc.?
nick spinelli 1, December 2, 2012 at 9:45 pm
Elaine, Discipline and hard work makes for a successful society. Lack of discipline and laziness makes for a dependent society on the few who do work hard. But eventually you run out of other people’s money. I’ll take the former, how ’bout you?
*****
You should be more precise when writing comments. How was I to know that you were talking about France when no mention was made of the country in the comment that you addressed to me?
BTW, I didn’t complain. I merely asked you a question. Why the hostility?
nick,
I didn’t make any comment about French society. I made a comment that homework doesn’t make one smart–and that lack of homework doesn’t keep one stupid. That’s all. It seemed to me that your comment implied that if kids don’t do homework they’ll be stupid.
Elaine, We’ve had this problem previously where you forget prior comments. The discussion took a detour to new French educational policies in the news. Shano responded and YOU responded. I was still on France when I spoke of laziness and taxes and somehow you thought I was talking about your grandmother..presumably American. So…I pointed out I was talking about France. Take notes if you can’t follow your own thread. And, when you will now respond that “This is about school vouchers in La.” I’ll preemptively state discussions here often take detours. This detour was on the topic of educational policy. You didn”t complain one bit when it was brought up and actually responded to it. Now you’re complaining. Let’s just end this now. It’s silly.
nick,
Please explain.
Elaine, You need to your homework.
nick,
What has France got to do with a discussion about the Louisiana school voucher program?
Elaine, I was speaking about France.
“Creationism” is really not an ism; it is the pretend belief that the JudeaChristian religious story of the origin of the universe is actually cosmology. Religious stories should only be taught in religious schools for religious people who choose to go to them, funded privately, or they should be taught as part of a history class or a “philosophy of religion” class to illustrate how various religions have come up with answers to various questions. Tax dollars can pay for comparative religion courses in public schools but not for private schools that teach religion as if it were science or some other subject.