Maggie Severns: At Republicans’ recent retreat, Messer listened to GOP strategist Alex Castellanos promote school choice as one of a handful of issues that should make up a new agenda for the party. “I thought, oh gosh — maybe I’m onto something here,” Messer said. School choice has always been a hard sell in Washington: … Continue reading School Vouchers have new champions on the Hill
Jessica Arp: “My main concern is that right now we are at a 20-year low in funding for public education so our public schools are already in a state of crisis,” Moffit said. Sierra disagrees and said vouchers are really about choice. “We pay taxes also,” Sierra said. “Nothing against public schools, but we decided … Continue reading School Voucher Climate Commentary
Erin Richards: Milwaukee’s long-running school voucher program that allows certain children to attend private and religious schools at taxpayer expense has saved Wisconsin more than $238 million since its inception in 1990, according to a new study by a national voucher advocacy group. The study released Tuesday by the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice said … Continue reading Study contends voucher programs save money, benefit public schools
Joy Cardin @ Wisconsin Public Radio (43 Minuted MP3 Audio) interviews WEAC’s (Statewide Teacher Union Umbrella) President Betsky Kippers and Jim Bender President of School Choice Wisconsin. Wisconsin Public Radio’s Joy Cardin show. www.weac.org. SIS notes and links. www.schoolchoicewi.org/. SIS voucher notes and links.
Join WEAC's Betsy Kippers in a #WPR conversation about school #vouchers at 7 a.m. Wednesday on @JoyCardinShow. http://t.co/ERTnY69RiW — WEAC (@WEAC) September 9, 2014
Cassandra MD Hart: This study examines public school characteristics, and public and private school market characteristics, associated with participation among elementary-aged students in a means-tested school voucher program in Florida. Participants are more likely than eligible nonparticipants to come from disadvantaged public schools on multiple dimensions. On average, participants’ public schools have lower aggregate student … Continue reading More Public School Choices; Fewer Voucher Applicants
Matthew DeFour on Madison School Board Member and Gubernatorial Candidate Mary Burke: Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mary Burke said Tuesday that if elected, she would eliminate the new statewide voucher program and private school tax deduction in the next budget. Burke, a Madison School Board member, previously said she didn’t support the statewide voucher program. In … Continue reading Local, National & Global School Voucher Perspectives
Erin Richards & Kevin Crowe: Reading and math proficiency for students attending private, mostly religious schools in Milwaukee with the help of taxpayer-funded vouchers ticked up in 2013 from 2012, according to the latest state standardized test score results. On average, students in Milwaukee’s private-school voucher program still performed lower than students in the city’s … Continue reading Voucher students post gain in math, reading; still lag public schools
Chris Rickert: Usually, the popularity of something is an indication that people value it. Public school proponents and anti-voucher Democrats might want to keep that in mind, as their tendency to downplay support for vouchers can sound like an excuse for avoiding improvements to public schools that keep public school enrollments strong. …. Pope did … Continue reading Public school advocates dismiss voucher popularity at their own risk
The U.S. Justice Department says Louisiana’s private school voucher program must be monitored to make sure it doesn’t make public school segregation worse. To that end, it wants the state to submit extensive student and school demographics each year.
Moreover, federal lawyers say that after 25 years of working together, Louisiana has largely stopped cooperating with the federal government on efforts to ensure racial equality in schools. They made the case in a memo filed Friday with Judge Ivan Lemelle in federal District Court in New Orleans.
The lawyers wrote that “the United States’ requests for information in this case are not an attack on the voucher program.” However, the demand is likely to raise Gov. Bobby Jindal’s hackles once more in this high-profile court case that has drawn support from prominent national Republicans, including House Majority Leader Eric Cantor and Republican National Committee Chair Reince Priebus, both of whom visited New Orleans voucher schools this month.
The statewide voucher program, in its first year, is at capacity, with about 500 students receiving vouchers statewide, according to the department. Of those, 79 percent did not attend a Wisconsin public school last year.
The program’s enrollment limit will rise to 1,000 next year. The statewide program exists in districts outside of Milwaukee and Racine, which have had programs for years.
Seventy-three percent of students now attending private schools using a voucher were already enrolled in a private school last year, according to the department. Twenty-one percent of students were from public schools. About 3 percent did not attend any school and 2 percent were home schooled.
Sen. Luther Olsen, R-Ripon, chairman of the Senate Education Committee, said he would probably support adding a preference given to applicants from public schools given those numbers.
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal said Tuesday that regardless of what the Department of Justice is claiming, his state is no closer to a resolution in a school voucher lawsuit that has appalled high-profile conservative school choice advocates.
The Justice Department sent a letter Tuesday to House Speaker John Boehner, saying the state has agreed to hand over information that the federal government has wanted for a while about the voucher program’s effect on the racial makeup of participating schools. That move might bring both parties closer to a resolution over the August suit, the letter said.
“…Louisiana agreed to provide information on the voucher program that the department had originally requested in May 2013 and that the state had, up until now, largely withheld. This is thus a major step forward and puts the parties on a path to resolving the primary issue that motivated the department’s court filing in the first place,” the DOJ letter to Boehner reads. “We are pleased that Louisiana finally has agreed to provide the necessary information to the department. It is only regrettable that the department had to resort to court involvement in this case in order to obtain it.”
The U.S. Department of Justice has entered into a lawsuit opposing Louisiana’s voucher system. The state’s program, passed into law in 2012, offers a voucher to attend a private school to students from families with incomes below 250% of the poverty line attending low performing public schools. Parents apply for the vouchers and to date about 90% of the recipients are black.
The DOJ is not intervening as you might naively expect because of concerns about the constitutionality of voucher programs, or because they believe that private schools in Louisiana discriminate, or because they think the state has designed its voucher program in a way that discriminates against minorities. No. Their argument is that the voucher program will have an impact on federal desegregation orders that require certain school districts to achieve a racial distribution in each of their schools that mirrors the racial composition of the district as a whole. So, if 40% of the school-aged population in these districts is black then each school has a target of 40% black enrollment.
Here is an example the DOJ provides of the harm caused by the voucher program they are intervening to halt:
The recent news release from the State Department of Public Instruction revealing that 67 percent of the applicants to the Walker administration’s expanded school voucher program are already attending private schools elicited cries of “scam” from many quarters.
And well it should have.
That two-thirds of the voucher applicants had their children already enrolled in private schools lays waste the argument by Wisconsin legislative Republicans and the governor that vouchers are needed so poor families can rescue their children from poorly performing public schools.
That has always been a spurious argument, even back in the days when Gov. Tommy Thompson shepherded the nation’s first school choice program through the Legislature for low-income Milwaukee families. It was sold based on the argument that poor families, said to be ill-served by Milwaukee’s public school system, ought to be able to send their children to private schools just as do rich people. So, in order to do that with taxpayers’ money, vouchers were devised to technically make tuition grants to the families, which in turn would use them to pay the private schools.
Dana Goldstein on Sweden’s voucher system.
The U.S. Justice Department is suing Louisiana in New Orleans federal court to block 2014-15 vouchers for students in public school systems that are under federal desegregation orders. The first year of private school vouchers “impeded the desegregation process,” the federal government says.
Thirty-four school systems could be affected, including those of Jefferson, Plaquemines, St. John the Baptist and St. Tammany parishes. Under the lawsuit, the state would be barred from assigning students in those systems to private schools unless a federal judge agreed to it. A court hearing is tentatively set for Sept. 19.
The statewide voucher program, officially called the Louisiana Scholarship Program, lets low-income students in public schools graded C, D or F attend private schools at taxpayer expense. This year, 22 of the 34 systems under desegregation orders are sending some students to private schools on vouchers.
Rick Esenberg, via a kind reader’s email:
Whether or not he is right, we are left with, again, with the very philosophical divide that I identified. Mr. Hughes thinks that centralized and collective decision-making will more properly value diversity (as he defines it) and make better educational choices for children than their parents will.
Of course to describe a philosophical divide does not tell us who has the better of the argument. Mr. Hughes defends his position by relying on a 2007 “study” by the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute which, strictly speaking, was not a study at all and had more to do with the impact of choice on public schools than its value to the families who participate in the program.
The 2007 WPRI publication collected no data on what was actually happening in Milwaukee. It simply took a national data base on the educational involvement of families and extrapolated it to Milwaukee based on the socioeconomic characteristics of Milwaukee families. It was, strictly speaking, nothing more than a calculation. If low income and minority families in Milwaukee behave like low income and minority families nationally, the calculation showed, then, based on certain assumptions, very few would engage in informed decision-making regarding their children’s education.
It was an interesting and thought provoking exercise but one with an obvious limitation. It is not at all clear that national findings would extend to a city with a relatively longstanding and actively promoted choice program. It is possible that the existence of a greater array of educational choices would change the incentives and capacity of parents to engage in the informed and engaged decision-making that would otherwise not happen.
Beyond that, the fact that only a subset of families will exercise a choice tells us precisely nothing about whether they ought to have the opportunity to make one – unless you entertain a presumption against individual choice and a diversity of alternatives in education.
Mr. Hughes argues that education is an “experience good” which is a fancy way of saying that it is something that consumers have a difficult time evaluating before deciding whether to buy it. But, again, the extent to which you think something is that type of good (many things are difficult to be sure about before you try them) and whether, having decided it is, you think that people should have someone else choose for them reflects very philosophical divide I’m concerned with.
“We know best” has long been associated with parts of Madison’s K-12 community, despite long term, disastrous reading scores and spending twice the national average per student.
Background: “The notion that parents inherently know what school is best for their kids is an example of conservative magical thinking.”; “For whatever reason, parents as a group tend to undervalue the benefits of diversity in the public schools….”.
It would certainly be useful to spend a bit of time learning about Milwaukee’s experiences, positive and negative with a far more open k-12 climate. The results of Madison’s insular, non-diverse approach are an embarrassment to students, citizens, taxpayers and employers. 
Madison Superintendent Jennifer Cheatham wisely stated:
“Rather than do a lot of work on opposing the voucher movement, we are going to focus on making sure our schools are the best schools possible and the schools of choice in Madison,” Cheatham said.
Just a few days ago, the Madison School Board said this in the “strategic framework document”:
Public education is under sustained attack, both in our state and across the nation. Initiatives like voucher expansion are premised on the notion that public schools are not up to the challenge of effectively educating diverse groups of students in urban settings.
We are out to prove that wrong. With Superintendent Cheatham, we agree that here in Madison all the ingredients are in place. Now it is up to us to show that we can serve as a model of a thriving urban school district, one that seeks out strong community partnerships and values genuine collaboration with teachers and staff in service of student success.
Our Strategic Framework lays out a roadmap for our work. While some of the goals will seem familiar, what’s new is a clear and streamlined focus and a tangible and energizing sense of shared commitment to our common goals.
Madison must focus, laser like on academic achievement.
“If you have 10 students on vouchers in your school, are the test scores for those 10 going to be used for a report card when you’ve got 200 or 300 in your school?” Lancaster said.
The Legislature has yet to introduce a bill that would bring private voucher schools into the state’s public school accountability system, though the budget requires those schools to receive report cards a year after linking to the state’s student information system.
Walker said earlier this year he hoped to sign a bill with the details before the budget passed, which won’t happen. His office didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, said he expects legislators to make progress on a proposal this summer and pass a bill during the next fall or spring session.
Lancaster said many schools were concerned about paying $900 to sign up for the program, only to not make the top 25. Last week the Assembly addressed that concern with a budget amendment that ensures the registration fee would be reimbursed to schools that don’t make the cut.
Some schools in the rural and suburban parts of the diocese don’t expect to have large enough low-income student populations to make it into the top 25, Lancaster said.
Much more on vouchers, here.
Important Press Conference – Can You Make It? – http://t.co/8VlrPf2rMD
— Madison Teachers Inc (@MtiMadison) June 15, 2013
DPI Superintendent, Tony Evers, and legislators who want to maintain Wisconsin’s proud system of public education, are holding a press conference on Monday, June 17 at 10 AM in the Assembly Parlor to address the recent decision by the Joint Committee on Finance to expand voucher funding at the expense of public schools. The Senate and Assembly will be voting to pass this extreme budget within weeks. Please join these folks to inform and educate the public about the negative impact that private school voucher expansion will have on Wisconsin’s public schools. Wear Red for Public Ed. We need a wall of support behind the speakers. Time is running short to stop this train wreck but we cannot allow our opposition to go unnoticed!
TIME / LOCATION: 10 am in the Assembly Parlor with Superintendent Tony Evers.
Governance change is apparently quite difficult within the present school district model.
Madison Teachers, Inc. Solidarity Newsletter (PDF), via a kind Jeannie Bettner email:
As he described it in February, 2011, Governor Scott Walker “dropped a bomb” on Wisconsin’s public employees, attempting to strip them of their rights to collectively bargain. Now he’s aiming at our kids. Walker’s 2013 biennial budget goes a long way in his plan to crush public education in Wisconsin; a move to privatize via VOUCHERS (i.e. providing funding from the area public school to enable parents to pay tuition to send their children to private or religious schools).
In its press conference on May 17, the Forward Institute released their study of the impact of school funding on educational opportunity. The study found that schools with higher poverty levels have experienced greater loss in funding when compared to more affluent schools across the state. The number of students in Wisconsin living in poverty has doubled since 2007, and since 2007 state funding of public education has fallen to its lowest level in 17 years. Walker’s biennial budget proposes to further exacerbate the situation by expanding voucher schools into nine additional areas, including Madison.
Expanding voucher schools will take away funding from our public schools. Not only are school districts required to pay 38.4% of the cost of each voucher; they lose the ability to count the student attending private/parochial schools in the state aid formula on which the amount of revenue is based. In Madison, a person would receive $6,442 from the MMSD to send their child to a private or parochial school. Yet Madison would receive no additional state aid to offset that cost, so payments come directly from money that would have supported education in Madison public schools. It is projected that in the first five years of vouchers, Madison schools could lose nearly $27 million to vouchers.
….
MTI has received several concerns regarding the calendar, as recently released by the District, for the 2013-14 school year. Among the demands by the District, enabled by Governor Walker’s Act 10, in last year’s negotiations, was that one of the Voluntary Days, August 28, be converted to a mandatory attendance “development day”. It is specifically designated as “development”, not “staff development”. The latter is designated for August 29. Since the 1970’s the Contract provided returning teachers three Voluntary Days, days for which they are paid, but did not have to be at their assigned work site. The new Contract, effective July 1, 2013, reduces that to two days. “All Staff Day” is August 30.
Secondly, an agreement provides that the District has full
discretion as to whether to enable Ready, Set, Goal Conferences. The agreement provides teachers compensation or flex time for engaging parents in such conferences. Because of the proposed cut in State aid under Governor Walker’s Budget, MMSD may not authorize RSG Conferences this fall. They ask that teachers prepare letters inviting parents for such conferences, should funding enable them.
Third, is the issue of Parent-Teacher conferences. The Contract provides that there will be two evenings for conferences and that the day following conferences will also be for conferences with no students present to enable conferences which were not held on the prior evening. The District has failed to list November 13 as being with no students, while they scheduled evening conferences on November 12. The District has proposed to MTI changing the day following each conference to be with students, and having the only “no student” day be November 27, the day before Thanksgiving.
Vouchers are not an existential threat to our local public school structure. Long-term disastrous reading scores are, and merit everyone’s full attention.
Stop the latest ploy by the WIGOP to destroy our public schools!The time to act is now: bit.ly/18zyVJW
— Madison Teachers Inc (@MtiMadison) May 30, 2013
Long term disastrous reading scores are the existential threat to our local public school “status quo” structure.
Related: Where Have all the Students Gone? Madison Area School District Enrollment Changes: 1995-2013.
Gov. Scott Walker’s plan to create a statewide charter school board has hit a roadblock as lawmakers are considering removing it from the next two-year budget.
Republicans are also backing away from using new school report cards to expand the state’s voucher program, though a broader agreement on the voucher expansion remained elusive Wednesday.
Republicans said they might introduce separate legislation to establish a statewide board to authorize nonprofits to open charter schools in certain school districts, including Madison.
“We think that’s highly popular around the state and we need to talk about it a little more,” said Sen. Alberta Darling, R-River Hills, co-chairwoman of the Joint Finance Committee, which is rewriting Walker’s 2013-15 spending plan.
Are taxpayers really getting their bang for their buck when it comes to funding school vouchers?
The short answer from the Forward Institute is no.
The new, progressive public policy research organization released its comprehensive report today on Wisconsin’s education funding and poverty and it’s well worth a close read.
A portion of the report examines taxpayer funding for voucher schools and their performance.
Now, this isn’t easy to do since schools that accept vouchers don’t have to provide the kind of data that fully public schools provide, even though the state has enhanced some of the voucher schools’ accountability measures.
That said, the Forward Institute chose to look at state aid per pupil and the percentage of students that test proficient or advanced on state tests. (You’ll find all of this on page 46 of the report.)
Let’s just acknowledge here that both public schools and voucher schools take in money from other sources. Both types of schools typically spend more per pupil than what they receive from state taxpayers.
Much more on vouchers, here.
The word was out last year that Republican Assembly Speaker Jeff Fitzgerald intended to retire and make the big money working as a lobbyist. Two days after his term was up, he signed up as a lobbyist for School Choice Wisconsin.
Fitzgerald’s decision underlined the ironic facts of life in Wisconsin. Choice Schools may be badly underfunded, getting just $6,442 per pupil in public funding (about half of what public schools get), and may often pay lousy salaries to teachers. But those who lobby for school choice are doing just fine, thank you. Indeed, the pay is so good that three former Republican Assembly Speakers now do lobbying and advocacy for school choice.
The first to jump aboard the gravy train was former Speaker (and key figure in the legislative caucus scandal) Scott Jensen, who works for two Washington D.C.-based groups that work to increase School Choice funding: the American Federation for Children and the Alliance for School Choice, two sister organizations located at the same address, 1660 L Street NW, Suite 1000. Both groups have a key consultant, Chartwell Strategic Advisors, the one-man consulting company run by Jensen from his Brookfield home. In 2011, the most recent for which these groups filed federal income tax forms, Jensen earned $202,972, including $102,7346 from the American Federation for Children and $100, 236 from the Alliance for School Choice.
These groups have often worked to influence issues and elections in Wisconsin. A report by the American Federation for Children bragged that “With expenditures of $2,392,000, [AFC] engaged in hard-fought, successful battles to ensure educational choice majorities in both chambers of the Legislature” in Wisconsin, as the the Badger Herald reported.
2013-2014 Madison School Board President Ed Hughes:
The proponents of the proposed expansion of Wisconsin’s private-school voucher program have run out of substantive arguments. Governor Walker’s “This is about children” illustrates how vacuous their efforts at persuasion have become.
When Governor Walker’s budget was first announced, his initial talking points in support of his voucher expansion plan featured the claim that schools in the nine targeted school districts were failing and vouchers were necessary to provide a lifeline to students who needed help to pursue other schooling options. Neither the governor nor his supporters are pushing that argument any more. It seems that they got the point that it is not a smart move politically for the governor to go around trashing the public schools in some of the larger urban areas of the state.
While proponents have claimed that students in voucher schools do better academically, the wind has gone out of the sails of that argument as well. DPI has reported that students in voucher schools in Milwaukee and Racine performed worse on the WKCE than students in the public schools in those communities. Voucher school advocates can point to data that supposedly support their view, opponents can counter with contrary figures, and at best the evidence on improved student performance is a wash. There is no reason to think that students in the nine districts targeted for voucher expansion would do any better in the private schools in their area than they would in their neighborhood public schools. No one has offered an argument to the contrary.
Voucher proponents sometimes try to construct a cost-savings argument around the fact that the per-pupil amounts that voucher students would receive are less than the average per-pupil expenditures by their school districts. But this argument goes nowhere because no one is proposing that the public schools shut down as voucher schools expand. Consequently, there’s really not much of a response to the observation credited to former Governor Tommy Thompson that “We can’t afford two systems of education.”
Additionally, voucher schools have not discovered a magic bullet that allows them to educate students across the spectrum of needs more economically. Here’s a telling excerpt from an op ed by the Choice Schools Association advocating for much higher voucher payments and posted on line by the right-wing MacIver Institute:
Vouchers are hardly an existential threat to the Madison School District. Rather, the District’s long term disastrous reading scores are the essential issue, one that merits endless attention and improvement.
2005: When all third graders read at grade level or beyond by the end of the year, the achievement gap will be closed…and not before.
Many observers have called Gov.Scott Walker’s proposal to expand private school vouchers bad education policy. I agree. Today I would like to address voucher expansion from the perspective of fiscal policy.
If voucher advocates are successful in expanding private school vouchers in this budget, vouchers will eventually become one of the largest taxpayer-funded entitlements in Wisconsin.
I realize this is a strong statement. I also understand that voucher proponents argue the Governor’s proposal increases voucher eligibility to just nine new school districts in 2013-14. If you let the nose of the camel inside the tent, however, it won’t be long before the rest of the camel is inside the tent as well.
The ultimate objective of private school voucher advocates is a statewide system of private school vouchers for all Wisconsin school children. Voucher advocates, including Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, have repeatedly voiced their support for statewide vouchers. This objective became crystal-clear in a recent news interview when School Choice Wisconsin Vice-President Terry Brown identified the goal of voucher proponents as “a voucher in every backpack.”
So, how much could this entitlement end up costing Wisconsin taxpayers?
Since new test cut scores designed to raise standards in reading and math was adopted last year, many school systems have to adjust to having less students rated “proficient” or “advanced” than in recent years.
In a statement Tuesday, MPS Superintendent Gregory Thornton noted that MPS students continued to outperform their counterparts who used publicly funded vouchers. According to the results, MPS students scored 3.4 higher than voucher students in reading and 6.5 points higher in math.
But nobody could deny the overall results of the standardized testing revealed daunting problems still remain with under-performing students in Milwaukee Public Schools.
In his remarks, Thornton praised the results but noted there was more to do.
“We have seen some promising increases in achievement among students who have historically underperformed,” Thornton said. “We are working hard to make sure that the significant reforms we have put in place … will yield stronger results in the coming years.”
Gov. Bobby Jindal defended his school voucher program in a whirlwind interview Friday with NBC-TV newswoman Hoda Kotb, saying that whether a school is a charter, private or a traditional public school, government should “fund what works for a child.” The interview took place during NBC’s invitation-only Education Nation summit in New Orleans and was broadcast live on WDSU and the Internet.
Jindal is waiting for a state Supreme Court ruling on the constitutionality of the 2012 law authorizing the voucher program. The state Department of Education will issue its first private/parochial school matches for new entrants in the program next week.
Vouchers help “low-income kids that are trapped in failing schools,” Jindal said to a who’s-who of New Orleans education figures, who grumbled at many of his remarks.
In Louisiana, he said, roughly 5,000 students are now “getting better academic results” at a savings to the taxpayer. The average voucher scholarship uses $5,300 of public money, compared with the $8,500 state and local per-pupil allotment for a child in public school.
Union Information – Please Read – eepurl.com/xQ3MH
— Madison Teachers Inc (@MtiMadison) April 8, 2013
Much more on GRUMPS, here.
A growing number of lawmakers across the country are taking steps to redefine public education, shifting the debate from the classroom to the pocketbook. Instead of simply financing a traditional system of neighborhood schools, legislators and some governors are headed toward funneling public money directly to families, who would be free to choose the kind of schooling they believe is best for their children, be it public, charter, private, religious, online or at home.
On Tuesday, after a legal fight, the Indiana Supreme Court upheld the state’s voucher program as constitutional. This month, Gov. Robert Bentley of Alabama signed tax-credit legislation so that families can take their children out of failing public schools and enroll them in private schools, or at least in better-performing public schools.
In Arizona, which already has a tax-credit scholarship program, the Legislature has broadened eligibility for education savings accounts. And in New Jersey, Gov. Chris Christie, in an effort to circumvent a Legislature that has repeatedly defeated voucher bills, has inserted $2 million into his budget so low-income children can obtain private school vouchers.
Proponents say tax-credit and voucher programs offer families a way to escape failing public schools. But critics warn that by drawing money away from public schools, such programs weaken a system left vulnerable after years of crippling state budget cuts — while showing little evidence that students actually benefit.
So the Indiana Supreme Court has ruled that the state’s school voucher program is constitutional. It isn’t the first time a supreme court has made a questionable call but, apart from the legal argument, the decision doesn’t mean that vouchers are a good educational or civic idea.
They aren’t.
Indiana is one of a growing number of states with school voucher programs. These allow public dollars to be used at private schools, including religious schools, including those religious schools that use creationist materials that teach anti-scientific notions such as the idea that the universe is no more than 10,000 years old, and that humans lived at the very same time as dinosaurs.
With Tuesday’s decision by the Indiana Supreme Court, Indiana can now expand its program, in which more than 9,300 low-income students already are enrolled. Under the program, students in grades 1-8 can receive up to $4,500 annually for private school tuition, and high schoolers can get a little bit more. The court ruled that the money is going to families, who use it as they wish, rather than the schools themselves, which the justices believe is an argument that gets around the separation between church and state.
Indiana’s Supreme Court upheld a law that lets taxpayer funds pay for private schools, boosting an effort to expand what is already the broadest such voucher program in the U.S. and rebuffing critics who say it undermines public education.
The court’s five judges unanimously rejected the argument of the state’s largest teachers union and other plaintiffs that the Indiana voucher program violates the state Constitution because it uses public funds to support religious education. Most of the voucher funding goes to parochial schools. The judges, upholding an earlier trial-court decision, ruled that as long as the state maintains a public-education system, using Indiana tax dollars to help fund the private-school educations of low- and middle-income children doesn’t violate the state Constitution.
Proponents say vouchers offer parents important alternatives to public schools. Twenty-two states and Washington, D.C., have some sort of program that funds private schools, but most limit eligibility to low-income or otherwise disadvantaged families, said Robert Enlow, chief executive of the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice, a national advocacy group for vouchers. In Indiana’s two-year-old program, families are eligible if their income is up to 150% more than the threshold to qualify for a free or reduced-price lunch, which translates to as much as $64,000 a year for a family of four.
(Reuters) – The Indiana Supreme Court on Tuesday unanimously upheld the nation’s broadest school voucher program, which gives poor and middle-class families public funds to help pay private school tuition.
Opponents, including the state teachers’ union, had sued to block the program on grounds that nearly all the voucher money has been directed to religious schools.
Voucher systems have drawn criticism across the United States from critics who say they drain money from public schools and subsidize overtly religious education. Supporters say they offer families greater choice on where to educate their children.
In a 5-0 vote, the Indiana justices said that it did not matter that funds had been directed to religious schools, so long as parents – and not the state – decide where to use the tuition vouchers.
“Whether the Indiana program is wise educational or public policy is not a consideration,” Chief Justice Brent Dickson wrote. The program is constitutional, he wrote, because the public funds “do not directly benefit religious schools but rather directly benefit lower-income families with school children.”
Milwaukee Public Television 4th Street Forum:
Can parents make informed decisions? How does the community benefit from these school options? And how important are standards, accountability, and transparency?
ALAN BORSUK is an education columnist for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Until 2009, he worked full time for the paper as an education reporter. Mr. Borsuk is a Law and Public Policy senior fellow for Marquette University Law School where he continues his research and writing on education.
ANNELIESE DICKMAN, JD is the research director for Public Policy Forum, a Milwaukee-based, nonpartisan think tank. The focus of her research and writing is on education policy, including financing and governance. Ms. Dickman was the Forum’s lead author of their 15th annual report on education, “Cost and Performance in Choice Schools.”
LATISH REED, PhD is an assistant professor of educational leadership at UW-Milwaukee. Earlier in her career, she was a middle school teacher and an assistant principal for Milwaukee Public Schools. Professor Reed also helped to start a charter school, Malcolm X Academy, which has since closed.
Madison School Board candidate Wayne Strong said Friday he mistakenly told Madison Teachers Inc.’s political action committee in a January questionnaire that he supported private school vouchers.
The issue of voucher support has loomed large in this spring’s election. Ananda Mirilli, a former candidate for a separate seat, was falsely accused of supporting vouchers in an email from the husband of her opponent, Sarah Manski, who dropped out of the race after winning the primary. Mirilli finished third and will not be on the April 2 ballot.
The South Central Federation of Labor sent out a campaign flier this week supporting Strong’s opponent Dean Loumos. The flier says Strong “has retracted an earlier statement that he supports the use of public funds for private and religious schools.”
“I didn’t retract it, I corrected it,” Strong said. “It’s always been my position that I did not support use of public money (for private voucher schools).”
Much more on the 2013 Madison School Board elections, here.
Addressing the most contentious issue in Gov. Scott Walker’s budget bill, state Schools Superintendent Tony Evers on Thursday called on members of the Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee to reject a proposed expansion of voucher schools and to give more money to public schools.
Citing figures from the Legislature’s nonpartisan budget office, Evers said the $129 million in new state aid Walker included in his two-year budget bill drops to $39.2 million after accounting for how part of that money would go to private and charter schools under the proposal. Walker seeks to increase funding for existing and future voucher schools, expand them to nine new school districts and allow special-needs students from around the state to attend private schools at taxpayer expense.
At the same time, Walker wants to use the state public school aid to hold down local property taxes rather than increase spending on education.
Evers, who is running for re-election on April 2 against Rep. Don Pridemore (R-Erin), said Walker’s budget pitted public schools against private schools by increasing state funding for voucher school initiatives by 32% while keeping overall revenue to schools flat.
“This has to stop. The state cannot continue to play favorites. We can and must meet our constitutional obligation to invest in all of our kids,” Evers said.
In its third straight day of budget hearings, the Joint Finance Committee took testimony Thursday on Walker’s 2013-’15 budget proposals for Wisconsin’s K-12 schools, technical colleges and universities. The hearing made clear that the governor’s education proposals will face resistance from some senators in the Republican-controlled Senate and have strong support from Republicans in charge of the Assembly, leaving its future in doubt.
Last year, in its very first year of operation, St. John Fisher Academy, a voucher school, was forced to close its doors from lack of funding. The Northwestern Avenue school had counted on various grants and other funding coming in. But they didn’t come through and, after months of teachers working without pay, the school announced its closing.
After that episode, which left students looking for a new school, it was especially concerning to hear about another voucher school with money issues — Evergreen Elementary School.
This is a brand-new voucher school that wants to capitalize on the voucher program that started here in Racine during the 2011-12 school year. The program allows low- to middle-income students who live in the Racine Unified attendance area to attend participating private schools using state-funded $6,442 vouchers to pay tuition. There was a cap on the number of students who could attend the last two years, but the cap has been lifted for next year.
For a spirited entrepreneur, this is an opportunity to establish a new business and, possibly, that is what the founders of Evergreen were thinking.
Are all publicly funded school budgets well vetted?
“Vouchers, private charter schools, special education vouchers will fragment our community and weaken MMSD,” says GRUMPS. Thank You!
— Madison Teachers Inc (@MtiMadison) March 6, 2013
Much more on GRUMPS, here.
Here’s how five citizens answered this week’s question (on the expansion of Wisconsin voucher school opportunities) posed by Capital Times freelancer Kevin Murphy. What do you think? Please join the discussion.
“Yes, I think parents should have the choice to decide which school their children will attend and this would allow them to have the money to make that choice instead of having to go to the one in the area they live. Choice is better for everyone — parents too. When you give people the power to decide, it gives school districts an incentive to improve their programs for the students or they will go elsewhere.”
Beatrice Makesa
financial analyst
Madison
“I don’t think taking money away from public schools and giving it to private ones is right. I’m from California where our schools are in (bad) shape because the public schools don’t have enough money to do a good job of educating. I don’t want to see that happen here. In the city of Los Angeles, there’s a handful of relevant public schools due to lack of state funding and that leaves everyone else trying to get into private schools, which can pick and choose who they want to enroll. As a general rule, taking away more money from the public school systems doesn’t seem wise.”
Charlie Frederich
technical service rep
Madison
If I were a D.C. parent with little money and a child in a bad public school, I would happily accept a taxpayer-supported voucher to send my kid to a private school. But I still don’t think voucher programs are a good use of education dollars, particularly after reading a startling story on The Washington Post’s front page on Sunday.
My colleagues Lyndsey Layton and Emma Brown revealed that the $133 million appropriated for vouchers in the District since 2004 have gone to private schools with no requirements to report publicly how well their students are doing. Some of those schools have dubious curriculums and inadequate facilities. At least eight of the 52 schools with voucher students are not accredited.
Paulette Jones-Imaan poses for a portrait photograph inside the cafeteria of the Academy for Ideal Education. (Astrid Riecken – For The Washington Post) Take a look at the Academy for Ideal Education in Northeast Washington. Almost all of its students are in the voucher program run by the nonprofit D.C. Children and Youth Investment Trust Corp. The school’s founder, Paulette Jones-Imaan, believes in learning through music, stretching and meditation, Layton and Brown report.
The Academy for Ideal Education does not have to reveal its results on the nationally standardized test that voucher students are required to take, but I suspect those children are not learning much. I have some experience with the Ideal Academy, a charter high school also founded by Jones-Imaan. In 2009 I wrote about it having some of the lowest achievement rates in the city, which I knew because charters have to report their test scores. The D.C. authorizing board for charters forced it to close. Sadly, no agency has that power over private schools using vouchers.
This past Monday, parents of three young Camden City Public Schools students filed a class action complaint with N.J. Education Commissioner Chris Cerf. The parents contend that enrollment in Camden’s bleak public school system constitutes a breach of their children’s constitutional right to a “thorough and efficient public education system.”
Are the parents’ children being denied their constitutional rights? Sure. Twenty-three of Camden’s 26 schools are on the State’s list of our worst schools (the bottom 5 percent). Based on SAT scores, less than 1 percent of Camden High School’s graduates are ready for college. One plaintiff has a twelve-year-old son, Keanu Vargas, who attends 7th grade at Pyne Point Family School. The most recent data from the N.J. DOE (2010-2011) shows that hardly any kids at Pyne Point pass the state standardized tests in language arts and math. Forty-two percent of the student body was suspended during the year.
Not so hard to make an argument that Keanu doesn’t have access to a decent education system. By way of contrast, at Cherry Hill Public Schools, a mere seven miles away, just about all kids achieve proficiency on state tests.
This past Monday, parents of three young Camden City Public Schools students filed a class action complaint with N.J. Education Commissioner Chris Cerf. The parents contend that enrollment in Camden’s bleak public school system constitutes a breach of their children’s constitutional right to a “thorough and efficient public education system.”
Are the parents’ children being denied their constitutional rights? Sure. Twenty-three of Camden’s 26 schools are on the State’s list of our worst schools (the bottom 5 percent). Based on SAT scores, less than 1 percent of Camden High School’s graduates are ready for college. One plaintiff has a twelve-year-old son, Keanu Vargas, who attends 7th grade at Pyne Point Family School. The most recent data from the N.J. DOE (2010-2011) shows that hardly any kids at Pyne Point pass the state standardized tests in language arts and math. Forty-two percent of the student body was suspended during the year.
As Louisiana debuts one of the nation’s most extensive private-school voucher programs, deep divides persist over who should be accountable for ferreting out academic failure and financial abuse: the government or parents.
Across the country, vouchers have resurged in a big way over the last two years–both as a form of school choice and a political lightning rod. Republican governors in Louisiana, Indiana, New Jersey and other states have championed them as a solution to the challenges besetting public education. More recently, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney joined the chorus, saying he hopes to turn an eight-year-old voucher program in Washington, D.C. into a “national showcase.”
After the Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education approved state Superintendent John C. White’s version of accountability for voucher schools this week, some people were asking “what accountability?”
They especially feel that way since White reserved the right to waive any and all restrictions imposed in the accountability plan if he believes it’s merited.
If a school doesn’t have 40 students, there are no repercussions, even if every voucher student fails the state assessment tests.
The state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, or BESE, approved a new set of academic standards Tuesday for private schools participating in Louisiana’s expanded voucher program. By a vote of 9 to 2, the 11-member panel adopted a plan proposed by state Superintendent John White that will require private schools to hit roughly the same academic bar that public schools do in order to continue accepting public funding, though only if they take 40 or more students through the program.
The plan sparked heated debate among board members, with Lottie Beebe, from St. Martin Parish, and Carolyn Hill, from Baton Rouge, twice trying to get the decision put off until White could come back with tougher standards. Hill compared the board’s vote to Adam and Eve eating the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden, warning that “evil is going to arise” from the board’s decision.
Chas Roemer, a board member who also represents parts of Baton Rouge, offered the most full-throated support for White, calling the vote “one of our proudest moments as a board.”
State 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, according to new guidelines released by the state on Monday.
The voucher program, the most sweeping in the nation, is the linchpin of Louisiana’s bold push to reshape public education. The state plans to 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.
The Washington Post’s Jay Mathews mused last month about the similarities between the education platforms of President Obama and Mitt Romney, but he was also a little too eager to dismiss their differences on school vouchers as irrelevant. The issue of equal access to private schools speaks to the core values of each party, but the topic is particularly important to Democrats who were deeply divided on the issue in the 1970s, and are so again today.
Let’s start with some history. In 1922, the Ku Klux Klan pushed a referendum in Oregon, which the voters passed, making it illegal for children to attend private schools. The Klan thought outlawing private schooling, especially Catholic schools, would help reduce cultural pluralism in the United States. The Society of Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary, which ran a Catholic girls school in Oregon, sued, and the law was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1925 (Pierce v. Society of Sisters).
The recent Wisconsin recall election showed that even voters in blue states are willing to reward leaders who take on entrenched government unions. Have Pennsylvania Republicans missed the memo?
The question is raised by Pennsylvania’s continued failure to enact school vouchers, even as Harrisburg has been run for two years by Republicans who campaigned on school choice. Gov. Tom Corbett has talked the talk, calling education “the civil rights issue of the 21st century,” blasting a system in which “some students are consigned to failure because of their ZIP codes,” and identifying vouchers as his top educational priority. But with legislators’ summer break approaching on June 30 (and elections dominating the calendar after that), vouchers are already off the table. Apparently the fury of teachers unions would be too much for the Keystone State to bear.
Last October, Pennsylvania’s Senate passed a bipartisan voucher bill to throw an immediate lifeline to low-income students in the worst 5% of schools, with roughly 550,000 low-income kids becoming eligible within three years. Eight months later, Speaker Sam Smith and Majority Leader Mike Turzai–both Republicans who claim to support choice–haven’t brought the bill up for a vote in the House.
Stephanie Banchero & Jennifer Levitz:
It had been years since Principal Kathleen Lowry pulled extra desks from the dusty attic of St. Stanislaus, the only Catholic school left in this port city. But after Indiana began offering parents vouchers in the spring of 2011 to pay for private tuition, she had to bring down 30 spare desks and hire three teachers’ aides.
Thanks to vouchers, St. Stanislaus, which was $140,000 in debt to the Catholic Diocese of Gary at the end of 2010, picked up 72 new students, boosting enrollment by 38%.
“God has been good to us,” says Ms. Lowry. “Growth is a good problem to have.”
For the first time in decades, Catholic education is showing signs of life. Driven by expanding voucher programs, outreach to Hispanic Catholics and donations by business leaders, Catholic schools in several major cities are swinging back from
Stephanie Simon: 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. The following year, students of any income will be eligible for mini-vouchers that they can use to pay a range of private-sector … Continue reading Vouchers, Mini-Vouchers: Louisiana’s bold bid to privatize schools
Editor’s note: Progress in the parental school choice movement is measured not only by big gains in states like Indiana and Louisiana, but by the flurry of incremental developments in more states every year. Peter Hanley, executive director of the California-based American Center for School Choice, offers a look at encouraging developments in his home state.
California has the nation’s largest charter school program, with 982 charter schools serving 412,000 students. But with nearly a two-thirds Democratic legislature heavily influenced by the California Teachers Association, tax credit scholarships or vouchers have been entirely off the table. In fact, charter schools’ flexibility is under near constant attack. Now, though, two legislators have introduced innovative approaches that address a unique feature in California’s constitution and attempt to bring educational tax credits to the state.
Florida: State Education Commissioner Gerard Robinson responds to newspaper questions about charter schools and vouchers. (Tampa Bay Times Gradebook blog) He suggest school choice critics have a double standard. (redefinED)
Wisconsin: Vouchers have become an issue in the Democratic primary for governor between candidates Tom Barrett and Kathleen Falk. (wispolitics.com)
South Carolina: Jeb Bush talks education reform and school choice at a summit for educators, lawmakers and business leaders. (Associated Press) Parents rally for choice as Legislature considers several proposals. (The State)
Do critics have a double standard when it comes to scrutinizing school choice options like charter schools and vouchers? Florida Education Commissioner Gerard Robinson suggested as much in an interview published today by the Tampa Bay Times’ Gradebook education blog.
In response to a question from the Times editorial board, Robinson noted that charter schools that struggle academically and/or financially can be shut down (in Florida, that has happened many times) but that same ultimate penalty is rarely leveled at traditional public schools (off hand, we can’t think of any examples in Florida). “For the bad charter schools that aren’t working, they should close,” Robinson said. “But for the traditional schools that have also failed a number of our kids, we don’t see the same level of righteous indignation.”
Robinson has deep roots in the school choice movement, having once served as president of the Black Alliance for Educational Options. And interestingly enough, the editorial board’s questions focused mostly on choice options. Here are some other excerpts:
The Louisiana state legislature has approved a new school vouchers system that, when signed by Governor Bobby Jindal, will be one of the largest in the country. The move caps 18 months of extensive expansion of voucher programs nationwide and broadens the national argument about the future of public education, says the Wall Street Journal.
With growing systems in Florida, Virginia and Indiana joining older programs such as those in Washington, D.C., and Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the use of vouchers has increased rapidly since 2010.
- Nineteen states and Washington, D.C., have either voucher systems or “scholarship” programs that provide tax benefits to individuals and businesses for contributions that help pay for students to attend private school.
- The vast majority of these programs are targeted at specific groups of at-risk students, such as low-income or those with special needs.
- The Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice, an organization that advocates vouchers, estimates that about 220,000 students are currently enrolled in the programs nationwide.
The Louisiana program would add hundreds of thousands of students to the voucher camp, and would also implement several innovative policy provisions that would help put the program at the cutting edge of education.
Students like Delano Coffy are at the heart of brewing political fights and court battles over whether public dollars should go to school vouchers to help make private schools more affordable.
He was failing in his neighborhood public elementary school in Indianapolis until his mother enrolled him in a Roman Catholic school. Heather Coffy has scraped by for years to pay the tuition for Delano, now 16 and in a Catholic high school, and his two younger siblings, who attend the same Catholic elementary as their brother did. She’s getting help today from a voucher program, passed last year at the urging of GOP Gov. Mitch Daniels, that allows her to use state money for her children’s education.
“I can’t even tell you how easy I can breathe now knowing that for at least for this year my kids can stay at the school,” said the single mother, who filed a petition in court in support of the law. The state Supreme Court is hearing a challenge to the law, which provides vouchers worth on average more than $4,000 a year to low- and middle-income families. A family of four making about $60,000 a year qualifies.
State money spent on education should “follow the student” and not an institution, according to the argument often voiced by supporters of Gov. Bobby Jindal’s bill enabling the state to pay private school tuition for some students who want out of low-quality public schools. Critics of the Jindal-backed tuition voucher legislation, however, say there’s a problem: Some of the money following that student is local money, approved by local voters for their local public schools.
They say that’s an issue that could wind up in court.
The Jindal administration says the issue was cleared up with an amendment when the House approved the bill, but the matter arose again this past week during a Senate Education Committee hearing. It could spark more arguments Monday when the Senate Finance Committee discusses the measure.
Five years and three dozen reports later, here’s the biggest thing I have learned when it comes to comparing how kids are doing in Milwaukee Public Schools and in the publicly funded voucher program for private schools:
We’ve got some schools that are getting very good results. But we’ve got a lot of problems, and that’s true across the board. You’ll find schools where weak outcomes are the dominant reality in MPS, in the voucher program and among the independent charter schools. Three major streams of schools in Milwaukee and not much reason to cheer for any of them, in and of themselves.
What’s there to cheer for? Specific high performing schools – voucher, charter and MPS. Specific school leaders, teachers, supporters and kids. Specific people who are pushing to improve the status quo. Specific people who are willing to work together, including across ideological lines, to build up what works and tear down what doesn’t.
What’s there to cheer for? People who are serious participants in the pursuit of quality and results, regardless of the overarching governing and financial structure of their schools.
Five years and three dozen reports later, we know a lot about comparing the streams of Milwaukee education – and, it seems to me, it’s time to move past that. It’s time to focus on success school by school and what can be done to increase it effectively.
Milwaukee Public Policy Forum:
The Forum’s 14th annual census of schools participating in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP) finds that voucher use by Milwaukee students grew 10% in 2011-12 to 23,198 voucher students, reversing last year’s enrollment decline. In addition, the data indicate that most voucher students are attending hyper-segregated schools that have low reading and math proficiency rates.
The dramatic increase in voucher use is likely due to changes to the program in the most recent state budget, which allowed schools outside Milwaukee to join MPCP and expanded eligibility to include families at higher income levels. As a result, more than 2,200 additional students are using vouchers worth $6,442 each, increasing the program’s cost by $14.2 million.
Most of the new voucher users appear to have already been enrolled in private school. In 56 schools, the number of new voucher users exceed the growth in total enrollment in the school, while in 13 schools voucher growth and enrollment growth were equal. Over the past 10 years, total enrollment in the schools participating in the program has grown by roughly 5,300 students, while the number of voucher users has increased over twice as much.
When Gov. Bobby Jindal pushed through New Orleans’ school voucher program four years ago, political interest in using taxpayer money to send students to private schools had waned across the country. School choice advocates had suffered several stinging defeats, causing some to throw their weight behind charter schools, which generally receive more bipartisan support.
In 2009, St. Joan of Arc School in New Orleans had more than 80 students receiving vouchers.
Now, as officials expect Jindal to begin an effort to expand Louisiana’s voucher program, the national landscape has changed dramatically.
Although charter schools continue to dwarf vouchers in terms of overall growth, voucher programs have rebounded on the national political and educational scene in the past year. In 2011, more than 30 states introduced bills that would use taxpayer dollars to send children to privately run schools, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. That’s up more than 300% from the previous year, when only nine voucher bills were introduced.
The Senate approved a measure Tuesday that would curtail the expansion of school vouchers in Wisconsin, at least for now.
The voucher program provides parents in eligible school districts with state subsidies to help defray their children’s private school tuition. The subsidies have been a point of contention in Wisconsin for years. Conservatives insist the program gives children in struggling school districts an alternative, but opponents see it as vote of no confidence in public education and complain it pulls precious state dollars away from public schools.
The state Department of Public Instruction estimated it handed out $130.7 million in vouchers during the 2010-11 school year. Nearly 40 percent of that money came from a reduction in state aid for public schools in the city of Milwaukee, while the rest came from tax dollars, according to DPI.
The state budget Republican Gov. Scott Walker signed earlier this year laid out new qualifying criteria for vouchers based on a city’s size, poverty levels and per-pupil spending. The new standards made districts across Milwaukee County as well as in the city of Racine eligible.
We’re glad state lawmakers are attempting to fix a potential problem created when the controversial school voucher provision was hurriedly stuck into the biennial budget passed in June.
Senate Bill 174 would prevent the state’s voucher program from expanding to districts that don’t already qualify. The Green Bay School District falls into that category, but could eventually meet the qualifications.
Without the legislation, districts such as Green Bay could become eligible and begin the process of offering school vouchers without a full public hearing process. That would be unfair to taxpayers, parents, students and the public at large.
A proposal that Milwaukee taxpayers be told on tax bills exactly how much of their money is going to private schools through the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program is on the fast track for school board consideration.
During a special MPS board meeting Saturday morning to discuss the district’s long-range master plan for buildings, board member Larry Miller asked that his “voucher tax” transparency proposal be discussed at a school board committee meeting Tuesday, rather than wait to be introduced at the board’s next regular meeting Sept. 22, and then be referred to committee for discussion at a later date.
“The urgency of this is there’s a huge tax burden on the community and it’s important for the community to be educated on this burden,” Miller told the board Saturday morning.
The tax that MPS must levy under state law to support low-income Milwaukee students enrolled in private schools under the choice program would have ranked just behind Milwaukee Area Technical College and ahead of the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District if it had been broken out, ranked, and displayed under the “Levy by Unit of Government” section of tax information sent to taxpayers in 2010, Miller said.
Weeks after Indiana began the nation’s broadest school voucher program, thousands of students have transferred from public to private schools, causing a spike in enrollment at some Catholic institutions that were only recently on the brink of closing for lack of pupils.
It’s a scenario public school advocates have long feared: Students fleeing local districts in large numbers, taking with them vital tax dollars that often end up at parochial schools. Opponents say the practice violates the separation of church and state.
In at least one district, public school principals have been pleading with parents not to move their children.
“The bottom line from our perspective is, when you cut through all the chaff, nobody can deny that public money is going to be taken from public schools, and they’re going to end up in private, mostly religious schools,” said Nate Schnellenberger, president of the Indiana State Teachers Association.
As most Coloradans know, at least those who keep up with statewide education news, the Douglas County school board recently approved — unanimously — a groundbreaking plan to help pay the tuition costs for hundreds of students so that they can attend private schools.
This plan, known colloquially as a school voucher program, enjoys ardent support from some quarters, but vigorous opposition elsewhere.
Is such a plan useful, does it seem a wise use of taxpayer provided money, and is it available to all students?
Or, as many think, should public money earmarked for education be used exclusively for public schools to benefit all students? As with so many topics dotting the American sociological landscape, the answers lie in the murky sea of the individual’s political leanings.
Closing arguments in the case challenging the Douglas County School District’s voucher program ended three days of hearings that could halt the program in its infancy.
A standing-room-only crowd listened in Denver District Court while a legal team from the American Civil Liberties Union faced off against a team that included the Colorado Attorney General’s Office to decide the fate of the district’s school choice scholarship program.
Both sides agreed that any decision from Denver District Court Judge Michael Martinez will likely face an appeal, regardless of the ruling.
“There will be an appeal either way,” said Michael McCarthy, a plaintiff attorney representing the Taxpayers for Public Education. “What (the school district has) done is press the envelope as far as they can. For those interested in preserving public education in this state, they have got in their face as far as they can.”
More from the Wall Street Journal: Wall Street Journal:
In a bold bid to revamp public education, a suburban district south of Denver has begun handing out vouchers that use public money to help its largely affluent residents send their children to private and church-based schools. The Douglas County School District experiment is noteworthy because nearly all voucher programs nationally aim to help children who are poor, have special needs or are trapped in failing public schools. Douglas County, by contrast, is one of the most affluent in the U.S., with household income nearly double the national median, and has schools ranked among the best in Colorado. What do you think? Should vouchers only be used with lower-income students? Should they never be used? Do they violate the constitution?
One answer comes from Ivan Krastev, a Bulgarian political scientist. One of Mr. Krastev’s special interests is in the resilience of authoritarian regimes in the 21st century. To understand why they endure, Mr. Krastev has turned to the thinking of the economist Albert O. Hirschman, who was born in Berlin in 1915 and eventually became one of America’s seminal thinkers.
In 1970, while at Harvard, Mr. Hirschman wrote an influential meditation on how people respond to the decline of firms, organizations and states. He concluded that there are two options: exit — stop shopping at the store, quit your job, leave your country; and voice — speak to the manager, complain to your boss, or join the political opposition.
For Mr. Krastev, this idea — the trade-off between exit and voice — is the key to understanding what he describes as the “perverse” stability of Vladimir V. Putin’s Russia. For all the prime minister’s bare-chested public displays of machismo, his version of authoritarianism, in Mr. Krastev’s view, is “vegetarian.”
“It is fair to say that most Russians today are freer than in any other period of their history,” he wrote in an essay published this spring. But Mr. Krastev argues that it is precisely this “user-friendly” character of Mr. Putin’s authoritarianism that makes Russia stable. That is because Russia’s relatively porous dictatorship effectively encourages those people who dislike the regime most, and have the most capacity to resist it, to leave the country. They choose exit rather than voice, and the result is the death of political opposition: “Leaving the country in which they live is easier than reforming it.”
Related:
Madison School District May, 2011 Strategic Plan Update with Action Plans 1.8MB PDF
In a bold bid to revamp public education, a suburban district south of Denver has begun handing out vouchers that use public money to help its largely affluent residents send their children to private and church-based schools.
The move is being challenged in state court and a judge has held hearings this week to determine if the program can go forward.
The Douglas County School District experiment is noteworthy because nearly all voucher programs nationally aim to help children who are poor, have special needs or are trapped in failing public schools. Douglas County, by contrast, is one of the most affluent in the U.S., with household income nearly double the national median, and has schools ranked among the best in Colorado.
The program is also unique in that the district explicitly promotes the move as a way for it to save money. The district is, in effect, outsourcing some students’ education to the private sector for less than it would spend to teach them in public schools.
Do voucher programs force public schools into a zero-sum game by redirecting public funds and promising students to private schools? Or do school-choice options spur healthy competition by pressuring public schools to improve? Using data from Florida’s Tax Credit Scholarship Program, David Figlio of Northwestern University argues that public schools improve their performance when faced with the prospect of losing students to nearby private schools through voucher programs, and that greater competition results in greater gains in public school students’ test scores. In other words, the competitive effects of school choice could create a system where everybody wins.
Center on Education Policy 555K PDF:
With Republicans controlling a majority of state houses and the U.S. House of Representatives, interest in school vouchers has spiked during the past year at the federal, state, and local levels. Vouchers are payments that parents use to finance private school tuition for their children. Although vouchers can be privately funded, the programs that attract the most attention and controversy provide vouchers paid for with public tax dollars.
In the deal that ended the stalemate over the federal fiscal year 2011 budget, Congress restored funding for the District of Columbia voucher program, which had been discontinued in 2009 by the Obama Administration and the previous Democratic- controlled Congress. Vouchers are also likely to be a hot-button issue during the upcoming reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act and the 2012 national elections. Indiana recently enacted a statewide voucher program, and other states are actively considering voucher proposals with strong support from key legislators and governors. The school board in Douglas County, Colorado, adopted a local private school voucher program this spring.
In 2000, the Center on Education Policy (CEP), an independent nonprofit organization, reviewed and summarized the major research on school vouchers in the report School Vouchers: What We Know and Don’t Know and How We Could Learn More, available at www.cep-dc.org. Since 2000, much has changed in the voucher landscape. On the legislative front, new voucher programs have been established during the past decade in D.C., Ohio, and New Orleans, in addition to the recently adopted programs in Douglas County and Indiana. Citizens’ referenda on vouchers in California, Michigan, and Utah were defeated by sizeable margins. On the judicial front, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the longstanding Cleveland voucher program was constitutional, but state Supreme Courts struck down an established voucher program in Florida and a new statewide program in Colorado. On the research front, numerous studies have added to the knowledge base about vouchers, including comprehensive studies examining the longer-term effects of vouchers in Milwaukee, Cleveland, and D.C.
This CEP report provides updated information for policymakers and others about the status of publicly funded voucher programs and the findings of major voucher studies published since 2000. Other types of programs also subsidize private school tuition including tuition tax credits, specialized vouchers for students with disabilities, town tuition programs for remote rural students, and privately funded vouchers but in order to produce a succinct report focusing on the most controversial form of subsidy, we limited our review to publicly funded voucher programs for general education students.
More, here.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel certainly made news over his angry, finger-wagging scolding of NBC Chicago TV reporter Mary Ann Ahern the other day.
Ahern dared ask the Rahmfather whether he’d send his kids to the public schools he controls. He reportedly became indignant, took off his microphone and ended the interview.
Later, and with great courtesy, Emanuel revisited the topic with a rival station — which then reported the big exclusive that the mayor was sending his children to a private school.
Emanuel runs Chicago Public Schools. He’s shown grit to stand publicly and admonish the teachers union to improve the product. But he decided his children will not attend the public schools.
The Indiana Department of Education on Friday unveiled a website to provide information about the newly approved state voucher system.
The site includes an initial list of eligible private schools and answers to frequently asked questions.
Lawmakers in April approved vouchers, which will provide state dollars to Hoosier kids who want to attend private or parochial schools.
The amount of money available for a student depends on the household income and the local district’s state funding. . A family of four, for example, could make up to $62,000 and still be eligible for a partial voucher.
Public schools aren’t the only ones divided over the state’s new private school voucher program that became law Friday and is supposed to be in place by the time classes start in August.
Greater Lafayette private schools are split over the new system — one that some say will expand educational opportunities but others fear could drag state regulations into the mix and restrict freedoms their classrooms currently enjoy.
A handful of Lafayette area schools will be taking advantage of the program. But with such a short time before the new school year starts, the most basic information about how to use the voucher program created by the General Assembly in April still is not available — not even the online application form.
The process likely will face even greater delays in light of a lawsuit filed Friday in Marion County Superior Court by the Indiana State Teacher’s Association. The lawsuit, which seeks an injunction to prevent the disbursement of funds under the new program, will continue to stall the process as it winds its way through the court system. All the while, private schools hoping to participate wait for answers.
As of early afternoon Wednesday the fate of voucher schools in Green Bay is uncertain. Rumors are flying that the proposal to use tax dollars to pay families to send their children to private and religious schools in that city will be pulled from the state budget.
It’s been a hot topic.
The voucher story I posted on Chalkboard last week detailed Green Bay Supt. Greg Maass’ unhappy reaction to both the proposal and the abrupt legislative process that put it in the budget. It definitely struck a nerve, and drew many comments.
Some of the most interesting reactions went well beyond the issue of vouchers and whether public money should be used to fund private schools. They expressed the heart of the debate surrounding public schools, or “government” schools as some folks call them.
Are public schools failing? Who’s to blame? What responsibilities does a civil society owe to children who are not our own? What kind of reforms do parents, and taxpayers, want to see?
Here are some excerpts that are revealing of the divide in the debate:VHOU812 wrote: …As a consumer of the public (or private) educational institutions, I am demanding more value. If it is not provided, I will push to refuse to purchase and home school. This is not what I want. I want security knowing that I am satisfied with the investment in my children’s education. I don’t get that feeling right now from publc schools, and that is the core of the problem that public schools need to fix. I also see that private institutions, by their nature, can make changes to respond to consumer demands very quickly, and it is clear public schools either can’t, or won’t.
I’m glad Susan posted these comments. Looking at the significant growth in Wisconsin K-12 spending over the past few decades along with declining performance, particularly in reading compels us all: parents, taxpayers, students, teachers, administrators and the ed school community, to think different.
Wolfram’s words are well worth considering: “You have to ask, what’s the point of universities today?” he wonders. “Technology has usurped many of their previous roles, such as access to knowledge, and the social aspects.”
The state’s Milwaukee school voucher program has discriminated against students with disabilities, according to a federal complaint filed Tuesday by the American Civil Liberties Union.
The complaint, filed with the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division, comes as expansion of the voucher program to other cities moves closer to Legislative approval.
The program, which began 20 years ago and serves nearly 21,000 students, provides public money for students to attend private schools, including religious schools.
The complaint states that 1.6 percent of voucher students have disabilities, compared with 19.5 percent of Milwaukee Public School students. It alleges the state has failed to hold private voucher schools accountable for serving children with disabilities.
State Superintendent Tony Evers on Monday blasted the Legislature’s budget committee for its late-night vote Friday to expand to Green Bay a program that allows students to attend private and religious schools at taxpayer expense.
The voucher expansion should be removed from the state budget and “a true local public debate needs to occur,” Evers said in a statement. He also referred to the budget committee’s vote to include Racine in the voucher program Thursday night.
“Raising taxes on the citizens of Green Bay and Racine in the dead of night, without public hearings or the support of their locally elected school officials echoes the type of non-representative, undemocratic actions taken by the English parliament against the American colonists through their stamp and tea taxes,” Evers said.
He raised several questions about the action Friday night by the Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee to include in the state budget an expansion of the school voucher program for Green Bay.
Green Bay property taxpayers are now on track to pay millions for private and religious schools, Evers said. “At the same time, their public school system is being cut $40 million, which will certainly raise class sizes and reduce educational opportunities for public school students.”
Recently I participated in a panel discussion following a showing of the film ” Waiting for Superman .” The film is deeply moving. Only a heart of granite would remain unmoved by the plight of the children and caretakers as they learn they would not get into their schools of choice.
In the discussion, Jim Johnson, a UNC-Chapel Hill Kenan-Flagler Business School professor and founder of the Union Independent School in Durham, made a crucial observation. He noted that the debate around public charter schools versus traditional public schools, or private versus public schools, deflected us from the underlying issue: the plight of children who have no adult advocates.
As Johnson pointed out, despite failing to win a place in their school of choice, the students featured in the film all had a least one adult in their lives who knowledgeably advocated for them and cared deeply about their learning opportunities.
Wisconsin State Journal Editorial:
Giving children in poverty private-school vouchers to escape failing public schools in Milwaukee is one thing.
But Gov. Scott Walker’s proposal to hand vouchers to wealthy families in Milwaukee and other cities isn’t justified or affordable for taxpayers.
This is especially true given the state’s budget problems and cuts in aid to public schools. Walker’s proposal could result in beleaguered taxpayers having to subsidize private school tuition for wealthy families who never intended to send their kids to public schools in the first place.
The Republican-run Legislature should keep Milwaukee’s private school choice program as it is: focused on needy, urban children.
A report from Wisconsin Democracy Campaign shows proponents of the school choice program outspent opponents 3-to-1 during the last election season. Nearly $1 million in outside election spending came from state business lobby Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce.
Assembly Republicans approved a bill earlier this month to expand voucher school enrollment in Milwaukee. Democrats call the program a privatization of education.
Opponents of the plan spent about $1 million to help elect mostly Democrats, with $841,000 coming from state teachers union Wisconsin Education Association Council. Sen. Spencer Coggs of Milwaukee received more than $39,000 in direct campaign contributions from opponents, the single largest amount for any Democratic senator.
State Superintendent Tony Evers [SIS link] in a memo Monday urged the Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee to restore funding for public schools and work collaboratively to improve the quality of all Milwaukee schools before considering any voucher expansion.
“To spend hundreds of millions to expand a 20-year-old program that has not improved overall student achievement, while defunding public education, is morally wrong,” Evers said in the memo.
Gov. Scott Walker has proposed eliminating the income limits on participating in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program, eliminating the enrollment cap and has proposed opening up private schools throughout Milwaukee County to accept vouchers from Milwaukee students. Walker has spoken of expanding the voucher program to other urban areas in the state, such as Racine, Green Bay and Beloit.
The Milwaukee Parental Choice Program was created to improve academic performance among low-income students who had limited access to high-performing schools. Low-income students use taxpayer money to attend private schools, including religious schools. Each voucher is worth $6,442. The program now is limited to 22,500 students; 20,189 are in the program this year.
However, after 20 years and spending over $1 billion, academic performance data and the enrollment history of the school choice program point to several “concerning trends,” Evers said in his analysis of voucher student enrollment, achievement, and projected cost for long-term expansion.
Low-income students in Milwaukee Public Schools have higher academic achievement, particularly in math, than their counterparts in choice schools. Evers cited this year’s Wisconsin Knowledge and Concepts exams and the legislatively mandated University of Arkansas study, which showed significant numbers of choice students performing below average on reading and math.
At a press conference in Racine, DPI Superintendent Tony Evers gave his harshest criticism of school vouchers yet. Well beyond the typical quibbles over test scores and graduation rates, Evers claimed that school vouchers were de facto “morally wrong.” It’s not every day that a State Superintendent of education accuses an education-reform program of being immoral. In doing so, Tony Evers may have bitten off more than he could chew.
Calling a school voucher program morally wrong inculpates more than just the program, it inculpates parents, teachers, organizations, lawmakers, and a majority of Americans that endorse it. In fact, one could reasonably argue that Evers’ statement makes himself morally culpable since Milwaukee’s voucher program operates out of the Department of Public Instruction of which he is the head. What does it say about the character of a man that knowingly administers an immoral program out of his own department?
In short, Evers’ argument goes something like this: voucher programs drain public schools of their financial resources; drained resources hurt children academically; hurting children academically is morally wrong; ergo, voucher programs are morally wrong.
Public school officials called vouchers “morally wrong” and potentially “crippling” for Racine at a press conference Thursday.
A school choice voucher program in Racine would cost taxpayers money while hurting the academic chances of public school students, officials said during the afternoon press conference at Walden middle and high school, 1012 Center St. The press conference was held in response to a proposal from Gov. Scott Walker to expand Milwaukee’s school choice voucher program, which allows low-income Milwaukee students to receive state-funded vouchers to attend participating private schools. Walker has proposed removing the low-income requirement while also expanding the program to other cities.
Public school officials who spoke in Racine Thursday think that’s a bad idea.
“School vouchers have been called ‘a dagger in the heart of public education’ and I think there’s some truth to that,” Racine Unified Superintendent Jim Shaw said at the conference. He explained vouchers take needed funds away from public schools — when a child leaves a school with a voucher about $6,000 in per pupil state aid to that school leaves with them to pay for private school tuition.
Two Republican governors are scheduled to speak at a Washington conference hosted by a nonprofit that pushes for private school vouchers and charter schools.
Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin and Gov. Tom Corbett of Pennsylvania will address the American Federation for Children’s second annual policy summit Monday.
Both are expected to talk about school choice. Walker has proposed expanding a school voucher program in Milwaukee. Corbett is proposing cutting $1.6 billion from public education while also pushing for vouchers, which would allow students in poor-performing public schools to transfer to private schools.
Union leaders and other activists are planning a rally outside the summit, which will also feature former District of Columbia schools chancellor Michelle Rhee. Opponents say the federation is trying to “dismantle public education.”
‘Private school vouchers are not an effective way to improve student achievement,” said the White House in a statement on March 29. “The Administration strongly opposes expanding the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program and opening it to new students.” But less than three weeks later, President Obama signed a budget deal with Republicans that includes a renewal and expansion of the popular D.C. program, which finances tuition vouchers for low-income kids to attend private schools.
School reformers cheered the administration’s about-face though fully aware that it was motivated by political expediency rather than any acknowledgment that vouchers work.
When Mr. Obama first moved to phase out the D.C. voucher program in 2009, his Education Department was in possession of a federal study showing that voucher recipients, who number more than 3,300, made gains in reading scores and didn’t decline in math. The administration claims that the reading gains were not large enough to be significant. Yet even smaller positive effects were championed by the administration as justification for expanding Head Start.
Indiana will create the nation’s broadest private school voucher system and enact other sweeping education changes, making the state a showcase of conservative ideas just as Gov. Mitch Daniels nears an announcement on whether he will make a 2012 presidential run.
The Republican-controlled state legislature handed Daniels a huge victory Wednesday when the House voted 55-43 to give final approval to a bill creating the voucher program that would allow even middle-class families to use taxpayer money to send their children to private schools.
Some advocates think vouchers are the future of Pennsylvania’s troubled schools.
They say those vouchers will give parents choices and promote competition among the schools.
But the idea isn’t getting straight A’s across the board.
It’s an issue state legislators are hashing out in Harrisburg and some area school districts say they don’t want any part of.
Pennsylvania’s Republican Governor Tom Corbett has already thrown his support behind vouchers..
While state Democratic leaders continue to debate the $730 million plan.
The vicious scam behind Milwaukee’s school voucher program now is becoming public for all to see. The program is about to take another ugly turn transferring money from our neediest students to the most privileged.
It was always suspicious that right-wing Republicans were enthusiastically supporting a tax-funded government program they claimed would help poor children of color receive a quality education.
Historically, the right has consistently fought tax funds going to people in need, especially those of other races. The only government programs they support are huge tax cuts and corporate welfare benefiting the wealthy.
Much more on the Milwaukee School Choice Program, here.
The Obama administration “strongly opposes” a bill championed by House Speaker John Boehner that would revive and expand vouchers for low-income students in the District of Columbia.
The administration’s statement stops short of saying President Obama will veto the measure, known as the Scholarships for Opportunity and Results Act or SOAR.
“Private school vouchers are not an effective way to improve student achievement,” said the Office of Management and Budget statement. “The administration strongly opposes expanding the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program and opening it to new students.”
A Republican Assembly leader plans to add to the state budget bill an expansion of Milwaukee’s voucher program to other school districts, potentially giving more families in cities such as Madison access to private and religious schools.
Voucher advocates say the time is ripe to expand the program to other cities, especially with Republicans in control of state government and a recent study suggesting students in the 20-year-old Milwaukee program are testing as well or better than their public school counterparts, with a lower cost per pupil.
They also argue that vouchers would level the playing field for private schools, which have seen enrollment decline as public charter schools have gained popularity.
But voucher opponents say expansion would further cripple public schools, which already face an $834 million cut in state funding over the next two years.
And state test scores to be released Tuesday, which for the first time include 10,600 Milwaukee voucher students, could suggest they are testing no better than poor students in the Milwaukee Public Schools.
“Given the proposed unprecedented cuts to public education as well as results from our statewide assessments, I question plans in the 2011-13 state budget for expanding the choice program in Milwaukee or anywhere else in Wisconsin,” State Superintendent Tony Evers said.
Supporters of school vouchers like to say that their goal is to provide a higher-quality education for the children who need it most. The latest events in Colorado say otherwise. A voucher program there seems more likely to benefit middle-class children and religious schools than low-income public school students, and to worsen inequities in education.
Last week, the board of the Douglas County School District voted for a pilot program that will give the parents of 500 of its 60,000-students about $4,500 each — 75% of what the district receives in per-pupil funding — to use toward tuition at participating private schools of their choice. Many of the private schools in the area are religiously based.
Even in Colorado, where a dollar stretches a lot further than in Southern California, $4,500 falls significantly short of private school tuition. Most schools there range from about $7,000 up to $14,000. Clearly, the parents poised to benefit most from this taxpayer-sponsored perk are those with a few thousand to spare to fill in the price gap. There might be scholarships for some of the needier students — about 10% of the Douglas County students qualify for free or reduced-price school lunches — but no one is promising anything.
This report collects the results of all available empirical studies using the best available scientific methods to measure how school vouchers affect academic outcomes for participants, and all available studies on how vouchers affect outcomes in public schools. Contrary to the widespread claim that vouchers do not benefit participants and hurt public schools, the empirical evidence consistently shows that vouchers improve outcomes for both participants and public schools. In addition to helping the participants by giving them more options, there are a variety of explanations for why vouchers might improve public schools as well. The most important is that competition from vouchers introduces healthy incentives for public schools to improve.
Key findings include:
One of the most contentious budget debates this year may be over something the president did not include in his 2012 spending plan — school vouchers. Now more often called “scholarships,” vouchers have been debated for decades, but support for these initiatives is on the rise.’
Let’s start with D.C. After years of discussion, Congress established a plan in 2004 to give 1,700 students in Washington a voucher of up to $7,500 to attend private and religious schools in the city as alternatives to the frequently lousy neighborhood schools. The program was controversial from the start — it was the first federal funding for vouchers in three decades. But in 2009, under intense pressure from the teachers unions, Congress and the Administration began to dismantle the program and no new students are participating today. New Speaker of the House John Boehner says restoring the program is a top priority.
IF D.C. MAYOR Vincent C. Gray isn’t careful, he could well argue the District out of $60 million in federal education dollars. Testifying before a Senate committee against the voucher program that enables low-income students to attend private schools, Mr. Gray (D) was warned that extra money for the city’s traditional and public schools was likely conditioned on congressional reauthorization of vouchers. Money alone isn’t reason for Mr. Gray to change his mind, but given that District children benefit from the program and that parents are desperate for the choice if affords, it’s unfathomable that he is opposing this worthwhile program.
Mr. Gray was among those who appeared Wednesday before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs as it considered legislation to extend the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, including an important provision to allow new students to be enrolled. Mr. Gray said that efforts should be focused on improving public schools, that Congress was inappropriately intruding into local affairs and that D.C. parents have enough education choices, given the number of flourishing charter schools and the public school reforms starting to take hold.
Douglas County, a swath of subdivisions just south of here that is one of the nation’s wealthiest, is something of a public school paradise.
The K-12 district, with 60,000 students, boasts high test scores and a strong graduation rate. Surveys show that 90% of its parents are satisfied with their children’s schools.
That makes the Douglas County School District an unlikely frontier in the latest battle over school vouchers.
But a new, conservative school board is exploring a voucher system to give parents — regardless of income — taxpayer money to pay for their children to attend private schools that agree to abide by district regulations. If it’s implemented, parents could receive more than $4,000 per child.
The proposal’s supporters argue that competition can only improve already-high-performing schools.
Related: A School Board Thinks Differently About Delivering Education, and spends less.
Colorado’s Douglas County School District spends $8512.74 per student ($476,977,336 for 56,031 students in 2009). Madison spent $15,241 per student in 2009, a whopping $6,728.26, 79% more than the “wealthy Denver suburbs”.
Supporters call them a matter of choice, a lifeline for children stuck in broken schools. Opponents deride them as unconstitutional and unworkable and warn that they will erode conditions in some of Pennsylvania’s most troubled schools.
The debate over taxpayer-paid tuition vouchers to help poor children find alternatives to attending the state’s weakest-performing public schools has emerged as a major item on the legislative agenda for the next six months — perhaps the major item after the state budget.
The voucher issue will come to the fore in the General Assembly on Feb. 16, when the chairman of the Senate Education Committee will lead a hearing on his bill to establish the Opportunity Scholarship and Educational Improvement Tax Credit Act.
I worried constantly about my daughter Jerlisa when she attended our neighborhood elementary school. I knew that I wanted a better education for her, but I didn’t know how to make that happen. In 2005, I took a chance and applied to the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program. Little did I know how much more than $7,500 I would be gaining.
I grew up in the District and attended D.C. public schools. Jerlisa started off the same way. We enrolled her at Gibbs Elementary School for kindergarten, and as the years went by she started to fall behind. There was so much going on around the school and in the classroom. Every morning, I walked with her to school, and every afternoon I waited outside the school gates to walk her home again. She got teased for that, but I was worried about the drug dealers, addicts and bullies in the neighborhood. I didn’t have any other choice. I had to make sure she was safe.
When Jerlisa was in fifth grade, she became anxious and didn’t want to return to school. It was clear to me she wasn’t getting the help that she needed. That’s when I received fliers about the Opportunity Scholarship Program. Although I didn’t know everything about the OSP, I knew I had to do something different, even if it meant getting out of my comfort zone. When you’re a single mother on a fixed income, sometimes simple things like filling out your name, address or income on a form can be a scary thing to do.
A state Senate committee voted Thursday to advance a program that would offer vouchers for students in failing public schools to attend private and parochial schools.
The Opportunity Scholarship Act is a signature piece of Gov. Chris Christie’s education reform agenda and another proposal over which he and the state’s largest teachers union are coming to blows. The New Jersey Education Association vehemently opposes the voucher program, calling it “a government bailout for struggling private schools.”
If implemented, the bill would cost about $825 million and serve 40,000 students in 166 chronically failing public schools by its fifth year. It could be a boon for parochial schools, which have been closing in droves because of declining enrollment, but could also force reductions in state aid to public school districts.
Gov. Mitch Daniels has never been patient when it comes to pushing progress for Indiana. And Tuesday night he implored legislators not to wait any longer on key education and local government proposals.
“Wishing won’t make it so. Waiting won’t make it so. But those of you in this assembly have a priceless and unprecedented opportunity to make it so. It’s more than a proposal, it’s an assignment. It’s more than an opportunity, it’s a duty,” he said.
Although some were searching for a hint about his presidential aspirations, Daniels used his seventh State of the State address to focus on Indiana – sticking to a familiar formula of highlighting successes and seeking improvement.
He reminded legislators of the progress they have made in road construction, cutting property taxes and keeping Indiana fiscally solvent. And he asked them to do more – much more.
Gov. Mitch Daniels said Wednesday he will ask lawmakers to approve an education voucher system that would let low-income students use state money to help pay for private school tuition.
aniels provided few details about his proposal – including income levels at which families would qualify or the amount they could receive – but said it will be part of his larger education agenda for the 2011 session.
The governor and Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Bennett presented part of that agenda on Wednesday to the Indiana Education Roundtable, a group of education, business and labor leaders who advise the state on school issues.
But Daniels never mentioned the voucher program there. Instead, he and Bennett focused on only a few areas: Freeing schools of regulation, recognizing and rewarding high-quality teachers and limiting the issues for collective bargaining to teacher pay and benefits.
A decade ago, almost any discussion about reforming the nation’s public schools included vouchers. The idea of letting students use taxpayer dollars to attend private schools appealed to conservatives, who liked the notion of subjecting public schools to competition. Some Democratic mayors, frustrated with the slow pace of school improvement, also rallied behind vouchers.
Then, vouchers got overtaken by other ideas about how to shake up public schools. Unions vehemently opposed vouchers, arguing they would starve public schools of funding. Vouchers were left out of the 2002 federal No Child Left Behind law, making it difficult for programs to gain a foothold in school districts. More recently, the Obama administration left vouchers out of its Race to the Top grant program, even as it endorsed other reforms such as charter schools and pay-for-performance plans for teachers.
On Rick Scott’s recent pre-take-office tour, Floridians got a peek at what issues his administration’s agenda will be likely to favor. The results ranged from confusing to frightening, especially since the opposition party will be virtually powerless to stop him. Provided Scott’s initiatives are supported by the Republican majority in the legislature, he will have the opportunity to make broad and sweeping changes and seems intent to do just that.
Among Scott’s most troubling assertions was an idea he floated about giving school vouchers to practically any student that wanted one. No governor has ever publicly contemplated such widespread use of vouchers and such a move would be a change to the very foundation of how we view and deliver public education.
As with any political movement, I tend to look at who is pushing it, how it fits into their core ideology and what stands to be gained. In this spirit, the most troubling part about vouchers is that they seem to be most strongly favored by those who do not really believe in government funding of education in the first place. That’s not to say that all supporters of such programs wish to abolish public education. Nonetheless, I still think that it is instructive to examine why those who do wish public education to suffer such a fate view vouchers as a vehicle toward that end.
Governor-elect Scott Walker’s campaign promise to lift the enrollment cap on Wisconsin’s voucher and virtual schools could come to fruition soon, despite opposition from unions.
In an interview this week on the public affairs program “WisconsinEye,” State Superintendent Tony Evers said that he is open to lifting the enrollment limits, something Republicans have pushed for in the face of resistance from unions and public school advocates who see the voucher program as draining resources from Milwaukee schools by diverting public funding to private voucher schools.
“I’m steeped in reality. I’m not sure if what I think makes a lot of difference,” Evers said, alluding to the impending Republican control of the governor’s office and both houses of the Legislature. “People have made clear what their positions are.”
Removing the caps on virtual schools or the choice program would not “fundamentally change the way those programs operate, nor will it dramatically increase the enrollments,” Evers said.
Marc Caputo and Sergio Bustos:
Pledging to cut taxes and increase school choice for parents, Republican Rick Scott rolled out his education plan Tuesday in what could presage a long fight with the state’s teachers union.
“Parents ought to have a right to choose a school for their kids,” said Scott. ”Competition is good.”
To accomplish his education plan, Scott wants to increase taxpayer-backed private school scholarships, charter schools, home schooling and virtual, online education. At the same time, Scott wants to trim $1.4 billion in property taxes for schools and cut up to $700 million more in corporate income taxes — a main vehicle to fund a state educational voucher program.
This is an encouraging season for education reform, and the latest development is a bipartisan political breakout on vouchers in the unlikely state of Pennsylvania.
Last month, and to widespread surprise, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Dan Onorato came out in support of school vouchers for underprivileged kids. Mr. Onorato said that education “grants”–he avoided the term vouchers–“would give low-income families in academically distressed communities direct choices about which schools their children should attend.”
Mr. Onorato’s Republican opponent, state Attorney General Tom Corbett, is also a strong backer of education choice, which means that come November Pennsylvania voters will get to choose between two candidates who are on record in support of a statewide school voucher program.
Mr. Onorato, the Allegheny County Executive, adopted his new position at the urging of state lawmaker Tony Williams, a voucher proponent whom he defeated in a May primary. The speculation is that Mr. Onorato, who trails Mr. Corbett in the polls, is looking to attract financial support from pro-voucher businessmen who backed Mr. Williams in the primary.