Sunday, February 20, 2011

The School Voucher Scam: When Will Politicos Wake Up?


The push for school vouchers by the Political Right never seems to end, and even now as they prepare to cut nutrition programs for poor kids (nixing school meals in public schools), the Repuke House is on a drive to allocate more millions for new voucher efforts. Thus, 'Crybaby John Boehner', one of the original co-sponsors of a D.C. voucher scheme in 2004, now is pushing to re-authorize it on the backs of poor, malnourished black kids from public schools.

This follows $14 million already allocated to “the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program” which provides tuition vouchers of up to $7,500 per kid. Though limited to the District of Columbia, the plan has had great PR value as it allows the pro-voucher contingent to point to Congress own backyard as evidence for the need for school choice in other places.

The D.C. plan was pitched as a five year ‘experiment’ and pushed through a divided congress in 2004. The plan thankfully expired in 2009 but Barack Obama allowed current participating students to continue receiving vouchers (at taxpayers’ expense) until they graduate. However, no new students will be accepted.

This is just as well because every dollar extracted from taxpayers for vouchers means less to fund public schools. Instead of pouring millions into voucher systems (which tactics I believe violate the separation of Church and state since most voucher schools are religious) that money could be going toward improvements in our public schools. Just think then, how much difference that $14 million could have made to D.C. public schools.

And what of the plan’s efficacy? Has it delivered on its promises? In fact, studies of the plan have disclosed it hasn’t lived up to the hype. A final study commissioned by the U.S. Dept. of Education found that voucher-funded students did not better than non-participants. The plan’s main benefit has been to prop up failing Roman Catholic schools in the district that would otherwise have closed.

Nor was the plan popular with District residents and it cost incumbent Mayor Adrian Fenty his job. So why are Bozos like Boehner trying to appropriate more monies for this farce of a voucher scheme when it's already been shown to be of minimal value? Well, for the same reason he's bloviating about having pushed through $61 billion in cuts, to everything from educational support, to heating supplies to poor seniors and funding for food safety: it serves the 'cut the public sector' aspirations of the rich bastards his party serves.

What we must be aware of, as thinking citizens, is that a large part of the voucher agenda is pushed onto communities via tailored propaganda - as well as deep pockets. (Much like the whole "Tea Party" itself is subsidized by the deep pockets of the Koch brothers, who must rest smugly knowing they've found so many millions of useful idiots to run interference in the courts of public opinion for them.)

For example, much of the pro-voucher propaganda is run under the banner of "choice" and designed to tug at heart strings of the susceptible "middle" or moderate voters, who seldom invest as much time as partisans into deep politics. I.e. looking behind the veil of who funds what and to whose benefit it accrues.

Thus, in Washington, D.C., a front group for vouchers calling itself "D.C. Parents for School Choice" inevitably drags hurtful, wide-eyed children to rallies, congressional hearings and other assorted political dog and pony shows as useful props. As for deep pockets, last year The Heritage Foundation (the same ones who've offered to pay any scientist $10,000 apiece for anti-global warming articles) even bankrolled a series of ads on Washington's mass rail system featuring kids demanding vouchers. Naturally, most of this crap is more anti-public school than it is pro-voucher (some of the ads even avoid the word 'voucher' entirely, relying on the usual euphemisms, 'choice', 'scholarships' etc.)

The propaganda even comes in the form of more or less mainstream films (documentaries)such as "Waiting for Superman", which attacks public schools as a massive failure while it celebrates charter schools. As scholar Diane Ravitch has pointed out, the film is not above its own cognitive dissonance, i.e. in simultaneously arguing public schools don't need money while praising a D.C. charter school called SEED that spends $35,000 per student! Obviously if THAT much money is spent per student, then most any public school can be converted to become another Brooklyn Technical High School, or Air Academy High (from Colorado Springs) or Centennial High, from Ellicott City, MD. All exceptional, with high standards, and each spending around $35,000/yr. per student!

Ravitch, in an essay appearing in The New York Review of Books, asked:

"Is our society prepared to to open boarding schools for tens of thousands of inner city students and pay what it costs to copy the SEED program?"

And, delivering the coup de grace:

"Those who claim that better education for the neediest students won't require more money cannot use the SEED case to support their argument."

Indeed, because to do so invites the 'One True Scotsman' fallacy and the de facto admission of prejudice against public schools per se, when all public schools can't be put under the same umbrella.

The two main forces behind vouchers appear to be:

1) Religious enablers and proselytizers, looking for ways to circumvent Supreme Court rulings to keep religion out of public schools

2) Libertarians who want to privatize as many functions of government as possible, including education.


Both are wrong, and both are misleading voters with their slick ad campaigns and come-ons.

Here are a number of reasons that vouchers are just plain wrong:

1)They undermine religious liberty:

The vast majority of private schools (to which vouchers are applied) are run by religious groups, especially Catholic parochial systems. Over 80% of students attending private schools are enrolled in religious institutions and most of these actively seek to indoctrinate as well as educate.

In other words, vouchers force Americans (even secular) to pay taxes to support religion. This can never be right, as Thomas Jefferson once put it:

"To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical." --Thomas Jefferson: Bill for Religious Freedom, 1779. Papers 2:545


2) Vouchers Divert Public Money to Unaccountable Private Schools:

In effect, school vouchers are little more than a backdoor means for the government to subsidize religion. As noted earlier, those Catholic schools in D.C. would likely have gone the way of the dodo had Boehner and his Buffoons not pushed through their D.C. voucher scheme at a cost of $14 million.

Further, under most voucher bills, private schools can take taxpayer monies and still deny admission for any student they choose. Private schools are also free to impose religious criteria on teachers and staff, thus it is highly unlikely any atheist would ever be hired to "teach the other side".

3) Vouchers Violate Many State Constitutional Provisions:

Voucher advocates often overlook that STATE provisions often more explicitly bar taxpayer money from funding religious schools than comparable federal laws. While "state's rights" assumptions often obscure this, those who are anti-voucher can make hay by familiarizing themselves with their state's constitution.

4) Voters Generally Do Not Support Vouchers.

Whenever given the opportunity to actually vote on voucher proposals or bills, Americans have repeatedly expressed opposition. Since 1967, voters in 23 states have rejected vouchers and other forms of tax aid to religious schools at the ballot box.

5) Vouchers Do Not Improve Academic Performance.

Which was already evident in the case of the D.C. Voucher program I cited earlier. Further, in mulitiple other further studies that ranged from the D.C. schools, to those in Milwaukee and Cleveland, it was found the targeted population (enrolled in private schools via vouchers) did not perform better in reading and math than those in public schools.

Vouchers, in other words, are a waste of time and money and a subversive attempt to make end runs around established case law regarding the separation of Church and State.

They ought to be outlawed in every state. If public schools need better quality materials, resources and teachers, then let us fund them (WITH HIGHER INCOME TAXES,)not just property taxes! The latter are a bad idea because: a) the property taxes collected can vary from year to year depending on home values, and b) property taxes are only applied to home owners, not renters. If we did this we be more in line with other nations (e.g. Singapore) that offer quality education.

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