Associated Press
We talked on Tuesday about Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal's (R) new statewide school voucher scheme, which gives tuition money to as many as 380,000 kids in struggling public schools, encouraging them to transfer to private schools. Jindal's program is already off to a rough start, with unanswered questions about accountability and proper use of taxpayer money.
The questions have not gone unnoticed by state officials, and we now know about state School Superintendent John White's plans to "muddy the waters."
The News-Star obtained a series of emails between White, Gov. Bobby Jindal’s spokesman Kyle Plotkin and Jindal’s policy adviser Stafford Palmieri in which White attempted to counter the growing questions about the oversight of the voucher program. The questions began after the News-Star visited the New Living Word School which has no library and filters lessons through Bible-based DVDs. The Times-Picayune also pointed out that the school would charge voucher students more than the other current students, which not allowed under the new legislation.
Saying that he was planning on “muddying up the narrative” that media had offered about the school, White’s office, shortly after the story first broke revealed that approved schools would need to undergo further vetting. This additional round of appraisal was not mentioned to the schools, which had already been approved for voucher students, prior to the initial News-Star story.
Voucher proponents work from the assumption that private schools, practically by definition, are always superior to public schools, especially public schools with low test scores. But that's clearly nonsense -- in Louisiana, the Jindal administration is prepared to use public funds to subsidize, among other things, a private school that basically shows children Bible videos all day, every day.
The state's school superintendent, uncomfortable with this scrutiny, decided the smart move would be "to talk through the process with the media, muddying up a narrative they're trying to keep black and white." In this case, the "process" apparently refers to some kind of possible scrutiny for schools participating in the program -- after being told they could participate without such scrutiny.
In other words, he apparently hoped to deliberately confuse the public, so taxpayers wouldn't notice the flaws of this rotten voucher plan.
This has always been one of the key problems voucher proponents couldn't resolve. The basic framework is easy enough to follow: (1) identify which public schools are underperforming; (2) give some of the students at those schools tuition money for private schools; (3) watch those kids' test scores improve thanks to the unproven wonders of private education; and (4) wait for the struggling public schools to get better with less money and fewer smart children.
Aside from the faulty assumptions and serious constitutional questions surrounding giving tax dollars to religious ministries, there's the basic question of accountability.
Jindal and other voucher supporters want to test public schools to identify which are the best and worst, but they don't want to test private schools. How would anyone know public funds are being well spent? They wouldn't. How would anyone know if the students are benefiting? They wouldn't know that, either.
How would anyone know the private schools have good enough teachers and a strong enough curriculum to deserve tax dollars in the first place? That'd be a mystery, too.
No standards, no accountability, no oversight. It's the mantra of voucher advocates, and it's a problem that won't go away.
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3 questions;
Who will teach these children?
What are their qualifications?
How much will they be paid?
Extra credit:
What are the overhead costs? ("profit")
Yeah, but how do you expect to run a profit when the accountability factor becomes too earnest?
You can't, so converting a community based education into a for profit, private, evangelically ideological operation takes a committed few like Jindal and his gang of profiteers!
"The basic framework is easy enough to follow:"
1) Divert public money into private hands.
2) This isn't really about "educating" the children as it is about "indoctrinating" the next generation into being sheeple!
3) Much like the "faux debate regarding healthcare", the GOTP don't want to really do anything about our dysfunctional educational system, this is just another excuse to shove public money into private hands!
Bobby Jindal and the rest of the GOTP will do whatever they can to hold onto the rings of power and dumbing down the citizenry enough so that they can get their way into privatizing government services while taxing the 90% of US to enable the Oligarchy to usurp our democracy!
Vote the GOTP out in November!
And yet they refused The Islamic School for Greater New Orleans their request for 38 vouchers.
Looking at the list of approved schools, it's not hard to see the true agenda of these legislators.
Perhaps what we need is a federal law that states that all private schools receiving public funds must adhere to the same standards as public schools.
No, the better thing to do is to never divert public funds into private hands. Things that are in the public interest, like education, should be done entirely in the public sphere. I don't mean that there shouldn't be private or parochial schools, but that those schools should be entirely on their own hook financially. But they should meet the same standards as public schools.
We already know how this crap would work--when S.C. voted to have a lottery to help "fund education" Colleges and universities doubled or even tripled their tuition before the scholarships began.
The Church of the almighty dollar must save us from truth and reality though.
So they do away with public schools and send them to private schools which happen to teach bible studies all day. What religious beliefs are they pushing? What ever happened to religious freedom? So the Republican Party wants to do away with public school system and have their buddies running only Religious Private Schools? What if you are an atheist? 313 Religions and Denominations in the United States which of these will their DVD's be teaching all day every day. SO MUCH FOR DEMOCRACY.
It's much worse than that. One school were approved for vouchers and the city had no knowledge of the school being there. Also, other schools who were approved didn't have an adequate supply of books or desks. http://www.kplctv.com/story/18792127/school-claims-to-accept-vouchers
Books? Desks? Bah! Just need the one Book. Now git busy memorizin' them verses 'fore I have to break out the rod of correction.
""What did you learn at 'Private School' today sweetheart?"
"Oh, that Jesus started the tea party in 1776 and that the cash goes in and the tide goes out, by Gawd.."
So, basically, Jindel's plan is to destroy secular state funded education and replace it with rote indoctrination in fundementalist religious beliefs by ignorant fanatics free of any restraints or supervision?
Hey, why not? That strategy's worked out great in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Meanwhile back on the Hill, more immigration Visas will be provided to foreigners who actually learned math and science. The right will of course be beside themselves as to how they can keep little Johnny dumbed down with religion and yet keep him employed-AHA he can take out the trash and clean toilets for a bowl of gruel! Thus he will learn humility and the gift of servitude.
Ah, vouchers. Y'know, there was actually a time when I first heard about those, thought about all the failing public schools out there, and said to myself, "I could see justification for this."
...But when I saw how they're actually being used, and for what kinds of schools, at the cost of not improving those failing public schools? Dear goodness forbid these things! It's at least hypocritical to scrutinize a public school system while not holding private schools academically accountable. It goes to another level, though, when taxpayer dollars go to support a child learning, in a private school, something like creationism, which the SCOTUS has already ruled public schools cannot teach (Edwards v. Aguilard, 1987).
Libertarians would say that the private schools would be subject to the rigors of the market, in which parents would inspect the schools and judge their suitability. Those schools that do not have qualified teachers, adequate facilities and effective curricula would not receive students, while effective schools would be filled to capacity.
It's a nice theory, but it is one that assumes the perfect efficiency of the market, where price reflects value. Therein lies the rub. The very existence of 'Bible-DVD school' shows that an extremely poor school is not culled by market forces. Instead, it survives on the law that 'there's one born every minute.'
Add to this the obvious goal of transferring public money to private hands, and the situation becomes a train wreck.
Redistributing public money and function to private hands is consistent with the philosophy that our economy and thereby everyone does best when for anything to happen, education or otherwise, it must go through private enterprise mechanism. The only difference between public and private operation is profit and accountability, which means to have profit more must be charged and operations more designed for making money does not have the same oversight as public operations. Regardless of which, private or public, does a better job of educating children, vouchers are not enough by themselves to pay full tuition and the difference is not affordable to most, more often saving money for those who can afford private schooling already while in effect charging those who can't afford the tuition via taxes with no return in service. Public teachers, whose contractual benefits and salaries are being renegotiated downward as layoffs continue student ratios go up, might see advantage in using their collective skills and experience to open their own private voucher school as, if they so choose, a non-profit company.
The religious right and anti-government fanatics (James Leininger’s supporters) tried doing this in TX during the last legislative session. It failed to pass when the House Committee on Government Efficiency investigated the bill and found out that it would require the state to pay more for a student to attend private school then public school. Their scheme was to disguise it under the name “Taxpayer Saving Grant Program.”
Rachel should get Diane Ravitch on the show to discuss this topic!! The best resource out there on this subject IMO!
http://dianeravitch.net/2012/07/05/muddy-the-narrative-we-know-that-trick/