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Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal's (R) school voucher scheme has been plagued by a series of problems, culminating in a legal defeat in a state court two weeks ago. But in a Brookings speech yesterday, the Republican governor said he still sees his plan as a national model.
"I think there is a moral imperative that it's not right that only wealthy parents get to decide where their kids go to school," Jindal told an audience at Washington's Brookings Institution. [...]
"To oppose school choice is to oppose equal opportunity for poor and disadvantaged students in America," he said. "What we are putting in motion in Louisiana can be done across the country."
This is certainly standard rhetoric from the right. They're not trying to privatize public schools out of existence, the argument goes, they're simply trying to use tax dollars to provide new opportunities to "poor and disadvantaged" children.
There's always been one part of this argument that bugs me: why does the principle apply solely to education?
For Jindal, poor and disadvantaged kids should have the same educational opportunities as kids from wealthy families. Fine. There's ample evidence that vouchers don't work, but let's stick to the larger principle. The next question is pretty straightforward: can poor and disadvantaged kids have the same access to quality health care as kids from wealthy families? How about the same access to safe and affordable housing? How about nutrition? And transportation? And political influence?
Jindal and his allies want the public to see them as entirely sincere. They're not trying to crush teachers' unions, and they're not on a privatization crusade, intent on destroying public institutions. They just want to help low-income children, even spending public funds to advance their goal.
But their purported concern for the poor is literally unbelievable. When the issue is health care and housing, Jindal and other conservatives say struggling families should rely on the free market and their capacity to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. When the issue is education, suddenly the right cares deeply about disadvantaged children and is eager to "help."
When Jindal and other school voucher advocates are ready to assist "poor and disadvantaged" families in ways that don't undermine public schools and teachers' unions, I'll gladly revisit the debate. Until then, this looks a lot like a scam.
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This isn't about helping the poor this is about putting money in the hands of home schoolers and taking money away from public institutions where the teach horrible immoral subjects like science and sex ed. Not to mention all the conservative companies lined up to get in on the action. This is just another GOP racket to swindle and defraud tax payers.
It also walks like a scam,, smells like a scam,,,,
"Quack damn you"
It's Louisiana, where they have a 300 year tradition of putting fools, morons, con artists, back alley assassins, bank robbers, fascists and traitors into public office. Just more of the same old same old. New Orleans may be nice to visit but you have to be crazy to live there (and I say that thinking of my several Louisiana progressive friends).
Bobby is a hypocrite. Not every La. governor has been corrupt, though. Kathleen Blanco had the misfortune to be a democrat during Hurricane Katrina, but I don't recall any corruption issues. She was a great Lt. Gov; supported the arts & tourism, as did Mitch Landrieu. They are missed.
There have been articles about the success of the school system in Finland - the concept that caught my eye was that there are no private schools - same schools for all - don't you think we could get along better as adults if we were not so isolated as children. i am a graduate of private schools - it is one of the regrets of my life at this point because the conformity to doctrine did not allow for discussion of alternatives. How can we talk to each other civilly if we never practice that concept?
You neglected to mention if there are any unionized teachers in Finland.
Another interesting point is that Finland has an ethnically homogeneous population. I doubt they have to deal with the wide variety of cultural norms and expectations for children that we do. It sounds like a one size fits all model may work well there from what I have read. In this country, parents expectations for their children vary and thus the reason for private schools, charters, etc. I agree in an ideal world that this would not be the case but I am not sure that it can turn into reality.
It's nothing less that a scam to hand over taxpayer money to religious institutions that would never get it otherwise. Would they be as quick to push this if the money was going to muslim madrassas, or hindu schools, or mormon schools? In other words, is it only because the money would go to evangelical christian schools for the most part, schools whose supporters also overwhelmingly make up the repub base?
Let's be extremely charitable, and posit that this has nothing to do with rewarding the religious base on the right, and that supporters really and truly believe that private schools do a better job of educating kids than public schools do, and that all kids should have that educational opportunity. By funneling large numbers of new students into private schools, they are destroying the very things that make private schools so successful. Gone are the days when private schools can take only the best and brightest students, put them in a situation of small class sizes, and provide the very best in equipment. In other words, they simply make the private school into a public school, and probably at a much greater cost than a comparable public school. The only solution that makes sense is to fix public schools. Eliminate funding by property taxes, as this simply means the rich get the good schools and everyone else get what's left over.
Show me a wealthy person who would send a kid to one of those voucher schools teaching a bat$hit crazy curriculum. The kids going to these schools will be laughed off any campus in America.
Only if you open your mouth. I did go to a private ACE school and looked like a fool when I went to college. Did some personal searching and realized how backward private schools are. And to be clear I went to private school from 2nd through 12th grade, and home schooled with the same curriculum 6th-8th and 10th-12th.
believe me we are screwed if these private schools and home schooling become the norm.
It seems we are searching for solutions without defining the real problem. Some believe vouchers and charter schools are the solution. In certain cases they may be right. Others believe the answer is more money. I've been hearing that for years, and, for years, we've been doing that. Still, drop out rates remain high, and test scores low.
We have a societal issue, and until we define it and focus on solutions, education will remain a crutch we lean on to ignore the underlying problems.
Unless these vouchers cover the entire tuition to attend a private school "only wealthy parents" will still get to decide if their kids go to better private schools. The better or more elite private schools will have tuition higher than what would be covered by the voucher, so they will still not be an option for lower income families. The school choices for lower income families will be the existing public school, whose budget will be slashed because of the vouchers going to private schools, or the new local private school.
So who benefits? The owners of the for-profit private schools. Who loses? Just about everyone else, but especially teachers' unions and teachers (even those at the private schools - as public school teachers lose pay and benefits, so to will their private school counterparts - this is the problem with all of the anti-union efforts - employers compete with each other for their labor force, as the total wage/benefit package for a competitor's employees is reduced so to is it for the private school employer, as they do not have to worry as much about their teachers leaving for a more lucrative package).
Already the vast majority of teachers in charter schools make less than their public school counterparts with fewer benefits, but then they also have fewer qualifications. They are also expected to teach in a regimented model provided by the school's founder.
Public education that teaches "how to learn" and the "value of learning" would be a boon and a serious enhancement but this voucher (home-school) horseshet is the next big scam on the Republican playbill. Privatize = Profiteer(s), plain and simple. The real question is; will the country continue to repeat the same mistakes or can we learn by and recall conjunctively the failures of privatization a la KBR, Halliburton, Blackwater, Cheney, etc..?
Teaching students "how to learn" would mean they'd never become Republicans.
Did you make it through the eighth grade. I can tell you've never taken an accounting course, or kindergarten Economics 101.
The justification for this initiative rests partly on the premise that private schools do a better job of educating kids than public schools do.
Unfortunately, we don't have data on that since the Bush Administration stopped keeping track of private/charter school academic performance.
And the reason that Shrub/Darth Vader stopped keeping track was because the data showed academic performance wasn't increasing the way that they said it would!
It's kinda like the coffins being returned to Dover AFB - they stopped photo's from being taken, and unless you have a loved one fighting many Americans don't even think about it!
Two rules for vouchers would fix the nonsense:
1. All schools must admit students for the value of the voucher, no additional charges.
2. All schools must admit all students that apply, no selection based on qualifications of any kind.
That's what the public schools do. And that would guarantee eqaul opportunity for all students.
I didn't know that the government as suggested by the author was supposed to provide everything for everybody. Are the few people that are still paying taxes supposed to provide housing now too? There already are affordable housing projects, unless he is unaware. Forbes put out an interesting list that contained information about states where there are fewer people working that are paying for services for those that aren't working. Several states are already there. It won't be long before others reach that milestone too. Then what! Will dems still be clamoring for more spending and more social programs? When we have fewer people to tax than those that don't pay taxes we're doomed.http://www.forbes.com/sites/baldwin/2012/11/25/do-you-live-in-a-death-spiral-state/
The author is suggesting no such thing.
He is pointing out Jindal's hypocrisy, nothing more.
Really poor effort TROLL
Mike, you're dealing with a right winger. They don't understand nuance since they are so fixated on simplicity because of a lack of adequate neuronal connections.
Fine, Jes. We'll apportion federal $$s based on the amount each state contributes to the federal coiffers. Guess what - my blue state will get more fed funds and those red states (who currently get more fed $$s than they contribute, i.e. they spend more than they take in) will get less. And those of us in blue states will stop subsizing those lazy red state "takers".
Just for the hell of it, I'd like to see ALL students get vouchers to go to any private school they like. It might be fun towatch the collapse of all those private schools. Nothing like seeing a twenty-fold increase in enrollment for a school in one year.
"this looks a lot like a scam."
Ya think so, do ya? What gave you your first clue? Maybe it's because it's a right wing proposal? Or because the guy carrying water for these plutocrats isn't too bright himself?
If there were ever someone who fit the caricature of Gunga Din, it is Bobby.
Just because government monopoly schools fail generation after generation of children while teachers' unions prevent bad teachers from being fired as costs skyrocket is no reason to try anything different. Maybe by the year 3000 a solution to chronic government school failure may be found. Let's just let kids wait for that.
Government monopoly production of goods and services is called communism. So we can all have the benefits of this system, let's adopt it for everything else as well. The average wage in Cuba under communism is $20 per month. It works just as well for everything there as it works for schools here.
Right, it's AAAAAALLLLLL about those awful teachers unions. It has NOTHING to do with the fact that public schools are funded by property taxes, so that the areas that are better off economically provide a stronger tax base to fund schools compared to inner cities. It has nothing to do with the lack of finances causing ballooning class sizes, outdated books and equipment, and buildings that are falling apart. It would all be magically fixed as soon as we eliminate teachers unions, cut their pay to minimum wage, and bring in private companies to run the whole thing. To say that your views are simplistic and uninformed would be an insult to simplistic and uninformed views.
Last time I checked, Chicago was an "inner city". During the recent teachers' strike, which was initiated by the teachers' union, teachers were protesting a new contract that raised average salaries from $76,000 to $90,000 over 4 years while the average wage of the taxpayers in the city was about $40,000. That wasn't good enough for the union, which was outraged that the city wanted to evaluate teacher performance in return for the lavish incomes and benefits. Oh, the horror! But to liberals, the only solution to any government created problem is more money, and more money, and more money, while asking for actual performance in return for inflated compensation is just being simplistic and uninformed. Since liberals don't have actual facts and logic on their side, name calling is pretty much all that's left. So have fun calling me names.
Please, Republicans, run this gibbering simpleton in 2016.
OBAMA’S MONEY PLANS BACKED BY COMMUNISTS. The Communist Party USA is backing Barack Obama’s position on the coming fiscal cliff and claims its economic program “will unfold in the coming year” with the reelection of Obama and continued Democrat control of the U.S. Senate. The statement came from Joelle Fishman, chairwoman of the … READ MORE: http://bwcentral.org/2012/12/obamas-money-plans-backed-by-communists/
Freedom is bad.
Public schools are at the 3rd world level and they are good.
How screwed up is this logic?
Allow parents to use a voucher and send their kids outside their local hell-hole of a public school..............
Oh, you thump your chest and proclaim your righteousness at "caring for the poor" but then you do it by using government to screw everyone else.
Your morality is that of a thug who takes what you want by force.
The true hypocrite is the individual who says we need to help the poor by raising taxes and creating government programs to meet their needs. Of course the poor remain poor, their needs aren't met, but a large, well-funded, permanent, self-serving bureaucracy is created that leeches of the suffering of the poor.
In a recent study, African-American students using vouchers were found to be 24% more likely than non-voucher students (those who applied to and lost the voucher lottery) to go on to college (NYC voucher program) while DC voucher students had graduation rates of 82% for voucher students v. 70% for non-voucher students. I love the argument that "vouchers don't work" who seem to ignore both clear-cut results like this and the real-world evidence in the long lines of hopeful, desperate African-American parents hoping to win the lottery as depicted in "Waiting for Superman." Anyone who can defend the current system as-is lives in an alternate reality. Even the schools in "wealthy" suburbs are mediocre at best.
Meanwhile, the real hypocrites like Clinton, Gore and Obama, who send their children to one of the most expensive, prestigious private schools in the country but deny the right of other parents the tools to escape some of the most dangerous, failing schools are given an inexcusable free pass by the press.
Bobby Jindal is no hypocrite on this issue. Before being governor, he was the head of Louisiana's hospital system and an assistant secretary of HHS and has added 11,000 children to the state's CHIP program for health care since he's been in office. He is in fact in favor of and has done a great deal to promote better health care and more choice for the poor in Louisiana, contrary to the straw man Benen creates.
We have allowed religious schools to receive tax money through the GI Bill and other vaunted federal college funding programs, and religious schools haven't put all the state schools out of business or created (on their own) a nation of ignorant crackpots. Has it occurred to anyone that the reason there are so many home schoolers is because one size does not fit all, and most parents (including some with significant incomes) have no realistic alternatives to their neighborhood public school, even if that school is failing their child. We've been having this voucher argument for over 2 decades, and public schools in the worst neighborhoods have only gotten worse. Where is the outratge for this educational malpractice?
Jindal, like many others, believes that choice, accountability, and respecting parental decision-making in the education of their own children are goods in themselves. The fact that his efforts provoke such hostility from so many in the left has more to do with the indefensibility of the current system than any flaws in his voucher plan.
@dadlaw
Facts are distorted because these "voucher student" percentages are based on top student recruitment...not just anyone was allowed into the voucher school for the very reason they were trying to sell their schools by using the best students as examples. These same students put in public schools would just as likely graduate and just as likely go on to college.
Sooner or later "vouchers"would get more expensive and selective until only the wealthy would be educated. Look at the expense of colleges now...and you want primary and secondary schools to lfollow suit. If you can't see that coming then you are being short sighted. Poor people my ass.
Jindal and pals will say anything to get 'control' of the education dollar. Look at what happened to "No Child Left Behind" when schools were required to give these standardized tests to students...Jeb Bush and Company made a fortune..Billions...providing the 'required' standardized tests to students nation wide...that's what Jindal has in mind with these voucher programs...that and half of Pat Robertson's Billion dollar empire of Christian educational dollars thrown into the voucher rewards. Public education needs to stop being criticized and ignored but given better budgets, better teacher pay and the respect it deserves. Jindal is against all three and is trying to pull another greedy scam. There will always be poor and unhealthy people and our programs do a very good job dealing with this issue when the bitching stops and the work continues to aid and comfort.
Benen, as usual, misses the point. Society long ago committed to making available to all children, for no charge, a free primary and secondary school education. Thus, these dollars are spent regardless.
Society has never decided to provide free health care to everyone. Doing so would dis-incentivize parents to find and hold onto good jobs with good benefits. If we decide we want to remove one of the big incentives for at least one parent to find a good job with good benefits, then lets make health care freely available.
I am a teacher of 38 years, and I live IN Louisiana. Bobby Jindal is SATAN, and John White, his partner-in-crime. You can imagine the reform efforts I have seen in 38 years. Public Education does need reforming. There are always better ways to get the job done. AND the only people who know what those “better ways” are…….are the TEACHERS. Jindal came busting in with his young little tart, John White, who hired his OWN young little tarts. No education experience in the lot of them. THEY have decided what needs to be changed. Using taxpayer money to fund the “vouchers” is morally, legally, and ethically WRONG. Jindal is walking on the backs of the poor in our state to garner some national attention. He covets the Presidency. He will NEVER see it. Bobby Jindal is anathema in Louisiana. I spit on him.
The private schools they want, are going to be used for laundering. They serve the kids green hotdogs and water plus a piece of bread, they provide the cheapest school supplies, and they pocket the money that they didn't use for the education of children on themselves and their wallets, Walla, the privatization of school scam all laid out for ya. You can also run private prisons in the same way, they have noone to answer to, so they can run them however they choose to, There most certainly will be a lot of business for lawyers, who will encourage their clients to sue, what a farce. The game is over. They lose, now maybe they can stop with their get rich quick schemes.
Amen !