{"id":4769,"date":"2011-05-07T02:23:53","date_gmt":"2011-05-07T09:23:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=4769"},"modified":"2011-05-07T04:18:20","modified_gmt":"2011-05-07T11:18:20","slug":"assault-on-education","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2011\/05\/07\/assault-on-education\/","title":{"rendered":"Assault on Education"},"content":{"rendered":"

American children are falling further behind.\u00a0 If memory serves, we\u2019re down to 25th place now.\u00a0 Part of the reason is that education is underfunded.\u00a0 Another part is that curricula, especially in red states, have lost touch with teaching students how to think, in favor of teaching them what to think.\u00a0 And part is that Republicans want public education to fail, so that they can privatize it.\u00a0 Working to achieve that end, the DeVoss family is to education, what the Koch family is to organized labor.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"7devoss-bush\"<\/a>Since the 2010 elections, voucher bills have popped up in legislatures around the nation. From Pennsylvania to Indiana to Florida, state governments across the country have introduced bills that would take money from public schools and use it to send students to private and religious institutions<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Vouchers have always been a staple of the right-wing agenda. Like previous efforts, this most recent push for vouchers is led by a network of conservative think tanks, PACs, Religious Right groups and wealthy conservative donors. But “school choice,” as they euphemistically paint vouchers, is merely a means to an end. Their ultimate goal is the total elimination of our public education system<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

The decades-long campaign to end public education is propelled by the super-wealthy, right-wing DeVos family<\/strong>. Betsy Prince DeVos is the sister of Erik Prince, founder of the notorious private military contractor Blackwater USA (now Xe), and wife of Dick DeVos, son of the co-founder of Amway, the multi-tiered home products business [pyramid scheme].<\/p>\n

By now, you’ve surely heard of the Koch brothers, whose behind-the-scenes financing of right-wing causes has been widely documented in the past year. The DeVoses have remained largely under the radar, despite the fact that their stealth assault on America’s schools has the potential to do away with public education as we know it.<\/p>\n

Right-Wing Privatization Forces<\/h6>\n

The conservative policy institutes founded beginning in the 1970s get hundreds of millions<\/a> of dollars from wealthy families and foundations to develop and promote free market fundamentalism. More specifically, their goals include privatizing social security, reducing government regulations, thwarting environmental policy, dismantling unions<\/a> — and eliminating public schools.<\/p>\n

Whatever they may say about giving poor students a leg up, their real priority is nothing short of the total dismantling of our public educational institutions, and they’ve admitted as much. Cato Institute founder Ed Crane and other conservative think tank leaders have signed the Public Proclamation to Separate School and State,<\/a> which reads in part that signing on, “Announces to the world your commitment to end involvement by local, state, and federal government from education<\/strong>.”<\/p>\n

But Americans don’t want their schools dismantled. So privatization advocates have recognized that it’s not politically viable to openly push for full privatization and have resigned themselves to incrementally dismantling public school systems. The think tanks\u2019 weapon of choice is school vouchers.<\/p>\n

Vouchers are funded with public school dollars but are used to pay for students to attend private and parochial (religious-affiliated) schools<\/strong>. The idea was introduced in the 1950s by the high priest of free-market fundamentalism, Milton Friedman, who also made the real goal of the voucher movement clear: \u201cVouchers are not an end in themselves; they are a means to make a transition from a government to a free-market system<\/strong>.” The quote is in a 1995 Cato Institute briefing paper titled \u201cPublic Schools: Make Them Private.\u201d<\/p>\n

Joseph Bast, president of Heartland Institute, stated in 1997, \u201cLike most other conservatives and libertarians, we see vouchers as a major step toward the complete privatization of schooling. In fact, after careful study, we have come to the conclusion that they are the only way to dismantle the current socialist regime.\u201d Bast added, \u201cGovernment schools will diminish in enrollment and thus in number as parents shift their loyalty and vouchers to superior-performing private schools.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Bast’s lofty goals have not panned out. That’s because, quite simply, voucher programs do not work<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

The longest running voucher program in the country is the 20-year-old Milwaukee School Choice Program. Standardized testing shows that the voucher students in private schools perform below the level of Milwaukee\u2019s public school students, and even when socioeconomic status is factored in, the <\/strong>voucher students<\/strong><\/a> still score at or below the level of the students who remain in Milwaukee\u2019s public schools<\/strong>. Cleveland\u2019s voucher program has produced<\/a> similar results. Private schools in the voucher program range from excellent to very poor. In some, less than 20 percent of students reach basic proficiency levels in math and reading.<\/p>\n

Most Americans do not want their tax dollars to fund private and sectarian schools. Since 1966, 24 of 25 voucher initiatives<\/a> have been defeated by voters, most by huge margins. Nevertheless, the pro-privatization battle continues, organized by an array of 527s, 501(c)(3)s, 501(c)(4)s, and political action committees. At the helm of this interconnected network is Betsy DeVos,<\/a> the four-star general of the pro-voucher movement.<\/p>\n

The DeVos Family Campaign for Privatization of Schools<\/h6>\n

The DeVoses are top contributors to the Republican Party and have provided the funding for major Religious Right organizations<\/strong>. And they spent millions of their own fortune promoting the failed voucher initiative in Michigan in 2000, dramatically outspending their opposition. Sixty-eight percent of Michigan voters rejected the voucher scheme. Following this defeat, the DeVoses altered their strategy.<\/p>\n

Instead of taking the issue directly to voters, they would support bills for vouchers in state legislatures<\/strong>. In 2002 Dick DeVos gave a speech on school choice<\/a> at the Heritage Foundation. After an introduction by former Reagan Secretary of Education William Bennett, DeVos described a system of \u201crewards and consequences\u201d to pressure state politicians to support vouchers<\/strong>. \u201cThat has got to be the battle. It will not be as visible,\u201d stated DeVos. He described how his wife Betsy was putting these ideas into practice in their home state of Michigan and claimed this effort has reduced the number of anti-school choice Republicans from six to two. The millions raised from the wealthy pro-privatization contributors would be used to finance campaigns of voucher supporters and purchase ads attacking opposing candidates.<\/p>\n

Media materials<\/a> for Betsy DeVos\u2019 group All Children Matter, formed in 2003, claimed the organization spent $7.6 million in its first year, \u201cimpacting state legislative elections in 10 targeted states\u201d and a won\/loss record of 121\/60.<\/p>\n

Dick DeVos also explained to his Heritage Foundation audience that they should no longer use the term public schools, but instead start calling them \u201cgovernment schools.\u201d He noted that the role of wealthy conservatives would have to be obscured. \u201cWe need to be cautious about talking too much about these activities,\u201d said DeVos, and pointed to the need to \u201ccut across a lot of historic boundaries, be they partisan, ethnic, or otherwise.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reinventing Vouchers<\/h6>\n

Like DeVos, several free-market think tanks have also issued warnings that vouchers appear to be an \u201celitist\u201d plan. There’s reason for their concern, given the long and racially charged history of vouchers<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

School vouchers drew little public interest until Brown v. Board of Education and the court-ordered desegregation of public schools. Southern states devised voucher schemes for students to leave public schools and take the public funding with them<\/strong>\u2026. [emphasis added<\/em>]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <Alternet<\/a>><\/p>\n

This is a small part of a large article.\u00a0 Click through for the rest.<\/span><\/p>\n

Vouchers serve a serve devious purposes.\u00a0 One is that they get poor and middle class people to help fund elitist education for rich kids.\u00a0 Even with vouchers, poor and middle class people could not afford to send their kids to the elite schools.\u00a0 Another is that vouchers provide a means to avoid the First Amendment establishment clause.\u00a0 It provides taxpayer funds to finance religious indoctrination of children.\u00a0 Yet another is that it allows racists in areas where whites are a minority to send their kids to schools with a minimum number of token non-white students.\u00a0 In all cases, the funds for vouchers comes from the budgets for public schools, making it more difficult tor them to provide quality education.\u00a0 That just what Republicans want.<\/span><\/p>\n

I think that the system of local finance and control needs overhaul.\u00a0 Students in rich districts have plenty, while students in poor districts have little.\u00a0 Perhaps funding should be at the state level, so the funding of the schools depends on the number of students, not on the wealth of the communities where they are located it.\u00a0 In such a system, we could keep local school boards.\u00a0 However, a system that truly delivers equality of educational opportunity is the last thing Republicans want.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

American children are falling further behind.\u00a0 If memory serves, we\u2019re down to 25th place now.\u00a0 Part of the reason is that education is underfunded.\u00a0 Another part is that curricula, especially in red states, have lost touch with teaching students how to think, in favor of teaching them what to think.\u00a0 And part is that Republicans […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4769","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4769","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4769"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4769\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}