Making Room for More Child Labor and Unregulated Voucher Schools

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Democants Free Republicons to Pursue War on Teachers and Public Schools

When it became clear early on that Obama would rubber stamp the Bush-Spellings NCLB school privatization agenda by passing over Darling-Hammond and promoting to Secretary the pasty, befuddled yes-man to corporate tyranny, Arne Duncan, the conservatives had a spirited, brief celebration and immediately set to work to move the education agenda even further to the Right.  This meant they could give their full attention to dusting off the school voucher portfolio and their anti-union bombs and strategies.

By moving Right from their previous position while painting Obama as a Muslim socialist 24-7 on hate radio and Fox News, Obama, over time, will be forced to move toward them (further Right) in order to demonstrate that he is, after all, a real American, and not the dreaded "Other."  Pure racism. Works like a charm, especially when you have a President who believes you can reason with pit vipers.  When we most need a Teddy Roosevelt, we end up with a Neville Chamberlain.

And so the Republicons are engaged in a 50 state strategy to elect governors who will hammer home the message of tax dollars for private schools, corporate vouchers that allow tax credits for sending kids to church schools, and a full frontal attack on teacher job security, seniority, tenure, retirement, and health benefits.  Chris Christie has become the poster-fathead for this antiquated sociopolitical blueprint, but there are active fronts in Florida, Tennessee, Idaho, Ohio, Utah, and Indiana, to name a few.

This battle for public schools and for the integrity of the teaching profession will not be won by cowering union heads sitting on their hands or making nice while cashing their 6-figure paychecks.  Yesterday there were signs that educators and parents in Indiana finally got the memo that Little Mitch Daniels is leading the State toward the 19th Century if they don't block the way. Civil disobedience will be required to stop this, in Indiana and elsewhere.

INDIANAPOLIS -- Hundreds of teachers and their supporters descended on the Statehouse on Tuesday to support public education and denounce proposals backed by Republicans who control the House and Senate.

The Indiana State Teachers Association and the Indiana Federation of Teachers urged teachers to pack the Statehouse for their "Rally for Public Education."The unions object to several proposals from Gov. Mitch Daniels that are gaining traction in the Republican-controlled General Assembly, including restrictions on collective bargaining, merit pay for teachers and vouchers that would direct taxpayer money to private schools. . . .

Could democracy break out in Indiana, too!

Privatatizers Seek to Breathe Life into Dead DC Voucher Program

With the bloom off the segregated corporate charter schools as the ultimate tool for crushing public education, the privatizers are ginning up the old standby option, school vouchers. Right-wing princess, Betsy Devos, daughter of the Amway fortune and sister of Eric Prince (of Blackwater Christian Crusader fame), has launched a new website, the American Federation for Children (get it?), in an effort to breathe life once more into corporate vouchers in DC (again), a program that would give corporations a dollar tax write-off for every dollar given for a voucher.

A clip from the AFC's latest press release aimed to garner support for Lieberman's amendment to a Senate Bill to reauthorize the FAA (you may ignore the Press Release's claim that Lieberman is offering an amendment to an entirely unrelated House Bill):

The Obama Administration’s own “What Works Clearinghouse” has validated the Institute for Education Sciences (IES) research on the OSP. The evaluation of the program shows that students who were offered vouchers to attend private schools scored higher on reading tests compared to students who were not offered vouchers. These gains were equal to three months of additional learning.

And on cue, too, is the Editorial Board of the Washington Post, printing their own fabrications this morning about the IES study, whose PI was none other than Patrick Wolf, Endowed Chair of School Choice (no, that's not a misprint or a joke) at the education school that Walmart built at the University of Arkansas. Quoting Wolf:

"in my opinion, the bottom line is that the OSP lottery paid off for those students who won it. On average, participating low-income students are performing better in reading because the federal government decided to launch an experimental school choice program in the nation's capital."

Of course, that research at IES occurred during the reign of Bush II, and Betsy, WaPo, and Dr. Wolf all fail to point out, of course, the math results from that study, which show significant achievement losses in math for voucher kids. Just to put to bed the AFC claim, here is the Executive Summary from the IES:

The District of Columbia School Choice Incentive Act of 2003, passed by Congress in January 2004, established the first federally funded, private school voucher program in the United States. As part of this legislation, Congress mandated a rigorous evaluation of the impacts of the Program, now called the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program (OSP). This report presents findings from the evaluation of the impacts 3 years after families who applied were given the option to move from a public school to a participating private school of their choice.

The evaluation is based on a randomized controlled trial design that compares the outcomes of eligible applicants randomly assigned to receive (treatment group) or not receive (control group) a scholarship through a series of lotteries. The main findings of the evaluation so far include:

• After 3 years, there was a statistically significant positive impact on reading test scores, but not math test scores. Overall, those offered a scholarship were performing at statistically higher levels in reading—equivalent to 3.1 months of additional learning—but at similar levels in math compared to students not offered a scholarship (table 3). Analysis in prior years indicated no significant impacts overall on either reading or math achievement.
• The OSP had a positive impact overall on parents' reports of school satisfaction and safety (figures 3 and 4), but not on students' reports (figures 3 and 4). Parents were more satisfied with their child's school (as measured by the percentage giving the school a grade of A or B) and viewed their child's school as safer and more orderly if the child was offered a scholarship. Students had a different view of their schools than did their parents. Reports of safety and school climate were comparable for students in the treatment and control groups. Overall, student satisfaction was unaffected by the Program.
• This same pattern of findings holds when the analysis is conducted to determine the impact of using a scholarship rather than being offered a scholarship. Fourteen percent of students in our impact sample who were randomly assigned by lottery to receive a scholarship and who responded to year 3 data collection chose not to use their scholarship at any point over the 3-year period after applying to the Program.¹ We use a common statistical technique to take those "never users" into account; it assumes that the students had zero impact from the OSP, but it does not change the statistical significance of the original impact estimates. Therefore, the positive impacts on reading achievement, parent views of school safety and climate, and parent views of satisfaction all increase in size, and there remains no impact on math achievement and no overall impact on students' perceptions of school safety and climate or satisfaction from using an OSP scholarship.
• The OSP improved reading achievement for 5 of the 10 subgroups examined.² Being offered or using a scholarship led to higher reading test scores for participants who applied from schools that were not classified as "schools in need of improvement" (non-SINI). There were also positive impacts for students who applied to the Program with relatively higher levels of academic performance, female students, students entering grades K-8 at the time of application, and students from the first cohort of applicants. These impacts translate into 1/3 to 2 years of additional learning growth. However, the positive subgroup reading impacts for female students and the first cohort of applicants should be interpreted with caution, as reliability tests suggest that they could be false discoveries.
• No achievement impacts were observed for five other subgroups of students, including those who entered the Program with relative academic disadvantage. Subgroups of students who applied from SINI schools (designated by Congress as the highest priority group for the Program) or were in the lower third of the test score distribution among applicants did not demonstrate significant impacts on reading test scores if they were offered or used a scholarship. In addition, male students, those entering high school grades upon application, and those in application cohort 2 showed no significant impacts in either reading or math after 3 years.

The Sunny Side of the Depression for Corporations: Cutting Wages and Benefits

Today's Washington Post has a story on the new strategy by corporations to use the Depression that their greed and incompetence created as reason enough to cut wages and benefits of those workers lucky enough to still have a paycheck. This follows on the heels of recent developments by banks to use some of the billions in federal bailouts to buy up foreclosed properties, rather than to loan money to citizens trying to buy homes. All of this is occurring as bank lobbyists use more bailout dough to buy up enough votes from crooked Senators of both parties to halt modifications in the bankruptcy law last week that could have saved 1.7 million homeowners from foreclosure. As Durbin admitted last week, banks "frankly own the place."

Meanwhile, kids hoping for college must contend with a minefield of crooks and gougers from the Sallie Maes of the world, ready to victimize those who can't afford to pay their own way without loans. And their younger brothers and sisters--well, they continue the cram as the Business Roundtable's cheap charter movement picks off more and more poor public schools for corporate welfare conversion, all with the blessing of the Obama Administration. Which brings us back to the subject of cut wages and benefits for workers, yes?

Finally, following a voucher link on my Google Alerts, I came across a summary in the Miami Herald of Florida legislative action during the current session that just ended. These two actions were stacked together in the list of "accomplishments" for Florida's illustrious body of corporate stooges:

- Strengthen a private school voucher program for children from low-income families by giving insurance companies dollar-for-dollar credits against premium taxes for donations to the program, now supported solely through similar corporation income tax credits.

- Require public school students who lose or damage textbooks to pay 100 percent of replacement costs instead of 50 percent to 75 percent under present law.

No write-down for students losing a book, but some pretty good action for corporations with giving programs to shut down public schools.

Jeb Offers Arne Advice on Corporate Vouchers

With $5 billion in discretionary cash at his disposal, it looks like Arne is lining up his options. From the Tribune's Swamp (ht to Ken Libby):

. . . .Bush, who seriously considered a bid for Florida's opening Senate seat in 2010, has always been a policy-driven politician. And his interest in education runs deep -- as governor, he won an "A-Plus'' plan that steeered added state funding to schools that improved from year to year, as measured in standardized testing, and offered vouchers to students in failing public schools.

Bush was talking about tuition vouchers today in his meeting with Duncan, according to a well-placed source who also was calling on the new education secretary. See Bush's essay about school choice running in the Georgia press.

"It was a productive meeting,'' Bush reported tonight of his meeting today with Duncan. "I believe he has a reformer's heart.''

Some background here on corporate vouchers.

Corporate Vouchers and the Smell of Doing "Good"

If you want to smell close up the reek of the corporate welfare parasites that are feeding off what remains of public education, sniff no further than Florida and its corporate voucher program.

Advertised as a way to offer better choices to poor parents of children in poor schools, the Corporate Tax Credit voucher program neither requires children to have ever been enrolled in a "failing" public school, nor does it come anywhere close in providing enough money to provide anything other than marginal schooling. The voucher is worth just about half of what the state paid would pay for a public education.

Both of these clean feats are accomplished while providing the corporations that give to the voucher fund a dollar in reduced taxes for every dollar they put into the fund. So in the end the public schools are further bled by a shrinkage of $6,106 for every child whose parents opt for the $3,416 voucher, while parents are stuck looking for a school that can provide an education as good as the public schools without the benefit of any accountablility requirement of those private "schools" accepting the public dollars. Thank you, Jeb Bush, for leaving this shiny trail for the world to see what a smelly slug you really are.

Sadly, the ploy of "educating" the poor at a big savings in taxes that can be turned into tax write-offs for corporations engaged in this variety of blood-sucking beneficence is not limited to Florida's corporate voucher program. It is the power source fueling the non-profit charter school movement as well. Large social entrepreneurial investment funds are ready for the feeding frenzy that they anticipate when Obama's Secretary Duncan fires the starting gun for the new race to pilfer the federal treasury for corporate benefit, while bringing the death blow to public schools trying as they will to survive. And all of it will done in the drippingly cynical name of the poor, whose poverty will assuredly remain the untreated cause of their numerous gaps, from achievement to health to job to prison, for yet another generation that remains preoccupied by "bold education reform."

Here is the story Winter Park Observer by a guest writer. The corporate media, not even the Winter Park Observer, is interested in putting a paid reporter on this:

By Kristy Vickery
Guest Writer

As public school officials contemplate how to deal with an increasing deficit, a new report on the cost of private school vouchers could put more pressure on them.

"The only way to get funding for a school is if a child is sitting in a desk," Orange County School Board Chairwoman Joie Cadle said. "Having more (private school) vouchers would take money away from public schools."

A report released last week by the state Office of Program Policy Analysis and Government Accountability, or OPPAGA, shows that students choosing private schools may cost individual school systems money, but the state will actually spend less per pupil on students who use vouchers.

The OPPAGA report says the Corporate Tax Credit, a voucher program established in 2001 to help low-income students afford private school tuition, saved state taxpayers $38.9 million last school year and currently serves 23,234 students from households whose income meets federal guidelines for free and reduced lunch.

"We welcome OPPAGA's findings," said John Kirtley, chairman of the Florida School Choice Fund and the Tampa businessman who helped create the program. "We certainly want taxpayers to know we are saving them money, and we hope our partners in public education benefit from our savings."

Students in private schools cost the state less than students in public schools. According to the report, in 2007-08, the cost of the average scholarship for a student in private schools was $3,412, compared with the state cost of $6,106 in public schools. It is also estimated that 90 percent of scholarship recipients would have attended a public school if they had not received a scholarship through the program. For each $1 lost through corporate tax credits, the state saves $1.49 in general revenue.

"While the program reduces the amount of corporate tax revenues received by the state, it produces a net fiscal benefit," the report stated. "This occurs because state education spending for students who receive scholarships is reduced by more than the amount of revenue lost."

Although these savings please Kirtley, he said it is not the purpose of the program.

"The purpose of the program is not to save taxpayers money, but to give low-income families more educational options if their kids are struggling in their assigned schools," he said. "Our only goal is to improve the educational outcomes of low-income kids."

But some public school officials warn against low-income families making the choice to educate their children in a private setting.

Orange County School Board member Rick Roach said parents who use voucher programs should be careful.

"There's no proof that they improve the quality of education," Roach said.

Seminole County Public School Board member Jeanne Morris also has concerns about private school voucher programs.

"Students lose all constitutional rights in private school settings," Morris said.

Morris also said she questions the quality of education students receive under these programs because they are not required to take the same tests as students in public schools.

"There's no measurement to see the success of education these kids are receiving," Morris said. "And when you set your own grades, you can give kids whatever grades they want."

The OPPAGA report states that private school representatives will not encourage their schools to participate in state tests, such as the FCAT, and some would likely stop accepting scholarship students if required to use the FCAT. The report does undermine the argument that vouchers drain public school funds.

27 Years After Savage Inequalities. . .

Over a quarter century after Jonathan Kozol told the gripping horror story of Camden, New JerseySchools, the corporatistas have a plan to finally do something--for themselves. The privatizer solution? Corporate vouchers to kill off the still struggling public schools. From the Courier-Post:

By LISA GRZYBOSKI
Courier-Post Staff

A school choice pilot program now under consideration in the state Senate is getting a thumbs down from the Camden Education Association, the union representing the Camden school district's teachers and support staff.

The proposed program would give scholarships to poor children in Camden, along with youth in seven other low-income, urban areas of the state, so they could attend a different public school or enroll at a private school. The money to fund the scholarships would come from corporate donations to qualified nonprofit organizations. The corporations would receive a dollar-for-dollar tax credit for their contributions.

The bill uses the word scholarships, but really it means school vouchers, said Kenneth McIntosh, president of the Camden Education Association, which represents about 2,700 district personnel. . . .

The Bush Brothers' Remaining Florida Battle: Publicly Funded Church Schools

From Americans United:

Jeb Bush And His Cronies Have Provoked A Church-State Showdown In Florida With National Ramifications

By Joseph L. Conn

Dade County, Fla., is home to almost 200 religious schools.

According to the Florida Department of Education’s data from the 2006-2007 school year, an array of denominations and faith perspectives is represented. Forty-five schools are affiliated with the Roman Catholic Church, but many other spiritual traditions answered the state roll call.

All Angels Academy is Episcopalian, Christ Fellowship Academy is Baptist, Clara Mohammed School of Miami is Islamic, Greater Miami Hebrew Academy is Jewish, World Mission of Jesus Christ Christian is non-denominational, New Testament Church of Transfiguration School is Pentecostal and Glory of God Christian School is affiliated with the Assemblies of God.

Some are well-established and fully accredited with a qualified teaching staff and a tradition of educational excellence. Others are small, poorly equipped and devoted to religious indoctrination, not academic accomplishment.

If former Gov. Jeb Bush and his allies have their way, however, all of these schools – and private academies like them around the state – will soon be eligible for massive new streams of public funding, courtesy of the state’s taxpayers.

Bush has engineered onto the November ballot two initiatives that would eliminate the state constitution’s strict church-state separation provisions, mandate funding of religion and water down language requiring a quality public school system.

For advocates of church-state separation and strong public schools, it’s a political showdown with breath-taking possible consequences.

How did the Sunshine State find itself in this predicament? It’s the culmination of a convoluted plot.

In 1999, Bush pushed through the legislature an “Opportunity Scholarship Program” that gave students in “failing” public schools state funding for tuition at religious and other private academies. Americans United for Separation of Church and State and allied groups immediately challenged the voucher scheme in state court.

After years of legal wrangling, the Florida Supreme Court finally struck down the program in January 2006. The 5-2 court majority said vouchers violated a provision of the state constitution requiring a uniform system of free public schools.

Bush, an ardent advocate of “faith-based” solutions to public problems, was livid and vowed to press for a constitutional amendment. But he found more difficulty in the state legislature than expected. In May 2006, the proposed constitutional amendment fell short by one vote in the Republican-controlled Senate, despite a lot of hardball political pressure from the governor and his allies.

Bush then reached for Plan B. He left office in January 2007, but he and his top advisers crafted a back-door maneuver to revise the state constitution and advance vouchers. They decide to stack the state’s Taxation and Budget Reform Commission.

The Commission, a 25-member panel created only once every 20 years, is supposed to study the state’s tax code, revenue needs and expenditures and find ways to address financial problems. It has the power, by a two-thirds vote, to place initiatives directly on the ballot, bypassing the legislature and other governmental checks and balances.

Commission members are appointed by the governor, the Senate president and the House speaker. (Four members serve ex officio and have no voting rights on the body.)

To achieve his goals, Bush arranged with Gov. Charlie Crist to appoint Greg Turbeville, a former Bush policy director, and other voucher advocates to the Commission. House Speaker Marco Rubio (R-Miami/Dade) helped the scheme along by appointing Bush education adviser Patricia Levesque and other voucher fans.

Levesque was controversial as Bush’s education adviser. She is a graduate of Bob Jones University, the arch-fundamentalist South Carolina school notorious for its racial and religious intolerance. Today, she serves as executive director of Bush’s pro-voucher Foundation for Florida’s Future as well as his Foundation for Excellence in Education.

News media soon alerted the public to the Bush plot. Tallahassee Bureau Chief S.V. Date of the Palm Beach Post obtained Levesque’s e-mails under the open records law. They solicited assistance from the wealthy organizations that supported the Bush voucher program as she worked to craft the constitutional amendments.

“I’m still trying to figure out the right language,” Levesque said.

Some Commission members were upset that the Bush agents were diverting attention to his pet project instead of dealing with the state’s serious financial problems.

“I don’t think it’s our job to be getting into fights with the courts,” said Les Miller, a former Democratic senator from Tampa. “The Supreme Court has spoken, and they have said it is unconstitutional.”

Even some voucher boosters on the Commission were appalled. Former Senate President John McKay, who successfully pushed through a voucher program for disabled students that is still on the books, told the newspaper, “I think I’d be very cautious about it getting outside taxes and budget issues.”

But the Bush cronies forged ahead. In April, the Commission voted to place two initiatives on the November ballot.

Amendment 7 would strike current constitutional language that forbids the use of any public funds “directly or indirectly in aid of any church, sect, or religious denomination or in aid of any sectarian institution.” In place of those words, Article I, Section 3 would assert, “An individual or entity may not be barred from participating in any public program because of religion.”

Amendment 9 would eviscerate the constitution’s strong language requiring, as a “paramount duty of the state,” the provision of a “uniform, efficient, safe, secure, and high quality system of free public schools.” The amendment revises Article IX, Section 1 to state that “this duty shall be fulfilled, at a minimum and not exclusively” through public schools.

To make matters worse, the Bush forces combined the attack on public schools with a measure requiring that at least 65 percent of public school funds be spent on classroom activities. Voucher boosters think the spending measure will be popular with parents and could help win public approval for the funding diversion to private schools.

Analysts said the two amendments combined would eliminate any state constitutional barriers to tax aid for religious schools and other ministries of all sorts, and some experts thought the vague wording might even require public funding of “faith-based” social services, even if they evangelize and discriminate in hiring.

Opponents on the Commission were outraged.

According to the Tampa Tribune, House Minority Leader Dan Gelber said, “I think this is as wrong-headed a proposal as this Commission could come up with.”

Gelber argued that it not only allowed vouchers, but also required them. Other critics said the plan would cost the state $2 billion in additional revenues.

Many of the state’s leading newspapers deplored the Commission’s actions. The South Florida Sun-Sentinel said the ballot proposals “seem more about pushing warmed-over ideology than implementing meaningful fiscal reform.” The Palm Beach Post said the Commission “chose politics over public responsibility” in signing off on “Jeb Bush’s anti-public education agenda.”

The St. Petersburg Times warned that the ballot amendments “will make Florida a national battleground” and “the campaign will be ugly, costly, divisive – and just the kind of politics that Bush relished.”

The Times added, “The way the Commission put the items on the ballot hints at the deceptions that lie ahead. Neither question mentions the word ‘voucher.’… Call this Bush’s post-gubernatorial ‘devious plan.’”

Miami Herald columnist Carl Hiaasen opined, “If the measure passes, Florida would be the first state in the country to formally trash the concept that the roles of church and government should be separate.”

The Bradenton Herald was even more critical.

“Though voucher proponents cast their zeal in the shining light of a better education for all students,” the newspaper said, “this is just a way for rich people to subsidize their children’s private schooling. Would right-wing Republicans ever push for vouchers if they truly benefited the poor? No. This is a cynical attempt to undermine public education and further divide the classes.”

To become part of the state constitution, the amendments must be approved by 60 percent of the voters in November. The school initiatives will be on the ballot with seven other referenda, including one that would ban same-sex marriage.

The drive to win public approval of the pro-voucher amendments has powerful backers. Bush’s wealthy political allies are certain to contribute generously to the effort.

After the Commission vote, Bush stepped out of the shadows and into the limelight to praise the action.

“Thanks to the good work of the Taxation and Budget Reform Commission,” Bush said, “Florida voters, not activist jurists, will ultimately decide the best way to provide a quality education for all of our students.”

In addition, religious school advocates and Religious Right forces will rally to the cause.

John Stemberger, president of the Florida Family Policy Council (and Religious Right leader James Dobson’s top agent in the state), told OneNewsNow he welcomes the constitutional change.

“If this measure passes, it would become a permanent part of Florida’s constitution,” said Stemberger, “and it would enable the legislature to pass voucher legislation without being struck down by the courts.”

Mike McCarron, executive director of the Florida Catholic Conference, urged the Commission to delete the church-state separation language in the state constitution, saying it “does not reflect the pluralistic values of Floridians, and is instead reflective of the discriminatory and prejudicial fears of years gone by.”

McCarron and other opponents of church-state separation say the language in the Florida constitution is anti-Catholic and was put there to block public funding of Catholic schools.

Such provisions barring aid to religion appear in as many as three-fourths of the state constitutions; they are often referred to as “Blaine amendments.” In some states, the provisions were added after Sen. James G. Blaine attempted unsuccessfully to add a similar amendment to the U.S. Constitution in the 1870s.

Scholars say part of the motivation for state no-aid provisions was sometimes anti-Catholic, but they note that many states had the restrictions in place long before the Blaine controversy. In addition, they say, forbidding taxpayer support of religion is a fundamental principle of American life, dating back to the enactment of the First Amendment.

The Florida no-aid provision was adopted by a constitutional convention in 1885. No records of the convention exist to give the intent of the framers, so there is no evidence that anti-Catholicism was involved. The language may simply be an extension of the 1868 constitution’s requirement that money from the state School Fund be used exclusively for “the support and maintenance of common [public] schools.”

Church-state separationists say state provisions like Florida’s are critically important now that the Supreme Court is taking a less rigorous approach to religion funding. On the other hand, advocates of taxpayer aid to religious schools and other “faith-based” ministries desperately want to see the provisions removed. In a recent speech, President George W. Bush (Jeb’s brother) urged states to delete the provisions from their constitutions. (See “A New Low At The White House Summit,” page 11.)

If Florida adopts the Bush brothers’ approach, major political campaigns to do the same in other states are certain.

If the state provisions are removed, critics expect an avalanche of funding proposals that will benefit religious schools and other ministries, and state regulation is likely to be weak or non-existent.

That’s been the case in Florida. In 2003, Sami Al-Arian, a founder of Tampa’s Islamic Academy of Florida, was indicted on charges that he was the North American leader of the Palestinian Jihad, a terrorist group. Yet, according to the Palm Beach Post, more than 50 percent of the school’s revenue came from a state-subsidized scholarship-funding organization. (Al-Arian pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy and has served nearly five years in prison.)

In 2004, the newspaper reported that 55 percent of Bush’s “Opportunity Scholarships” were going to private schools with no accreditation.

David Ray, director of the Association of Christian Schools, told the Post, “You have some non-educators out there starting schools because they see a pot of gold.”

Still, Bush bitterly fought demands for accountability. His spokesperson said only parents with vouchers should be involved in the decision about which schools to select.

The Bush constitutional revisions are so sweeping that a wide variety of religious ministries will be eligible for state aid, not just religious schools.

Miami Herald columnist Hiaasen said adoption of the amendments would send a message, “Translation: Rush out and start your own church as soon as possible, because deals are waiting in Tallahassee.”

Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, told The Washington Times that supporters of religious liberty and public education will wage a “massive education campaign” to alert Florida voters to the devastating impact of the initiatives.

“It’s going to be a formidable battle,” he said.

Corporate Vouchers Victorious in Florida

When state legislators in Florida offer children and parents either a rundown, under-funded, segregated testing factory or a tax-supported corporate voucher to a Christian school, the school choice has already been made--and it hasn't been made by the parent or the child.

Nevertheless, a growing number of legislators in Florida have seen the light at the bottom of their vortex. They have convinced themselves that they are not voting for vouchers--they are voting for scholarships. They are not giving up their civic commitment to provide for citizens in order that corporations may be relieved of their tax burden--they are saving children, even if it from their own legislative and moral failure to provide for them.

The amount of democracy within a society is directly proportionate to the amount of civic space remaining there. Oh, well.

Clips from St. Petersburg Times:

In 2001, Democrats in the Legislature pounded Republican plans to start a private school voucher program for poor and predominantly minority kids. They said it was unconstitutional, a drain on public schools, even un-American. In the end, all but one Democrat voted against it.

Times have changed. This year, a bill to vastly expand the same program passed by large margins.

And this time, a third of the Democratic caucus was on board.

"I'm a strong advocate for public school education, and I'm not necessarily a strong advocate for vouchers," said Rep. Bill Heller, D-St. Petersburg, one of four Tampa Bay-area Democrats to vote yes. But "the bottom line has to be the child. If good things are happening for the child, then you can justify it."

. . . .

The legislation increases the amount of each scholarship to $3,950, up $200 from this year. The average cost per student in public school is about $7,000.

Some Democratic supporters say they back the program because unlike Opportunity Scholarships, the state's first voucher program — which the Florida Supreme Court struck down in 2006 — the money for tax-credit scholarships doesn't come directly out of state coffers. Some offered what critics call a semantic defense.

"I don't think I'm voting for a voucher," said Rep. Betty Reed, a Tampa Democrat who has 13 private schools in her district that accept tax-credit scholarships. "It's a scholarship." . . . .

Corporate Welfare Voucher Bill Dead in Oklahoma

From the Alva Review-Courier:

04/25/08

OKLAHOMA CITY (April 23rd, 2008) A bipartisan coalition of Legislators, through spirited debate, prevented taxpayer dollars from funding private schools through a private voucher scholarship program by defeating a bill on the House Floor today.

“I opposed a $2.5 million tax credit program that took taxpayers dollars to support private schools,” said Representative Jeannie McDaniel, D- Tulsa. “We cannot strengthen public education by taking money away from our schools. We need to work to address the challenges that face our education system instead of diverting money from public schools to private entities. It is our responsibility to provide the best opportunity for our kids to learn.”

Senate bill 2093 would give a 50% tax credit to individuals who donate to a fund providing private school scholarships. This tax credit would be on top of any charitable tax deductions donors already receive. It essentially creates a voucher system that would take public dollars and transfer them through the use of tax credits to private schools. The end result is still fewer resources left for those students who remain in public schools.

“School vouchers may be a good thing for a select few in Oklahoma City or Tulsa,” said Representative Ray McCarter, D- Marlow. “However, they destroy our rural communities, which revolve around our public schools. By cherry-picking students out of public schools and using taxpayer dollars to fund their education at private charter schools, you would leave students behind. I am glad that we were able to take a stand for public education in Oklahoma today.”

“If I went to a business owner in my district and told him that I was going to take the top ten percent of his employees and some of his capital and then send them to work at one of his competitor’s business and somehow he is supposed to grow his business, he would just laugh,” said Representative Scott Inman, D- Del City. “This is what the proponents of Senate Bill 2093 wanted to do with our public schools today. It doesn’t make sense and it is wrong for the children of Oklahoma.”

District 58 Representative Jeff Hickman was among the 40 representatives voting in favor of the bill which many school superintendents in this district opposed.

Corporate Advance, Accountability Retreat

As public schools are eliminated, the so-called accountability movement will become a relic of the past. See Florida plan for more tax-supported corporate vouchers. My favorite clip from Palm Beach Post editorial:

Corporate voucher schools are supposed to give a standardized test. But the test doesn't have to be based on FCAT-tested curriculum, and the results aren't public. With no accountability, low-income students can vanish into lousy schools without a trace.