Take 17 Minutes to Learn About School Vouchers

And if you are already educated about vouchers, there’s still more here that will surprise you about the biggest educational scam in American educational history. Pass it on. 

From ProPublica: Indoctrinating Charter and Voucher Schools in Oklahoma Are Bleeding Out Public Schools

This Is Ground Zero in the Conservative Quest for More Patriotic and Christian Public Schools

by Jennifer Smith Richards

October 22, 2025

https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-education-department-oklahoma-public-schools

The future that the Trump administration envisions for public schools is more patriotic, more Christian and less “woke.” Want to know how that might play out? Look to Oklahoma.

Oklahoma has spent the past few years reshaping public schools to integrate lessons about Jesus and encourage pride about America’s history, with political leaders and legislators working their way through the conservative agenda for overhauling education.

Academics, educators and critics alike refer to Oklahoma as ground zero for pushing education to the right. Or, as one teacher put it, “the canary on the prairie.”

By the time the second Trump administration began espousing its “America First” agenda, which includes the expansion of private school vouchers and prohibitions on lessons about race and sex, Oklahoma had been there, done that.

The Republican supermajority in the state Legislature — where some members identify as Christian nationalists — passed sweeping restrictions on teaching about racism and gender in 2021, prompting districts to review whether teachers’ lessons might make students “feel discomfort, guilt, anguish” or other psychological distress about their race. The following year, it adopted one of the country’s first anti-transgender school bathroom bills, requiring students to use restrooms and locker rooms consistent with the gender they were assigned at birth or face discipline.

While he was state schools superintendent, Ryan Walters demanded Bibles be placed in every classroom, created a state Office of Religious Liberty and Patriotism, and encouraged schools to use online “pro-America” content from conservative media nonprofit PragerU. He called teachers unions “terrorist” organizations, railed against “woke” classrooms, threatened to yank the accreditation of school districts that resisted his orders and commissioned a test to measure whether teacher applicants from liberal states had “America First” knowledge.

Many of the changes endorsed by the state’s leaders have elements of Christian nationalism, which holds that the United States was founded as a Christian nation and often downplays troubling episodes in the country’s history to instead emphasize patriotism and a God-given destiny.

Walters, who declined to comment for this story, resigned at the end of September and became CEO of the Teacher Freedom Alliance, an arm of the conservative think tank Freedom Foundation that aims to “fight the woke liberal union mob.” But much of the transformation in Oklahoma education policy that he helped turbocharge is codified in the state’s rules and laws.

“We are the testing ground. Every single state needs to pay attention,” warned Jena Nelson, a moderate Democrat who lost the state superintendent’s race to Walters in 2022 and is now running for Congress.

ProPublica has reported that Education Secretary Linda McMahon has brought in a team of strategists who are working to radically shift how children will learn in America, even as they carry out the “final mission” to shut down the federal agency. Some of those strategists have spoken of their desire to dismantle public education. Others hope to push it in the same direction as Oklahoma.

Walters tapped the president of The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank that published Project 2025 and the blueprints that preceded it, to help rewrite Oklahoma’s social studies standards. The Legislature did not reject the rewrite, so the standards now include roughly 40 points about the Bible, Jesus and Christianity that students should learn as well as skepticism about the 2020 presidential election results and the origins of COVID-19. If the new standards survive a legal challenge, they could be in place until they’re up for review again in six years.

But while Oklahoma made these shifts, it has consistently ranked near the bottom on national measures of student performance. Scores on eighth grade reading and math in national evaluations are abysmal. Only New Mexico’s proficiency rates rank lower. The high school dropout rate is one of the highest in the country, while spending on education is one of the lowest. Only three other states — Utah, Idaho and Arizona — spend less per pupil. And in the most recent federal data about average teacher pay, Oklahoma tied with Mississippi for dead last. Many school superintendents and parents say state leaders have been fixated on the wrong things if the goal is to improve schools.

“The attention to the culture war thing means that there’s a lot of distraction from the basic needs of kids being met,” said Aysha Prather, a parent who has closely followed changes in state education policy. Her transgender son is a plaintiff in a 2022 lawsuit challenging the state’s bathroom ban. That case remains on appeal.

“The school should be the nicest, happiest, best resourced place in a community,” she added. “That’s how we show that we value kids. And that is obviously not how most of our Legislature or state government feels about it.”

In a statement to ProPublica, the new state superintendent, Lindel Fields, said that he’s sorting through previous rules and edicts that have created “much confusion” for schools, including about the standards and the PragerU teacher certification tests. He said the public rightfully has questions about how the state Education Department changes after Walters’ tenure, but “given all these pressing tasks, we simply don’t have time for looking backward. Whether we are 50th or 46th or 25th in education, we have work to do to move our state forward,” Fields wrote. He said his first tasks are “resolving a number of outstanding issues that are hindering operations” including creating a budget for the agency.

Public school superintendents do not oppose all of the mandates from the past several years. When Walters directed schools last year to place Bibles in every classroom and teach from them, one district superintendent emailed to thank him for offering “cover” to incorporate Bible-focused lessons, according to news reports.

Another superintendent, Tommy Turner of Battiest Public Schools, said students at his schools have always had access to the Bible. The district still puts on a Christmas program and observes a moment of silence to start the day, and the school board prays before meetings.

“Christ never left the school,” he said in an interview in his office.

A lifelong Republican who works in a remote stretch of southeast Oklahoma, Turner said he is concerned about the state’s priorities and doesn’t see Bibles as the most pressing issues.

In his district, the cafeteria needs repairs even after the emergency replacement of a roof that had a gaping hole in it. Many of his teachers work second jobs on weekends because the pay’s so low. Nail heads are poking through the gym’s thin hardwood floors. The district has lost 15% of its students to an online charter school and homeschooling. Voters have rejected three bond issues in a row for building repairs and renovations.

Turner said he’d like to retire, but he loves the students and wants to protect his little district. He put on his cowboy hat, apologized for the pile of dead wasps on his office floor — the infestations barely register anymore — and walked over to the high school. He said he hadn’t even read the new social studies standards.

“I don’t have time to chase every rabbit,” he said. “I’ve got a school to run.”

Patriotism and Jesus

The changes to Oklahoma’s curriculum rules don’t just touch on national issues around race and gender. Here, teachers aren’t supposed to tell students that the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921 — a defining incident of racial violence in Oklahoma history — was perpetrated by racists.

State social studies standards for years have included discussion of how white Tulsans murdered as many as 300 Black people. But once the 2021 state law that restricted teaching about race and gender passed, some teachers avoided the topic.

The law prohibits teachers from singling out specific racial groups as responsible for past racism. It specifies that individuals of a certain race shouldn’t be portrayed as inherently racist, “whether consciously or unconsciously.” In addition to teachers’ licensure being on the line, repeated failure to comply would allow the state to revoke district accreditation, which could result in a state takeover.

When educators questioned how to teach about a race massacre without running afoul of the law, state legislators and the Tulsa County chapter of the conservative parent group Moms for Liberty weighed in to say that white people today shouldn’t feel shame and that the massacre’s perpetrators shouldn’t be cast as racists. A Moms for Liberty chapter representative did not respond to questions from ProPublica.

At a speaking engagement at the Norman Public Library in 2023, Walters suggested teachers present the facts about the murders but should not say “the skin color determined it.” Even two years after the law went into effect, news reports said teachers were still treading lightly on the race massacre, wary of the state suspending or revoking their licenses for exposing students to prohibited concepts. Those fears are not hypothetical; the state has revoked at least one teacher’s license and suspended two others’.

Other historic episodes that reveal racism also are getting a new look in Oklahoma through the state’s partnership with PragerU Kids, which creates short-form videos to counter what its founder believes is left-wing ideology in schools.

Teachers in the state aren’t required to use the videos, but some like them and show them in class. The videos align with conservatives’ push to teach a positive view of America’s past and with the state’s rules on teaching about race and gender. For instance, PragerU Kids’ version of Booker T. Washington’s story is a cheery lesson in self-sufficiency and acceptance. Once freed from slavery, Washington toiled in coal mines, worked as a janitor in exchange for formal education and became a great American orator and leader of the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama.

The video does not linger on his being born into “the most miserable, desolate and discouraging surroundings” or, as he wrote in his autobiography, that slavery was “a sin that at some time we shall have to pay for.”

“America was one of the first places on Earth to outlaw slavery,” a cartoon version of Washington tells two time-traveling children in the PragerU video, so “I am proud and thankful.” (The U.S. did ban importing slaves in 1808, but it did not enforce that law and did not outlaw owning people altogether until 1865, after Britain, Denmark, France and Spain had done so.)

The Washington character says in the video that he devoted his life to teaching people “the importance of independence and making themselves as valuable as possible.” And when one child says she’s sorry that he and other Black Americans faced segregation and discrimination, Washington thanks her for her sympathy but assures the child, who is white, that she’s done nothing wrong.

Echoing a conservative talking point, the cartoon Washington says, “Future generations are never responsible for the sins of the past.”

Jermaine Thibodeaux, a historian at the University of Oklahoma, said he is familiar with the PragerU videos and considers them an ideological tool of a “reeducation project nationwide” that can be misleading.

“I don’t think that’s something Washington necessarily uttered,” he said of the quote about future generations.

The value Washington placed on independence, Thibodeaux added, was “predicated on the notions of self-sufficiency post-slavery, when there was little help coming from the government.”

A spokesperson for PragerU declined to comment for this story.

Pressure to keep squeezing social justice and LGBTQ+ issues out of classrooms has been intensifying since 2021, when Republican state lawmakers began pushing “dirty book” legislation that would censor school libraries. One bill, which didn’t pass, called for firing school employees and fining offenders $10,000 each time they “promoted positions in opposition to closely held religious beliefs of the student.” That was the backdrop when the state accused Summer Boismier of “moral turpitude” and then revoked her teaching license last year.

The English department at Norman High School near Oklahoma City told Boismier and her colleagues they needed to pull titles that might be considered racially divisive or contain themes about sex and gender. Or they could turn books around on the shelves so students couldn’t see the titles.

“I remember just sitting in my seat shaking. I had colleagues in the room who were in tears,” Boismier said. Given the choice to purge books or hide their covers, Boismier did neither. She wrapped her classroom’s bookshelf in red butcher paper and wrote “books the state doesn’t want you to read” on it in black marker. She added a QR code linking to the Brooklyn Public Library, where students could get a library card and virtual access to books considered inappropriate in Oklahoma, then posted a photo of it all on social media.

Boismier, who resigned in protest of the 2021 law, challenged the license revocation in court, and the case is ongoing. She said she does not regret taking a stand against a law she views as unjust. The state has argued the revocation is valid.

“I am living every teacher in Oklahoma’s worst nightmare right now,” she said. “I am unemployable.”

In the Battiest district, where Turner is superintendent, an elementary reading teacher told ProPublica that just to be safe, she removed books about diversity and including others who are different. She said that was uncomfortable; half of her students are Native American, and so is she.

Adopted this year, the state’s new social studies standards provide even more specifics about what should be taught. They include the expectation that students know “stories from Christianity that influenced the American Founders and culture, including the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth (e.g., the ‘Golden Rule,’ the Sermon on the Mount),” to second graders. A state court last month issued a temporary stay on requiring schools to follow the standards while a lawsuit against them plays out.

In addition, the new standards accept Trump’s false claims about the 2020 election. They dictate that ninth graders learn about “discrepancies” in election results including “the sudden halting of ballot-counting in select cities in key battleground states, the security risks of mail-in balloting, sudden batch dumps, an unforeseen record number of voters” and other unsupported conservative talking points. The Trump campaign and supporters filed at least 60 lawsuits covering these points; nearly all were dismissed as meritless or were decided against Trump. The election skepticism standard has left the superintendent of a roughly 2,000-student district north of Tulsa confused. He said he and other superintendents are unsure how they would navigate those but are hopeful that “standards rooted in fact prevail.”

“There comes a point where curriculum cannot be opinion,” said the superintendent, who didn’t want to be named because he feared retaliation. “I’m not trying to get involved in conspiracy theories.”

Fear and Resistance

The push by state leaders to embed more Christian values in schools isn’t what keeps many superintendents in the rural parts of the state up at night. They say the Bible has never left their classrooms.

“I am smack-dab right in the middle of the Bible Belt,” said the leader of a tiny district on the western side of the state. “We are small, but we have seven churches. You’re talking ‘Footloose’ here.”

While she doesn’t disagree with everything the Legislature and Walters have done, she said she feels like some of their actions undermine public schools and could “shut down rural Oklahoma.”

She and other leaders of public school districts worry that the state’s expanded school choice program, which allows families to get tax credits if they attend private and religious schools, will draw away students from their districts and, ultimately, erode their funding. Congress passed the first federal private school tax credit in July.

It’s just the second year of the statewide tax credit program approved by the Legislature that allows students to use public funds to attend private and religious schools. The credits cost the state nearly $250 million in tax revenue this school year and subsidizes almost 40,000 students. That money, superintendents say, is desperately needed in their districts.

The state also has encouraged the growth of charter schools, which are publicly funded but privately run and subject to fewer regulations. Last year, the state’s third-largest district, behind the Oklahoma City and Tulsa districts, wasn’t a traditional one. It was EPIC, a statewide online charter school. Walters and Gov. Kevin Stitt supported St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School in its efforts to become the country’s first religious charter school. The Supreme Court blocked it from opening.

Even communities with few private schools feel threatened by the state’s push toward privatization. At Nashoba Public School, in a rural part of southeast Oklahoma where there’s little else but timber and twisting roads, the roughly 50 kids who make up the elementary and middle grades are taught in split-grade classrooms. Like hundreds of other Oklahoma districts, more than three-quarters of which are rural, it’s not just a school, it’s the school; there are no private schools in Pushmataha County.

When students enroll in charter schools, they often take funding with them while districts have to maintain operations as before.

“You starve your public schools to feed your private schools and charter schools,” said Nashoba Superintendent Charles Caughern Jr. “Our foundation was set up for a free and appropriate education for all kids. All kids!”

Caughern fears students with disabilities will suffer as public schools are weakened. Private schools don’t have to admit students with disabilities, and many won’t, he said.

Erika Wright, a parent who leads the Oklahoma Rural Schools Coalition, which advocates for public schools, said the state’s deep-red politics might lead outsiders to think Oklahomans support state leaders pushing education far to the right. But that’s not the case, Wright said.

“They don’t understand what’s happening,” Wright said. “They just assume that public schools are always going to be there because they’ve always been there in their lifetime. I think the average Oklahoman does not understand the gravity and complexity of what is taking place.”

That’s not to say there isn’t resistance. A group of about 15 parents and public school advocates that Walters derided as the “woke peanut gallery” goes to State Board of Education meetings — a visual reminder that people care about education policy and public schools. A suburban Oklahoma City district is devising plans to deliver all of the Bible lessons contained in the new social studies standards on the same day, giving parents an easy way to have their children opt out. Court challenges to some of the state’s right-wing policies are pending.

Some are hopeful that Oklahoma will recalibrate the more extreme policies that marked Walters’ tenure. The State Board of Education last week decided not to revoke the licenses of two teachers who Walters wanted punished for their social media posts about Trump. The new superintendent said he would drop Walters’ plan to distribute Bibles to every classroom.

But many of the significant changes in classrooms came out of the Legislature, which has continued this year to propose bills to rid schools of “inappropriate materials” and proclaim that, in Oklahoma, “Christ is King.” A lot of damage already has been done to public schools, said Turner, the Battiest superintendent.

He was only half-joking when he said some parents have been “brainwashed” by right-wing TV news and Oklahoma leaders’ talk of liberal indoctrination to think the district is teaching kids to be gay or converting Christian kids into atheists.

A couple of years ago, one mom stopped him in the parking lot at school to say she was withdrawing her child from the district because its teaching didn’t align with her values. The superintendent was floored.

“That’s the power of the rhetoric,” Turner said.

He said he used to sit a couple of pews behind that mom in church every Sunday.

TN Parents File Lawsuit to Stop Bill Lee’s School Voucher Privatization Plan

Lawsuit Alleges Tennessee's School Voucher Program is Unconstitutional nashvillebanner.com/2025/11/21/t...

[image or embed]

— James Horn (@schools-matter24.bsky.social) November 21, 2025 at 8:06 AM

Massive Fraud in AZ School Voucher Program

From News 12, Phoenix:

 PHOENIX — Home and private school parents with Empowerment Scholarship Accounts for their kids bought diamond rings and necklaces, Kenmore appliances, and even lingerie with education tax dollars, a 12News investigation has found.

Parents of ESA children also purchased more than 200 Apple iPhones, more than 50 smart TVs, and dozens of gift cards worth up to $500 each since last November, when the state Department of Education began automatically approving all ESA requests because of a massive backlog.

The 12News I-Team, through a public records request, also uncovered more than $3 million in purchases to Amazon, Costco, and Best Buy, with no indication of what was bought. There were also nearly $2,000 payments to a person identified as "me" and "Jamie the tutor," as well as for a purse.

Many of the purchases are considered "unallowable" under ESA guidelines, and Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne said his office eventually will claw back the money. A spokesman said Monday that parents may be referred to the Attorney General's Office for prosecution, and 400 accounts have been suspended because of improper spending.

"Most people are honest and request reasonable things," Horne said. "The unreasonable ones are about 1 percent, and we recover them afterwards….So, there’s nothing where people can get away with murder on things under $2,000.”

The I-Team's public records request was made after 12News uncovered that 1.2 million ESA requests totaling $124 million were automatically approved since late last year.

The Department of Education's website said the ESA program, which has about 90,000 kids and will cost the state $1 billion this school year, "may be the most accountable program in the state."

Beth Lewis, who leads Save Our Schools, Arizona, said that's laughable.

"Tom Horne has instituted this policy, which is, you know, the exact opposite of any sort of financial stewardship or responsibility," Lewis said. "We have no idea where the funds are going, and whether they’re being used to just improve people’s homes or pay for things that no other person in the state would ask people to pay for.”

The questionable -- and possibly illegal -- ESA spending was uncovered by 12News as a Maricopa County judge ruled last week that Arizona isn’t properly funding capital needs for its public schools, calling it unconstitutional.

In Judge Dewain Fox's 114-page ruling, the judge included several pictures of damaged roofs, cracked floors and peeling walls from various schools across Arizona to emphasize how some districts "languish with substandard facilities for years."

Other purchases automatically approved include:

• Two 1-carat diamond rings and several necklaces.
• Kenmore washers, dryers, and a range.
• Gift cards to Kohl's and Happy Moments, which can be used at restaurants and clothing.
• Gaming laptops.
• Apple iPods and watches along with warranties.
• Hotel and resort stays, including Knott's Berry Farm, Great Wolf Lodge and Hilton properties.
• Broadway tickets at ASU Gammage, including one for nearly $1,300.
• Airline tickets.
• Luxury clothing like Psycho Bunny.
• Maternity wear and corsets.
• Diapers.
• Dog food.
• High-end office furniture like a $1,750 Herman Miller Embody Ergonomic Office Chair.
• Sports camps.
• Dozens of Lego sets, including 15 for more than $1,000 each.
• Above-ground pools.
• Personal fitness training.
• More than 300 purchases at The San Diego Zoo and SeaWorld.
• Traeger grills.
• Electric bikes and mopeds.
• Massive inflatable water slides.
• Horse saddles.

Marisol Garcia, president of the Arizona Education Association, said it's shameful that ESA parents are making such luxury purchases when so many public schools are struggling.

She notes that numerous teachers are asking for donations for basic necessities like books, and added that public school employees would be fired if they made similar purchases as ESA parents.

"It just doesn’t happen. And there would be accountability, multiple layers of accountability," she said. "Hearing about these extravagant purchases breaks my heart."

Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue

“In the long run, charter schools are being strategically used to pave the way for vouchers. The voucher advocates, who are very powerful and funded by right-wing foundations and families, recognize that the word voucher has been successfully discredited by enlightened Americans who believe in the public sector. So they’ve resorted to two strategies. First, they no longer use the word “vouchers.” They’ve adopted the seemingly benign phrase “school choice,” but they are still voucher advocates.” — Jonathan Kozol

The end goal of school privatization projects like charter schools has always been vouchers. While both charters and vouchers prevent the public from being able to control the curriculum taught with public dollars, vouchers are far worse in that regard. Vouchers represent an attack on democratic institutions and they represent an attack on rationality in general. Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue, a case about to be heard in front of the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS), could open the flood gates to scare community tax dollars being squandered on dominionist curricula and schools that can openly discriminate.

Vouchers mean Jeanne Allen's dream of teaching children that Jesus rode dinosaurs will finally come true
image by Monty Propps https://b3ta.com/board/7293522

With a SCOTUS populated by arch-reactionaries like Kavanaugh and Gorsuch, it's highly likely that the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment will either be ignored or explained away in order to justify funding extremist religious organizations. You know Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue represents a major threat to public education when charter-voucher promoting organizations like the Center for Education Reform file an amicus brief in favor of the right-wing plaintiff. Reactionaries Jeanne Allen and Paul Clement also got a piece published in Time in favor of using public funds to teach religious extremism.

Feinstein and Other "Democrats" Supporting DC Vouchers

Got this email from Pete Farruggio:

Just got this letter from California senator Dianne Feinstein (below) defending her support for vouchers, and revealing that she intends to interfere with the school system in Washington DC by co-sponsoring a voucher bill with a Republican. With her billionaire husband, she represents to me the state of the Democratic Party as the biggest obstacle to real change in the US political/economic system, as long as so many misinformed Americans support it.

Here's a local DC story about charter schools:

A charter school chain is trying to open a middle school Washington, D.C.'s Ward 8 and has enraged nearby residents in the process. 

https://tinyurl.com/yx8mm79h

Dear Dr. Farruggio:

Thank you for writing to me to express your concerns about vouchers.  I  appreciate hearing from you, and I welcome the opportunity to respond.

I understand that you do not support the reauthorization of the Scholarships for Opportunity and Results Act (Public Law 112-10), which provides funding to the District of Columbia Opportunity Scholarship Program (DC OSP).  DC OSP provides scholarships for students to attend private schools and provides funding for D.C. Charter Schools and D.C. Public Schools that serve students from K-12th grade.

Like you, I believe that all students deserve access to high-quality education.  However, I believe that a one-size fits all approach to our children’s education does not always work and that different school models may work better for different students.  Parents should have an informed and meaningful choice in their children’s education.  

On January 24, 2019, I, along with Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) introduced the “SOAR Reauthorization Act of 2019” (S. 213), which would allow families in the District of Columbia to continue to be able to choose their educational experience through the DC OSP program.  S. 213 would reauthorize funding for DC public schools, public charter schools, and DCOSP schools through Fiscal Year 2024.  The bill would also require an assessment of student growth and progress each year a child participates in the program.  S. 213 is currently awaiting consideration by the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, of which I am not a member.

It is worth noting that I do not believe that our educational system should promote school choice at the expense of federal funding for students who attend public K-12 public schools.  You may be interested to know that when considering education reform through the Every Student Succeeds Act (Public Law 114-95), I voted against amendments that would have allowed federal funding to be used at private schools.

While we may have to agree to disagree on this issue, I will be sure to keep your thoughts in mind as the Senate considers S. 213.  I will continue to fight to ensure that students have all the resources they need to succeed in school and beyond.

Once again, thank you for writing.  Should you have any other questions or comments, please call my Washington, D.C., office at (202) 224-3841 or visit my website at feinstein.senate.gov.  You can also follow me online at YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, and you can sign up for my email newsletter at feinstein.senate.gov/newsletter.

Best regards.

Indiana's Voucher Program Another Loser

Preliminary findings from a real research study, now under peer review:

When comparing these [voucher] students' achievement after the switch to their test scores the previous year, the researchers found:

Voucher students experienced "modest annual achievement losses" in math, especially in the first two years after leaving public school.

In English/language arts (ELA), voucher students showed no benefits.
These results echo what other researchers have found: that voucher students often backslide academically after switching to private school.

Graphic Essay: Betsy DeVos' 'School Choice' Movement Isn't Social Justice. It's a Return to Segregation.

Charters and vouchers have always been intended to break public schools, and wrest education away from the public commons. "School choice," a phrase coined by segregationists, has always been about maintaining and exacerbating segregation by race and class.

Graphic Essay: Betsy DeVos' 'School Choice' Movement Isn't Social Justice. It's a Return to Segregation. by Adam Bessie and Erik Thurman is a powerful piece that makes complex concepts easy to understand. It's a excellent thing to share with non-academics regarding the scourge of school privatization via charters-vouchers. I've included a quote and a teaser from the piece below.

http://socialjusticequotations.tumblr.com/post/160327844183/the-school-choice-system-is-jim-crow-education

https://charterschoolfacts.tumblr.com/post/160327683353/graphic-essay-betsy-devos-school-choice

I can't think of anyone as profoundly ignorant, or as uniquely unqualified to be appointed Secretary of Education as Betsy…

I can't think of anyone as profoundly ignorant, or as uniquely unqualified to be appointed Secretary of Education as Betsy…

…oh, wait, never-mind.

Let's not forget that neoliberal school privatization is a bipartisan project. Both parties fail education.

A natural progression of neoliberalism

• Rod Paige
• Margaret Spellings
• Arne Duncan
• John King
• Betsy DeVos

Not opposing the neoliberal corporate education reform agenda when Democrats were in charge is what led to the DeVos disaster. Not unlike how the Hillary Rodham Clinton camp's "Elevating Pied Piper Candidates" led to the Trump fiasco.

Fredrick Hess: Duplicity Personified

By Ken Derstine

June 22, 2015

Frederick Hess is a resident scholar and director of education policy studies at the right-wing American Enterprise Institute. He has a blog on Education Week called Straight Up.

On June 11, 2015 he posted this column on his blog:

5 Thoughts on Nevada’s Landmark School Choice Law

In the article Hess praises the newly enacted Nevada law that makes Education Savings Accounts (vouchers) available to all families for a hodgepodge of education choices if parents want to flee the funding and resource starved public schools. The bulk of his article sings the praises of disaster capitalism as the means to promote privatization of public schools.

He concludes his article with the astonishing statement:

“Finally, per usual, I'm puzzled as to why teachers aren't embracing this kind of reform and all the possibilities it holds for them. Instead, Nevada State Education Association president Ruben Murillo has denounced the bill, arguing that taxpayers should not be helping families to attend "private school interests. Now, I’ve met Murillo (Nevada NEA President). He knows that plenty of teachers in Nevada are frustrated with testing, disciplinary issues, teacher evaluation, accountability systems, and more. And the opportunity for families to choose the kinds of teaching and schooling that will best serve their children means more kids will be in different kinds of schools—which gives teachers opportunities to work in schools that aren’t wired into the system of state-mandated evaluations and accountability, if they wish. After all, many of those “private school interests” will offer a very different school culture and approach. Seems like a win-win to me. I hope Nevada’s educators proceed with that possibility in mind.”

On February 5, 2015 Hess moderated four hours of panels at the American Enterprise Institute. The theme of the conference was “Is the ‘new’ education philanthropy good for schools? Examining foundation-funded school reform”. The main purpose of the conference was how to promote standardized tests for teacher evaluation.

 For a synopsis of the conference, see:

 Talking to the Choir: AEI panels discuss their attack on public education

Apparently the “starve the public schools, feed the charters” tactic of corporate education reformers to make charters appealing to parents is evolving into “flee from the public schools to escape standardized testing” (which corporate education reformers initiated and are promoting).

Duplicity – deceitfulness in speech or conduct, as by speaking or acting in two different ways to different people concerning the same manner; double-dealing.

Also see:

Privatization Primer
Curmudgucation - June 20, 2015 

Investors Ready to Liquidate Public Schools
Life at the Intersections - November 9, 2014
It's over half a year old, but this article captures the corporate education reform method.  

Jeb's Kicking Off His Campaign in Florida with School Choice Week

To put the final nail in the coffin of public education, elect Jeb Bush.

Jeb's kicking off his campaign in Florida with School Choice Week

SOURCE National School Choice Week

School choice supporters to ring in National School Choice Week 2015 with Official Kickoff at Florida Theatre, January 23, 2015.

US Sen. John McCain, Joe Trippi, Rev. HK Matthews, Superstar Athlete Desmond Howard to headline first of 11,000+ events nationwide

JACKSONVILLE, Fla., Jan. 14, 2015 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The largest celebration of school choice in US history will officially start on Friday, January 23, 2015 at a special event in Jacksonville, Florida.

National School Choice Week 2015 will kick off at the Florida Theatre at 12:30 pm on January 23. The event is the first event of an unprecedented 11,082 independently planned and independently funded special events taking place across all 50 states during the Week, which runs until January 31, 2015.

The goal of the Week is to shine a positive spotlight on effective education options for children, and to raise awareness of the importance of, and benefits of, school choice in a variety of forms.

More than 1,900 students, parents, and teachers will attend the Official Kickoff celebration, which will be nationally televised – on tape delay – on two cable television networks. The event's speakers include:

• US Senator John McCain (R-AZ), a longtime school choice supporter, who will be touring the NFL-YET Academy, a public charter school in Phoenix, and addressing a National School Choice Week event at the school.
• Rev. HK Matthews, a noted civil rights pioneer who marched with Dr. Martin Luther King in Montgomery and Selma, and was arrested 35 times for peaceful protests to demand integration during the US civil rights movement.
• Joe Trippi, Democratic strategist and FOX News analyst, who managedHoward Dean's 2008 presidential campaign and is a renowned national and international political advisor.
• Desmond Howard, a school choice advocate and former college football and NFL player, winner of the 1991 Heisman Trophy, Super Bowl XXXI MVP, and current ESPN commentator.

Additional speakers include Gary Chartrand, chairman of the Florida State Board of Education; Frank Biden, the president of Mavericks in Education and the brother of Vice President Joe Biden; Jeanne Allen, pioneering education reform champion and founder of The Center for Education Reform; Wendy Howard, the founder and executive director of the Florida Alliance for Choice in Education; Christie Bassett, 2015 Florida Teacher of the Year and a teacher at Highlands Park Elementary School in Polk County, Florida; Jason Fischer, member of the Duval County School Board; Lisa Graham Keegan, senior advisor to National School Choice Week and the former superintendent of public instruction for Arizona; and Randan Steinhauser, an advisor to National School Choice Week, who will join the event live via satellite from Austin, Texas. Andrew Campanella, the president of National School Choice Week, will serve as the event's host and anchor.

The event is centered around testimonials from students, parents, and teachers who benefit from an array of education options – including students and graduates from traditional public schools, public magnet schools, public charter schools, private schools, online academies, and homeschooling.

"Florida is a national leader in providing quality, effective education options for children," Wendy Howard said. "National School Choice Week provides an opportunity for the Sunshine State to demonstrate to the nation the basic but transformational message that school choice works."

"National School Choice Week will break records as the nation's largest celebration of educational opportunity in American history," Campanella said. "We are grateful for our partner organizations and supporters in my home state, Florida, for their work in making the inaugural event of this special week, so memorable."

The event's planning partners include:

• Florida Alliance for Choices in Education
• Charter Schools USA
• Step Up for Students
• Coalition of McKay Scholarship Schools
• American Federation for Children
• Florida Charter School Alliance
• National Institute for Educational Options
• Urban League of Greater Miami
• Agudath Israel of America
• Florida Virtual School
• Hispanic Council for Reform and Educational Options
• K12
• Black Floridians Care
• Foundation for Florida's Future
• Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops
• PublicSchoolOptions.org
• Center for Education Reform
• James Madison Institute

For more information, please visit www.schoolchoiceevent.com and www.schoolchoiceweek.com.

Held every year in January, National School Choice Week is an independent public awareness effort spotlighting effective education options for children, including traditional public schools, public charter schools, public magnet schools, private schools, online learning, and homeschooling. National School Choice Week is America's largest-annual series of education-related events.

Contact: Andrew Campanella
President, National School Choice Week
arc@schoolchoiceweek.com or 850-837-0240

To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/nations-largest-ever-school-choice-celebration-to-kick-off-in-jacksonville-next-week-300020403.html

©2012 PR Newswire. All Rights Reserved.

Voucher Gospels in Indiana Government

**Guest Post by Doug Martin

SCHOOL VOUCHER BULLYING, PURE POLITICS, AND THE INDIANA OFFICE OF MANAGEMENTAND BUDGET

When it comes to the corporate-religious-political bullying for the Amway/Walmart/ALEC/Overstock.com/Koch Brothers assault on Indiana school children, the Republicans will stop short of nothing.   House Bill 1342 was a perfect example.  Having moved out of committee but finally killed off yesterday by GOP House Speaker Brian Bosma, this bill sought to strip Indiana superintendent of public instruction Glenda Ritz and the Department of Education of all power to monitor the state voucher schools, giving instead, the Koch-Brothers/ALEC crony Chris Atkins and his Indiana Office of Management and Budget complete control over voucher school funding distribution, oversight, and even voucher school visits.

With OMB’s State Board of Accounts now handing charter school audits over to private companies, House Bill 1342 was meant to punish Ritz, who was originally involved in the lawsuit to stop Indiana’s school voucher system, and lead to even more lack of oversight.

THE INDIANA OMB AND THE CORPORATE RIGHTWING MACHINE

Mike Pence recently rehired Chris Atkins to lead OMB. A past tax and fiscal policy director at ALEC, the Anderson, Indiana-born Atkins began working for the sociopathic voucher lobbying and propaganda mill, the Milton & Rose Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice, after leaving as OMB policy director where he hammered out the Mitch Daniels’ anti-public school property tax plan, one of the first initiatives to drain funding from the schools.

Not surprisingly, Atkins is a member of the pro-school voucher Institute of Justice’s Human Action Network, a group of IJ student law conference alumni who volunteer for various cases IJ deems appropriate. IJ is battling in court to save the Indiana school voucher program.

Atkins is not a fan of increased spending to eliminate inequality in the public schools.  In 2007, while carrying corporate water for the Koch Brothers-supported/ Eli Lilly affiliated Tax Foundation, Atkins released a “study” at the Philadelphia ALEC meeting which claimed that lawsuits in favor of forcing states to pay adequate funding to inadequately funded school districts have not led to better schools or “long term increases in school spending” but only to higher tax rates. Atkins commented: "Lawsuits may be able to build schools, but they haven't proven effective at teaching kids.”

Atkins, however, is not the only OMB employee with ties to school voucher groups.  The Friedman Foundation-funded and Tea Party Americans for Prosperity is represented at OMB’s Department of Government Efficiency and Financial Planning by Gloria Downham, whose husband, Chase, heads the Americans for Prosperity’s Indiana branch.  Chase, a former Mike Pence intern, helped elect Republicans for the Indiana Chamber of Commerce.  Chase and Gloria are parishioners at the St. Monica Catholic Church which operates its own Indianapolis school receiving state vouchers.

Former Ice Miller attorney Brian Bailey, OMB’s chief of staff & general counsel, is also a Tax Foundation crony.

Micah Vincent, at OMB’s Department of Local Government Finance, likes to attend Friedman Foundation events, too.

LIVING WITH DINOSAURS

Besides the American flags flying high in the Indiana religious schools accepting taxpayer money, OMB would have found no problem visiting schools promoting creationism, John Birch Society propaganda and paranoia, and free-market radicalism. Many of the schools receiving vouchers, as Steve Hinnefeld noted at School Matters, use the A Beka and Bob Jones curriculum texts, which vilify liberals, plug free-market inequality, lie about global warming, and see the Bible as the see-all-be-all to an education. Hinnefeld unearthed some disturbing examples, including these from the teacher’s guide to United States History in Christian Perspective: Heritage of Freedom, an A Beka 11th-grade history book:

FDR and the New Deal: “New Deal socialism is but a halfway house to Communism; what Communists seek by violent revolution, socialists seek by legislation, regulation, and taxation … The effects of the New Deal can be seen today in the Social Security system, Medicare, various welfare programs, and the numerous federal regulatory agencies in operation today. Many Americans depend on the government for their daily needs and all suffer from excessive government regulation in one way or another.”

Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s 1950s crusade against Communists: “Senator McCarthy’s aggressive manner and his physical appearance – he did not photograph well and often appeared to be scowling – did not play well in front of the television cameras … In addition, the print media and radio roundly castigated McCarthy. The combined effect of this propaganda turned many people against the senator.”

LBJ and the Great Society: “Higher taxes drained money from individuals and business to fund programs that destroyed the work ethic among the poor while eroding the self-sufficiency of the American family.”

These textbooks, as Professor Frances Paterson and Rachel Tabachnick have observed, compare gay people to child molesters and rapists and show hatred of Hinduism, Native American beliefs, and Buddhism, even lashing out at Roman Catholics and non-evangelical Protestants. Tabachnick also details the texts’ prejudice against African-Americans, writing that “Concerning slavery in America, a Bob Jones high school text states, ‘To help them endure the difficulties of slavery, God gave Christian slaves the ability to combine the African heritage of song with the dignity of Christian praise. Through the Negro spiritual, the slaves developed the patience to wait on the Lord and discovered that the truest freedom is from the bondage of sin.’”

If you want more on Indiana school voucher schemes, like visits to the Creation Museum, see Zack Kopplin’s report here.

Robert Behning, House Bill 1342’s author, told the Journal Gazette “The goal was to try to send a message that we don’t want to abuse our power but we want to make sure that everything we have moved that we value in terms of reform needs to be moving forward the way it was intended.”

In other words, it was an act of bullying and pure politics, plain and simple, one geared on “moving” Indiana back into another century, with a Good News Club in every public school still left standing. If one believes that OMB would have been capable or willing to regulate Hoosier schools receiving vouchers in any way, shape, or form, one would have to believe that humans walked hand in hand with the dinosaurs and that Jesus hated the poor, which many in the school voucher movement either believe or like to lie about.