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private schools
In 'Abandonment of Public Education,' Louisiana to Allow Tax Dollars to Pay for Private Schools
"We must build and maintain a public education system that serves all children," said one Democratic lawmaker.
May 18, 2024
After an aggressive push by Republican Gov. Jeff Landry, the Louisiana Senate advanced a bill this week that would allow public funds to be used for private school tuition—sending what one Democrat called an "abandonment" of the state's public schools to the state House, where it is expected to pass.
The state Senate approved the Louisiana Giving All True Opportunity to Rise (LA GATOR) Scholarship Program in a vote of 25-15 on Thursday, with just four Republicans joining the Democratic Party in opposing the bill.
The program would allow the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education to create "education savings accounts" (ESAs), which would give families state tax dollars to pay for private school tuition, uniforms, and other expenses.
The grants would first be available to low-income families and special education students, but in the program's third year the ESAs are set to be available to all Louisiana families.
The legislation was briefly shelved this week over concerns about its cost, but Landry, backed by right-wing groups and donors, used television ads to push his party to support the ESAs.
Landry went as far as suggesting lawmakers could revise the state constitution to end a restriction mandating that certain public funds are set aside for K-12 public schools. He called on the state Senate to hold a special convention to do so, in order to unlock funding for the $520 million yearly cost of the LA GATOR program.
Moments before the Senate voted on Thursday, state Sen. Royce Duplessis (D-5) said the bill was "nothing short of an abandonment of public education."
"We as a state are making the decision and taking the step to say that it's too hard, it's too complex" to fund public schools, said Duplessis.
Landry told the Louisiana Illuminator that the success of the bill was "a big win for the kids of Louisiana," but local school board members, teachers, and superintendents lobbied Republicans ahead of the vote to protect funding for public schools, where a majority of students in the state are educated.
"These universal voucher bills are a step in the wrong direction," Larry Carter, president of the Louisiana Federation of Teachers, toldPublic News Service earlier this month. "We've seen in other states around the country, like Arizona and Ohio, where these bills have been passed, [schools are] now facing a budget crisis, and we're hoping that we cannot go down that same road."
"If we're cutting that funding stream, Louisiana students will have fewer nurses and counselors, less options for after school programs, and certainly limited access to field trips and AP courses that help prepare them for their next step in life," he added.
Louisiana-based journalist Dayne Sherman said the LA Gator program will provide a lesson in "how to starve your local Louisiana public school, Clownfish-style."
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Do Unions Belong in the Fight Against Corporate School Reform?
Aug 21, 2016
In the fight for public education, the forces of standardization and privatization are running scared.
They've faced more pushback in the last few years - especially in the last few months - than in a decade.
The Opt Out movement increases exponentially every year. Teach for America is having trouble getting recruits. Pearson's stock is plummeting. The NAACP and Black Lives Matter have both come out strongly against increasing charter schools.
They want you to believe that the corporate vultures preying on our public schools are really just misunderstood philanthropists.
So what's a corporate education reformer to do?
Answer: Change the narrative.
They can't control the facts, so instead they try to control the story being told about the facts.
It's a classic propaganda technique. As Malcolm X put it:
"If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing."
Their story goes like this - yes, there is a battle going on over public education. But the two sides fighting aren't who you think they are.
The fight for public schools isn't between grassroots communities and well-funded AstroTurf organizations, they say. Despite the evidence of your eyes, the fight isn't between charter school sycophants and standardized test companies, on the one hand, and parents, students and teachers on the other.
No. It's actually between people who really care about children and those nasty, yucky unions.
It's nonsense, of course. Pure spin.
They want you to believe that the corporate vultures preying on our public schools are really just misunderstood philanthropists. And those demanding a fair shake for their own children and communities are really just paid shills from a monolithic and uncaring bureaucracy.
In essence, they want you to believe two things:
1) Despite profiting off the system and zero evidence supporting the efficacy of corporate school policies, they're motivated purely by empathy.
2) Unions are evil by definition and they pervert everything they touch.
Put simply, unions are not perfect, but they are not evil. In fact, they are essential to the health of public education.
I'm not going to bother with the first claim here. There is an inherent bias from those who wish to change the laws so they can more easily profit off of schools without actually helping students learn and in fact exist at the expense of that learning. If you can't see through the propaganda wing of the Walmart corporation, the Broad Foundation and Big Daddy Bill Gates, you probably won't be very receptive to anything else I have to say.
Instead I will focus on the second claim, because it is the more pernicious of the two.
Put simply, unions are not perfect, but they are not evil. In fact, they are essential to the health of public education.
Many progressives are upset with teachers unions because of the current Presidential election. Both the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) endorsed Hillary Clinton in the primary election without what many would consider adequately polling rank and file members. For better or worse, the endorsements were top-down affairs reflecting the preference of union leaders.
That's not how unions are supposed to work. And it's having consequences for the way both members and non-members view teachers unions.
Critics infer from this that unions don't represent membership. They are de facto arms of the waiting Clinton administration and the neoliberal agenda.
There may be some truth to this, but it does not represent the whole picture. Not nearly.
Unions are like any other democratic organization. The larger the association, the further from the grassroots the decision making body.
In the mammoth national unions, decisions are made by representatives most removed from our schools. They probably were teachers or support staff at some point in the past, but that may be ancient history. Now they are professional leaders and therefore at a remove from the grassroots.
By contrast, in our local chapters, leaders are most often working classroom teachers. Decisions are made by those still meeting students' needs on a day-to-day basis. As such, they retain an authenticity and expertise that may be more cloudy in the large bureaucracies.
This isn't to say the national unions are by definition unconcerned with the needs of teachers and students. I'm sure that most of the NEA and AFT leadership who decided to endorse Clinton did it because they honestly believe doing so will help public education. And - who knows - they may be right. But what they forgot in this case was the democratic process they were tasked with preserving. As such, they may have to pay a price for their hubris when their terms are up.
In most cases, the leaders of national teachers unions are at too much of a remove to see what is best for our schools. And they usually know that. It is up to the rank and file to tell them what to do, and that's what happens every year at representative assemblies through various caucuses made up of work-a-day members. And if leaders overstep their authority it is members' duty to hold them accountable at election time.
So even though the national organizations are most likely to go astray, they often don't. Usually even these giants are trying to improve the situation in our public schools.
Opposition to privatization and standardization policies doesn't come from the leadership of the NEA and AFT. It comes from the grassroots.
However, it can't be denied that the most intense and passionate activism happens a bit closer to where the rubber hits the road. It's those local chapters that are there everyday and make the most difference. They are the heart and soul of unionism.
So when corporate education reformers sneeringly deprecate their opponents as mere unions, they're glossing over an important distinction. Opposition to privatization and standardization policies doesn't come from the leadership of the NEA and AFT. It comes from the grassroots. This is not a top down initiative. It is bottom up.
This is how it's always been. There is no political organization directing the fight to save public education. The Democrats certainly aren't overly concerned with reigning in charter schools. It was grassroots Democrats - some of whom are also union members - who worked to rewrite the party platform to do so. The Clinton campaign is not directing anyone to opt out of standardized testing. However, voters are demanding that Clinton be receptive to their needs - and some of them are union members.
There is no great union conspiracy to fight these policies. It's called public opinion, and it's changing.
That's what scares the standardizers and privatizers. They've had free run of the store for almost two decades and now the public is waking up.
They're desperately trying to paint this as a union movement when it's not. Unions are involved, but they aren't alone. And moreover, their involvement is not necessarily an impediment.
The biggest lie to have resonated with the public is this notion that teachers unions are only concerned with shielding bad teachers from justice. This is demonstrably untrue.
The needs of the community and the needs of teachers are the same.
Both want excellent public schools.
Both want the best for our students.
Both want academic policies that will help students learn - not help corporations cash in.
And both groups want good teachers in the classroom - not bad ones!
The biggest lie to have resonated with the public is this notion that teachers unions are only concerned with shielding bad teachers from justice. This is demonstrably untrue.
Unions fight to make sure teachers get due process, but they also fight to make sure bad teachers are shown the door.
In fact, in districts with strong unions, MORE bad teachers are fired - not less, according to a new study by economics Prof. Eunice Han from the University of Utah.
The study entitled The Myth of Unions' Overprotection of Bad Teachers concludes that when unions are strong and successfully bargain for higher salaries, they have an incentive to help ensure ineffective teachers don't receive tenure. In short, it costs too much to keep bad teachers on staff. It is in the interests of the collective bargaining unit to ensure those unfit to teach move along.
Moreover, Han also concludes that strong unions actually help reduce the dropout rate. It just makes sense. When you treat people like the professionals they are, when you give them autonomy and respect, they're free to concentrate more energy into their jobs than fighting to keep those jobs.
But unions stand in direct opposition to the efforts of corporate vultures trying to swoop in and profit off of public education. Teachers provide a valuable service to students. If your goal is to reduce the cost of that service no matter how much that reduces its value to students, you need a weak labor force. You need the ability to reduce salary so you can claim the savings as profit.
THAT'S why corporate education reformers hate teachers and their unions. We make it nearly impossible to swipe school budgets into their own pockets.
So do unions belong in the fight against corporate education reform?
Answer: Heck yeah! In fact, they are essential to it.
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As WalMart Writes Checks, Critics Blast Teach for America
Critics blast non-profit as 'pipeline' for pro-corporate policies like charter schools and privatization
Aug 05, 2013
The education non-profit Teach for America has been under increasing fire recently as critics and alumni accuse the organization of misappropriating their original mission by backing the policies of the "corporate education agenda" that promote privatization, the expansion of charter schools and the undermining of teachers unions.
These criticisms come amidst news last week that Wal-Mart owners, the Walton Family--key backers of charter school expansion and the effort to end teacher protections--donated $20 million to the nonprofit for "recruitment, training and professional development," bringing their total support for TFA to over $100 million since 1993.
"The Walton Family Foundation's support for Teach for America is driven by the organization's proven ability to create a pipeline of outstanding education reform leaders," said Ed Kirby, deputy director of the Walton Family Foundation's K-12 Education Reform effort, in a statement released last week.
"The foundation is expanding its investment in Teach For America because of the organization's ability to produce leaders who are helping to transform public education in the US," the statement continues.
Recruiting recent college graduates from many of the nation's most prestigious universities, the organization requires a two-year commitment from its student-teachers. Though the majority of recruits have no education degree or experience, the nonprofit boasts an "intensive" five weeks of training before dropping these fledgling educators in the nation's neediest urban and rural schools.
Touting such alumni as StudentsFirst founder and former Chancellor of Washington, D.C. public schools Michelle Rhee, LAUSD Board member Steve Zimmer, and KIPP charter school founders Mike Feinberg and Dave Levin, TFA prides itself on introducing individuals to the policy side of the public education debate.
As the Washington Post's education columnist Valerie Strauss explains, "TFA is not looking for young people who want to be teachers, but rather, people it believes will have 'important' jobs later in life who can advocate for public education. That's why TFA recruits are asked to give only a two-year commitment to teaching."
"TFA is a self-perpetuating organization," addsJacobin writer Kenzo Shibata. "Teach for two years, burn out, go to law school, become a policy maker, make policies that expand TFA."
In a Los Angeles Times article published Saturday, reporter Howard Blume notes the high correlation between the number of TFA hires in states such as California, Alabama, North Carolina, and Louisiana, and the dominance of efforts to embrace charter school expansion, limiting the protections on veteran teachers and teachers' unions.
In Chicago--where the school board recently voted to shutter 49 of the city's public schools eliminating jobs for over a thousand teachers--the Board of Education voted to increase its payment to TFA from $600,000 to nearly $1.6 million, and to add up to 325 new TFA recruits to Chicago Public School classrooms, in addition to 270 second year "teacher interns," the Chicago Sun Times reports.
"While TFA uses the rhetoric of justice and equity, these reforms in fact stifle democratic processes and are used to justify budget cuts and the takeover of public institutions by privately funded and privately run companies." -Valerie Strauss
After Hurricane Katrina, when Louisiana state officials laid off more than 7,000 employees and took over 102 of 117 city schools converting them to nonunion charters, Teach for America provided a large share of the replacements.
"I don't think this could have happened without TFA," boasted Georgia State University assistant professor Kristen Buras. "You need these on-the-ground organizations that are going to assist the state with these reforms."
This year, approximately 375 New Orleans teachers are members of TFA, up from 85 just a few years ago.
"While TFA uses the rhetoric of justice and equity, these reforms in fact stifle democratic processes and are used to justify budget cuts and the takeover of public institutions by privately funded and privately run companies," added Strauss.
For just one example, this video from the organization's own website, where TFA alumnus turned Colorado State Senator Michael Johnston employs the language of the civil rights era to justify passage of Colorado's high-stakes teacher accountability law: Though the chorus of criticisms against the organization has grown, it was not until last month that the first coordinated effort to "put the breaks" on TFA took place when roughly one hundred students, parents, academics and teachers, some affiliated and others not with the organization, gathered in Chicago for a symposium entitled, "Organizing Resistance to Teach for America and its Role in Privatization."
"The desire to make the world a better place is something that Teach for America taps into," said TFA alumna Terrenda White, a graduate student at Teachers College, Columbia University.
"When did my willingness to teach in urban communities become translated to this very specific political agenda? It's not what I believe in."
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