Giving public money meant for public schools to private/church schools is a scam.

Invest in the community. Provide the resources.

School vouchers are a drain on society.

Pandering to the wealthy

The first day of school for students enrolled in the new Queer Blended Learning Center (QBLC) is August 1st.

“Frankly, 6th, 7th and 8th grades were some of the hardest years for me. I changed schools every single school year,” said Nate Rhoton, the CEO of One-N-Ten. “Today, if I were in junior high, I would love to live my full, authentic self.”

One-N-Ten is an advocacy group for LGBTQ+ youth. Its youth center is located in Downtown Phoenix, which is where QBLC will have its classrooms for students in the 6th through 8th grades. Students do not have to identify as LGBTQ youth to enroll.

The curriculum is built by the Spark Community Schools, with LGBTQ subjects being highlighted. “Specifically, culturally responsive curriculum in Civics LGBTQ history, just making sure we’re telling stories from every perspective and point of view,” said Katrina Thurman, the President of Spark Community Schools.

She explained traditional subjects like science, math and reading will be covered. “At the end of the day, we end with project-based learning, which is something that has been proven to take what you learned in those core subjects and really make it relevant,” she said.

QBLC is a micro-school, meaning it could have a 1 to 12 teacher-student ratio. However, Thurman said there are currently eight students enrolled. There is only one teacher, but there are plans to add a second teacher and one classroom aide. Thurman also mentioned parents can tap into the state’s universal voucher program to cover tuition.

“Our tuition is what that voucher amount is. It is available to any parent. It is not above that. There should be no out-of-pocket costs to the family,” she said.

The school calendar will be August 1 and go to May 23, 2024, with traditional breaks in between. Students can enroll at any time of the school year. To learn how, click here.

A real life example of how cutting public school funding leads to more private school funding. It’s another example of a policy that is a structural wealth transfer, from poorer communities to wealthier, whiter communities. School privatization is inherently racist and ableist.

Their “statement of nondiscriminatory policy” actually ends with the nonsense quoted in the post, and points out school vouchers are…not good.

In any other context of public service, this plan would be laughed out of the room. Imagine a guy saying he doesn’t like his local park so he wants his “park dollars” to follow him to the country club. Can Black citizens who are tired of unfair treatment from local cops take their “police dollars” and hire private security?

Such stupidity is the basis for the “school choice” argument – that tax dollars paid by parents should follow the child.

From ”‘School Choice’ Is Just a Ploy to Defund Public Ed” by correspondent Dr. David Brockman:

Another session of the Texas Legislature, another push to spend public dollars on private and religious schools.

Vouchers and voucher-like schemes have been floated repeatedly by Republican legislators over the years, and just as repeatedly have been shot down by the combined opposition of Democrats, rural Republicans, and public school advocates. This time, however, GOP leaders are going all out to make vouchers—in the form of education savings accounts (ESAs)—a reality here in Texas under the sunny mantra “school choice.” As Rev. Charles Foster Johnson, founder and executive director of Pastors for Texas Children, told the Texas Observer, “‘School choice’ is a deceptive misnomer” because the choice lies not so much with parents as with the private schools, which “are highly selective about who they enroll and who they do not enroll. They will not take the economically disadvantaged, at-risk, special needs, socially and emotionally challenged child because it is too expensive to teach that child.”

However, Republican leaders have laid the groundwork for ESAs through well-funded efforts to undermine confidence in public schools, along with an equally well-funded push by Christian nationalist donors to elect voucher-friendly candidates. Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick (who has long championed vouchers) said he and Governor Greg Abbott are “all in on school choice”; both have listed it among their legislative priorities for this session. Abbott has embarked on a statewide “parent empowerment” tour of private schools—so far, all of them Protestant Christian schools—to tout ESAs. And last week, the Senate passed the leading “school choice” measure, part of the omnibus education Senate Bill 8, on a party-line vote—though as of this writing, it faces an uphill battle in the House. 

But in another, deeper sense, there is nothing new about this session’s “school choice” push. Having spent nearly a decade researching and writing about Christian nationalism—the movement to make the United States an explicitly “Christian nation” governed by Bible-based laws—I see this year’s push to fund private and religious schools as just the latest front in that movement’s decades-long battle to undermine what Thomas Jefferson called the wall of separation between church and state, and thereby establish conservative Christian dominance over government.

Prominent Christian nationalists in Texas are involved in the ESA push, and a win could undermine not only Texas’ venerable public school system, but our nation’s even more venerable tradition of church-state separation. That should worry all Texans, religious and non-religious alike. 

Read more at the Texas Observer.

(📸 Photography by Josephine Lee for the Texas Observer)

Yet the teacher unions and their enablers in the Democratic Party still fight against school choice and charter schools? Put two and two together, people. Despite what the Wokesters claim, it still equals four (Although these students don’t know that).

Public dollars are for the public good.

This report shows school vouchers apparently reducing student performance.

This is pretty surprising to me because I would expect vouchers to have zero or a positive effect on student performance. It does seem like this study has many possible confounds, including:

the lottery was weighted to assign more vouchers to applicants with siblings in the program, applicants in low-performing schools, and applicants who had been awarded vouchers in previous years that they hadn’t used

like 20%-30% of students’ end-of-trial test scores were not recorded (not least because nothing was really keeping students from leaving the program or moving out of the city entirely)

I don’t really know what to think.

Majority of Texans Oppose Governor Abbott's School Voucher Proposal, Survey Finds

A recent survey conducted by the Texas Hispanic Policy Foundation (TxHPF) reveals that a majority of likely voters in Texas are opposed to Governor Greg Abbott’s proposal to provide tax dollars for parents to enroll their children in private schools. The poll, available on the TxHPF website, indicates that 57% of Texans surveyed oppose the so-called school vouchers, while 36% are in favor of…

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School voucher proponents spend big to overcome rural resistance

by David Montgomery, Wisconsin Examiner March 29, 2024 AUSTIN, Texas — In rural Texas, public schools are the cultural heart of small towns. People pack the high school stadium for Friday night football games, and FFA classes prepare the next generation for the agricultural life. In many places, more people work for the school district than for any other employer. For years, many rural Texas…

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“The deeper issue is that the premise of vouchers is based on giving up on public schools. There is no reason to do that. Publics have their problems, like all massive undertakings, but they are still the best bet for the overwhelming number of state residents.”