Pajamas Media

18 Comments

1. Keith W. Brown:

As a former public & private school teacher, I can say that vouchers certainly do work. Look, we live in Bulgaria now. EVERYONE has free choice to choose whatever public school to go to. Schools actually advertise & campaign to draw new students. It has improved education & what is offered to the students. So, if even a backward former Communist nation like Bulgaria can improve by school choice, why do we not have it in the US? Answer: the teacher’s unions period.

Mar 30, 2009 - 5:06 am 2. Greg:

The media isn’t so much ‘buying it’ as ’selling it’….

Mar 30, 2009 - 5:26 am 3. Alice Finkel:

The media always seems to be at the center of every attempt to mislead the public. About vouchers, about the economy, about scientific issues like climate catastrophe . . . The media creates problems out of whole cloth, and inflates minor problems into earth-shaking disasters. In short, the media is the problem.

Mar 30, 2009 - 6:57 am 4. AJR Journal:

I live in Milwaukee. Vouchers work! Private schools have sprung up like wildflowers. Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) is THE MOST DYSFUNCTIONAL bureaucracy in the State of Wisconsin, with lousy test scores and horrendous drop-out rates. Choice has provided poor families with hope and greater selection. Some choice schools have closed, due to various poor performance of some sort. That is only natural selection at work. MPS never accomplishes much, levies horrendous property taxes, yet always (ALWAYS!) promises to do better.
The school voucher system should be expanded in Milwaukee!

Mar 30, 2009 - 6:58 am 5. American Warmonger:

Descriptive Statistics:
Comparing two groups in the same district that will all be feeling the effects of the vouchers is a failed experiment. You taint the control group the moment you give the vouchers out in the same area. It’s bad science. (NOTE: The first study is failed science by the samples it took.)

On the opposite end of things, taking into account the three groups: Test(those with vouchers), residual(those in the same area as vouchers), and control (those in a completely different area with the same or similar demographics) you create a real study with real results. THIS is real science. (NOTE: The second study did not go far enough in utilizing a control group. It did, however, use comparative statistics from previous years. It’s better than study 1, but still lacks solid qualitative data.)

=================

I’ve been a fan of putting this to a legitimate test for a long time. It’s good to see people giving it a shot, but I don’t think the study has gone on long enough, not had the control group positioned appropriately for a “hard facts” legitimate test. Like others have said. Wait the full five years for the empirical data.

Mar 30, 2009 - 7:54 am 6. Frank Logan:

Our public educational system is a prime example of liberalism at work. Teaching children is not rocket science. You don’t need large government bureaucracies in Washington and Madison telling teachers, how or what to teach. Teacher unions promote incompetence and stifle innovation. The first thing Reagan tried to do as President was eliminate the Dept of Education, but the liberals in congress blocked him. It’s not about results, it’s about power. All our problems stem from the 535 men and women in the congress. We need a constitutional amendment limiting our congress to One Term and ONE TERM ONLY if we ever want to exchange PUBLIC SERVICE for SELF SERVICE.

Mar 30, 2009 - 8:05 am 7. karlstro2u:

As a former Public School Board elected Member and an appointed Board member to a Charter school there is clear evidence that Charter/vouchers do work and would greatly benefit disadvantage children. Congress only protects their own. They would never send their children to a failing education district. Unions in public school protects the lowest common moron teacher with tenure and slowly our country sinks lower in academics!

Mar 30, 2009 - 10:51 am 8. Bill Perron:

The teachers union in California has been making all sorts of demands on their employer, the citizens and tax payers of California, all the while we have the worst schools and the highest paid teachers in the nation. The teachers unions all across this country have forgotten what their #1 job is the education of the children and young adults, and nothing else.

Mar 30, 2009 - 11:43 am 9. lee:

Private schools can stink too, believe you me. Parents actually have to find private schools that’s actually BETTER than the public counterpart if voucher programs are ever allowed in this country. You don’t want to send your kids to private schools that mimic failures from the govt. ran programs.

Ideal scenario IMO – We need education businesses like Sylvan Learning Center to expand. They’re more like after school programs as I understand them, but they should function as a smaller, private school. If they offer SAT programs and show proven connection to prestigious unversities, wealthy Asian parents should send their students there.

Mar 30, 2009 - 12:21 pm 10. Spark22:

I am glad to see an issue on this site that doesn’t revolve around Obama…directly anyway.

I like hearing about the progress of the voucher program – please keep up with this topic!!

As for the MSM, whether they are lying or not, if they say that the vouchers don’t work and the unions say that it doesn’t work, then people will eventually start to believe it. It’s the Hitler theory: if you repeat something enough times, people will eventually start to believe that it is true…

That is why articles like this need to start coming out in frequecy with parent reviews and stat updates before the voucher idea gets a bad rep!!

Thanks for the insight into this topic!!

Mar 30, 2009 - 1:01 pm 11. ashok:

Even though I’m pretty sure you’re right, there were abuses of the voucher program initially regarding those who set up schools:

http://www3.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=333144

Moreover, “choice” is not necessarily a good thing when it comes to parents who themselves do not want to know better. From the article above:

“One core idea behind vouchers – that parents could be counted on to pick a strong school for their children or pull their kids from the worst – has not proved uniformly true. Some parents continue to send children to weak schools.

Alex’s Academics of Excellence, a school started by a convicted rapist, continued to enroll students even after facing two evictions, allegations of drug use by staff on school grounds, and an investigation by the district attorney.”

Now granted, this article is from a while ago, and Milwaukee did take steps to clean these problems up.

My own feeling is that the strongest ground for vouchers has less to do with student achievement, and more where we want to be as a people politically. I’m not saying student achievement shouldn’t be a priority, but given the condition of Milwaukee’s student body, it could have been conceived that choice alone would make things better.

What is the case is that teacher’s unions are the backbone of the Democratic party financially and ideologically:

http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/list.php

And the biggest problem with public schooling, therefore, is that on the whole it pretty much teaches people to hate America and hate free markets and be skeptical of religion. It’s no coincidence Bill Ayers is a Distinguished Professor of Education. To see the case made for vouchers, allowing that gains from school choice might be minimal:

Why Vouchers for Education are the Most Important Issue in America

Mar 30, 2009 - 6:04 pm 12. Linda Mae:

I taught for 37 years – 8th graders. Loved them until the last day of my career. Do I like school choice? You better believe it. I want students whose parents care enough to send them to a charter school by filling out the application forms and promise that they will be supportive. I want students who know that if their behavior is not appropriate, they will be asked to leave the school and another student will take their place. Parental support and appropriate behavior – you can teach a student with these positives so very easily. Charter schools also have been exempted from state mandated testing so in many cases it is impossible to compare how well the school is doing. Remember – public school accepts students as we find them, and then try to improve their skills. I’d love research which gives the range of levels from both public and private schools. I believe the range would be greater in the public school – more heterogeneous while the range in private schools would be more homogeneous. I’ve lost students who have elected to transfer to the charter school and received students who have been asked to leave a charter school. In one case I cried to lose such a great student and in the other case I knew a staff celebrated to get rid of the student they sent to us.

Mar 30, 2009 - 10:56 pm 13. Joe Bison:

The value of using vouchers is good if for no
other reason than it prevents the teacher’s
unions from holding a monopoly on education.

In time, when the union has a monopoly, wages
spiral up and buildings and books spiral down.
The number of teachers employed stays the same
or increases regardless of enrollment. Lower
pupil-teacher ratio becomes the big issue
when the union faces lower enrollment.

Take a look at what the UAW/CAW did with a
monopoly position in regards to the Detroit
Three. Only difference until now was that
the teachers could rely on tax dollars and
not results to stay afloat while the auto
makers could not.

Mar 31, 2009 - 7:47 am 14. William:

If the German system is still the same as when I lived there, to teach a subject, you had to have a least a bachlors degree in that subject, plus two years of teacher training. What we have in the US today are teachers trained only to be teachers. I’d like to go to a modified Greek system where the government furnished the facilities but the students select and pay the teacher. Competent teachers would flourish, the rest could seek other employment.

Apr 1, 2009 - 2:18 pm 15. Linda Mae:

Willian
Germany did have a strong teacher training program. Many states have similar ones. In CT you have to go through the BEST training program.

Germany also has a different system. Students are tested in 5th grade. Their results determine whether or not they go to the hauptschule – workplace training to 10th grade; or realeschule – basic education which will bring you into the workforce or further training – grade 11; or to the gymnasium – university prep which goes to grade 12. Since the kids are sorted out based upon their ability to complete academic skills, we in America can never compare since we push all students through the same hoop.

Apr 2, 2009 - 12:27 am 16. Glenda:

I was the 5K teacher there. I have included a letter that I emailed out to as many government officials as I could. The school has been abusing the children daily. I contacted child protection and after talking to many of the children they went to the police. The Det. came to my house during their investigation. If you have any children that went to Labrew talk with your child, if they tell you they were harmed you need to call 414-220-7233 Child Protection, so that they can get justice for your child as well. I need the help of the voice of the community to make sure the police follow through on their job for justice for our children. It was only one hour or so after child protection went to them, that they told me that because the children didn’t go to the hospital that they are thinking that they won’t be able to do much. They came to this conclusion without listening to my tape evidence, talking with the children or the staff who have spoken up about the abuse. We must force the hand of the officials to do the right thing.

Please Read My Letter:
Glenda Haynes
3837 W. Mt. Vernon Ave.
Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53208
414-303-5375

To Whom It May Concern:

My name is Glenda Haynes. I have been working and volunteering in the community with youth for over 25 years. And I am writing to you to ask for your help in preventing the private (voucher) school “Labrew Troopers University School” owner Shan Owens from ever operating any school dealing with children; due to the serious physical , mental, and verbal abuse done to the children. There are also the dangerous conditions concerning sanitation of the day to day operations of the building.
I began working with “Labrew in Oct. of 08, as a temporary job for myself as I awaited a position with the Sheriffs dept. It wasn’t long after working there that it became apparent that things were not right. Children were getting their arms bent as far up their backs as they could go, smashed face first into walls and a full run, dragged, arms pulled up into the air and then their wrist is bent trying to force their fingers to touch their wrist, and verbal abuse.
Also, concerning the sanitation conditions, this building has no windows, no ventilation system to bring in air or circulate air. The bathrooms are filthy and we can go weeks without soap in them. There is no sink in the kitchen. I saw the cook washing two serving spoons in the girls bathroom sink. I video taped the cook washing the serving food pans in the slop mop sink. There is so much more, but it all can’t be put into this letter.
I am requesting your assistance, as well as others. I am writing the President, going to the Journal, and calling child protection to go and get the stories of the children for abuse charges. When my efforts to try and change this place and making demanding complaints fell on deaf ears I started to collect evidence to take for help. I have tapped our last staff meetings and the video of the dish washing. But before I could get more the school has taken an early spring break (Mar. 9 – 23) due to owing the state over 200,000. What I understand is that they plan on closing and re-applying as another private voucher school. This can not happen please! I have already contacted my K5 class where I became the teacher. All the parents are willing to allow their children to tell their stories. Please I need your help, the children need your help.

Sign Help,
Glenda Haynes.
3/7/09

Apr 2, 2009 - 3:55 pm 17. Glenda Haynes:

A new study says that voucher schools educate students for less than MPS. I can vouch for that. At Labrew not one classroom had enough books in any subject to even give out to ten students in your class. So the teachers had to use the one copy machine to copy from a book to put together the daily lessons; and that’s if you got your chance at the copier. We complained daily that we did not have the supplies we needed. No affordable benefits, no sick days, no holiday pay and no teachers performance review plan. What a way to keep cost down!

Remember what it was like when you were in kindergarten, you know the toys. Well imagine, no toys at all. At Labrew the 4K and K5 class had no toys, no in class playtime. They worked from paper work at their desks. When I became the 5K teacher I searched every junk corner of the building and found a few broken and dirty toys. I went out and bought some toys and allowed the children to have center time. Yet, the 4K still had nothing.

We had no play ground, so after lunch we played in a large garage type area. The only things really to play with was mostly under inflated balls, jump ropes, and Oh, milk creates in which the children discovered they could pull each other in.

So, yes Labrew used less of our dollars to educate the students.

Glenda Haynes

Apr 4, 2009 - 5:02 am 18. Glenda Haynes:

Re: School Choice (Voucher Program)

To whom it may concern:

My name is Glenda Haynes and I am writing to you as a concerned citizen in my community about the School Choice Voucher Program. I would first like to start my letter to you by saying that two of my children have graduated from the Milwaukee Public School system and I have a fourteen year old that is yet attending MPS. I am very involved in my community and have been working in the childcare field for over twenty-five years. And because I am involved in my community and with the children and how they are faring, I am against the Voucher Program. I am writing to you as our Congress Woman in hopes that you will help in act some laws to do away with privatizing of schools with tax dollars.

I am against the Voucher Program for many reasons, the first being it hurts our urban communities. How it hurts our urban communities is that there are so many of them moving into our community, you would be hard pressed to find this situation in the suburban communities, I don’t think they would allow it, which is probably the reason that it is not taking place there. In our neighborhoods they are just placed every 20 or 30 blocks. Having so many schools in our community along with the MPS school sends our children scattered all over the place in and out of their neighborhoods and communities, they are scattered from the east to west, from the north to the south side of town. This causes many problems in our neighborhood communities, because of this the social structure in urban communities for children and their families have become void.
How is this you happening? You might say. Well, before school desegregation our urban communities were in tacked, children went to school in there own neighborhoods and therefore socialized with those same children, and after school the socialization continued with these same children. Parents didn’t have to go far to attend school conferences and other school issues and involvement. So although desegregation has played its part in destroying the social behavior in our communities, now we have to contend with the School Choice Voucher Program adding further to the demise to an already broken structure. The Voucher Program has added even more schools to divide up our children even more from each other; this is not a good thing at all.

Now, next reason I am against the Voucher Program is that it does not have to adhere to the same standards as the public school have to, this is due to the fact that they are part of the private business sector and do not come under such standards. Yet they are receiving tax dollars just as the public school system. There is virtually no educational accountability for schools participating in the voucher system. As you already know that on March 10, 2006, Governor Doyle signed the Milwaukee private school voucher expansion plan into law. This expansion will add up to 7,500 students to the Milwaukee School Choice Program, with a cost of more than 140 million annually, of which 64 million would come from Milwaukee taxpayers. How in the world can this be possible that 64 million taxpayer dollars can be spent in a private school yet they have no accountability for how those tax dollars are spent, surely you can see the madness in this? Did you know that under the current law, taxpayer supported voucher schools are not required to hire certified teachers, to release basic data about the school’s performance, to provide special education services, abide by open meetings laws or administer the tests required of public school students under the so-called No Child Left Behind law. How in the world with this kind of non-accountability can we the taxpayers measure the quality of the schools and whether or not they foster a classroom that works. There are those who have given in to the madness of privatizing schools with taxpayer dollar and only seek for reform, I am not for reform I want the tax dollars to stop flowing to these private schools. This only hurts the community of students that are enrolled in MPS when tax dollars leave. One only needs to read the news stories of all the voucher school that have been close for reasons like forged signatures on submitted applications, unsound fiscal practices, lack of a valid occupancy certificate, also a school being run by a convicted rapist. Then when a voucher school is shut down in the middle of the school year, no other voucher school will take the students because their tax dollars are gone. So what happens then? MPS has to take them back in also with no dollars and put them into already full classrooms. One only has to open their eyes to see this is clearly a miss appropriation of funds on behalf of our government to allow this to occur.

The last reason I would like to state for my being against the Voucher Program is that it falls under the social conspiracy theory as well as the social conflict approach where big corporations namely the Bradley Foundation who wants the privatization of schools with taxpayer dollars to fatten their own pocket over the common welfare of the children and families and the communities these schools harm. The Bradley Foundation has spent millions of dollars to insure they convinced the public that MPS was in shambles in fact that is not the fact. The Bradley foundation has spent millions to push forward their corporate agenda through the School Choice Movement, these dollars were spent on funding everything from academic studies to hatchet jobs and litigation, public advertising and using the air waves to denigrate the current educational system, they funded Milwaukee citizens’ group, state level research that promotes vouchers and attacks its opponents as well as funding critiques of the MPS system just to name a few; and the sad thing is that it worked despite the fact that much empirical evidence shows public schools are doing well and improving. Let me mention the first of many dollars spent by the Bradley Foundation was to Milwaukee representative Polly Williams, private consultant George Mitchell, and Milwaukee superintendent Howard fuller all three received funding from the archconservative Harry and Lynde Bradley Foundation of Milwaukee Wisconsin. Is it just a coincident that these were the three who first met with Governor Thompson where the school choice policy was first issued in Wisconsin and not to mention that Polly Williams is the author of the original school choice legislation in Wisconsin.

There are those who say “Rich parents have a choice of schools for their kids; poor parents should have the same choice. – Competition between schools has a better history of getting results in teaching information and values than public schools. – Providing private school access to everyone will increase diversity.” I say the Voucher Program take funds away from already under funded public schools, and furthering the gap of inequality between the have and the have nots. To continue down this road of destruction at the cost of the future of many, many poor children just to satisfy corporate greed is wrong, it’s wrong for the children as well as the future of our communities and our country as a whole. Each state has a duty to provide an equal education to its citizens, so provide the public schools what they need to provide an equal education.
It is because of this that I am writing to you asking that you be the voice of the children by using your power to influence others in congress to over turn The School Choice Voucher Program.

Sincerely,
Glenda Haynes

Apr 4, 2009 - 6:03 am

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