Freeing D.C. Kids Rich Republicans join ultraliberals in defense of failing schools

Here's the PFAW report on this Vast Right Wing Conspiracy to
destory the public schools. Ooooo, Tom Tancredo is mentioned so you know it must be good.

http://www.pfaw.org/pfaw/general/default.aspx?oid=11439

For Immediate Release: 7/11/2003
Contact: Nathan Richter or Tracy Duckett
PFAW Foundation
email: media@pfaw.org
phone: 202-467-4999
PFAWF Report Exposes Disturbing Agenda Behind Attacks On Public Education
For nearly fifty years, school voucher supporters have worked hard to sell vouchers as a vehicle to improve low-performing schools in urban and rural areas. Yet beneath the veneer of the modern voucher movement is a disturbing and far-reaching agenda. A report released today examines some of the individuals and institutions that have been the driving force behind the voucher movement and the strategies they have used to put a compassionate public face on their privatization agenda.

The new report, The Voucher Veneer: The Deeper Agenda to Privatize Public Education, is authored by People For the American Way Foundation. The report focuses on a network of Religious Right groups, free-market economists, ultraconservative columnists and others who are using vouchers as a vehicle to achieve their ultimate goal of privatizing most or all of the public education system.

Read the report now.

The Voucher Veneer notes that while advocates have adopted an incremental strategy that includes vouchers, their long-term goal is to make all schooling an activity supplied by private sources.

As The Voucher Veneer explains, the voucher movement has steadily progressed since economist Milton Friedman first proposed a privatized system in 1955. Since then, privatization advocates have made a serious effort to bring about change from within the corridors of power. While in more recent times these forces have learned to modify their message so as to make it more palatable to a public wary of vouchers, the goal has remained the same.

“Over the years there has been a systematic attack on our public education system by some very influential and ultra-conservative elements of the voucher movement,” said Ralph G. Neas, president of People For the American Way Foundation. “In many cases, it has been primarily these elements who have funded efforts to broaden support for vouchers, often under the guise of encouraging public school reform.”

The extreme views of some influential voucher supporters are detailed in the report and are disturbing in their implications.

# For example, Friedman’s original proposal envisioned a voucher system that was universal and open to students from even the wealthiest families. He has called for “privatization to the point at which a substantial fraction of all educational service is rendered to individuals by private enterprises.”

# Joseph Bast, president of the Heartland Institute, has called vouchers the “way to privatize schooling,” and has predicted that “[p]ilot voucher programs for the urban poor will lead the way to statewide universal voucher plans. Soon, most government schools will be converted into private schools or simply close their doors.”

# The public statements of David Brennan, an influential Ohio businessman and the author of Cleveland’s voucher law, is revealing. Brennan has stated that “Education is first, last and always a business.”

# U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.), an ardent voucher supporter, has explained how his appointment to the House education committee would advance the privatization agenda. “I think it’s a lot easier to kill the beast when you get in the cave.”

The Voucher Veneer is one of a series of reports on vouchers, tuition tax credits, the voucher movement and other important issues in education. Learn more about PFAWF’s education work.

That being said, I still can't understand why the schools are blamed so viciously when they have no raw materials to work with... The schools are staffed by middle class people with at least acceptable behaviors and values, with basic educations. Sometimes their licenses are only provisional, but they must have a college degree and they must work towards certification by attending classes at night, after they have worked all day...Therefore, my conclusion is that it is the families who are to blame... What idiocy to blame the teachers.

(No Dowdisms intented by the elipses!)

Granted, most teachers are well intentioned and have challenging raw material to work with. However, no-one is placing the blame on the teachers, but rather on the adminstrators, the politicians and the NEA who have converted our public schools from institutions of learning into cesspools of politically motivated non-learning.

Take some time to read some of the textbooks from which our children are now "instructed". Research what happens to most teachers who do try to raise performance expectations. Take a look at the performance of some charter and other non-government schools tasked with educating children from difficult backgrounds and compare the results with those of government schools. Consider also, that influence flows in both directions. Good schools can ultimately influence bad parents to become better parents.

Unfortunately, in the current "public" "education" monopoly, there is little ability to overcome the entrenched protectors of the status quo or the parasites who live off current system. Competition, through vouchers, will allow sunlight into the system and, as Justice Brandeis noted, serve as "the best disinfectant".

These kids deserve better. And for this snot-nosed Pennsylvanian and idiot New Jerseyite to condemn these children to hell is absolutely reprehensible.

Agreed. Here's what we are trying to do about it in NC - elect a prominent black school choice conservative to Congress.

From the Milton and Rose Friedman Foudation for School Choice. (someone please tell me how to make this a link!) http://www.friedmanfoundation.org/profilesinschoolchoice/vernonrobinson.html

North Carolina has four-term governor Hunt, but it also has Vernon Robinson, one of the most effective grassroots warriors for school choice in the country. And that makes all the difference. And so North Carolina's legislature passed in 1996, without Hunt's endorsement, one of the strongest charter school laws in the land -- strong in the sense that it gives the charters much power to deviate from the orthodoxy of the public education monopoly. Robinson, a 1977 U.S. Air Force Academy graduate who clearly believes the best defense is a good air strike, authored the House version of the charter law that won necessary bipartisan support.

We need to emphasize this issue in the next election cycle!

We need to emphasize this issue in the next election cycle!

Agreed, but who are these people: Todd Platts, a GOP Congressman from exurban Pennsylvania... and Rodney Frelinghuysen of New Jersey; and what can we do about them?

It's truly apppalling that two Pubbies are holding this up.

I understand your thoughts as well.

Mind you, should vouchers go through, there's about a 10-year window of opportunity during which the Gummint is not likely to corrupt the 'private' school.

Seventy-two percent of black D.C. students read at the "below basic" level, which means they have "little or no mastery of fundamental knowledge and skills." Who can possibly defend such results?

How in creation can DC teachers and administrators take a check in good concience when these are the best results they can produce? I know the family is key and something must be done to get these families to value education more but surely the system can start earning its keep too.

It would be wonderful if this were a school failure problem, a parent failure problem or any kind of a failure problem.

What is never said but is well known is that the problems of DC and many school disticts is the low ability of entering students. An entering I.Q. of 85 or less is quite common.

Sowell and others believe this problem is a function of low peer and parental expectations. Wish it were so! Egalitarian mythology usually results in flaming of anyone who dares to suggest maybe the recipients of the education have serious problems entering the system. What is needed is a recognition of what the problem is. Then, tailor-made educational programs for those who not favored with high IQ's. Parenthetically, also excellent and demanding programs for those who are well endowed.

Like this:

Friedman Foundation

It would be nice if we could drain the NEA swamp enough so that we could isolate the problem to ability and begin addressing it as you suggest. The current system prevents us from even getting there.

Here's a piece that David Limbaugh published yesterday on TownHall.com on the subject:

(Note - sorry for accidently sending this a a private message a few minutes ago. Delayed caffeine kick-in at play here!)

NEA: Politicizing 'education'
David Limbaugh (archive)

July 12, 2003

Since the National Education Association describes itself as "America's largest organization committed to advancing the cause of public education," is it not fair to ask why it spends so much of its energy on political issues having little to do with education?

It would be ludicrous for the NEA to deny its political activism. In 1996, it employed more political operatives than both major political parties combined. It would be just as ridiculous for it to deny its liberalism, but it does, claiming to be bipartisan. But since the NEA established its Political Action Committee in 1972, it has supported and endorsed every Democratic presidential candidate and has overwhelmingly supported Democratic candidates at the congressional level as well.

During the first week of July, the NEA held its annual weeklong convention in New Orleans, where it considered more than 300 proposed policy resolutions, many concerning controversial issues not remotely related to education.

A review of the NEA's consistent stances on these issues provides further proof that whatever else it may claim to be, it is clearly a political arm of the left wing that endorses the liberal position on such issues as abortion, homosexual rights, capital punishment and gun control.

The NEA is also fully supportive of what are called the "multicultural" and "diversity" agendas. In two resolutions issuing from its 1999 convention it affirmed its commitment not only to "diversity"-based curricula, but urged that it be introduced in early childhood (from birth through age 8) education programs. One of the resolutions stated "that a diverse society enriches all individuals." Part of this enriching diversity, it said, is people with differences in "sexual orientation."

On Feb. 8, 2002, the organization went further, adopting a plan to make schools safe and hospitable for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered students and education employees. The plan was ostensibly targeted at punishing "harassment" and "discrimination."

The NEA's press release promoting the plan said the union would endeavor "to provide students, education employees and the general public with accurate, objective and up-to-date information regarding the needs of, and problems confronting gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered students." Any such information, according to the statement, would be "nonjudgmental in terms of sexual orientation/gender identification." This is how the NEA organizes its education priorities. One is left to wonder what "objective" information educators would provide under the plan, not to mention the import of the word "nonjudgmental." Did it mean what it usually does: that those with opposing views would be denied their voice?

This year's convention saw some fireworks when a group of pro-life delegates appealed to the NEA to stop promoting abortions for teenage students. "We'd like it if the NEA would stick to education issues and not promote abortion with the words 'reproductive freedom'" in a resolution concerning family planning, said junior high school language arts teacher Judy Bruns.

But the NEA has been less than forthcoming about its position, denying the plain meaning of the language in its resolution. The family resolution states, "The National Education Association supports family planning, including the right to reproductive freedom. The association urges the government to give high priority to making available all methods of family planning to women and men unable to take advantage of private facilities ... "

David Kaiser, an elementary school guidance counselor from Fort Recovery, Ohio, pressed the NEA Resolutions Internal Editing Committee Chairman to explain the meaning of "private facilities." Chairman Shirley Cherry evaded the question. "I am not prepared to answer that question to you at this time," she said.

Mrs. Cherry, however, justified the NEA's habit of political advocacy, saying, "As educators, everything is related to our children, and we have to look out for the best interests of our children, students and educators."

The federal and state governments continue to pour more and more money into education with pathetic results. When are politicians (and parents, for that matter) going to wake up to the fact that the education establishment is shirking its primary duty of promoting the education – as opposed to the social transformation – of our children? Is it any wonder more parents are turning to homeschooling and private schools?

There are still many, many outstanding public school teachers who do a superb job at educating despite the obstacles, distractions and interfering political agendas of the education establishment. But it is no thanks to the NEA, and the more that word gets out the better for the students and the cause of education.

If all of the kids in DC receive a voucher where are they going to go to school?

Markets do not spring into existence overnight. In the case of alternative shools, it takes time to build or locate facilities, hire, train and grow staff, etc. However, given the per pupil figure that DC will spend, it is a reasonable assumption that competitive alternatives to the "public" school system would be quickly attracted to the District.

The GOP spends too much time worrying about a bad item on the Washington Post.

..and less than 5 of the private high schools would be considered competitive with the suburban public schools that surround the District of Columbia.

If all of the kids in DC receive a voucher where are they going to go to school?

Good question, and one that must be considered in the rush to promote "vouchers," which I do support as a short-term solution to some of the problems within public education.

Problem is, too many of these "voucher" schools are just smaller versions of the same failure that's perpetuated in the public schools, especially when they are set up under programs that still require most or all of the teachers to be state-certified. Also, too many of them do not enforce standards, parent involvement, discipline, uniforms, and all the other things they claim make them better than public schools. Those that operate this way are more after the money than out to produce better results.

It may disappoint some out there but I've seen the above too often and it needs to be stopped now. Any solutions?

You are right- kids and their families have to value education or all the vouchers in the world won't make a dime's worth of difference.

I run my own summer program that I hope to continue as an afterschool program. The first rule is this: "If you don't want to learn don't come here."

Frelinghuysen disputes WSJ's charge. Here is my response:

Via Facsimile 202/225-3186

The Honorable Rodney P. Frelinghuysen
2442 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington DC 20515

Re: DC School Choice

Dear Congressman Frelinghuysen:

Thank you for your letter of July 15 in response to my letter regarding the July 11 editorial in the Wall Street Journal, “Freeing D.C. Kids.”

You denounce the editorial as “disgraceful and inaccurate” and enclose your letter to the Journal and a July 15 press release declaring your support for DC school choice. Unfortunately, your response is inadequate because you fail to address the central charge of the editorial, namely that you inserted a “poison pill” into the spending bill.

To be fair, the Journal was also remiss in not making this charge more specific. According to the Capitol Hillblogger (http://hillblog.blogspot.com, copy attached), the measure conditions the appropriation upon authorization. As many appropriations are passed without specific authorizing legislation, it would appear that you may indeed have created an additional and unnecessary obstacle to funding the voucher program.

I would gratefully appreciate your response to the merits of this specific charge. Thank you very much for your time and attention to this matter.

Respectfully,

Merrill Smith

Attachment
Cc: The Wall Street Journal

More on D.C. School Choice
Here's Opinion Journal's take on the D.C. School Choice debate. They are particularly harsh on my hometown Congressman, Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-NJ) for including a "poison pill" in the D.C. Appropriations Bill. It is unfair to call the provision a poison pill as it appropriates money for the project, but states that the funds are conditioned upon authorization, which is what the bill would do that passed the House Government Reform Committee yesterday. While Frelinghuysen could have worked a little harder to get a stronger provision in the Appropriations bill, the White House and Republican House Leadership were not exactly helpful to the conservatives who were pushing this issue either. After all the talk Bush has given to this issue recently, a call from Karl Rove or Dick Cheney to Frelinghuysen or some junior Members on the Committee would have been helpful. In general I agree with the sentiment of the piece.
# posted by Eric @ 10:15 AM

http://hillblog.blogspot.com/