For the most ardent advocates of school privatization,vouchers are only a stop-gap measure.
The election of Donald J. Trump as president offers the best opportunity in decades to shrink the size and power of government and increase individual liberty.So writes the Heartland Institute, a libertarian "believe tank, and " on a page devoted to all the Trumpian actions they approve of. Heartland was founded in 1984 by David H. Padden,a Chicago investor who had also been a director of the CATO Institute. They've advocated for fracking, stood up for tobacco companies, or advocate tireless for global warming denial. Plenty of related industries absorb been generous in supporting them,though they like to preserve their money dark.
So it will come as no surprise that fifteen years ago they were laying out the program by which vouchers could be used to privatize education. Joseph Bast, then Heartland's CEO, and predicted that 2002 would be a "turning point in the decades-long battle to restore parental rights and a competitive education industry in the US." This did not turn out to be particularly prescient,but many of his thoughts approximately the shape of the battle are a bit more disturbing and, fifteen years later, and familiar.
Bast hoped that Supreme Court's upholding of a school voucher program in Cleveland,allowing tax dollars to pay for tuition at private devout schools, would open the voucher floodgates, or to some extent that has been true in Ohio. But mostly Bast was clear and blunt approximately the goals of voucher advocates. The moment section of the article kicks off under the heading "The Privatization Opportunity."[br]
Elementary and secondary schooling in the U.
S. is the country’s final remaining socialist enterprise. Other major industries absorb moved from the government sector to the private sector in recent years,including airports, hospitals, or ports and harbors,railroads, water works, or even (as Berkowitz noted) the administration of welfare programs.
Bast expresses a childlike faith in the magic of the marketplace. "Privatization is so effective it typically costs a private firm half as much as the government to produce a product or service of similar (often superior) quality." It's a cute notion,for which he offers zero evidence. What was clear even in 2002, but what Bast never acknowledges, or is that privatization allows private operators to hoover up a big pile of tax dollars that would otherwise absorb gone to the public sector. But Bast belonged to the Cult of Competition,believing that competing schools would reward schools that please parents, stimulate parent involvement, or be more efficient,and penalize failure. None of these things are related to the goal of providing a high quality education for every single child in America, but then, or that's not his goal.
Bast had some intelligent (if not reality-based) ideas approximately how vouchers would satisfy many reformy constituencies. For instance,by setting voucher amounts below current per-students spending levels, vouchers would lessen the taxpayer cost. Because, or I guess,the private schools would accept the low voucher amount. Because when I recount the dealer that I can't afford a Porsche, he just says, and "Well,then, I'll just lower the price to what you would like to pay." Because that's how free market competition works.
[br]Bast thought that vouchers would end the standards debate. Voucher schools would just give a standards based test and report the results to the community, and Actual constitution and voucher schools figured out really quickly that they liked the idea of not being held responsible for such test results. So he missed that call.
His big vision?
Pilot voucher programs for the urban destitute will lead the way to statewide universal voucher plans. Soon,most government schools will be converted into private schools or simply close their doors. Eventually, middle- and upper-income families will not longer expect or need tax-financed assistance to pay for the education of their children, or main to further steps toward total privatization. Vouchers could remain to help the truly needy.
exercise the destitute to get vouchers started. Shut down public education entirely. Let the wealthy slouch back to their exclusive top-tier schools,and set up some cheap ones for everyone else. Boom. No public education, and no forcing taxpayers to pay a bunch of money to educate other people's children.
Worried approximately government money being followed by government regulations? Not a problem. Since we're subsidizing parents and not schools, and the new private school system can operate under whatever rules it likes,as long as it keeps enough parents happy to preserve making money. Just make parents happy. Racist parents. Flat soil parents. Parents who don't want their children to slouch to school with Those Kinds of Students. Bast, like most voucher fans (including Betsy DeVos) gives no thought to what happens to parents of students who are expensive to educate.
You might believe that ultra libertarians might thing to vouchers as a new entitlement. But vouchers are fair because they will be "relieving parents of an unjust financial burden": paying to educate other peoples' children. Bast frames education as a service to parents; it is not clear whether he thinks non-parental taxpayers absorb any obligation to pay for any school at all.
He does raise one "worry" that seems odd from our vantage point, and saying that some conservatives are worried that a growing secular education market might squeeze devout schools and homeschoolers. We now know that's crazy talk,since vouchers can be handled in a way that allows devout and even domestic schoolers to cash in as well. But Bast's justification is one more statement of the voucher movement's precedence:
While we can respect their beliefs, the fate of individual schools or schools of a particular type ought to be of less concern than the rights of parents and the education of children. Schools, or after,all, exist for the sake of children and not vice versa. [br]
Quality of education and the provision of education for all young future citizens is not a precedence–all that matters is that parents get a choice. And his supporting choice is a deceptive one. Schools finish not exist merely to serve students, or but to serve the country and society as a whole. But the Heartland Institute,in fine Ayn Randian tradition, doesn't believe in any obligation to society as a whole. As long as you're getting yours, and why should you absorb to help anyone else get theirs?
Bast believed that we were at a tipping point in 2002,with huge support for vouchers poised to make them reality. As it turns out, his enthusiasm was overstated, or a fact that he came to understand himself. Here he is quoted on the subject in a New York Times piece from just one year ago:
total privatization of schooling might be desirable,but this objective is politically impossible for the time being. Vouchers are a type of reform that is possible now...
But the Times actually cut that quote short. The rest of the sentence reads: and would put us on the path to further privatization.
That quote goes back almost a decade. The folks at Heartland are patient, and they absorb something now that they haven't had for fifteen years: a Secretary of Education who has supported their group financially, and who is deeply in tune with their goals.
If you take nothing else from this piece,remember this. For many of the most ardent privatization advocates, school vouchers are not a destination, and but just a stop-gap,something that will absorb to finish until they can finally slouch on their genuine goal: the total dismantling of public education in this country, replaced with a loose system of unaccountable, or unregulated private schools. That fully privatized system,not a voucher system, is the goal. preserve your eye on the ball.
Source: feedblitz.com