South Dakota has a stealth voucher program, allowing fatcat insurers and anti-public-school legislators to skirt the Establishment Clause and launder public dollars to subsidize religious schools. If Senator M. Michael Rounds and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos have their way, private schools will get more public dollars, to the detriment of student academic achievement and civil rights.
Reinforcing the badness of the idea of public funding for private schools are new studies from Milwaukee and Washington, D.C., showing that voucher programs in those schools did not improve student success in college:
In Milwaukee, voucher students were 6 percent more likely to enroll in college, and stayed in college 22 percent longer, than their public school peers. But the city’s voucher program had no effect on whether students actually earned a college degree.
More than 26,000 students participate in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program, which allows them to attend one of 126 participating private schools. The Urban Institute study tracked students from 2006 to 2017.
In D.C., the vouchers are distributed through a citywide lottery, making it an ideal case study since researchers can easily compare students who received vouchers against those who applied but did not receive one. It’s also the nation’s only federally funded school voucher program.
Unlike Milwaukee, D.C.’s voucher program had no substantive effect on whether students enrolled in college [J. Brian Charles, “Do School Vouchers Help Kids Get to College? Studies Offer Mixed Results,” Governing, 2018.02.27].
Vouchers don’t work. South Dakota should repeal its insurer-scholarship stealth vouchers and redirect all of its education dollars toward the state’s sole educational obligation, funding a free, fair, and adequate public school system.
This is why you don’t understand; homeschool, private schools, religious schools do not set an objective of college but rather the objective is to raise their children in a value system of their choosing instead of the fashion that the state chooses for them.
Home school parents just figure their kid will just happen to fall right into college with no preparation? Okay.
Aside from drawing false conclusions about an idea based on limited implementation, you are also ignoring other research from the same people responsible for the one you did reference.
https://www.usnews.com/news/education-news/articles/2017-09-27/florida-private-school-choice-program-increases-college-enrollment-study-says
If you don’t like the voucher program, how about offering an alternative idea that might fix the monopoly problems of the existing system.
Mr B, are you suggesting the Constitution is a monopoly? Curious iowan is curious to know.
Sure. Foolish and unenlightened people can create constitutions which could be used to establish a monopoly, had Iowa done so?
Not sure about iowa, but I am sure the US and South Dakota Constitutions say no public funds for any schools other than public.
State constitutions may say many things, so I’ll give the benefit of the doubt to you that SD has decided a monopoly is a good idea. There is no such restriction in the US constitution though. In fact there is non enumerated power to have ANYTHING to do with education in the US constitution, so the regulation and funding they do now is already unconstitutional.
Old Sarg, That is really a knock on the good parochial schools out there. They are very much interested in their students going to college.
Regarding the Wisconsin voucher program, there has been a marked shift in recent years that may have skewed the results. The original voucher program was target toward poor students in the Milwaukee area. The results of that voucher program was horrible. Rather than admit it and shut down the program, the de Vos-acolytes in Wisconsin and the Republicans curry favor with middle class Catholics expanded the program from vouchers going to poor students in bad schools to vouchers going to middle class students already attending parochial schools. Vouchers are now just a political payoff, not and education program. The goal was to mask the failure of vouchers by roping in some higher functioning students already attending the parochial schools to claim what a great job vouchers do. Hey, it’s a way to scam the data, and it apparently worked in this instance.
Glad I actually read the article:
We homeschool, and are preparing are kids for whatever vocation they want to persue. We have tailored educational curriculum suited to each child’s capabilities and aptitude, as well as teaching them the responsibility of getting their work done efficiently. The have assignments to complete, and when they are done, they are done; whether it be at 12:30 in the afternoon or 4. They are not slaves to an artificial
8 hour bell designed to prepare them for the factory floor.
Joe, you know I respect your efforts to give your kids a better, more personalized education than any factory-model school can. But it’s not the state’s job to subsidize your choice to make that extra effort.
The private schools spend less because they do not have to maintain the capacity to educate every child in the community. It’s not the state’s job to subsidize their selective efforts; it’s the state’s job to guarantee that every child can walk in and get a free, fair, and adequate education.
Roger, the state does not maintain any monopoly on education. Private parties like Joe and the Catholic Church are free to set up their own schools. One could argue that by accepting public funding, private schools run a greater risk of losing their autonomy and becoming subject to a state-controlled monopoly.
OldSarg, that’s all the more reason for the state not to subsidize those alternative programs. This state has declared multiple times that its mission is to increase the number of citizens with degrees. The state’s mission is most certainly not to produce more citizens with fringe anti-science, End-Times belief systems.
But Cory your article made the point that college was the objective. I think you are wrong. If you now want to change the argument you can but we both know you are still wrong concerning your original premise. If you now want to argue that the state should not support education wrapped within a standard of moral civil behavior you would still be wrong. That is actually the point of education in a civil society.
OldSarg, I just said the state also makes the point that degree completion is the objective. So I’m not changing the argument. The article says vouchers don’t help kids get degrees. South Dakota (Daugaard, Regents, Legislature…) say they want kids to get degrees. That thus shows one more way that vouchers really don’t serve the state’s intent.
You decided to change the argument by offering your point about instilling some other set of values than the common democratic values instilled by our public school system. If you really want to wage that different argument, then I’ll still win, because the state has no compelling interest in subsidizing your alternative, selective education system. The state’s interest lies in offering one free, fair, and adequate education system open to all students.
OldSarg, your specious arguments show you aren’t interested in moral civil standards. You just want, by hook or by crook, to argue with me and to get public subsidies for your private activities.
Cory I find it difficult to accept that the state is not maintaining a monopoly through its total control over the funding of the activity. In any other economic enterprise if the state were to provide 100% subsidization, that enterprise would have obvious monopoly power against anything that tried to compete against it.
You are correct that accepting public funding directly would undercut their autonomy, but as vouchers are not directed by the state, those strings are much more tenuous. It would be nice if we could guarantee the state would not meddle, but we must accept that they will, even without funding to use as a weapon.
First off, education isn’t any other economic enterprise; it is an essential function of government. Government must support a public school system that is ready to act as the only provider of this service, because we cannot afford to leave education to private actors who might or might not provide services to any number of citizens.
Private school and public school are not meant to act in competition. As a public school teacher, as a taxpayer, and as a dedicated supported of public education, I do not see a need to outlaw, destroy, or drive into bankruptcy any private school or parents who choose to school their children at home. Private schools should do us the similar courtesy and view their role as an option, not an aspirant conqueror.
Compare to private detectives and rent-a-cops. You may seek investigative or protective services that are unavailable from the police department. The state doesn’t have to ban those alternative private policing services (although there is certainly a role for regulation). Likewise, those private providers should never see it as their mission to compete with, drain resources from, or destroy the public police force that serves all citizens equally.
Voucher backers play word games with their plans, but the plain fact is that we are redirecting state dollars to private, parochial actors, far too many of whom act adversarially to the state and its obligation to serve all citizens.
If you want a guarantee that the state won’t meddle with your private school, don’t ask the state for any money. Pay your taxes, support the system that serves all citizens, and then enjoy your complete freedom to set up your private, selective, non-competing system for your chosen children.
Far too many private actors act adversarial towards the state? The states interests do not arise or if the opinions of elitist bureaucrats Cory, they arise from the desires and needs of those same private interests you deride. If the parents who wish to exercise discretion over their children’s education is adversarial to the states interests, then it is far past time for the state to step back and reevaluate its own arrogance in dictating the interests of its own people.
Education is not different from any other enterprise. The importance of its function is utterly irrelevant to determination of the states role in providing services to the exclusion of a functioning market. The reason policing is an exception is entirely due to the authority police have over personal rights, which they must have to carry out their duties, and which must be devolved from a governmental authority, as no private entity has that authority to give. There is no parallel with education, and no automatic reason to expect government to guarantee free education to all… It’s as silly as thinking government is obligated to guarantee free health care to everyone. Pointing at something that is essential does not establish the government’s need to provide it. It doesn’t even establish the need for the government to guarantee it. If it did, then that need would not require anything more than redistributing the means for private citizens to use, and then to evaluate the results. you level an argument against private actors that”may or may not provide services…” but you offer no rationale or evidence at all for that claim. The capacity for students to be neglected in public schools is already well established, and you believe opening up those students options to private actors makes it more likely for them to miss out on services?
I am not asking the state for money. The state already is giving it. I am asking that the state allow the citizens who provided those resources in the first place, be given the power to allocate it for their own kids. You are asking that anyone unhappy with their public school just loses that money they probably contributed to, and pays for that essential function on their own. Education apparently is only essential if the state provides it.
Where are the state run grocery stores? The state better start providing food to us for “free” it’s essential and we can’t leave something that important up to the private sector who may or may not provide services to any number of citizens.
Wow! Very nice Roger. . .
I love how Republicans respect our state and federal constitutions when it serves their personal goals and hobby horses, but when they don’t serve those purposes the constitutional provisions at odds with their views are ignored:
§1. Uniform system of free public schools.
The stability of a republican form of government depending on the morality
and intelligence of the people, it shall be the duty of the Legislature to establish
and maintain a general and uniform system of public schools wherein tuition
shall be without charge, and equally open to all; and to adopt all suitable means
to secure to the people the advantages and opportunities of education.
Article VIII, Section 1, South Dakota Constitution.
I’m still looking for the free food and state run grocery store provisions of our state constitution.
Roger Beranek writes: “In fact there is non enumerated power to have ANYTHING to do with education in the US constitution, so the regulation and funding they do now is already unconstitutional.”
I guess you don’t think education is important for the general welfare of our country then:
GENERAL WELFARE CLAUSE. Article I, section 8 of the U. S. Constitution grants Congress the power to “lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts, and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common defense and general Welfare of the United States.”
encyclopedia.com, General Welfare Clause article
The General Welfare is not an expansion of power for the federal government to do anything that Congress deems helpful. It’s a limitation on power, with the intent that no spending should ever be enacted that is local, state, or regional in nature. Spending authorized in the constitution must be national in nature. It is not an open licence for becoming involved in education, or anything else, simply because someone decides it’s “Good”
As far as the SD constitution. It’s unenlightened but entirely permissible for a state to do stupid things at times. Congratulations
I think we should question the “Good” in defense spending and audit that spending.
Roger,
I’m glad that the US Supreme Court does not agree with your interpretation of what is part of the general welfare of our country. What is more important to our general welfare than an educated populace?
You are the first person I have ever heard call a requirement for universal education “unenlightened.” Do you read history books on the dark ages and long for a return to the time when the masses weren’t burdened with knowledge and educational opportunities?
Roger B. said “There is no parallel with education, and no automatic reason to expect government to guarantee free education to all… It’s as silly as thinking government is obligated to guarantee free health care to everyone.”
Then, Darin proved Roger B. wrong.
Then, Roger B. said the legal authority that provided the proof that he was wrong is just a state being stupid.
Nice evolution of your argument, Roger B.
Here is how I think about this issue: There are roads all over my city, but some lame poor people use those roads all the time, and it makes me feel less special to have my fancy special vehicle on a road with the un-fancy and un-special vehicles of the poor people all around me. So, I want to pave my own road, and I want to control who drives on my road so there are only fancy special vehicles all around me, but I am so fancy and special I feel entitled to get my own road without using my own resources or labor to create it – so I will ask the city, county, or state to use funds they would otherwise spend on the public roads to build my own fancy special road, just for me and my fancy special peers.
Do I care that the public roads will fall to disrepair? Certainly not. Caring about others is so un-fancy and un-special, and did I mention how fancy and special I am?
(Where’s Debbo!? This conversation isn’t about gender issues at all, and I’m still getting worked up!)
Darin, I have read books on history, including the dark ages and including the enlightenment. The idea of universally supported education is not synonymous with a demand for the state to provide one that is free, uniform, or public. The lack of enlightenment comes because those who wrote and support such a demand are either incapable of seeing how it results in diminished results, or they fully understand and desire those results because it offers the state so much greater control. Uncertainty frightens, even if it’s often the better path.
Re scotus, there have been many justices that to agree with that interpretation, as well as those involved in writing it in the first place. Hamilton and Madison contradicted each other constantly on the federalist papers. Pointing at any of these and claiming things like “The Founders thought X” falsely implies an opinion held by a homogenous static entity that never actually existed. The Supreme Court’s opinions change, and hopefully my interpretation regarding the general welfare, and the commerce clause, will ascend.
Ryan, you do seem to be a very special person with a firm grasp on the discussion. Particularly the distinctions between legal obligations binding a specific government in its constitution and the philosophical basis for any government and the actions that are morally justifiable.
The rest of your comment is little more than social contract theory with poor parallel with education, and nothing to do with trying to apply market principles to building public roads
https://www.shmoop.com/church-and-state/supreme-court-school-vouchers.html
Some background on Scotus decisions on the establishment clause and using public funds to pay for religious indoctrination.
Roger –
I appreciate your acceptance of my self-reported special nature.
Who said I was trying to apply market principals to building public roads? I’m trying to build private roads. That’s the point. I want special things for my special self, but I want to use other people’s money to pay for them. Just like private schools and their customers who want voucher programs.
The correct parallel would be to have a portion of the budget for road improvements available to be allocated by residents, who could hire contractors to do the work instead of having all decisions made by the city department of roads through the public union workers.
Vouchers have that structure, not the nonsense of special interests leaching from the public schools coffers. The prior link was helpful since it seems worth noting the cost of the vouchers versus the public school cost per pupil shows vouchers are a net gain for the public school system in Wisconsin by thousands of dollars.
http://www.governing.com/gov-data/education-data/state-education-spending-per-pupil-data.html
Ryan,
I was going to use pretty much that exact analogy of private roads compared to private education funding. Thanks for making that illustration for us.
Forget the private this and that. You need one set of standards for all kids to achieve in PUBLIC SCHOOLS-no exceptions when public money is paying the bills.
Same with roads. There needs to be, at least, a minimum set of regs on how to build, what materials to use and every other aspect of engineering with public taxpayer money at stake.
You want private roads or schools pay for them yourself, after you pay your property taxes for public schools.
Wisconsin didn’t have school choice until June 2015.
All this nonsense from Roger Beranek isn’t relevant. It isn’t in the realm of reality. South Dakota’s Constitution sets out a very strong role for public education, and that isn’t going to change without an amendment to the Constitution.
Vouchers actually are a huge cost to Wisconsin. It started small, as a pilot project to see if vouchers could do two things: (1) provide new and better schools for Milwaukee’s low-income students and (2) to provide free-market incentives that would spur improvement in the public schools. Neither of those objectives were met. Some students were able to use vouchers to get into some good parochial schools. Some of this had nothing to do with academics. Some students in Milwaukee were recruited by voucher schools because they had basketball skills and could use the vouchers to attend these private or parochial academies. In other cases, the voucher schools operated much like the Mid-Central Education Cooperative in South Dakota, ie., they were corrupt. Or they were simply not any better than the public schools.
There is a saying that is often true: you get what you pay for. Vouchers were sold as a cheap way to improve schools. It was a failure. It didn’t improve schools and it wasn’t cheap. Public school students and local taxpayers ended up footing the bill.
Rather than admit failure, though, we had the voucher apologists, funded by rich out-of-state billionaires, double down on Republican Party corruption. So, Republicans got lots of campaign dollars and money for righty think tanks, lobbying operations and propaganda mills, and local property taxpayers got to fund an expansion of this failed system, because, as state money for public education was funneled to parochial schools, local property tax payers had to up their support for public schools. Now there is no pretense about improving education for inner city minority kids. All the voucher programs has become is a subsidy for students already attending parochial schools.
second public school operation that has been funded by the state through taking money from public schools.
Sorry, continuing:
Now there is a second public school operation that has been funded by the state through taking money from public schools and funneling it to parochial schools through vouchers, except their is no way to vote and hold the parochial schools accountable and their is no oversight of the finances by the state. Does this sound like a Mid-Central situation in the making?
governing.com is owned by Scientologists. Just saying.
Mike, I’m not sure who the comment on the governing website was for, since Cory’s original post used them as a source, and you gave no further comment to show it has any relevance to the data the site posted.
https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/do-school-vouchers-work-milwaukees-experiment-suggests-an-answer-1517162799&ved=2ahUKEwj_4IeNoc7ZAhVI5mMKHQi0CzUQFjAAegQIBRAB&usg=AOvVaw3KcoicWLRD0B4NonnYiKko&cf=1
Here’s a rational article not from a Scientologist describing the Milwaukee voucher results.
Donald,
The state, if its constitution mandates a guarantee of universal education, then it doesn’t matter of those students were already paying to be educated privately. The entitlement those students have for public support of their education doesn’t vanish and the state was simply having its obligations paid for by the families prior to the voucher program. It’s a bit whiney for anyone to complain about the cost now, when the state had in effect been taking advantage of those students for generations by avoiding the educational support they were entitled to. Particularly since the vouchers are at such a discount compared to the public school students.
Mike, There is no reason to believe that because something is done by someone other than a public entity, that no common standards would be implemented. In fact, the Guidelines and standards would be much easier to enforce with accountability where the public isn’t trying to sue itself
Mr B, your WSJ page isn’t available. At least not on my computer. I tossed that comment about Scientologists out there because some of us (me) have heard some unsavory stuff about their methods.
If that Wall Street Journal article, which I can’t access, was from 2018, you have the issue of mixing in the expanded program to the original program, so the results are purposely skewed. They are now giving money to parents of children already in the parochial schools, not just to students who were “trapped” in bad schools and moved into new voucher schools. This is what I’m talking about when I said they did this to purposely swamp the bad data out by adding in students who were never intended to be in the program. When you get data on these programs you have to know what cohorts you are dealing with.
he Wall Street Journal recently examined the Milwaukee school voucher program, the largest in the country, and found some interesting trends. As schools (including religious schools) accept a larger number of voucher students and those students come to represent the majority of a school’s enrollment, the academic success can decline to the point where there is little difference academically between the voucher schools and neighboring public schools. Conversely, where the number of voucher students is kept at a lower percentage of the student body, these students enjoy greater academic success. Read “Do Vouchers Work?” for more information
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2016/12/08/a-sobering-look-at-what-betsy-devos-did-to-education-in-michigan-and-what-she-might-do-as-secretary-of-education/?utm_term=.f801d7757438
Seems the people want to privatize education at any and all costs.
https://wonkette.com/630728/professor-elizabeth-warren-grades-betsy-devoss-first-year-is-all-out-of-fs-to-give
Not a cuss word to be found in this article. Not a good word for public education, either.
I Tiny URLed the link at 15:10 and got this one instead.
https://tinyurl.com/y8jwn3q8
Anything Elizabeth Warren says is likely to influence me in the opposite direction. I think she is honest in her beliefs, but those beliefs are in complete opposition to me and everything I believe. The particulars of Betsy Duvoss seem to mostly be antipathy towards supporting private education. The only part that concerns me would be if they are really stopping accountability of charters. Individual schools sucking….there are plenty of terrible public schools but that doesn’t mean anything about the value of a traditional public school system, and bad charters are equally meaningless.
Betsy DeVos, known for her remarks about “bringing children to the Kingdom of God”, desires to evangelize our children and privatize public education, making our schools for-profit corporatist institutions at the taxpayers’ expense. Bad business, bad reasoning, tunnel-visioned education for our kids.
https://www.scribd.com/document/360695151/Belly-Up-Report-on-Ohio-Federal-Charter-School-Grants
Money sucking holes even when they don’t bother to open- then there was this I read about a month ago-
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=11978167
E-school had gotten nearly a billion bucks from Ohio recently dumped 12k kids into public schools because of fiscal …. I’m guessing greed.
Anybody catch DeVos pretending to be a chicken minus its head on 60 minutes Sunday? That woman is not qualified to be anything.
Isn’t DeVos something else, SNL is going to have a field day with her this weekend. Pubs always make it so easy for SNL.