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"When lawmakers consider expanding or creating private school voucher programs, their projections often dramatically underestimate the actual costs. They sell a false promise that vouchers will save money, do not budget adequate funds, and then wind up with million dollar shortfalls, necessitating cuts from public education and even tax increases… First, it costs less than the average expenditure to educate some students...The students who are most expensive to educate...tend to remain in public schools, because they cannot find a private voucher school willing to accept them. Yet, because of the voucher program, the state now pays tuition for private school students who never attended public schools...This all adds up to more, not less spending." -- from the National Coalition for Public Education, quoted in Voucher Programs Prove Again and Again What We Already Know
THE COST OF VOUCHERS
Voucher Programs Prove Again and Again What We Already Know
Voucher costs in Indiana...two-thirds of which go to students who never attended public schools and who can afford the cost of a private education...are approaching half a billion dollars a year. That money goes to mostly religious schools even though the Indiana Constitution states (in Article 1, Section 6) that...
"No money shall be drawn from the treasury, for the benefit of any religious or theological institution."
Note also that the state allows voucher accepting schools to reject students on the basis of "religion, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, or academic ability."
From Jan Resseger
As we all know, state legislators across the country originally justified passing small, experimental voucher programs as a way to help poor kids escape from their so-called “failing” public schools. A year ago, at the end of The School Voucher Illusion: Exposing the Pretense of Equity, an authoritative collection of essays by experts on school vouchers, here is what the editors conclude instead:
“As currently structured, voucher policies in the United States are unlikely to help the students they claim to support. Instead, these policies have often served as a facade for the far less popular reality of funding relatively advantaged (and largely White) families, many of whom already attended—or would attend—private schools without subsidies. Although vouchers are presented as helping parents choose schools, often the arrangements permit the private schools to do the choosing… ”
In states like Ohio, where the legislature made vouchers universal by raising the income eligibility level to 450 percent of the federal family poverty level (with partial vouchers for even wealthier families), the state simply started paying the private school tuition bills that families had been undertaking for generations. In other states like Arizona, the state has been awarding Education Savings Account vouchers for the private educational expenses of children who are not enrolled in public schools, whether to pay for private school tuition vouchers or homeschooling costs...Here is the primary fiscal problem of all these programs, according to Josh Cowen, a professor of education policy at Michigan State University: “It’s not that there is a mass exodus from public to private schools… (W)hat these states are doing is obligating themselves to expenditures that were previously borne by the private sector.”
Indiana is a classic example of a state that has made its old fashioned private school tuition voucher program universally available. This week for Chalkbeat Indiana, Aleksandra Appleton and Mia Hollie report: “Voucher use has soared in Indiana since lawmakers made nearly every student in the state eligible, with more than 90% of students at more than half of all participating schools using a voucher during the 2023-24 school year…. That was true in just 11% of private schools before lawmakers made the Indiana Choice Scholarship available to nearly every student in Indiana by relaxing income eligibility and removing other requirements to participate…. Since lawmakers approved the expansion last year, the number of schools where 100% of students receive a voucher rose from just one in 2022-23 to 28 in 2023-24. Last year, in 178 of the 349 private schools that accept vouchers, more than 90% of students enrolled use a voucher to pay for tuition.” The program cost the state of Indiana $439 million for the 2023-24 school year.
Peter Greene: Why Sex Scandals Matter
From Diane Ravitch
...How could someone who had inveighed against “the woke agenda” and urged the adoption of vouchers to escape that agenda have done what the rumors said? I didn’t think I would touch it with a ten-foot pole. I don’t care what others do in their private lives. I believe in Tim Walz’s credo: “Mind your own damn business.” But I was troubled by the hypocrisy.
Corey worked for Betsy DeVos and was her leading salesman for vouchers. DeVos and her family are rabidly anti-LGBT. For years, they have funded anti-LGBT organizations like the Family Research Council, Focus on the Family, and Alliance Defending Freedom. Yet the rumor was that Corey had performed in gay porn, and there were many videos online to prove it.
One of the alleged virtues of vouchers was that they enable students to escape pedophile teachers and to attend schools that ban LGBT students. I couldn’t make sense of these two lives.
Peter Greene wrote about Corey’s apparent double life.
Network for Public Education launches the National Center for Charter School Accountability
The National Center for Charter School Accountability provides research and recommendations on increasing transparency and accountability for charter schools.
From The Network for Public Education and Diane Ravitch
Having spent years covering charter scandals and seeking accountability for charters, the Network for Public Education realized that it could not compete with the high-powered corporate public relations firms representing the charter school industry. So, we decided, the only way to get accountability is to do it ourselves.
So NPE established the National Center on Charter School Accountability, which will produce reviews of charter school performance.
Network for Public Education 2025 National Conference
From The Network for Public Education
Registration is now open for NPE/NPE Action’s 2025 national conference, Public Schools: Where All Students Are Welcome. We can’t wait to see you in Columbus, Ohio, on April 5-6!
Stay tuned for more info about keynote speakers and session topics.
BANNED BOOKS WEEK
Banned books week is over...but book banning continues.
It's Banned Books Week
NOTE: A Facebook account is required to access this article.
From Michael B. Shaffer on Facebook
So here we are in the third day of Banned Books Week 2024, and I want to give a huge shout-out to all of the great teachers in Indiana who have resisted the mandate to clear their shelves of books that one person might find objectionable, in favor of keeping the books that speak to the hearts of kids. What those who want to restrict access to the kinds of books students want, do not realize is that if we are serious about literacy, we must have the books that mean something, books that students want to read, books that students will read!
When we ban books, or sit still while it happens, we are not only giving up a precious freedom, we are also depriving our students the ability to do what my friend Alan Boyko, the retired President of Scholastic Book Fairs, used to say that students need the ability to "find themselves in a book, and then lose themselves in that book."
Banned Books Week
From American Library Association
In a time of deep political divides, library staff across the country are facing an overwhelming number of book ban attempts. In 2023 alone, the American Library Association's Office for Intellectual Freedom tracked 1,247 efforts to censor books and other resources in libraries—an increase of 65% from the year before. In total, 4,240 unique book titles were targeted, many of them representing LGBTQIA+ and BIPOC voices and experiences.
As we gear up for Banned Books Week 2024 (September 22-28), with the theme "Freed Between the Lines," we’re reminded how much is at stake. The freedom to explore new ideas and different perspectives is under threat, and book bans don’t just restrict access to stories—they undermine our rights. Now is the time to come together, celebrate the right to read, and find freedom in the pages of a book. Let’s be "Freed Between the Lines."
LOCAL NEWS
Wells County school district scores Red Wagon status
From the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette**
The Bluffton-Harrison Metropolitan School District has once again earned Red Wagon Corporation status for its fundraising efforts for Riley Hospital for Children, a news release said.
Districts receive this designation when their fundraising equals $1 per student per building in an academic year, the release said. State enrollment data shows Bluffton-Harrison had about 1,800 students last year – the year its recognition honors.
The Wells County school system has contributed more than $300,000 to the Indianapolis-based children’s hospital since 1993, the release said. It indicated each school annually hosts special events – including dress-up days, boat races and an auction – to support the cause.
Note: The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette is behind a paywall. Digital access, home delivery, or both are available with a subscription. Staying informed is essential; one way to do that is to support your local newspaper. For subscription information, go to fortwayne.com/subscriptions/ [NOTE: NEIFPE has no financial ties to the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette]
†Note: NEIFPE's In Case You Missed It is posted by the end of the day every Monday except after holiday weekends or as otherwise noted.
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