School choice and unaccountability week

Published January 28, 2015

By Chris Fitzsimon

by Chris Fitzsimon, NC Policy Watch and NC SPIN panelist, January 27, 2015.

The timing couldn’t be more perfect for this year’s “ School Choice Week,”  the nationally orchestrated right-wing funded annual public relations extravaganza touting alternatives to traditional public schools, including charters, virtual charters, home schools, and of course voucher-supported private and religious academies.

Next week the N.C. Department of Public Instruction will release grades for all the public schools in the state using an A-F grading scale for the first time. Eighty percent of the grade will be based on how students perform on end of grade tests and 20 percent will be based on growth in test scores.

It is almost a guarantee that most schools with wealthy, high-achieving students will receive higher grades than schools in low-income communities, regardless of how much the students improve to year to year at the poorer schools.

Many schools with high percentages of low-income students will have an “F” slapped on their door, prompting more hand-wringing about our “failing public schools” and how we need to expand virtual charters and the sketchy voucher program created last year by the General Assembly.  That’s the point of the new grading system after all.

The constitutionality of the voucher scheme is now before the N.C. Supreme Court with a hearing scheduled for February 17th but almost 2,000 students attending private and religious schools this year are already using taxpayer-funded vouchers to pay for part of their private education.

None of those schools will receive an A-F grade next week. Neither will any of the several hundred private and religious academies eligible for the voucher program, regardless of what they teach or how they teach it or how well the students are doing.

They can teach that dinosaurs co-existed with humans, as many of the fundamentalist schools do, and that slaves were treated well and the Klan was a means of reform and fought a decline in morality. They won’t receive a letter grade next week and they are eligible for taxpayer funding.

They can teach, as many of the vouchers school do, that the earth is only a few thousand years old and that gay people have no more claims to civil rights than child molesters or rapists, and they won’t receive a grade next week and can receive taxpayer funding.

They can have three students and one teacher and meet in one room in a private home like Paramount Christian Academy in Davidson County, another school on the list to receive taxpayer-funded vouchers. Paramount won’t be receiving an A-F grade next week either.

Students at the voucher schools don’t have to take the same end of grade tests as students at traditional public schools and the schools don’t have to provide lunch or transportation or meet any basic curriculum standards at all.

But they can receive taxpayer money in the name of “school choice” that groups on the Right are celebrating this week.

Supporters of the A-F grading system, many of the same folks who also support expanding the voucher scheme, tell us repeatedly that the new grades are needed to give parents a true picture of how schools are doing.

Apparently the parents don’t need to know well how voucher schools are educating kids and neither do the taxpayers who will be funding them.

School Choice Week is actually its own organization with its own website, social media campaign and there’s a president and press secretary too. There’s even an official song and dance with a YouTube video to learn the steps, which the site says “are easier to learn than ever.”

Easier to learn even than what voucher schools are doing with our money.

Maybe next year we can have “School Choice Accountability Week.” That would be worth celebrating.

- See more at: http://www.ncpolicywatch.com/2015/01/27/school-choice-and-unaccountability-week/#sthash.1ivp7oCy.dpuf

January 28, 2015 at 9:16 am
Frank Burns says:

Ask yourself the question why middle class parents are demanding choices with education. They are not satisfied with the public schools and their poor learning environment.

January 28, 2015 at 12:03 pm
Richard Bunce says:

I do not know of a single education voucher program where the parents demand for vouchers did not far exceed the number of available vouchers.

January 28, 2015 at 12:02 pm
Richard Bunce says:

What Chris and his friends in the government education industrial complex fear most if parents having a real choice in the children's education, especially relatively low income parents. Sure Chris and his ilk do think they know what is best for these children while their parents do not. Sure Chris and his ilk want to shape the minds of future generations to think like good little progressives. Mostly though Chris and his ilk want to keep the government education dollars flowing to their own benefit.

They do not care about failing government school systems where parents have little choice... they imagine failed private school systems totally ignoring the role that parents will play in the market in rewarding successful systems and punishing failing ones... including the government education systems once true choice is finally obtained.

January 29, 2015 at 6:59 pm
Norm Kelly says:

Wouldn't it be nice to read just one post from Chris that stayed away from lib-speak? His insistence on using 'right-wing' as a derogatory adjective is overused. His insistence on never reporting left-wing groups as left-wing groups simply proves that when referring to a left-wing group by name only, it is by default a left-wing group.

Wouldn't it be nice if just once Chris could refer to ANY program supported by Republicans, right-wing nuts & zealots, conservatives and other citizens who believe in the Constitution using any other word besides 'scheme'? Just once it would be nice for Chris to refer to ANY left-wing nut-job idea as a 'scheme'. What's the difference between a 'scheme' and a 'plan'? A 'plan' comes from libs, Demoncrats, socialists. A 'scheme' comes from right-wing nutjobs. That is, at least, according to left-wing zealots and socialists. You know, the kind of people that tell us private business does not create jobs. The kind that tell us government interference in any market provides more choice (think obamacancer!). The kind that tell us government should be in the Internet delivery business. The kind of left-wing scheme that would actually eliminate & reduce choice, just like government monopoly schools!

As a side note, thanks Chris for turning me on to the term 'government monopoly schools'. Without you I may never have thought of referring to this establishment using such accurate terms.

January 29, 2015 at 11:44 pm
Richard Bunce says:

I get the feeling Chris is looking to move on up to bigger and better progressive thinks than his little NC progressive polemic screed factory so he is polishing his progressive resume for the folks in DC who have access to the positions pulling down serious coin.