ACLU sues to stop new Nev. School vouchers

Edd Doerr (arlinc.org) notes the Washington Post, article, Aug 28. “ACLU sues to stop new Nev. School vouchers,” by Emma Brown. Here is the comment Edd posted on line  ----

Nevada's Republican-rammed-through school voucher plan clearly violates Article XI, Sections 2, 9 and 10 of the state constitution. If the legislature had done the honorable thing and tried to amend the constitution, the amendment would have been rejected by the voters. How do we know? Because the neighboring states of California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Utah and Colorado have had twelve referendum elections in which vouchers or similar schemes to divert public funds to private schools were rejected by an average margin of 64% to 36%. Nevada voters would surely follow suit.

And the annual PDK/Gallup education poll released on August 23 showed opposition to vouchers at 57% to 31%.

Nevada's GOP lawmakers thumbed their noses at the state constitution, at the voters, at the public schools that serve 95% of the state's kids, and at the religious liberty of the state's citizens, their right not to be forced by government to support religious institutions. 

See ACLU site for more.

Majority of Americans give public schools high marks

Edd Doerr, president, Americans for Religious Liberty, Silver Spring, Md. notes this posting in the 

Herald-Mail   ----   June 20, 2015

Majority of Americans give public schools high marks

This letter is in reference to Larry Smith’s June 18 letter criticizing Allan Powell’s June 12 column on Nevada’s unconstitutional lurch toward school privatization.

While our public schools, like everything else, can stand improvement, 40 years of annual Gallup surveys of public opinion on educational issues have shown that two-thirds of Americans consistently give an A or B rating to the public schools attended by their own children. And Maryland public schools consistently rank among the best in the United States.

Can our public schools be improved? Yes. And leading educators have shown how — with more adequate and more equitably distributed funding, smaller classes, universal pre-K education, wraparound social and medical services, enriched curricula, serious efforts to deal with the poverty that afflicts more than a quarter of our kids, and an end to the diversion of public funds to special-interest private schools that tend to fragment the school population along religious, ideological, social class, ethnic and other lines.

School privatization is definitely not the answer. As educators Christopher and Sarah Lubienski show in their 2014 book, “The Public School Advantage: Why Public Schools Outperform Private Schools,” any apparent advantage of private schools is due to their undemocratic selectivity.

Further, as Powell noted, millions of voters from coast to coast in 28 statewide referenda have rejected all devices for diverting public funds to private schools by an average margin of 2 to 1. In Maryland, voters defeated tax aid to private schools in 1972 and 1974 referenda, as did Washington, D.C., voters in 1981 by the astounding margin of 89 percent to 11 percent.

Finally, most state constitutions ban tax aid to religious institutions (about 90 percent of private schools are run by religious organizations) because, as Bill of Rights architect James Madison made clear in his 1785 Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments, it is a violation of religious liberty for government to compel citizens to support religious institutions, their own or anyone else’s.

School Choice Letter Omits Research, Distorts Polling

 Edd Doerr suggests that this letter was published in Education Week on June 15 might be of interest

“School Choice Letter Omits Research, Distorts Polling”

Paul DiPerna’s letter touting school vouchers and education savings accounts (“Governor’s School Choice Essay Ignores Research, Critic Says,” May 20, 2015) conveniently did not mention the research and published findings of University of Illinois education professors Christopher and Sarah Lubienski showing that the apparent private school advantage is due to those schools’ selectivity (The Public School Advantage: Why Public Schools Outperform Private Schools, University of Chicago Press, 2013).

Further, the results of the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice survey in Delaware that were mentioned in Mr. DiPerna’s letter should be viewed with skepticism as, according to the group Americans for Religious Liberty, they run substantially counter to the results of 40 years of Gallup/Phi Delta Kappa education polls and 28 state referendums over the years, such as those in Hawaii in 2014 and in Florida in 2012.

Dennis Middlebrooks 

Brooklyn, N.Y.

A brief comment on "Zombies of 2016"

by Edd Doerr (arlinc.org)

Paul Krugman’s column in the April 24 NY Times, “Zombies of 2016”, chops up Chris Christie, Jeb Bush and other Repubs who would like to infest the White House. Below is the comment I posted in the Times on lone. -- Edd

Excellent column, as usual. Christie, of course, is toast. But Jeb Bush agreeing with Christie on raising the Social Security age? Equally out of step with the American people. And not only on that issue. Jeb also has little respect for women's rights of conscience and religious freedom, and he made an utter fool of himself in the Terry Schiavo case.

As for education, Jeb is no friend of our public schools. His school voucher plan for diverting public funds to private schools, especially the divisive sectarian ones run by his own church, was so bad that Florida voters rejected it in the 2012 election by 55% to 45%.

A third Bush in the White House would turn the Oval Office into the Offal Office.

Rheeformers & the Vergara ruling against teacher tenure

Edd Doerr (arlinc.org) notes that the Washington Post, 15 Aug 2014, ran a long op ed piece, “The promise of teacher tenure reform”, by Joshua Lewis, a long time “Rheeformer”  supporting the recent LA lower court ruling in the Vergara case that slashed teacher tenure.

 Below is the comment Edd posted in the Post on line. A similarly strong response was posted by “LaborLawyer”. 

Of course Lewis would like the Vergara ruling against teacher tenure. He is on the board of Pearson, the testing and publishing supergiant that makes uncounted millions from its contracts with public schools and which owns some charter schools, which are not friendly to teacher unions. Lewis talks big about "reform" but says nothing about the overtesting of kids that is actually hurting public education and kids. And he says nothing about the real reforms that serious professional educators have been advocating, such as more adequate and more equitably distributed funding for public schools, universal pre-K, smaller classes, wraparound social and medical services for the neediest kids, an end to the diversion of public funds to special interest private schools through vouchers and tax credits (which have invariably been voted down in state referenda), and a pull-back in the expansion of charter schools, which the 2013 Stanford CREDO study found were generally no better than regular public schools despite their selectivity and other advantages.

Doing away with teacher tenure can only harm the teaching profession and the kids. The idea that the quality of in-school teaching is all important ignores the fact that kids are not widgets in a factory, that teachers are not robots on an assembly line, and that at least 1/4 of our students live in poverty.

The Post should run opinion pieces by real educators -- like Diane Ravitch, Mercedes Schneider or David Berliner.