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school privatization
Democrats Rebuked for Backing GOP War on Public Schools, Trump Voucher Expansion
"Don't let the far right's demonization of public education fool you," said one commentator. "People support their local public schools."
Aug 06, 2025
Evidence is mounting across the United States that school vouchers are harming public schools—and numerous studies have shown they largely do not benefit students academically as proponents have long claimed—leaving education advocates to wonder why the issue of so-called "school choice" is a fault line within the Democratic Party.
The Trump administration's recent cave on K-12 public education funding, more than $6 billion of which President Donald Trump was pressured to release after temporarily freezing it, showed that "public schools are a winning issue, everywhere," wrote commentator David Pepper at his Substack blog, Pepperspectives last week.
Yet when Education Week asked the governors of all 50 states and Washington, D.C. whether they would opt in to the nation's first federal school voucher program that was passed last month as part of Trump's so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act, only one Democratic governor—Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico—clearly stated she would not take part in the $26 billion program, which allows taxpayers to claim a 100% tax credit for up to $1,700 in donations to scholarships to private schools, and allow lower-income families to receive scholarship funds.
Lujan Grisham expressed concerns about the lack of accountability measures for private schools that would be funded with tax dollars, a loss of funding and enrollment for public schools, and the possibility of private schools discriminating against children with special needs.
Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker also expressed doubt that his state would participate, saying "it doesn't seem fair" to support a program that "is taking away money from people who can't afford to go to a private school, who would like to go to a public school."
But several other Democratic governors didn't respond to Education Week's query, and others who have been supportive of school vouchers in the past, including Colorado Gov. Jared Polis and Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, said they were "reviewing" the program, which does not go into effect until 2027.
"Governor Polis is still reviewing the details of this legislation, but is excited by the possibility of unlocking new federal tax credits for donations to help low-income kids achieve," said Polis' office.
The survey of governors was taken as two reports in The New York Times and The Washington Post detailed the damage school vouchers have already done to public school districts.
As the Times reported Wednesday, a decline in the number of babies being born in the U.S. and the rise of the "school choice" movement, particularly in Republican-controlled states, have led public schools in cities including Orlando, Florida; Newark, New Jersey; and Memphis, Tennessee to confront their emerging enrollment crisis by hiring consultants to help combat right-wing claims that children will suffer if they attend public schools.
Although Florida is one of a few states that has a growing instead of shrinking population of children, its public school systems are facing "significant declines," reported the Times, with more than 400,000 children in the state using the Florida school voucher system, called the universal education savings account—the largest voucher program in the United States.
In Orange County, where Orlando is located, the school-age population has grown by 5% since 2020—but the school district is expecting a 25% decline in kindergarten enrollment this year—and a potential loss of $28 million in federal funding, since schools are funded according to the number of students they enroll.
In Arizona, the Post reported, nearly 89,000 students receive vouchers the state government calls Empowerment Scholarship Accounts, while 62,000 receive taxpayer-supported scholarships for private schools through another voucher program and more than 232,000 students attend charter schools, which are publicly funded but independently run.
The state's embrace of the "school choice" movement left just 75% of Arizona children attending public schools in 2021, according to the Post, and school districts are responding by closing schools. Roosevelt Elementary School District in the Phoenix area will operate just 13 schools this year—a third less than last school year.
"You're taking the same size pie and cutting it into more pieces," Rick Brammer, a consultant who analyzes school enrollment, told the Post. "As we've created and funded alternatives, we've just emptied out school after school from the districts."
Instead of adopting an anti-voucher, vehemently pro-public school stance as a signature issue, the Democratic Party is split on the issue, with a number of Democratic governors backing charter schools and vouchers and some veterans of the Obama administration, including former Education Secretary Arne Duncan, backing a group called Democrats for Education Reform (DFER), which has advocated for states to embrace the federal voucher program in Trump's domestic policy agenda.
As the Times reported Monday, DFER's chief executive, former Democratic Providence, Rhode Island Mayor Jorge Elorza, traveled to a Democratic Governors Association in Madison, Wisconsin this past weekend with the goal of convincing governors who are still "reviewing" the federal voucher program, as many told Education Week, to opt in.
"This is literally free money that is broadly supported by the majority of voters who have steadily drifted away from the party," Elorza told the Times, referring to Black and Latino voters, who some polls have shown believe public schools are failing children. "It just makes sense."
Other Democratic strategists who have previously been involved with DFER have shifted their focus to growing charter school networks in southern states.
Former Georgia state lawmaker Alisha Thomas Searcy, who co-founded the Center for Strong Public Schools Action, which is pushing the charter school effort, told Chalkbeat Tennessee on Monday that the group will not embrace vouchers.
"I want to be clear about what sets us apart," Searcy told the outlet. "It's our commitment to public education. It is foundational for us, and it's nonnegotiable. We're committed to remaining focused on strengthening public schools, not creating pathways that take away from them."
Public education advocates have warned charter schools, like vouchers, drain funding from public schools with less oversight, and research has shown mixed results in terms of academic improvements.
Many Democratic lawmakers, said Tennessee state Rep. Gloria Johnson (D-90), "have an education plan, it’s fully funding public education so every child has a well-resourced classroom, providing wraparound services so families have needed resources, smaller class size, and teacher autonomy."
Jennifer Berkshire, host of the education-focused podcast "Have You Heard," noted that popular Democratic politicians including Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear and former North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper have been vehement critics of school vouchers and defenders of robust funding for public education.
"And yet there is intense pressure to get Democrats to embrace vouchers in order to 'stay relevant,'" said Berkshire last week.
Vouchers were resoundingly defeated in a number of states last November—including those that votes for Trump.
A ballot initiative in Kentucky that would have sent public money to private schools was defeated by a 30-point margin, and in Nebraska, nearly every county voted to repeal an existing voucher program. Colorado voters, despite their Democratic governor's support for school vouchers, voted against adding a "right to school choice" to the state constitution.
Considering the broad public disapproval of school privatization, Pepper offered advice to Democrats last week.
"Don't let the far right's demonization of public education fool you," he wrote. "People support their local public schools. Whether it's an attack from Washington, an attack from your statehouse, some new privatization scheme, a billionaire-backed referendum or a candidate who is all-in on attacking public schools—oppose them fiercely and call them out bluntly. Go on offense for public schools, and against efforts to attack public schools."
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GOP Bill Gives Rich Funders of Deeply Unpopular School Privatization 'A Lucrative Tax Shelter'
"The House tax plan would create a system that treats people supporting private K-12 vouchers far more generously than donors to children's hospitals, veterans' groups, and every other cause imaginable."
May 16, 2025
Embedded in the House GOP's advancing reconciliation package is a major, long-sought victory for school privatization advocates that would let rich funders of vouchers avoid taxation, a change that opponents warned would supercharge the right-wing assault on public education.
The measure, which resembles the GOP-authored Educational Choice for Children Act (ECCA), was tucked into the House Republican tax legislation that passed out of the chamber's Ways and Means Committee earlier this week.
In effect, according to an analysis published Thursday by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), the legislation "allows wealthy individuals to avoid paying capital gains tax as a reward for funneling public funds into private schools."
"While the bill significantly cuts charitable giving incentives overall, nonprofits that commit to focusing solely on supporting private K-12 schools would be spared from those cuts and see their donors' tax incentive almost triple relative to what they receive today," ITEP explained. "On top of that, the bill goes out of its way to provide school voucher donors who contribute corporate stock with an extra layer of tax subsidy that works as a lucrative tax shelter."
"The House tax plan would create a system that treats people supporting private K-12 vouchers far more generously than donors to children's hospitals, veterans' groups, and every other cause imaginable," the group added.
ITEP estimated that if the policy had been in effect in 2021, billionaire Elon Musk could have saved $690 million in federal capital gains taxes.
"By putting this arrangement on the books," ITEP said, "the bill's proponents have ensured that there will be an eager pool of wealthy donors lined up to help move public funds into private schools, and to collect their capital gains tax cuts as a reward."
Josh Cowen, a professor of education policy at Michigan State University, said Republicans' effort to ram the tax scheme through as part of their filibuster-proof reconciliation package is a testament to the unpopularity of school privatization at the state and local levels.
"People don't like this stuff," Cowen told Roll Call. "Voters, whether they're Republican or Democrat, look at this stuff, and they're like, what does this really do for me?"
Supporters of school privatization were quick to celebrate the inclusion of tax breaks for voucher donors, with the American Federation for Children applauding Republican leaders for their "relentless commitment to ensuring school choice becomes the law of the land."
The American Federation for Children is funded by the family of billionaire Betsy DeVos, who served as education secretary during President Donald Trump's first term.
The DeVos family is part of a network of deep-pocketed school privatization proponents that has been working for years to siphon taxpayer funding away from public schools and toward private—often religious—institutions.
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, told The New York Times on Tuesday that voucher supporters "don't believe in public schooling."
"We are against giving people tax breaks to defund public schools," the union leader said. "What you're seeing here is the fragmentation of American education."
The National Education Association, the largest teachers' union in the U.S., has also voiced opposition to the voucher tax break scheme, writing in a letter to members of the House Ways and Means Committee earlier this week that "taxpayer dollars should go to public schools open to all students, not private schools that can pick and choose their students."
"Every time voucher schemes are on state ballots—17 times in total, including three states last November—voters have rejected them," reads the letter. "America cannot afford to fund two education systems, one private and one public."
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'Project 2025 in Action': Trump Administration Fires Half of Education Department Staff
"Trump and Elon Musk have aimed their wrecking ball at public schools and the futures of the 50 million students."
Mar 12, 2025
The Trump administration on Tuesday took a major step toward dismantling the U.S. Department of Education by firing roughly half of the agency's workforce, a decision that teachers' unions and other champions of public education said would have devastating consequences for the nation's school system.
The department, now led by billionaire Linda McMahon, moved swiftly, terminating more than 1,300 federal workers on Tuesday including employees at the agency's student aid and civil rights offices.
Sheria Smith, president of AFGE Local 252, which represents Education Department workers, pledged in a statement to "fight these draconian cuts." The union told NPR minutes after the statement was issued that Smith, an attorney with the Education Department's Office for Civil Rights, was laid off.
The Education Department said the mass staffing cuts would affect "nearly 50%" of the agency's workforce and that those impacted "will be placed on administrative leave beginning Friday, March 21st."
In a press release, McMahon declared that the workforce cuts reflect the department's "commitment to efficiency, accountability, and ensuring that resources are directed where they matter most: to students, parents, and teachers."
But critics, including a union that represents more than 3 million education workers nationwide, said the firings underscore the Trump administration's commitment to gutting public education in the interest of billionaires pushing tax cuts and school privatization.
"Trump and Elon Musk have aimed their wrecking ball at public schools and the futures of the 50 million students in rural, suburban, and urban communities across America by dismantling public education to pay for tax handouts for billionaires," said Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association.
"The real victims will be our most vulnerable students," Pringle added. "Gutting the Department of Education will send class sizes soaring, cut job training programs, make higher education more expensive and out of reach for middle-class families, take away special education services for students with disabilities, and gut student civil rights protections."
"We will not sit by while billionaires like Elon Musk and Linda McMahon tear apart public services piece by piece."
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said in a statement that "denuding an agency so it cannot function effectively is the most cowardly way of dismantling it."
"The massive reduction in force at the Education Department is an attack on opportunity that will gut the agency and its ability to support students, throwing federal education programs into chaos across the country," she continued. "This move will directly impact the 90% of students who attend public schools by denying them the resources they need to thrive. That's why Americans squarely oppose eliminating the Education Department. We are urging Congress—and the courts—to step in to ensure all students can maintain access to a high-quality public education."
The Education Department purge came days after news broke that President Donald Trump was preparing an executive order aimed at completely shuttering the agency—a move that would legally require congressional approval.
Lee Saunders, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, said late Tuesday that the Education Department firings "are Project 2025 in action, and they have one goal—to make it easier for billionaires and anti-union extremists to give themselves massive tax breaks at the expense of working people."
"Today's announcement from the Department of Education is just the beginning of what's to come," Saunders warned. "These layoffs threaten the well-being and educational opportunities for millions of children across the country and those seeking higher education. The dedicated public service workers at public schools, colleges, and universities deserve better. Elections may have consequences, but we will not sit by while billionaires like Elon Musk and Linda McMahon tear apart public services piece by piece. We will keep speaking out and finding ways to fight back."
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'Truly Dystopian': Trump Administration Threatens Public Schools With Funding Cuts
A new Trump administration directive aims to "reduce our colleges and universities to the status of echo chambers, similar to those controlled by authoritarian states," warned PEN America.
Feb 16, 2025
Lawmakers and free expression groups voiced alarm Saturday after the Trump administration threatened to investigate and strip federal funding from public schools, including colleges and universities that don't comply with its broad interpretation of a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision striking down affirmative action programs in admissions.
In a letter to state education officials on Friday, Craig Trainor, the acting assistant secretary for civil rights at the U.S. Department of Education, wrote that the agency "intends to take appropriate measures to assess compliance with the applicable statutes and regulations based on the understanding embodied in this letter beginning no later than 14 days from today's date, including antidiscrimination requirements that are a condition of receiving federal funding."
"Institutions that fail to comply with federal civil rights law may, consistent with applicable law, face potential loss of federal funding," the letter states.
The letter takes aim at "DEI programs"—a right-wing boogeyman that the Trump administration has used as a pretext to rip apart federal agencies—and declares that the Education Department "will no longer tolerate the overt and covert racial discrimination that has become widespread in this nation's educational institutions," even as halts thousands of civil rights investigations.
PEN America warned that Trainor's sweeping directive "seeks to declare it a civil rights violation for educational institutions to engage in any diversity-related programming or to promote any diversity-related ideas—potentially including everything from a panel on the Civil Rights Movement to a Lunar New Year celebration."
"This declaration has no basis in law and is an affront to the freedom of speech and ideas in educational settings. It represents yet another twisting of civil rights law in an effort to demand ideological conformity by schools and universities," the group said in a statement Saturday. "To enact government interference in the intellectual life of such institutions is to end the United States' centuries-long history of intellectual freedom in educational settings, and to reduce our colleges and universities to the status of echo chambers, similar to those controlled by authoritarian states."
Brian Rosenberg, visiting professor of education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, told Inside Higher Ed that the letter was "truly dystopian."
"It goes well beyond the Supreme Court ruling on admissions and declares illegal a wide range of common practices," Rosenberg said. "In my career I've never seen language of this kind from any government agency in the United States."
"Republicans tell you they want to empower local communities and that states, schools, and parents know best, and again and again use top-down threats to achieve their culture war agenda."
The letter comes amid the Trump administration's broader assault on public education, including a push to abolish the Education Department altogether. That assault is expected to intensify if billionaire Linda McMahon, a proponent of school privatization, is confirmed as education secretary.
The Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency—which is currently rampaging through the Education Department and terminating contracts—posted Trainor's letter to X, the social media platform owned by Musk.
Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), a senior member of the Senate Education Committee, said Saturday that "this threat to rip away the federal funding our public K-12 schools and colleges receive flies in the face of the law."
"I hope no parent, student, or teacher is intimidated by these threats—this former preschool teacher certainly is not," said Murray. " While it's anyone's guess what falls under the Trump administration's definition of 'DEI,' there is simply no authority or basis for Trump to impose such a mandate. In fact, federal laws prohibit ANY president from telling schools and colleges what to teach, including the Every Student Succeeds Act, that I negotiated with Republicans."
"Rather than trying to make college more affordable or helping to improve our kids' outcomes, Trump is letting far-right extremists inject politics into the classroom at every turn," Murray added. "Republicans tell you they want to empower local communities and that states, schools, and parents know best, and again and again use top-down threats to achieve their culture war agenda."
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'A Win for the History Books': Brandon Johnson Defeats School Privatizer in Chicago
"Tonight is the beginning of a Chicago that truly invests in all of its people," Johnson said in his victory speech.
Apr 05, 2023
Progressive Cook County Commissioner Brandon Johnson defeated conservative Democrat and school privatizer Paul Vallas in Chicago's mayoral runoff on Tuesday, a victory he called a "gateway to a new future" for the nation's third-largest city.
"Tonight is the beginning of a Chicago that truly invests in all of its people," Johnson said in his victory speech, pledging to help usher in "a city that actually respects the workers who keep it running" and one "where public schools have the resources to meet the needs of every child."
Education policy quickly emerged as a central issue in the contest between Johnson and Vallas, which the progressive won with just over 51% of the vote.
A former public school teacher and longtime union organizer, Johnson vowed to prioritize investments in public education and oppose charter expansions—an agenda that couldn't have contrasted more sharply with that of Vallas, the former CEO of Chicago Public Schools and an ardent supporter of school privatization.
Vallas, whose campaign was backed by Republican donors and business interests, aggressively pursued school privatization schemes during his tenure as the head of school districts in Chicago, New Orleans, and Philadelphia—a record that Johnson's campaign spotlighted in an ad that aired this week as well as in debates ahead of Tuesday's vote.
"My opponent talks about school closures," Johnson said during one debate. "Well, he set up the market for schools to be closed. He got so good at it, he went around the country doing it."
Maurice Mitchell, national director of the Working Families Party, said in a statement late Tuesday that the Chicago runoff marks "a win for the history books."
"Brandon Johnson just defeated a deluge of far-right money and misinformation thanks to people power and his positive vision for a safe and thriving Chicago," Mitchell added. "Now comes the hard work of building a Chicago for the many, with strong schools, good jobs, and safe communities," Mitchell added. "We look forward to working with Brandon and the new class of Working Families alder members to reopen mental health clinics, pass universal childcare, and implement a local Green New Deal."
In contrast to Vallas, whose campaign was also backed by a super PAC with close ties to former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, the bulk of Johnson's support came from unions such as the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU).
"Make no mistake about it," Johnson said in his victory speech, "Chicago is a union town."
Stacy Davis Gates, president of the CTU, said in a statement that "today, Chicago has spoken."
"Chicago has said yes to hope; yes to investment in people; yes to housing the unhoused, and yes to supporting young people with fully-funded schools," said Gates. "It is a new day in our city."
AFT President Randi Weingarten called Johnson's win "a transformational moment" that "sends a message that efforts to exploit anxiety will not work in the face of a multiracial, multiethnic, multigenerational working-class movement standing together as one."
Johnson's upset win Tuesday capped off a remarkable rise for a progressive lawmaker who was polling at just over 3% in December. At that time, according to one survey, Vallas was polling at 19%.
In January, Chicago's outgoing mayor, Lori Lightfoot, brushed aside the CTU's endorsement of Johnson, saying: "Brandon Johnson isn't going to be the mayor of this city."
During his remarks Tuesday night, Johnson gave a nod toward those who dismissed his chances.
"They said this would never happen," he told a crowd of supporters. "If they didn't know, now they know."
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Ahead of Chicago Runoff, New Ad Spotlights 'Trail of Destruction' Left by Paul Vallas
"We've literally seen this man destroy public education, sadly for Black and Brown children," said one parent.
Apr 02, 2023
With Chicago's closely watched mayoral runoff just two days away, the campaign of progressive Cook County Commissioner Brandon Johnson debuted an ad on Sunday featuring expert and parent testimony on conservative candidate Paul Vallas' education record, including his stints managing school districts in Chicago, Philadelphia, and New Orleans.
The picture they painted was not flattering. One New Orleans parent, identified as Kevin G., said that "Paul Vallas has left a trail of destruction, everywhere he goes."
"We've literally seen this man destroy public education, sadly for Black and Brown children," he added.
Kendra Brooks, a Philadelphia parent and city councilmember, offered a similarly scathing assessment during her appearance in the ad, which the Johnson campaign said will air on broadcast and cable across Chicago until Tuesday's runoff.
"I think folks in Chicago should look at the destruction that he has left behind," said Brooks. "Money was being spent carelessly. Millions of dollars are missing, at the loss of Black and Brown communities."
Watch the two-minute spot:
Vallas' is an ardent school privatization advocate who served as CEO of Chicago Public Schools from 1995 to 2001 before moving on to head the School District of Philadelphia and the Recovery School District of Louisiana.
As The TRiiBE's Jim Daley wrote in a detailed examination of Vallas' record:
In each city, he opened charter schools, promoted military schools, and expanded standardized testing and zero-tolerance disciplinary policies. He also ran school districts in Haiti and Chile between 2010 and 2012...
Under Vallas' tenure, Philadelphia underwent what was then the largest privatization of a public school system anywhere in the country. He opened 15 new charter schools over the protests of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, who called for a moratorium on new charters in 2006.
In New Orleans, Daley continued, Vallas "immediately set to work opening more charter schools, and the trend continued after he left."
"New Orleans is now the only city in America with a school district that is entirely made up of charters," Daley noted, "something Vallas also took credit for: he wrote that he 'implemented reforms that created the nation's first 100% parental choice district, with all schools public, non-selective, and nonprofit.'"
Reshansa W., a New Orleans parent and education policy expert featured in Johnson's new ad, said that "everything about education in New Orleans is suffering" due to Vallas' reforms.
"It decimated our middle class," Reshansa added. "He wasn't right for New Orleans. He wasn't right for Philly. He will not be right for Chicago."
The contrasts between Vallas and Johnson on education policy have become central to the April 4 contest—which, if polling is any guide, is set to be razor-close.
Despite mounting criticism of his record, Vallas has pledged to expand charter schools if elected mayor—a promise that may help explain why a super PAC with ties to school privatization zealot Betsy DeVos recently spent $60,000 in support of his campaign.
Vallas' campaign is also backed by rich investors—a class he catered to during his tenure as CEO of Chicago Public Schools.
Johnson, a former public school teacher and organizer with the Chicago Teachers Union, has pledged to prioritize strengthening Chicago's public schools, which have long been badly underfunded.
ChalkBeat Chicago reported late last month that "if voters pick Johnson, his election would be the crowning achievement in a decade-long grassroots battle waged by the Chicago Teachers Union against mayoral control and many of the controversial policies that came with it, like school closures and charter expansion."
"Johnson opposes adding charter schools and closing small district schools, of which Chicago has a growing number," the outlet noted. "Johnson has talked about getting state lawmakers to ramp up funding increases to the state’s funding formula so Chicago and all districts get to so-called 'adequate funding' more quickly. He—and district officials—have also suggested pushing the state to kick in more for Chicago teachers' pensions, which have been underfunded since the mid- to late-2000s."
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DeVos-Tied PAC Spends $60,000 in Support of Chicago School Privatizer Paul Vallas
"Chicago voters should know that DeVos supports Vallas' candidacy, and that there is no daylight between DeVos and Vallas' education agendas," said Illinois Families for Public Schools.
Mar 30, 2023
A super PAC with close ties to former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos—one of the nation's most fervent supporters of school privatization—has taken an interest in Chicago's April 4 mayoral runoff, spending nearly $60,000 in support of notorious school privatizer Paul Vallas as the contest heads into its final stretch.
Vallas, a right-wing Democrat who previously served as the head of Chicago Public Schools (CPS), is taking on Cook County Commissioner Brandon Johnson, a longtime educator and public school champion whose campaign has been endorsed by prominent national progressives including Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).
The Illinois Federation for Children PAC, which is bankrolled by the DeVos-backed American Federation for Children Action Fund, recently spent $59,385 on digital media supporting Vallas, according to new campaign finance disclosures.
The Illinois super PAC's bare-bones website states that "families should have the choice to enroll their children in the best school to meet their needs, whether it’s a district-assigned public school, homeschool, public charter, private, virtual, or blended-learning school," adding that "this election cycle will be one of the most important in the history of Illinois' school choice movement."
The group has received $465,000 from the American Federation for Children Action Fund, including a recent donation of $65,000. (The American Federation for Children Action Fund is an affiliate of the DeVos-founded American Federation for Children.)
Spotlighting the super PAC's outlay in Chicago's mayoral race, the advocacy group Illinois Families for Public Schools (IFPS) said in a statement that while "DeVos has not endorsed Vallas, Vallas' education plans for Chicago's school system are directly aligned with the DeVos agenda of school privatization, one she supported as secretary of education and promotes through her national network of advocacy organizations and PACs: defunding and dismantling public school systems and redirecting public funds via programs like vouchers to private schools."
"Vallas voices his support for 'a reconstituted system in which parents get to direct the per-pupil public dollars to the school (or education model) of their choosing'... The education platform on Vallas' website calls for 'dismantling the central administration' of CPS," the group continued. "These are exactly the policy goals that DeVos and American Federation for Children are advocating for: 'fund students not systems' and 'dollars must follow students.'"
"As secretary of education, DeVos' education policies were harmful to public schools on a national scale," IFPS added. "Chicago voters should know that DeVos supports Vallas' candidacy, and that there is no daylight between DeVos and Vallas' education agendas."
Johnson, by contrast, has pledged to strengthen Chicago's underfunded public schools. The progressive candidate's top donors are the Chicago Teachers Union PAC and the American Federation of Teachers' Committee on Political Education.
The Illinois Federation for Children PAC's intervention in Chicago's mayoral race is part of a broader assault on public education financed in part by DeVos, a billionaire who has used her fortune to erode public education in her home state of Michigan and nationwide.
NBC News reported Thursday that DeVos' American Federation for Children "poured about $9 million into state elections last year, backing nearly 200 candidates."
"Now, some of those candidates are pushing a wave of legislation boosting DeVos' longtime goal: subsidizing private schools with public dollars," the outlet continued. "Using at least $2.5 million from DeVos and her husband, the American Federation for Children has played a pivotal role in getting what supporters call 'school choice' policies passed into law in at least three states and introduced in several more."
The American Federation for Children's board includes infamous political figures such as former Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and former Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), both of whom are outspoken supporters of school privatization.
Lieberman—a former Democrat-turned-Independent who is widely reviled by progressives for his role in tanking the prospects of a public option in healthcare more than a decade ago—introduced DeVos at her Senate confirmation hearing in 2017, praising the Trump nominee as a "purpose-driven team builder."
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Rejecting Lightfoot, Chicago Picks Progressive to Face School Privatizer in Mayoral Runoff
Progressive Brandon Johnson will take on conservative Democratic candidate Paul Vallas, who one advocacy group said "has never come across a public school he didn't want to gut."
Mar 01, 2023
Chicago voters rejected Democratic Mayor Lori Lightfoot's bid for a second term on Tuesday, elevating progressive Cook County Commissioner Brandon Johnson to face conservative candidate Paul Vallas—an ardent school privatization advocate—in an April 4 runoff.
Johnson, a longtime educator and organizer, advanced to the runoff with roughly 20% of the vote after a grassroots campaign centered on expanding resources for Chicago's public schools and taxing the rich to boost affordable housing, public transportation, healthcare, and other priorities.
"Today, we are on the verge of creating a new Chicago," Stacy Davis Gates, president of the Chicago Teachers Union, said in a statement applauding Johnson's campaign. "It's a Chicago for the many, not the few—a city where the unhoused can access affordable and sustainable housing, where our public schools are fully funded and provide the support students need, and where our young people can play in safe, welcoming, and thriving communities."
Vallas, though, is seen as the frontrunner, having received 34% of the vote on Tuesday in his second bid for mayor.
U.S. Rep. Chuy Garcia (D-Ill.) received less than 14% of the vote in Tuesday's contest, under Lightfoot's 17%.
The former CEO of Chicago Public Schools, Vallas is a longtime proponent of school privatization, having expanded charter schools and other privatization schemes in his home city as well as in Philadelphia and post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans.
Far from shying away from his record—which has drawn vocal criticism from lawmakers and officials from the areas where he's attacked public schools—Vallas has pledged to build on it if elected mayor of Chicago.
Maurice Mitchell, national director of the Working Families Party—which is backing Johnson—said late Tuesday that "the contrast in this runoff could not be clearer."
"In one corner, we have a classroom teacher and union organizer with deep community roots," said Mitchell. "In the other corner, we have conservative Paul Vallas, who is backed by the Trump-supporting Fraternal Order of Police and has never come across a public school he didn't want to gut."
Following Tuesday's vote, Johnson—who has described his opponent's approach to education as "morally bankrupt"—tweeted that "if tonight is proof of anything, it's proof that anything is possible."
"It's proof that we can build a Chicago as big and generous as its promise," he continued. "And it's proof that City Hall can truly belong to the people. Tonight is just the beginning. Thank you, Chicago."
To defeat Vallas, Johnson will have to overcome a likely torrent of opposition spending from dark money organizations that have taken an interest in the race to lead the United States' third-largest city.
As the Chicago Tribune reported last month, groups spent "hundreds of thousands of dollars in the final weeks of the race for mayor" while "hiding where that money is coming from."
One dark money organization, the Chicago Leadership Committee, has "spent more than $165,000 on TV and digital ads for Vallas' mayoral bid," the Tribune reported.
"There's no question even more dark money will flood this election in the coming weeks," Mitchell warned. "The right wing sees our movement gaining momentum and will do everything possible to stop us. But tonight is more proof that organized people can beat organized money. Brandon Johnson has always had the backs of working families, and in April, we'll have his."
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After Over 4 Decades of Failure, Time to Ban This High-Stakes Standardized Testing Regime
If these standardized tests were going to work as all their backers claimed, they would have done so by now
Apr 09, 2022
Standardized tests were supposed to be the magic remedy to fix our public schools.
They were supposed to make all students proficient in reading and math.
They were supposed to ensure all students were getting the proper resources.
They were supposed to ensure all teachers were doing their best for their students.
But after more than four decades, standardized tests have not fulfilled a single one of these promises.
In fact, all they've done is make things worse at public schools while creating a lucrative market for testing companies and school privatization concerns.
So why haven't we gotten rid of them?
To answer that question, we have to understand how we got here in the first place - where these kinds of assessments came from in the US and how they became the guiding policy of our public schools.
Standardized testing has been around in this country since the 1920s.
It was the product of the pseudoscientific eugenicist movement that tried to justify white supremacy with bad logic and biased premises.
Psychologists Robert Yerkes and Carl Brigham invented these assessments to justify privileging upper-class whites over lower class immigrants, Blacks and Hispanics. That was always the goal and they tailored their tests to find that result.
From the very start, it had serious consequences for public policy. The results were used to rationalize the forced sterilization of 60,000 to 70,000 people from groups with low test scores, thus preventing them from "polluting" the gene pool.
However, Brigham's greatest claim to fame was the creation of the Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT) to keep such undesirables out of higher education. These tests were not central to school curriculum and mainly used as gatekeepers with the SAT in particular still in wide use today.
The problem then - as now - is that standardized tests aren't very good assessments. They work okay for really simple things like rudimentary math. However, the more complex a skill you're assessing, the more inadequate the tests. For example, imagine just trying to have a conversation with someone where your only choices of reply were limited to four canned responses. That's a multiple-choice assessment. The result is a testing system that selects against the poor and minorities. At best, it reproduces the economic and racial disparities of society. At worst, it ensures those disparities will continue into the next generation.
That isn't to say the system went unchallenged. By the 1960s, the junk science and leaps of logic behind standardized testing were obvious and people began fighting back in court. Black plaintiffs began winning innumerable lawsuits against the testing industry.
Perhaps the most famous case is Hobson v. Hansen in 1967, which was filed on behalf of a group of Black students in Washington, DC. The court ruled that the policy of using tests to assign students to tracks was racially biased because the tests were standardized to a White, middleclass group.
Nevertheless, just as the tests were beginning to disappear, radical economists like Milton Friedman saw them as an opportunity to push their own personal agenda. More than anything, these extreme capitalists wanted to do away with almost all public services - especially public schools. They hoped the assessments could be repurposed to undermine these institutions and usher in an era of private education through measures like school vouchers.
So in the 1980s, the Reagan administration published "A Nation at Risk," a campfire tale about how America's public schools were failing. Thus, the authors argued we needed standardized testing to make American children competitive in a global marketplace.
However, the report, which examined test scores from the past 20 years, was misleading and full of statistical and mathematical errors.
For instance, it concluded that average student test scores had decreased but didn't take into account that scores had actually increased in every demographic group. It compared two decades worth of test scores, but failed to mention that more students took the test at the end of that period than at the beginning, and many of the newer students were disadvantaged. In other words, it compared test scores between an unrepresentative group at the beginning of the comparison with a more representative group at the end and concluded that these oranges were nothing like the apples they started with. Well, duh.
Most people weren't convinced by the disaster capitalism at work here, but the report marks a significant moment in the standardization movement. In fact, this is really where our modern era began.
Slowly governors and state legislators began drinking the Kool-aide and mandating standardized testing in schools along with corporate-written academic standards the tests were supposed to assess. It wasn't everywhere, but the model for test-and-punish was in place.
It took an additional two decades, until 2001, for President George W. Bush's No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation to require standardized testing in ALL public schools.
With bipartisan support, Bush tied federal funding of schools to standardized test performance and annual academic progress. And from then on, the die was cast. This policy has been upheld through both Republican and Democratic regimes.
In fact, standardized testing intensified under President Barack Obama and was continued with few changes by Donald Trump and even Joe Biden. Far from changing course, Biden broke a campaign promise to discontinue the tests. Once in office, he thought testing was so important that he forced schools to give the assessments during the Covid-19 pandemic when districts had trouble even keeping school buildings open.
And that brings us to today.
From the 1980s to 2022 we've had wide scale standardized testing in our schools. That's roughly 40 years where the entirety of what is done in public school has been organized around these assessments. They drive the curriculum and are the ultimate benchmark by which success or failure is judged. If this policy was ever going to work, it would have done so by now.
However, it has achieved NONE of its stated goals.
NCLB specifically stated that all children would be proficient in reading and math by 2014. That has not happened. Despite spending billions of dollars on remediation and completely reorganizing our schools around the assessments, test scores have remained mostly static or even decreased.
The law also justified its existence with claims to equity. Somehow taking resources away from districts with low test scores was supposed to increase funding at the neediest schools. Unsurprisingly this did not happen. All it did was further increase the funding gap between rich and poor schools and between wealthy and disadvantaged students.
NCLB also championed the idea that competing for test scores would result in better teachers. However, that didn't happen either. Instead, educators were forced to narrow the curriculum to cover mostly what was assessed, reduce creativity and critical thinking, and teachers who served poor and minority students were even punished for doing so.
If the purpose of standardized testing was all the things the law purported, then it was a decades long failure. It is the policy equivalent of slamming your head into a wall repeatedly and wondering why you aren't moving forward. (And where did this headache come from?)
If, however, the purpose of standardized testing was to fulfill Friedman's privatization dreams, then it was a resounding success. Public schools still persist, but they have been drained, weakened and in many ways subverted.
Look at the evidence.
Standardized testing has grown from a $423 million industry before 2001 to a multi-billion dollar one today. If we add in test prep, new text books, software, and consultancy, that figure easily tops the trillion dollar mark.
Huge corporations make the tests, grade the tests and then sell remediation materials when students fail. It's a huge scam.
But that's not the only business created by this policy. Test and punish opened entirely new markets that hadn't existed before. The emphasis on test scores and the "failing schools" narrative stoked unwarranted distrust in the public school system and a demand for more privatized alternatives.
Chief among these was charter schools.
The first charter school law was passed in 1991 in Minnesota. It allowed for the creation of new schools that would have special agreements (or charters) with states or districts to run without having to abide by all the usual regulations. Thus, the school could go without an elected board, pocket public money as private profit, etc. The bill was quickly copied and spread to legislatures across the country by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).
Today, there are charter schools in 43 states and the District of Columbia educating nearly three million students. Charter schools enroll about 6% of the students in the country.
However, charter schools are rife with fraud and malfeasance. For instance, more than a quarter of charter schools close within 5 years of opening. By year 15, roughly 50% of charter schools close. That's not a stable model of public education. It's a get rich quick scheme. And since these types of schools are free from the kinds of regulations, democratic governance and/or transparency that keeps authentic public schools in check, another charter school scandal pops up almost every day.
But let's not forget school vouchers. Before high stakes testing, the idea of using public money to pay for private or parochial schools was widely considered unconstitutional. Now about 4% of US students go to private and parochial schools some of which are funded with school vouchers. This is an option in 32 states and the District of Columbia, and more than 600,000 students participated in a voucher, scholarship tax credit or education savings account program last school year, according to EdChoice, a pro-voucher and school choice group.
There is little evidence that school vouchers actually improve student performance, however, and there's even evidence that students who receive vouchers to attend private schools may do worse on tests than they would have if they had stayed in authentic public schools.
Moreover, the cost of attending one of these private or parochial schools isn't completely covered by the voucher. On average, vouchers offer about $4,600 a year, according to American Federation for Children, which supports voucher programs. The average annual cost of tuition at a private K-12 school nationwide is $12,350, according to Educationdata.org, though that can be much more expensive in some states. In Connecticut, for example, the average tuition is almost $24,000. So vouchers only REDUCE the cost of attending private or parochial schools for a few kids while siphoning away tax dollars that should go to educating all kids.
In short, they're subsidies for wealthier kids at the expense of the middle class and disadvantaged.
Without standardized testing, it is impossible to imagine such an increase in privatization.
High stakes testing is a Trojan horse. It is a way to secretly undermine and weaken public schools so that testing corporations, charter schools and voucher schools can thrive.
Judged by its own metrics of success, standardized testing is an abject failure. Judged by the metric of business and school privatization it is a rousing success.
And that's why it has been so hard to discontinue.
This is corporate welfare at its finest, and the people getting rich off our tax dollars won't allow us to turn off the flow of funding without a fight.
On the right, policymakers are often boldly honest about their goals to bolster privatization over public schools. On the left, policymakers still cling to the failed measures of success testing has not been able to meet time-and-again.
However, both groups support the same system. They only give different reasons.
It is past time to wake up and smell the flowers.
If we want to ensure education dollars go to education and not profiteers, we need to end standardized testing.
& If we want to help students learn to the best of their abilities, we need to stop gaslighting them with faulty measures of success or failure.
If we want to allow teachers to do the best for their students, we need to stop holding them back with antiquated eugenicist shackles.
And if we truly want to save our public school system, we have to stop propping up privatization.
In short, we need to end standardized testing.
The sooner, the better.
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As the School Year Ends, Public Education is in Doubt
School is out for the summer, and kids are overjoyed. But across the country, the future of public education is in serious jeopardy.
Where will public schools be in a year?
Jun 22, 2015
School is out for the summer, and kids are overjoyed. But across the country, the future of public education is in serious jeopardy.
Where will public schools be in a year?
Here is a quick primer on some of the key issues that relate to the fundamental question: Will America maintain or destroy that most basic democratic institution, the public school?
Are Public Schools "Failing"?
The idea that public schools have "failed" and that private market solutions are the answer to this problem is the heart of a campaign promoted by rightwing foundations, particularly the Bradley Foundation, over the last 30 years.
Recent cuts in school budgets by Bradley-supported politicians, including Wisconsin's Scott Walker, is creating more "failure."
As Wisconsin Public Education Network director Heather DuBois Bourenane observes, "The entire myth of the "failing school" depends on a refusal to acknowledge the ways that poverty impacts local communities, and how austerity policies and years of underfunding have led to the crises we see now."
New reports show that most states continue to put less money into public schools than they did before the recession, and about half put less money into schools that serve low-income students than schools that serve the wealthy.
"We can point to countless success stories of districts that adopted community schools models or established practices that help meet the needs of the whole child (with wrap-around services, peer tutoring, family-focused resources, etc.) Bourenane adds.
"Many of the schools labeled as "failing," in fact, can produce evidence of enormously successful programming and gains in student growth, but might not rank highly when standardized test scores are the primary criteria for success of their vulnerable student populations."
Opt-Out Meets #BlackLivesMatter
This year, the nationwide movement to opt out of standardized tests grew to become a massive phenomenon--especially on the East Coast. One in six students in New York refused to take standardized tests in 2015, The New York Times reports, "more than double and possibly triple the number who did so in 2014."
When large numbers of New York students were labeled "not proficient" on statewide tests--including kids in well funded suburban schools--a massive walkout ensued. Parents rebelled against a plan to tie teacher evaluations to test scores, and the threat of labeling schools as "failing" based on new, tougher standards.
Education Secretary Arne Duncan has derided parents whose kids opt out of standardized tests as a bunch of "white suburban moms who -- all of a sudden -- their child isn't as brilliant as they thought they were, and their school isn't quite as good as they thought."
But a broad and diverse opt-out movement is picking up steam all across the country. "We've had requests from all fifty states for our opt-out guides," says United Opt-Out co-founder Tim Slekar.
In Seattle, teacher-author Jesse Hagopian, who helped organize the successful MAPS test boycott at Seattle's Garfield High School, is leading a multiracial coalition of parents, teachers, local civil rights groups, and students who see the stripped-down, test-focused education as bad for all kids--including low-income kids and kids of color.
That's a big deal, because national civil rights groups have taken a position against opt-out, on the theory that kids of color need standardized tests to determine whether schools are failing kids who have been underserved.
Jesse Hagopian articulates a different view:
"The idea that our school system implements standardized testing in the early grades to make students "career and college ready" (in the language of the Common Core standards) is an utter absurdity--especially when you consider that one of the most popular career choices for a 5-year-old is being Spider Man."
"And yet high-stakes are attached to the the MAP test--already in kindergarten!--using it as an arbitrator of who will be placed on the advanced track," Hagopian writes.
"[T]he Opt Out movement is a vital component of the Black Lives Matter movement and other struggles for social justice in our region," adds Gerald Hankerson of the Seattle/King County NAACP. "Using standardized tests to label Black people and immigrants 'lesser,' while systematically under-funding their schools, has a long and ugly history in this country,"
Since standardized tests have been used to label students, teachers, and schools as "failing," and to trigger the take-over of public schools by private operators, the opt-out movement is focused on taking back local, democratic control of the schools.
As Slekar puts it: "We are not an anti-testing movement, we are a revolutionary movement against the corporate takeover of education."
Common Core Bait and Switch
As education writer and Public School Shakedown contributor Jeff Bryant writes, Common Core has become a toxic issue for Republican presidential candidates thanks to Tea Party opposition. Chris Christie is the latest candidate to turn his back on the national standards he once supported.
Democrats, on the other hand, have been busy mounting a dubious defense of Common Core, Bryant points out. But the issue of the standards themselves is a big distraction.
The real question on Common Core is not whether national educational standards are a socialist plot, as the Republican base seems to think, or whether they are doing wonders for kids, as the Democrats claim, with little real evidence. The real question is whether public education for all kids, especially poor kids, is adequately supported.
It doesn't help when assessments tied to the Common Core are used to label schools as "failing," fire teachers, shut down schools, and hand them over to private charter-school operators.
This test-and-punish approach, not the national standards, is the real threat to public education.
Charter Schools: From Good to Bad
This year marked the beginning of the great unraveling of the for-profit mass charter movement.
There were the financial scandals: We learned that Ohio poured millions into charter schools that don't exist. Across the country, there was story after story about charter school waste, fraud, and abuse.
And then there was the failure to produce results: in New Orleans, data show that the big claims about improved outcomes in a school district that went all-charter right after Katrina don't hold water.
Given these terrible results, Jeff Bryant has called for a national moratorium on charter schools.
Charter schools were first conceived decades ago as a progressive education innovation. Small, alternative schools, schools for the arts, and language immersion schools flourished and provided experimental models that traditional public schools could adopt.
But big charter-school chains like Rocketship have taken over in urban areas including Milwaukee and Washington, DC, and lobbied for new laws that exempt them from school-board oversight, as they drain public education dollars out of local districts.
Governor Andrew Cuomo has proposed taking away the cap on private charter schools for the entire state of New York, selling charters as the solution to "failing" public schools.
That plan ran into a major speed bump in New York, when parents rejected the idea that their children had suddenly become a lot less smart, and have not been eager to embrace the charter school "solution".
"It's really shock doctrine--where blow something up and then come in and say we need to fix this," Slekar says about the combination of tests that show mass "failure" and the charter-school expansion.
Nowhere is this more evident than in New Orleans, the nation's first all-charter school district, which just happens to be hosting the National Charter Schools conference next week. Stay tuned for more reporting from the Progressive on that.
Vouchers
School vouchers started in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 25 years ago as a "ticket out" for poor kids who could use the money spent to educate them in public school to attend private schools.
Today, a new sector of cheap, fly-by-night academies has popped up to take advantage of school vouchers.
Despite poor results, Republicans in Wisconsin have expanded the voucher program statewide, and the school voucher concept has spread to thirteen states and Washington, DC.
More than 75 percent of new voucher recipients are families that never sent their kids to public schools. School vouchers drain money from the public school system to provide a straight subsidy for private school parents who get a break on tuition.
I wrote about the shocking state of Milwaukee's voucher schools in crumbling office buildings, strip malls, and former car dealerships last year
I watched an eighth-grade science class learning creationism, and observed a school where kids are learning the Bob Jones curriculum.
An anti-intellectual current is part of the attack on schools.
Last fall, in Colorado, students walked out of Jefferson County schools over a rightwing revision of the AP history curriculum.
Attacks on teachers and schools
Likewise, the attacks on teachers we've seen from the likes of Chris Christie, Scott Walker, and Bobby Jindal draw on a deep strain of cultural antipathy toward education. Whether they are busting teachers unions, replacing professional teachers with Teach for America volunteers, or doing away with certification requirements so anyone can teach, there is a concerted attack on this female-dominated profession.
Defending Schools Drives Electoral Victories
One year ago, Ras Baraka, a high school principal and member of the Newark City Council, won election as mayor of Newark despite massive opposition from Chris Christie and the hedge fund managers and corporate education "reformers" who want to turn over more public schools to corporate charter school chains. On her blog, Diane Ravich quoted supporters who called it "the most important election in the nation regarding the future of public education."
This year, the Los Angeles school board elections pitted charter-school advocates against public-school proponents, and the results were mixed in the school district with the nation's largest number of charter-school students. "The billionaires dropped a few million into the L.A. race, principally to defeat [public-school defender] Bennett Kayser," Diane Ravitch pointed out. They succeeded in replacing him with charter founder Ref Rodriguez, but charter proponent Tamar Galatzan also lost her seat to a retired public school teacher.
Tom Wolf beat Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett in a race that focused on Corbett's failed educational "reforms." The new state budget in Pennsylvania includes more funding for schools that serve the neediest kids. Wolf has also signaled that he is ready to to end Pennsylvania's charter-school expansion.
In the California race for state schools chief, Tom Torlakson beat Marshall Tuck despte millions of dollars in support for Tuck from the charter school industry.
Now what?
In 2016, one of the biggest national political questions in the presidential election was what to do about public schools.
Will the rightwing assault on education succeeed, based on decades of propaganda funded by the Bradley foundation to spread the message that "public schools have failed"?
Or will Democrats and Republicans alike take a stand for public education?
A lot will depend on how much pressure a growing pro-public-school movement can put on the candidates.
All across the country, there are real signs of hope.
Superintendents, school boards, and administrators of local public schools have been writing letters and testifying against the privatization and defunding of public education.
Parents are engaged as never before.
Communities, from urban mostly black and brown districts to conservative, rural areas, are rising up against budget cuts and the threat of school closures.
"It's not too late," one impassioned letter from a group of school superintendents declared, urging citizens to stand up and resist the defunding of public schools and their privatization.
Let's hope they are right.
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