Over at The Education Report, I note that vouchers are not just a problem in Tennessee, they may soon be a national disaster:
From Arizona to DC, the agenda is becoming increasingly clear: privatizers are after our public schools, and they’re aiming to totally dismantle public education, replacing it with an unaccountable, voucherized, for-profit free-for-all that will undermine quality education for generations.
House Republicans are not only busy cutting Medicaid, but also working on dismantling American public education while giving the very wealthy a nice tax break.
Yes, a national school voucher scam – supported by President Trump and backed by his former Education Secretary, Betsy DeVos – is taking shape as part of the current budget wrangling.
Here’s what one group that analyzed the bill said:
“. . . we estimate that this tax avoidance maneuver would deprive the federal government and state governments of more than $2 billion in capital gains tax revenue over the next decade. This would come on top of the roughly $21.5 billion cost of the tax credit itself, bringing the net total revenue loss to over $23.6 billion.“
If you wanted to undermine public education – even in states like Kentucky with no vouchers or charter schools – this would be the way to do it.
As an example, Tennessee public school districts are estimated to lose more than $50 million in state investment in year one of the state’s new, universal school voucher scheme.
Yes, getting rid of or partially dismantling or otherwise destroying the core functions of the U.S. Department of Education is bad.
Also bad: A national school voucher scam. But, of course, that’s just what Donald Trump wants:
Josh Cowen, in his newsletter for Public Funds for Public Schools, highlighted the voucher threat:
Finally, we’re all still waiting to see what happens with the so-called Educational Choice for Children Act (ECCA)—aka the tax shelter for the wealthy that’s also a federal voucher scheme intended to ram vouchers into every state—even those that don’t want it. Those of us with our ear to the ground have heard conflicting things: maybe it will make it into the federal reconciliation process (where it would need only a simple GOP majority to pass) or maybe it’ll come up for a vote later in the year. One thing we know is that Betsy DeVos’s group is continuing to make this a top priority, so it’s something to keep monitoring closely.
