[net-gold] EDUCATION: K-12: FUNDING : EDUCATION: K-12: PRIVATE SCHOOLS : GOVERNMENT: FUNDING : UNITED STATES: GOVERNMENT: Public Money Finds Back Door to Private Schools
- From: "David P. Dillard" <jwne@xxxxxxxxxx>
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- Date: Wed, 23 May 2012 17:43:43 -0400 (EDT)
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EDUCATION: K-12: FUNDING :
EDUCATION: K-12: PRIVATE SCHOOLS :
GOVERNMENT: FUNDING :
UNITED STATES: GOVERNMENT:
Public Money Finds Back Door to Private Schools
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Public Money Finds Back Door to Private Schools
May 22, 2012 1:04 pm
By STEPHANIE SAUL
The New York Times
Pittsburgh Post Gazette
http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/news/education/
public-money-finds-back-door-to-private-schools-637038/
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A shorter URL for the above link:
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http://tinyurl.com/ckayqju
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When the Georgia legislature passed a private school scholarship program
in 2008, lawmakers promoted it as a way to give poor children the same
education choices as the wealthy.
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The program would be supported by donations to nonprofit scholarship
groups, and Georgians who contributed would receive dollar-for-dollar tax
credits, up to $2,500 a couple. The intent was that money otherwise due to
the Georgia treasury -- about $50 million a year -- would be used instead
to help needy students escape struggling public schools.
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That was the idea, at least. But parents meeting at Gwinnett Christian
Academy got a completely different story last year.
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"A very small percentage of that money will be set aside for a needs-based
scholarship fund," Wyatt Bozeman, an administrator at the school near
Atlanta, said during an informational session. "The rest of the money will
be channeled to the family that raised it."
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A handout circulated at the meeting instructed families to donate, qualify
for a tax credit and then apply for a scholarship for their own children,
many of whom were already attending the school.
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"If a student has friends, relatives or even corporations that pay Georgia
income tax, all of those people can make a donation to that child's
school," added an official with a scholarship group working with the
school.
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The exchange at Gwinnett Christian Academy, a recording of which was
obtained by The New York Times, is just one example of how scholarship
programs have been twisted to benefit private schools at the expense of
the neediest children.
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Spreading at a time of deep cutbacks in public schools, the programs are
operating in eight states and represent one of the fastest-growing
components of the school choice movement. This school year alone, the
programs redirected nearly $350 million that would have gone into public
budgets to pay for private school scholarships for 129,000 students,
according to the Alliance for School Choice, an advocacy organization.
Legislators in at least nine other states are considering the programs.
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While the scholarship programs have helped many children whose parents
would have to scrimp or work several jobs to send them to private schools,
the money has also been used to attract star football players, expand the
payrolls of the nonprofit scholarship groups and spread the theology of
creationism, interviews and documents show. Even some private school
parents and administrators have questioned whether the programs are a
charade.
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Most of the private schools are religious. Nearly a quarter of the
participating schools in Georgia require families to make a profession of
religious faith, according to their Web sites. Many of those schools
adhere to a fundamentalist brand of Christianity. A commonly used
sixth-grade science text retells the creation story contained in Genesis,
omitting any other explanation. An economics book used in some high
schools holds that the Antichrist -- a world ruler predicted in the New
Testament -- will one day control what is bought and sold.
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snip
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Public school officials view the tax credits as poorly disguised state
subsidies, part of an expanding agenda to shift tax dollars away from
traditional public schools. "Our position is that this is a shell game,"
said Chris Thomas, general counsel for the Arizona School Boards
Association.
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snip
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For school choice advocates, the genius of the program was that the money
would never go into public accounts, making it less susceptible to court
challenges. Representative Trent Franks, an Arizona Republican and former
state lawmaker, is credited with the idea of routing the donations through
nonprofit organizations. "The teachers' union called it fiendishly
clever," Mr. Franks said during a recent interview.
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"The difficulty of getting at this thing from a constitutional point of
view is that there are private dollars coming from a private individual
and going to a private foundation. It drives the N.E.A. completely off the
wall because they can't say this is government funding," Mr. Franks said,
referring to the National Education Association.
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Kevin Welner, a professor of education at the University of Colorado,
Boulder, who wrote a book on the tax-credit programs, dubbed them
"neovouchers."
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As predicted, tax credits have thus far withstood legal challenges, most
recently when the Supreme Court upheld Arizona's program last year. It had
been challenged on the grounds that it violated the Establishment Clause
of the First Amendment, which prohibits government endorsement of
religion.
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snip
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One big proponent of the tax-credit programs is the American Legislative
Exchange Council, a coalition of conservative lawmakers and corporations
that strongly influences many state legislatures. The council became a
flash point in the Trayvon Martin case because it had championed the
controversial Stand Your Ground gun laws.
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"ALEC is a huge player in pushing forward a conservative agenda based on
the premise that the free market and private sectors address social
problems better than the government," said Julie Underwood, dean of the
school of education at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, who has been
critical of ALEC's education agenda.
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The complete article may be read at the URL above.
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Sincerely,
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Temple University
(215) 204 - 4584
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