Seven Days Of Deception: TGIF, ‘School Choice Week’ Is Just About Over

[Adsos Letter]

Source:
Wall of Separation
Feb 1, 2013
by Joseph L. Conn

“National School Choice Week” is winding down, and we’ve been treated to an avalanche of propaganda for vouchers, neo-vouchers and other expressions of so-called “educational choice.”

It’s all a lie, of course. This is not about “choice.” It’s about funding religious and other private schools with taxpayer dollars and ultimately destroying the public school system.

If you think the Heritage Foundation, the Koch Brothers and Betsy DeVos are in this just to help to some poor kid in the inner city, they’ve got a privatized bridge in Brooklyn they want to sell you.

Fortunately, Americans United and other advocates of public schools and church-state separation have been spreading an alternative message: School vouchers are a constitutional and public policy disaster.

https://www.au.org/blogs/wall-of-separation/seven-days-of-deception-tgif-school-choice-week-is-just-about-over

AU is currently running a contribution drive, for those so inclined.

[cbayer]

1. Good for them - glad to see that this is one of their issues.

This horse is way out of the barn and it's going to take a monumental effort to get it back in.

[bluestateguy]

2. I'm all for school choice, as long as it is not subsidized by the government

You want to go to a private school? Go ahead. You find a way to pay for it without my tax dollars.

You want to go to the public school of your choice, again, I say fine, but it should not be the state's responsibility to transport you to and from school.

[Adsos Letter]

9. An attorney representing opponents to a Colorado voucher program agrees

An attorney representing opponents to a Douglas County, Colorado, voucher program agrees with your sentiment, as do I:

Matt Douglas, one of two attorneys who argued the voucher opponents' side, said no one was challenging parents' right to choose a private or religious school for their child.

Their contention, Douglas said, "is that there is no fundamental right to have the state and its taxpayers fund those choices."

Source:
denverpost.com
"Douglas County school voucher program has day in appeals court"
11/19/2012
By Karen Auge
The Denver Post
http://www.denverpost.com/breakingnews/ci_22029206/dougco-school-voucher-program-has-day-appeals-court

In the same article, the author goes on to point out the significance of the current challenge to this voucher program:

The case's final outcome will have wide-ranging implications. Typically, vouchers have been used mainly in urban areas to improve educational opportunities for poorer students. Douglas County's Choice Scholarship Program, unanimously approved by the school board in March, 2011, would have been among the first to offer vouchers in a very affluent, high-achieving school district.

I've not seen whether the court has decided on this one yet.

[bluestateguy]

13. Here here

People also forget that if the private schools can start getting government vouchers, that gives them an incentive to raise tuition even more. Indeed, some private schools do this for the explicit reason of wanting to keep the poor and minority "riff raff" out.

[dballance]

3. It's Such a Horrible Disservice to the Kids

Not all of those kids going to the private voucher-supported schools and religious schools that teach creationism and question evolution are going to go to college at Bob Jones University or Regents University. So when they get to a real college that assumes they have a real education in science rather than the fantasy-land science education they're getting they will automatically be behind students educated in real schools and they will be at a disadvantage. Especially if they've become such ardent believers through the indoctrination they endured they challenge their professors on things like evolution that are very much accepted as fact outside those backwards religious and vouchered schools. They will most certainly not receive good grades on exam questions in science classes if they spew things like the earth is only 6,000 years old or question the validity of evolution.

It's a shame we've let this happen. It's yet another reason the US is becoming the laughing stock of the developed nations. Pretty soon we're going to have to stop referring to the US as a "developed" nation in their answers.

And don't get me started on how they're being taught the US is a "Christian Nation" and that all the founding fathers were such good, god-fearing Christians. When clearly they were no such thing.

[cbayer]

5. Unfortunately, what you describe is happening even in places where vouchers

don't come into play.

Just say the newest "Independent Lens" called "The Revisionists". It's about the Texas School Board and what why were able to do to get creationist based science textbooks (as well as other things). As one of the two biggest purchasers of K-12 textbooks in the country, they can influence much more than just their state.

It was truly frightening.

[dballance]

7. Yeah, Thanks to Posts Here I Read All About What TX is Doing

If I were a parent in TX I'd be talking to the ACLU or somebody about how to stop all that mess. TX is the place that wanted to ban critical thinking so how do they justify the very essence of critical thinking by suggesting teachers teach the alternatives to commonly and widely accepted science and encourage the kids to make their own decisions on what's "the truth." If it weren't so absurd and detrimental to the kids it would be amusing.

[cbayer]

8. There is a member from TX who posts here and gave some encouraging information

last week.

She said that when the general public began to see what the school board was doing, there was a serious backlash. She said the balance has changed in critical ways that will stop them from being able to continue down this road and that many of their decisions have been reversed.

But there is no question that serious damage has already been done.

[Adsos Letter]

10. This is one of the results of the Religious Rights focus on local government, etc.

over the last couple of decades. School boards were designated as targets for influence.

[cbayer]

11. Exactly and they accomplished their goals with much success and little notice

in many areas.

It's time to stop them.

[Adsos Letter]

12. The Denver Post had a comment which should give everyone pause:

The judges questioned both sides on whether district parents had the right to sue to stop the voucher system, or whether only their elected representatives on the school board could decide how state money is spent.

Source:
denverpost.com
"Douglas County school voucher program has day in appeals court"
11/19/2012
By Karen Auge
The Denver Post
http://www.denverpost.com/breakingnews/ci_22029206/dougco-school-voucher-program-has-day-appeals-court

The author goes on to note the significance of the Douglas County suit:

The case's final outcome will have wide-ranging implications. Typically, vouchers have been used mainly in urban areas to improve educational opportunities for poorer students. Douglas County's Choice Scholarship Program, unanimously approved by the school board in March, 2011, would have been among the first to offer vouchers in a very affluent, high-achieving school district.

We're beyond the financial need argument, it appears.

[HockeyMom]

4. I remember when my kids were little

The Catholic Church would put out all these adds for "Open House and promoting their education. As a former Catholic School graduate myself, I would laugh and say over my DEAD BODY!!!!!

[cbayer]

6. I fought against it for a long time, but finally moved two of my kids from public

to catholic schools.

It actually turned out to be a great move and there were none of the problems addressed in this article.

[HockeyMom]

14. I am against just about everything the Catholic Church promotes

from contraceptives to gay marriage to divorce. If I did decide to not school my kids in public school, it would be a private NON-RELIGIOUS one. While the Catholic education may be good, and I did see that as a graduate, all the other BS that was involved, I would not subject my own children to it. The ACADEMIC part can be achieved elsewhere.

[cbayer]

15. Are you against the services they often provide for those most in need?

Are you against Nuns on the Bus?

See, the problem here is that they are an extremely mixed bag.

In terms of the Catholic schools, the only thing that was different for my kids was the requirement that they attend some services about 3 times a year. Actually, I think they could have opted out of those, but chose not to.

There was virtually no teaching of catholicism except as part of a general, religious studies curriculum.

Finally, the cost difference between these schools and private non-affiliated schools was enormous.

Anyway, to each their own. It worked for us.

[HockeyMom]

16. I got into enough confrontations

in RETREATS with priests over just "artificial birth control". I am a only child by choice. I had to defend MY PARENTS CHOICE. Of course when priests molest little BOYS, birth control isn't an issue, now is it? Rome needs to get out of people's bedrooms, and clean their OWN house.

End of discussion on my part. I am no longer Catholic, and neither are my TWO, and ONLY TWO, adult children.

[cbayer]

17. Just an interesting aside.

One of my sons has been decidedly against ever being a catholic since he could decide..... until he met and fell in love with a girl from very catholic family. I think he will most likely "convert". I have a daughter who has married a muslim man from Pakistan. She will also have to make some very difficult religious choices.

That being said, I want to be clear that I am deeply and sincerely opposed to many of the positions of the catholic church and am enraged about some of the past behaviors by some priests and the subsequent cover up.

I am not here to defend the catholic church, just the individuals and organizations that have stayed with it and are trying to do the right thing within.

Nice talking to you.