Tag Archives: School Vouchers

News

Which presidential candidate will help minorites get a better education in better schools?

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One of the major issues affecting blacks and Hispanics in America is the issue of poor-performing public schools. Because the administrators and teachers are unionized, they are immune to criticism, discipline or termination for poor performance. And many of the administrators and teachers have no real-world experience at earning money in the private sector. Who will fix it?

Here’s Daily Wire reporting on Trump in his own words:

On Thursday, President Trump redeclared his commitment to enacting school choice, a conservative pitch most popular in the black American community, many of whom have grown weary of sending their children to government-funded public schools.

Speaking at the “Transition to Greatness” roundtable, the president called upon Congress to enact school choice now, hailing it as the great “civil rights issue of our time.”

“We are renewing our call on Congress to finally enact school choice now, school choice is a big deal, because access to education is the civil rights issue our time,” the president said. “I’ve heard that for the last, I would say year, it really is, it’s the civil rights issue of our time.”

President Trump elaborated on the benefits of school choice by forcing underperforming schools to better improve their methods.

“When you can have children go to a school where their parents want them to go, and it creates competition, and other schools fight harder, because all of a sudden they say, ‘Wow, we’re losing it, we have to fight hard,’” the president said. “It gets better in so many different ways, but there are groups of people against that. You have unions against it, you have others against it, and they’re not against it for the right reasons, they were against it for a lot of the wrong reasons.”

So basically, Trump wants schools to work more like companies in the private sector that are accountable to customers. When private sector companies compete, you get Amazon, Apple, Dell, Samsung, LG, etc. Competition gives you more choice, so you can find better quality for less money. Public schools don’t work like that, and children suffer as a result.

And note:

President Trump’s push for school choice at this turbulent moment in history is not coincidental, being that black American voters routinely have expressed support for it alongside criminal justice reform, which the president helped to enact with the First Step Act.

The Washington Times reports on more differences:

President Trump is pushing schools to reopen amid the COVID-19 pandemic, saying parents want it, the children can handle it and the economy needs it.

Democratic presidential nominee Joseph R. Biden says the teachers don’t want it, the children can spread the coronavirus and the country can’t stomach another surge of COVID-19 cases he fears would result.

[…]Beyond school choice, Mr. Trump and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos have rescinded Obama administration rules on school discipline, racial disparities and gender identity, and have given states more flexibility in meeting federal mandates.

And here’s Biden:

Mr. Biden counters Mr. Trump’s parent-centered approach to education with a teacher-centered platform, promising the money will flow to public education instead.

Mr. Biden counters Mr. Trump’s parent-centered approach to education with a teacher-centered platform, promising the money will flow to public education instead.

He wants to triple federal spending on schools with significant low-income populations and require that much of that cover higher salaries for teachers. He also would increase the availability of student loan forgiveness for graduates who go on to work in education.

Mr. Biden’s campaign says he will hire up to 60,000 more psychologists for schools to help with what he warned is a mental health crisis.

His unity platform, reached with former opponent Sen. Bernard Sanders of Vermont, opposes vouchers that support private schools and takes a dim view of public charter schools.

The Biden-Sanders plan would impose bureaucratic standards for diversity and discipline on charter schools, cut off money for those deemed underperforming and impose an outright ban on federal money for for-profit charter schools.

I don’t see the profit motive as a problem, as it is profits that causes people in the private sector to produce quality goods and services for their customers – or risk losing those customers to competitors who do a better job of pleasing customers.

You can see from this chart how well throwing money into a unionized monopoly has worked over time:

Cato Institute graphs education spending against test scores
Cato Institute graphs education spending against test scores

In public schools, administrators and teachers are not paid more or less based on pleasing their customers (parents) by achieving results (student performance).

Reason.com is a libertarian web site, interviewed Education Secretary Betsy Devos. I liked this:

You are someone who has advocated for more choice, more local decision making, in education. But then you were thrust into the role of national education official. It had to be tempting to use that position to really push local governments to implement more of the ideas that you have. But your idea is that there shouldn’t be some person in charge of telling everyone what to do. Do you ever feel this tension?

I do. The previous administration went exactly the opposite direction and overreached in multiple areas. Much of what I’ve had to do is come back and undo a lot of that. But at the same time, there are plenty of folks who’ve been critical of my not implementing all kinds of conservative policies that, in my view, would be desirable for students and their families. But I think my [approach] here has been one of restraint, and that I believe is ultimately a big accomplishment.

I view this department as one that probably never should have been stood up. I think there are ample arguments for it having gotten more in the way of students and their futures than actually being any kind of value-add.

Should the Department of Education be abolished—or gradually abolished, perhaps?

I would not be at all unhappy to work myself out of a job. I think that states and local communities and, most importantly, the family has to be the epicenter of these decisions. The 40 years since this department has existed, there’s been over a trillion dollars spent to close the achievement gaps. They haven’t closed one little bit. They’ve only opened in multiple areas. So why would we continue to advocate for doing more of the same thing and expect something different?

Do you like having Betsy Devos in charge of education policy? I do. For me this is just another reason to support Trump for President.

Related posts

News

House Republicans vote to repeal parts of Obamacare, defund Planned Plarenthood

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Republican Congresswoman Mia Love
Republican Congresswoman Mia Love

Great news from the Daily Signal.

Excerpt:

The House approved a budget reconciliation bill Friday that would repeal portions of Obamacare and cut federal funds to Planned Parenthood for one year.

The legislation, called the Restoring Americans’ Healthcare Freedom Reconciliation Act, was passed in a 240-189 vote.

[…]Rep. Tom Price, R-Ga., chairman of the House Budget Committee, said in a statement the bill “repeals the most coercive components of Obamacare—eliminating onerous taxes, the individual and employer mandates, an Obamacare slush fund, and lifting unnecessary burdens on employers and employees.”

Price noted the legislation would increase funding for community health centers while eliminating government support for Planned Parenthood, which is under investigation after a series of undercover videos related to its role with aborted baby body parts.

Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List, a pro-life group, praised the House’s efforts to defund Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider.

Naturally, Democrats voted for Obamacare and for Planned Parenthood. Because they love when people lose their doctors and health care, unless their doctor is an abortionist, and the health care is an abortion.

Cato Institute graphs education spending against test scores
Cato Institute graphs education spending against student achievement

Meanwhile, House Republicans also voted to extend a school voucher program for low-income, minority students in Washington, D.C..

The Daily Signal reports on that, too:

Speaker John Boehner cinched victory Wednesday as House Republicans smoothly extended his linchpin private school voucher program for low-income students through 2021.

The D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program provides students in Washington’s struggling school districts with federally backed vouchers to attend a private school of choice. The House confirmed its reauthorization Wednesday evening in a near party-line vote of 240 to 191.

[…]Boehner, the product of Catholic school, helped begin the program in 2003 while he served as chairman of the House Education and the Workforce Committee. The program has operated as an alternative for parents who can’t afford to transfer their kids out of a failing school district to a more effective private school.

Over the past 10 years, more than 6,100 inner-city students have used the vouchers to “escape underperforming schools,” Boehner noted.

Proponents boast data finding that among those enrolled, 90 percent graduated from high school, and 88 percent of the class of 2015 moved on to pursue higher education. The average annual household income of the students enrolled falls around $20,575.

Lindsey Burke, a fellow in education policy at The Heritage Foundation, previously told The Daily Signal the program marks a “beacon of education success” that has allowed other states to pursue similar school choice options.

“You’d be hard-pressed to find many other education programs that can deliver those types of outcomes,” Burke said.

The $45-million program has faced Democratic pushback since its inception and will likely surface in the ongoing school choice battle between Republicans and President Barack Obama this fall.

In anticipation of the program’s reauthorization, the White House issued a statement Tuesday reaffirming the administration’s “strong” opposition, but held back a veto threat.

The president has attempted to defund the program every year, aligning with Democrats who argue that the scholarship funnels money out of D.C.’s public schools system.

It still has to make it through the Senate, and then Obama might veto it. But so what if he does, that just means we get a Republican president in 2016, when it comes out where Democrats really stand on providing quality education for poor, minority children. Republicans are all for it. Democrats oppose vouchers because they want to make sure that they have an ample supply of uneducated, dependent voters.

News

Republican senator Tim Scott pushes school choice in MSNBC interview

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I managed to find some of the transcript here on Newsbusters.

Let Tim Scott explain it:

THOMAS ROBERTS: This is Thomas Roberts by the way. You said you are concerned about kids that growing up in the wrong zip code and — like yourself that had a tough start on the way out. But if we look at agencies that are following some of your voting records, they have concern. And the NAACP has given you an “F” on their annual scorecard. They also say that you voted against the ACA. You voted to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress. You oppose the Congressional Black Caucus’ budget. Delayed funding on a settlement between the U.S. and black farmers who say they were prejudiced against because of their race. So how do you respond to that, if your true concern is about lower-income families and kids? 

TIM SCOTT: Let’s just ask ourselves if we look back over history when the congress was controlled by the Democrats for 40 consecutive years. If we look at the result of that control, what has happened in black America? We saw greater poverty. If we take statistics from the 1970s to the 21st-century, what we see very clearly is that poverty’s gone from 11% to 15%. These are classic examples of the policies of the left have not worked. I will tell you, that if I have an “F” on the NAACP scorecard, it’s because I believe progress has to be made and the government is not the answer for progress. I was a kid growing up in poverty. I had a mentor who was a Chick-fil-A operator named John Moniz who taught me that the brilliance of the American economy happens through business ownership and entrepreneurial spirit. So whether you own the business or not, success is possible if you, a: have a good education, b: have a strong work ethic. For the average person who can work. These two key components come together and form a foundation. That is the way that you eradicate poverty. All the social programs that we’ve had. We have the largest government we’ve ever had in the history of the country. We have more nonprofit organizations working on the same issue. And yet we have higher percentage of people living in poverty. The key it seems like is individual freedom and economic opportunity, fusing those together in an agenda that focuses on education seems to leave forward.

Elsewhere in the interview, he talks about how Indian-American Republican Governor Bobby Jindal has pushed hard for vouchers for the poor in Louisiana, and how the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship voucher program helped the poorest black students to get a quality education – even though Barack Obama opposed it as a favor to their public sector union bosses.

See, here’s the deal. If Republicans want to get serious about winning the votes of poor people and minorities, they don’t have to pass policies that discriminate against the wealthy or against whites. They just have to pass good policies. It shouldn’t matter what color anybody’s skin is. School choice is a police that disproportionately benefits the poor and minorities, but it doesn’t discriminate. You just hand money to the parents whose children are stuck in an underperforming public school, and then the parents decide where to send their child. This is better than forcing parents to have to send their kids to a failing public school. It is not right for a child to be handed a garbage education just because lazy unionized Democrats don’t want to face competition from private schools. Kids come first!

Let’s learn about school choice from the Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation.

Cato Institute:

The Heritage Foundation:

Awesome!

This is how you build Republican  voters and do the right thing at the same time. Republicans like to help the poor. But we also like to screw the public sector unions. Private unions are fine – public sector unions are poisonous. We have to destroy them and save the children, at the same time. Everybody wins! Well, except the Democrats.