Public education: the Religious Right agenda

From Crusadewatch.org:

Jerry Falwell:

“One day, I hope in the next 10 years, I trust that we will have more Christian day schools than there are public schools. I hope I will live to see the day when, as in the early days of our country, we won’t have any public schools. The churches will have taken them over again and Christians will be running them. What a happy day that will be!” – America Can Be Saved! (Sword of the Lord Publishers, Murfreesboro, Tenn.) 1979, p. 52-53

“[T]he only hope for the inner city is vouchers, so that all the churches can go in and plant Christian schools in the inner cities and capture these fatherless young people for Christ and teach them biblical discipline and so forth. It’s either God or it’s ruin for our country, I do believe.” – “The 700 Club,” Sept. 3, 1996, (reported in Church & State, October 1996, p. 19)

They’re selling out our public schools

Letter, Daily Local News, 11/25/11

At a time when the Republican controlled Legislature in Harrisburg just cut hundreds of millions of dollars from our public schools, Harrisburg should not spend taxpayer dollars on a voucher program that gives up to $1 billion in taxpayer money to private schools. These schools are responsible to no one, as they are not held accountable to standardized testing results. This voucher program leaves too many children behind in underfunded public schools.

Unfortunately, Sen. Andy Dinniman (D, Chester County) did just that in voting “yes” on Senate Bill 1!

Vouchers do not provide “savings” to public schools, since they maintain the same overhead costs of maintaining buildings, transporting and feeding students, providing support services, and can’t reduce staff or other costs if a few students across different grade levels transfer to private schools.

If state funding for K-12 education is cut, and vouchers drain dollars from public schools, the likely result is higher property taxes and cuts to public school programs that are proven to work, as districts struggle to fill the gap to provide a quality education to their students….

Jane Bowen
West Grove

read the whole letter at Daily Local News

Pro-Voucher Tea Party Group Admits It Wants To ‘Shut Down Public Schools And Have Private Schools Only’

by Zaid Jilani, ThinkProgress, 7/12/11

As ThinkProgress has documented, a tightly-knit group of right-wing Political Action Committees (PACs) and corporate foundations have unleashed an assault on public education, pushing school voucher schemes nationwide that would funnel taxpayer dollars away from public schools and toward private schools instead. In doing so, many of these voucher advocates claim they simply want to expand school choice and improve the quality of education for all.

Yet one group that has been influential in the school voucher push — the Independence Hall Tea Party, which has run a major PAC that operates in Delaware, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania — is finally admitting that its true goal is to abolish public education.

In a series of e-mails and interviews, Teri Adams, the president of the Idependence Hall Tea Party Association, explains that her organization is involved in its voucher advocacy because it believes “public schools should go away.” Adams said that their ultimate goal is to “shut down public schools and have private schools only“:

“We think public schools should go away,’’ says Teri Adams, the head of the Independence Hall Tea Party and a leading advocate — both in New Jersey and Pennsylvania — of passage of school voucher bills. The tea party operates in those two states and Delaware. They should “go away,” she says, because “they are hurting our children.’’ […] Adams says the current voucher program “discriminates” against wealthier students by providing public subsidies only to inner-city children in allegedly failing schools. Her group’s e-mails pushing vouchers caught the attention of James Kovalcin of South Brunswick, a retired public school teacher who asked Adams for clarification. She responded via email: “Our ultimate goal is to shut down public schools and have private schools only, eventually returning responsibility for payment to parents and private charities. …”

continue reading at ThinkProgress

Voucher Advocate Betsy DeVos, Right-Wing Think Tanks Behind Koch-Style Attack on PA Public Schools

Rachel Tabachnick, Talk To Action, Wed Apr 20, 2011

The DeVos family crusade to eradicate public education has targeted Pennsylvania, and a voucher bill may come to a vote in the PA Senate as early as Tuesday. It’s being marketed as a solution to save public schools, but the big donors are tied to right-wing think tanks that openly advocate, and strategize, the end of public education. How can vouchers improve public schools if the people mobilizing the movement intend to eradicate public education? Regardless of your personal stance on “school choice,” it’s important to know who is behind the voucher movement and the agenda they don’t share with the public or advertise in their media campaigns.

A new wave of school voucher bills is sweeping the nation, which would allow public education funds to be used in private or parochial schools. As with past waves of voucher initiatives, these new bills are largely promoted and funded by the billionaire DeVos family and a core group of wealthy pro-privatization supporters. They include Pennsylvania SB-1, soon coming to a vote in the PA Senate, and the “Vouchers-for-All” bill approved by the Florida Senate Education Committee on April 14. Betsy DeVos is at the helm of organizations that have set the stage for both bills, but you would never know it based on the propaganda being marketed to Pennsylvanians. Even if you are from another state, keep reading. Chances are a Betsy DeVos-led campaign is already at work in your state or will be there soon.

The DeVos family is recognized as one of the top national contributors to the Republican Party, free market policy institutes, and Religious Right organizations. Many of their previous attempts at using voucher initiatives to privatize the nation’s public schools have been transparent. Recent campaigns have been more covert and are camouflaged behind local efforts described as grass roots and bipartisan.

Pennsylvanians should not be deceived. Regardless of where one stands on the issue of school choice, behind the curtain of this effort is an interconnected network of right wing think tanks and billionaire donors, funded by foundations including those of the DeVos and Koch families and the Scaife, Allegheny, and Carthage Foundations of Pennsylvania’s own Richard Mellon Scaife. The leaders of many of these DeVos/Koch/Scaife-funded institutes openly voice their ideological objections to all forms of public education. Some even proudly display their support for a proclamation posted at the Alliance for Separation of School and State, which reads,

“I proclaim publicly that I favor ending government involvement in education.”

Years have been spent developing and promoting schemes to privatize public education. The report “Voucher Veneer: the Deeper Agenda to Privatize Public Education” by People For the American Way (PFAW), quotes Joseph Bast, President and CEO of the Koch/Scaife/Walton-funded Heartland Institute,

“The complete privatization of schooling might be desirable, but this objective is politically impossible for the time being. Vouchers are a type of reform that is possible now, and would put us on the path to further privatization.”…

continue reading at Talk To Action