Category Archives: Privatization

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March 21, 2014

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AZ Legislature, Education, Privatization

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Why school vouchers are not in our collective best interest

Our state legislature has been busy introducing bills to redistribute taxpayer dollars designated for public education to private sources.  At last count, there were seven bills (HB 2150, 2036, 2256, 2291 and SB 1236 and 1237) on voucher expansion including one “strike everything” bill (HB 2139) slipped in at the last second.

When vouchers (aka Empowerment Scholarship Accounts) were first introduced in 2011, only children with disabilities were eligible.  That has now expanded to include children: who’s parent’s are in the armed forces, are a ward of the juvenile court, who attend a school or district assigned a D or F grade, are eligible to attend kindergarten, and who received a School Tuition Organization scholarship. This session, expansion efforts include those whose siblings receive ESAs, all first responder’s children and (HB 2291) children currently eligible for free or reduced lunch percent.  HB 2291 also seeks to further raise the income threshold of those who qualify by 15 percent ever year going forward.

ESA funds can be used for curriculum, testing, private school tuition, tutors, special needs services or therapies, or even seed money for college.  The program however, requires parents to waive their child’s right to a public education…a right that is guaranteed under the state constitution, in order to receive the benefits.

Vouchers are not about school choice, that’s just the smokescreen. They are about the redistribution of our taxpayer dollars from transparent, accountable, locally-led community public schools to private and religious schools not accountable to anyone. It is a zero-sum game. Every student who receives a voucher, pulls an average of $5,400 directly out of the budget from the public school he or she left. The vast majority of private schools cost more than what vouchers will provide and only those with means will be able to take advantage of them. Yes, that’s right. Those who don’t need the help will get it and those who are desperate for the help will just get more desperate, stuck in public schools starved for resources.

It should be no surprise to public education supporters that any attempt by pro-public education legislators to attach accountability amendments for these vouchers has been met with fierce resistance from the pro-privatization club.  In fact, one bill was held rather than risk having it pass with accountability measures attached to it.

Over 85 percent of Arizona students still attend public schools.  They shouldn’t have to make a choice.  The state should take care of their fundamental responsibility to properly fund and support these community public schools so that every school is a good school.  But then, this ideal isn’t just a political sound bite, nor is it a simple matter of just moving money around.  Ensuring our public schools have what they need would take a concerted effort and great political will.  Reminds me of a quote by James Freeman Clark:  “a politician thinks of the net election, a statesman [leader] of the next generation.”

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March 18, 2014

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AZ Legislature, Education, General Arizona, Privatization

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Its Not About Sense, but Cents (and Dollars)

The Arizona House voted to expand Empowerment Scholarship Accounts (vouchers) again yesterday and just about every Representative felt compelled to explain their vote.  Wait, could there have been a television reporter in the house?  Why yes, there was.  The votes were along party lines, and predictably, the Democrats spoke to the damage the voucher movement will continue to do to our public schools, where 84 percent of Arizona’s student still attend.  Representative Hale, representing parts of the Navajo nation, spoke passionately about the unique challenges in educating children on the reservation and how taking educational funding away from them to give to areas where there are plenty of options is just wrong.  On the Republican side, it was all about parental choice and that parents know best, but no discussion about increased transparency and accountability.  Once again in fact, Representative Meyer’s amendment to HB2139 (a “strike everything bill”), was defeated although it merely would have ensured accountability for results when taxpayer dollars are diverted to private schools via the ESAs.  

I was up at the AZ Capitol yesterday with a group of pro-public education supporters who rode the Bus4Ed sponsored by the Holt for AZ Senate Campaign.  Several of the participants were dismayed at the arguments made by Republicans in support of the vouchers.  One, a teacher in an accommodation school, couldn’t believe the non-sensical, hypocritical justifications made in favor of the vouchers.  

Of course, the actions of the GOP in the AZ Legislature with regard to education don’t make sense only if you believe they are working to improve public education.  If you are more realistic and understand the ALEC and corporate reformer driven privatization agenda for public education.  One of the arguments for vouchers presented by a GOP representative was that “only 752 Arizona children were on ESAs at this time so what’s the big deal?”  Well, the big deal is that we know from experience and from what is currently on the table that the end game for the AZ GOP it to make every child eligible for the vouchers.  First, the expansion was for those students attending a school or district assigned a D or F grade, then all children who are eligible to attend kindergarten, then a child of a parent in the armed forces, a child who is a ward of the juvenile court, then a child who is the sibling of a current or previous voucher recipient.  Then, there was the attempt to expand to all first responder’s children which eventually turned into include all those who are eligible for free or reduced lunch programs and finally, to all students in a Title 1 school.  In Arizona, that number equals about 73% of our students, or about 900,000. 

Vouchers are not about school choice, that’s just the smokescreen. They are about the redistribution of our taxpayer dollars to transparent, accountable, locally-led community public schools to private schools that are not accountable to anyone. It is a zero-sum game. The vast majority of private schools cost more than what the vouchers will provide and only those with means will be able to take advantage of them. Yes, that’s right. Those who don’t need the help will get it and those who are desperate for the help will just get more desperate, stuck in public schools starved for resources.

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March 6, 2014

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AZ Legislature, Education, General Arizona, Privatization

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Time to Act Against Arizona’s Axis of Evil

Nope, not referring to North Korea or Iran, but the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), The Goldwater Institute and The Center for Arizona Policy led by Cathi Herrod. All of Arizona’s GOP legislators are or have recently been members of ALEC.  Led by Representative Debbie Lesko, ALEC’s Arizona Chair, they have introduced no less than 20 ALEC model bills including those that:

  • Criminalize undocumented workers, stripping native-born Americans of their citizenship rights and requiring that all materials disseminated by state agencies be written in English only;
  • Encourage the privatization of state prisons to the benefit of the private prison industry;
  • Disenfranchise tens of thousands of Arizonans via voter suppression bills
  • Attack workers by undermining unions and collective bargaining and eliminating public employment through outsourcing and privatizing of government functions;
  • Attack public education through private school voucher programs;
  • Attempt to prevent implementation of healthcare reform, and
  • Attack federal environmental regulation by attempting to deny the federal government the ability to supersede weak state environmental legislation.

SB1062, the so-called religious freedom (but really about state-sanctioned discrimination against gays and others) bill that Governor Brewer vetoed last week, was being pushed by Cathi Herrod and her Center for Arizona Policy.  The veto was a fairly significant setback for Herrod, but don’t worry, she has plenty of other tricks up her sleeve.  On next week’s House Education Committee agenda, is SB1237, which passed the Senate on a party line vote.  This bill expands the amount of this private school voucher to include the charter school additional assistance weight as well as 90% of the base support level funding the student would have otherwise received if they had attend a school district. This is a significant dollar increase as the additional assistance amount is $1,684 for K-8 and $1,962 for high school.

This bill is totally about increasing the diversion of public school funding to unaccountable private schools.  Not only is our GOP-led legislature taking orders from Cathi Herrod, but our State Superintendent of Public Instruction recently robocalled public school families to entice them to take state (taxpayer) funding to attend private schools.  When questioned about this, Huppenthal retorted that he is “the Superintendent of Public Instruction, not of Public Schools.”

Vouchers, by any other name, is model ALEC legislation.  “Wherever you see states expanding vouchers, charters, and other forms of privatization, wherever you see states lowering standards for entry into the teaching profession, wherever you see states opening up new opportunities for profit-making entities, wherever you see the expansion of for-profit online charter schools, you are likely to find legislation that echoes the ALEC model.”

It is important for people to understand that one can’t be pro community public schools while also being pro vouchers and school choice.  Despite what the privatization advocates are touting, school choice, and the various methods for providing options (empowerment scholarship accounts [vouchers], student tuition organizations, etc.), do not generally produce better results, especially when comparing similar populations.  In addition, this is a zero sum game.  When money is taken from public schools and diverted to for-profit charters, private and parochial schools, it begins a downward spiral that is very difficult for public schools to recover from.  In addition, open enrollment promotes competition over collaboration not just between schools, but also on the part of parents who act in the interest of their child without concern for all children.

The bottom line is that community public schools perform a huge public good.  In many cases, they are the thread that binds communities together.  They helped put America on the path to greatness and they are still where 85 percent of Arizona students are educated.  We don’t talk about how fire and police departments should be run by like a business or compete with one another for their raw product.  Public community schools should be treated no differently.  They are entrusted with an awesome responsibility, staffed by dedicated professionals, take all children who come through their doors and work against all odds to achieve their mission.  They need you on-board advocating for their success.  Please contact the members of the House Education Committee prior to Monday, March 10th and tell them to fail SB1237.  It is not in the best interest of our students or our state and will only serve to enrich those who would make profit on our public education dollars.

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March 5, 2014

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AZ Legislature, Education, Privatization

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A rose by any other name…is just as thorny!

ImageIt is no surprise Arizona Legislators continue to seek expansion of Empowerment Scholarship Accounts AKA, vouchers.  The concept is model legislation for the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and has been introduced in numerous states around the country.  ALEC is the organization corporations pay big bucks to belong to so they can work together to develop model legislation to hand state legislators for introduction in their respective states.  ALEC claims it is non-partisan, but in 2012 it had only Democrat of 104 legislators in leadership positions.  In fact, every Republican legislator in Arizona is currently, or was recently, a member of ALEC.  The pipeline for the ALEC agenda in Arizona is the Goldwater Institute and Jonathan Butcher; Education Director from the Goldwater Institute is the “Private Chair” of ALEC’s Education Task Force.  Mr. Butcher has been collaborating with Rep Debbie Lesko, R-Peoria, ALEC’s Arizona State Chairman to expand Education Savings Accounts in Arizona.   Even the Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction, John Huppenthal, has actively promoted this private voucher program with a robocall directing parents to a Goldwater Institute website to pull their kids out of public school and send them to private school on the taxpayer’s dime, with no accountability.

Empowerment Scholarship Accounts were first introduced in Arizona in 2011 as a workaround to the state’s Supreme Court decision in 2009 that state school-voucher programs were unconstitutional because they violate a ban against appropriating public money for private or religious schools.  In Niehaus V. Huppenthal the Arizona Supreme Court determined ESAs were not the same as vouchers because the specified object of the ESA is the beneficiary families, not private or sectarian schools.  This decision is under appeal by the Arizona School Board Association and others.

ESA funds can be used for curriculum, testing, private school tuition, tutors, special needs services or therapies, or even seed money for college.  The program however, requires parents to waive their child’s right to a public education…a right that is guaranteed under the state constitution, in order to receive the benefits.

The original ESA bill, SB 1553, was signed into law April 12, 2011 and at that time, qualified students were only those eligible to received disability related services from a school district, or had been identified as disabled either by the school district or under federal guidelines.  Since then, we’ve seen expansions or at least attempted expansions, every year.  In 2012, the legislature attempted to expand the law with HB 2626, to include those attending a school or district that had been assigned a letter grade of D or F, previous recipient of a scholarship, child of a parent or guardian who is a member of the Armed Forces, child who is a ward of the court, or who has been identified as a gifted pupil.  Governor Brewer vetoed this bill on April 4, 2012.  In 2013, SB1363 was introduced to expand to all those categories above, and increased funding provided to 90% of the sum of the base support level and Additional Assistance if the student were attending a charter school.  Governor Brewer signed this bill into law on June 20, 2013.

Now, in its 51st Legislative Session, the Arizona Legislature is working fast and furious to further expand the state’s voucher program.  Here’s a list of what’s on the docket per the Arizona Legislature website:

Bill Purpose Status
HB 2291 & SB1236 Expands students eligible to those whose parents are police, fire, or EMT, as well as any child who has a sibling who is already receiving an ESA. Also extends eligibility to any student on free or reduced-price lunch programs and increases the household income threshold eligibility by 15% each year thereafter.  Would make a potential 881,000 students, or 73 percent of the total public-school population, qualified for the ESA program. The program is currently capped at 5,500 students until 2019 (per Legislative Report 2/26 AZ Capitol Reports.) House bill up for House vote 3/6/14.  Senate bill waiting to get on Senate Rules Cmte agenda.
HB2150 Allows children whose parents are an active-duty member of the armed forces to immediately enroll in a private school using vouchers and retain 25% of each voucher amount per student Ready for a floor vote
HB 2139 Expands eligibility to a sibling of a current or previous ESA recipient and those eligible to enroll in a program for preschool children with disabilities. Passed by House Approp Cmte
SB1237 Expands funding for ESAs to include the charter school additional assistance weight as well as 90% of the base support level funding the student would have otherwise received if they had attended a public school. Significant dollar increase, as the additional assistance amount is $1,684 for K-8 and $1,962 for high school. Passed the Senate along party lines
HB2036 Failed after Representative Eric Meyer added an amendment to the bill to require any student who uses the voucher to take the same assessment as public school students. Representatives Allen and Boyer specifically mentioned they were voting against the bill because the testing language was added to it. (per AEA) Defeated in House Education Committee

Pro-voucher folks argue that such programs level the playing field—low-income students can have the same educational options as their wealthier counterparts. In fact, they like to infer, if not outright state, that it is all about ensuring those low-income students are not stuck in bad schools. Really?  Only 362 students in Arizona had ESAs in 2012, but 92 percent of ESA funds went to private schools, in many cases for children whose parents could afford the schools without the assistance. For students without special needs, the program provides from $3,000 to $3,500 a year. As this is not nearly sufficient to cover the cost of tuition to a private school (which can be as much as $10,000), the program is unlikely to benefit students from low-income families.  Additionally, according to William J. Mathis, managing director at the National Education Policy Center, the best private schools often aren’t interested in participating in voucher programs, so voucher programs end up supporting lower quality alternatives. On top of all this, opponents of vouchers argue that the policy doesn’t improve educational outcomes or performance.

ESAs are really just another way for Arizona legislators to make the education of YOUR child, YOUR problem.  After all, under the Arizona constitution, “The legislature shall enact such laws as shall provide for the establishment and maintenance of a general and uniform public school system.” This is one of the primary responsibilities of the state of Arizona.  When state funding for educating is passed on to parents however, so will be the responsibility for that education.  After all, when you make a choice where to send their children, it won’t be your legislator’s fault you made the wrong choice.  Of course, ESAs are also good for those desiring to profit from the privatization of public education.  For-profit companies now run most charter schools and the lack of transparency and public oversight of charters and private schools will ensure profits can be maximized without repercussion.

Make no mistake about it; this push for vouchers is not in the best interest of the majority of Arizonans.  Over 85 percent of Arizona’s school children still attend public community schools.  Each time a student leaves with a voucher, schools lose the funding they would otherwise have received. Yet their overhead costs—for things like salaries and infrastructure—don’t go decrease just because a handful of kids left.  Jeremy Calles, the Kyrene School District chief financial officer, said “the state continues to use tax dollars and tax credits to make private school more affordable for the approximately 5 percent of the Arizona student population that makes the choice to attend those schools, while causing significant damage to the education of the 95 percent of students who are choosing to attend public schools.” Representative Eric Meyer added that supporting public education should be a priority of anyone at the Legislature who is interested in investing in the economic security of the state. “Legislation that undermines the public school system in our state is incredibly detrimental to our economic future,” Meyer said. “These vouchers use tax dollars to subsidize schools that are not subject to state testing standards. We need our kids in schools that can be held accountable for preparing them for the workforce. By starving public schools of resources, we are affecting the very foundation of our economy.”

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November 8, 2013

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AZ Legislature, Education, Privatization

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Parents shouldn’t have to choose, kids shouldn’t have to lose

The education reform movement loves to tout that parent’s right to choose is the “civil rights issue of our time.”  They point to how charter and private schools, and the vouchers to fund them will allow disadvantaged children to leave the public schools they are at and move to better performing schools which will better serve them.  This will eventually cause the bad public schools to close and raise the tide for all.  There are several reasons why this line of reasoning just doesn’t meet the smell test.

First of all, choice doesn’t always equal opportunity.  Not every parent can complete the complex applications sometimes required, or transport their children to the charter or private school, or put in the requisite number of volunteer hours sometimes required.  Secondly, there is no evidence that charter schools on the whole perform better than public schools.  In fact, despite the fact that charter schools are supposed to be open to  all, they still often cherry pick their students, accepting less than their share of special education or English language learning students.  Lastly, as I just mentioned, there just won’t be a wholesale departure from public education to charter and private schools.  Arizona is a leader in the charter school movement and yet almost 90 percent of our school children still attend district schools.  What will happen is the better students with more advantages, will potentially try other alternatives.  Those that can’t take advantage of opportunity however, will remain and segregation, the highest now since 1964, will just continue to increase.

The real truth however, is that parents should not have to make a choice.  Every public school in America should provide a quality education with a full curriculum including music, art and physical education.  Unfortunately, now in the Oracle School District, we no longer offer music or art and because of our recently failed override continuation (by 98 votes), we’ll most likely be forced to cut physical education.  And so the death spiral continues.  Funding is cut, forcing schools to cut the program or take it “out of hide”.  Of course, our education professionals work hard to find a way to still do it all.  That in itself contributes to the death spiral because then the taxpayer can claim “see, you didn’t need that funding after all.”  Cutting programs is just as bad, because it can cause students to leave the district for another that still provides the desired program.  This then reduces the District’s budget and means they can provide even less.  This is a formula for failure, not success.

In the meantime, we owe our all our children the opportunity to succeed, regardless of zip code or skin color.  Our future as a nation depends on it because we never know from where our best and brightest will emerge.  Charter schools have a place in our education system.  There are needs they best serve.  But…they were never intended to replace public community schools and in Arizona, they cost the taxpayers $1,000 more in state-provided funding per pupil than district schools.

America is a great nation.  Public education for all contributed greatly to our success.  The full-on assault currently being waged on public education threatens our success.  Contrary to what the education reformists would have you believe, our public schools are performing well.  Our graduation rate is higher than ever, our dropout rate is lower than ever, and our students’ performance on international tests is on par with just about any other nation when we factor out the affects of poverty.  Poverty is the issue that threatens our education system, and our schools can’t solve this problem.  It will take all of us working together to address it.

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October 27, 2013

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AZ Legislature, Education, Prisons, Privatization

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Predatory Privatization

Education reformers would have you believe the best way to improve the American public education is to privatize it.  Senator Al Melvin, candidate for Arizona Governor, thinks the solution is to give parents $9K for each of their children so they can choose where to send their child.  Never mind that there are over $1 million students in Arizona and the cost to implement this “voucher” system would be more than the entire state budget.

Nonetheless, let’s explore this idea that privatization is the best solution to provide services for the common good.  In Arizona, we turn to the business of incarcerating people, as this state is one of the leader’s in privatizing prisons.  In early 2012, the Arizona chapter of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) issued a report on the impact of private prisons in the state.  The report was called “Private Prisons: the Public’s Problem” and it concluded that between 2008 and 2010, Arizona overpaid for private prison services by about
$10 million, and the services it received were sub-par: malfunctioning alarm systems, fences with holes in them, staff who didn’t follow basic procedures and more.  In fact, the state’s auditor general found 157 serious security failings across five prisons that hold in-state prisoners.  At least 28 riots were also noted.[i]

How did we get here?  In 2012, Corrections Corporation of America (the largest for-profit private prison company in the country) sent a letter to 48 state governors offering to buy their public prisons in return for 20-year contracts.  These contracts would include a 90 percent occupancy rate guarantee for the entire term.  In Arizona, three for-profit prison contracts secured a staggering 100% quota, despite an analysis from 2012 by the Tucson Citizen that showed the company’s per-day charge for each prisoner increased an average of 13.9% over the life of the contracts.  In 1997, Arizona’s spent $409 million on prisons; the per-year cost is more than $1 billion today.  The state now has over 600 current contracts for incarceration related functions, but in fact, cost-effectiveness claims of private prisons just aren’t true.[ii]  According to both AFSC and the non-profit privatization resource center, In the Public Interest:  “in states across the country, private prisons have been plagued with a multitude of problems – major riots have exploded, inmates have died, and civil rights have been routinely violated. Private prisons have an economic motive to cut costs in every area of operations, resulting in lower-quality staff, higher employee turnover, and degrading prison conditions. These dismal conditions directly contribute to the decreased security and higher incidence of violence found at privatized prisons. As prison quality greatly suffers, there is little evidence that these private prisons save governments money.”

Surely this drove Arizona legislators to rethink their position on privatizing prisons, right?  Nope, instead of trying to right the ship, they just turned it into a submarine passing HB2860 which, in the words of AFSC, would “ensure that the public would have no way of knowing whether the state’s private prisons are saving money, rehabilitating prisoners, or ensuring public safety.”[iii]  Why would this be the case you ask?  Let’s just follow the money. Private prison companies like GEO Group and Corrections Corporation of America have made huge contributions to legislators from both major parties, but most of the funds have gone to Republicans.  These corporations have also played a very direct role in designing legislation good for business (such as SB 1070, the state’s notorious immigration bill, passed in 2010).   Florida on the other hand, made exactly the opposite choice with a bi-partisan bill to defeat a plan to privatize the state’s prisons.  The legislators who opposed the bill “argued that public education, like public safety, is a core mission of government that shouldn’t be outsourced to private vendors.”[iv]

As with the prison industry example, the incentives motivating those seeking privatization appear to be immune to the failures of vouchers to deliver on the promise of improved educational outcomes.[v]  The Arizona State Legislature has been working toward privatization of our public schools in a multitude of ways.  Tax credits for private schools and student tuition organizations wash money from public schools into private ones, often for students whose parents didn’t need the help to send their child to those schools.  Empowerment Scholarship Accounts (ESA) give parents 90% of what the state would have spent on their child with a wide range of how they can spend it, even to send their child to a private school.  Then there was also the pillaging of the public education budget that made Arizona the state with the highest per-pupil cuts to education from 2008 to 2012.  Court mandated funding of the owed inflation funding from Prop 301 has helped raise us to third highest in the nation now, but that still is a poor ranking.   Of course, it is important to understand that many of these voucher work-around programs get started as providing opportunity to students from poor families, children with disabilities or students in underperforming schools as with Arizona’s ESAs.  This however, is not the ultimate goal of the privatizers.  They are instead, a tactical means to a much larger strategic end of ending public education.[vi]

To what end you ask?  Again, follow the money.  Organizations like ALEC are promoting school choice and privatization, providing our legislators “camera ready” bills to implement across the country.  In addition, Right-wing organizations and donors laud Arizona as a leader in the school choice movement and are funneling big money into the state.

What is really ironic about this whole privatization movement is that the GOP has painted them self into this corner.  Their anti-government fanaticism, combined with tough stances on crime, immigration, etc., combined with a refusal to raise taxes, forces them to tout the benefits of privatization.  Unfortunately, the companies whom the services are farmed out to are interested much more in a desire to generate revenue than in any social obligation.  Think Halliburton and Backwater during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The bottom line is that business is in business to make money.  There is nothing wrong with that as long as the product or service they provide is not something that must be provided to everyone regardless of their ability to pay.  Every state constitution in the nation mandates the state provide a free public education – it was a requirement for their entry into the Union.  But, when public services have been outsourced to “for-profit” companies, it is very likely the contract will increase in cost over time, limit transparency, undermine good public policy and the democratic process, and that the drive to generate revenue over providing for the public good will eventually be more costly to the taxpayers.[vii]  The examples abound.  We should pay attention.  Public schools are not only our right as Americans, but they helped make us a great nation and, are important still very important to the health of our communities today.