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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsJeb And Jindal Watch. Such A Combination in A National Presidency Could Destroy Public Education
http://www.prwatch.org/news/2012/11/11883/taxpayer-enriched-companies-back-jeb-bushs-foundation-excellence-education-its-buhttp://www.dallaschamber.org/index.aspx?id=DallasEducationFoundation
https://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/07/14-12
Published on Thursday, July 14, 2011 by The Nation
ALEC Exposed: Starving Public Schools
by Julie Underwood
This article is part of a Nation series exposing the American Legislative Exchange Council, in collaboration with the Center For Media and Democracy. John Nichols introduces the series.
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snip
ALECs most ambitious and strategic push toward privatizing education came in 2007, through a publication called School Choice and State Constitutions, which proposed a list of programs tailored to each state. That year Georgia passed a version of ALECs Special Needs Scholarship Program Act. Most disability organizations strongly oppose special education vouchersand decades of evidence suggest that such students are better off receiving additional support in public schools. Nonetheless, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Florida, Utah and Indiana have passed versions of their own. Louisiana also passed a version of ALECs Parental Choice Scholarship Program Act (renaming it Student Scholarships for Educational Excellence), along with ALECs Family Education Tax Credit Program (renamed Tax Deductions for Tuition), which has also been passed by Arizona and Indiana. ALECs so-called Great Schools Tax Credit Program Act has been passed by Arizona, Indiana and Oklahoma.
ALECs 2010 Report Card on American Education called on members and allies to Transform the system, dont tweak it, likening the groups current legislative strategy to a game of whack-a-mole: introduce so many pieces of model legislation that there is no way the person with the mallet [teachers unions] can get them all. ALECs agenda includes:
§ Introducing market factors into teaching, through bills like the National Teacher Certification Fairness Act.
§ Privatizing education through vouchers, charters and tax incentives, especially through the Parental Choice Scholarship Program Act and Special Needs Scholarship Program Act, whose many spinoffs encourage the creation of private schools for specific populations: children with autism, children in military families, etc.
§ Increasing student testing and reporting, through more accountability, as seen in the Education Accountability Act, Longitudinal Student Growth Act, One-to-One Reading Improvement Act and the Resolution Supporting the Principles of No Child Left Behind.
§ Chipping away at local school districts and school boards, through its 2009 Innovation Schools and School Districts Act and more. Proposals like the Public School Financial Transparency Act and School Board Freedom to Contract Act would allow school districts to outsource auxiliary services.
ALEC is also invested in influencing the educational curriculum. Its 2010 Founding Principles Act would require high school students to take a semester-long course on the philosophical understandings and the founders principles.
Perhaps the Brookings Institute states the mission most clearly: Taken seriously, choice is not a system-preserving reform. It is a revolutionary reform that introduces a new system of public education.
Link above, Common Dreams, provides the complete article.
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Jeb And Jindal Watch. Such A Combination in A National Presidency Could Destroy Public Education (Original Post)
DhhD
Apr 2014
OP
femmocrat
(28,394 posts)1. Sigh.....
Like the democrats have done so much to preserve it.