Yeah, But He One Of Our Guys!

[Editorial]

The Republicans have a code… Thou shall not go against another party member.

Case in Point #1

Representative Sontos, what has the House Ethics Committee done about him?

Case in Point #2

Justice Clarence Thomas failed to disclose trips paid for by billionaire Harlan Crow and all we heard from the Republicans were crickets.

Case in Point #3

Justice Clarence Thomas failed reportedly has been claiming thousands of dollars annually from a shuttered real estate firm and all we heard from the Republicans were crickets.

Case in Point #4

Republicans voted near-unanimously to weaken ethical oversight in Congress.

Robert Reich wrote,

The Republican party new ideology:

1) Power is only legitimate if Republicans wield it

2) Power must be acquired by any means necessary

3) The party is accountable to no one once it has it

[/Editorial]

---

Update to The Tearing Down Of Public Schools

As many of you know, I do not like school vouchers, well Time came out yesterday with an article about vouchers.

How School Voucher Programs Hurt Students

By Joshua Cowen

In recent months, state legislatures across the country have broadened efforts to subsidize private school tuition with taxpayer dollars. New proposals for these programs—collectively called school vouchers—have appeared in more than a dozen states and passed as major priorities for Republican governors like Kim Reynolds in Iowa and Sarah Huckabee Sanders in Arkansas. Since 2021, Arizona, Florida, Utah and West Virginia have also created or expanded voucher plans. Meanwhile, a handful states like Indiana, Louisiana, Ohio and Wisconsin have run voucher programs for years. But do school vouchers actually work? We need to focus on what research shows, and what that means for kids moving forward.

As an analyst who has studied these and other forms of school choice for nearly two decades, I’m in a good position to give an answer. And based on data from existing voucher programs, the answer is almost unambiguously negative.

Let’s start with who benefits. First and foremost, the answer is: existing private school students. Small, pilot voucher programs with income limits have been around since the early 1990s, but over the last decade they have expanded to larger statewide initiatives with few if any income-eligibility requirements. Florida just passed its version of such a universal voucher program, following Arizona’s passage in the fall of 2022. In Arizona, more than 75% of initial voucher applicants had never been in public school—either because they were new kindergartners or already in private school before getting a voucher. That’s a problem because many voucher advocates market these plans as ways to improve educational opportunities for public school children.

All the vouchers is widen the “haves and have-nots.” 

What explains these extraordinarily large voucher-induced declines? Aren’t private schools supposed to be elite educational opportunities? When it comes to private schools accepting voucher payments, the answer is clearly no. That’s because elite private schools with strong academics and large endowments often decline to participate in voucher plans. Instead the typical voucher school is a financially distressed, sub-prime private provider often jumping at the chance for a tax bailout to stay open a few extra years.

Vouchers are designed to drive down public schools. And that leads me to what I is the reason why the Republicans like the voucher program… it can discriminate.

And it’s not just the academic results that call into question any rhetoric around opportunities created by vouchers. Private schools can decline to admit children for any reason. One example of that is tied to the latest culture wars around LGBTQ youth, and strengthened in current voucher legislation. In Florida, a voucher-funded school made national news last summer when it banned LGBTQ children. In Indiana, pre-pandemic estimates showed that more than $16 million in taxpayer funding had already gone to voucher schools with explicit anti-LGBTQ admissions rules.

Voucher schools also rarely enroll children with special academic needs. Special education children tend to need more resources than vouchers provide, which can be a problem in public schools too. But public schools are at least obliged under federal law to enroll and assist special needs children—something private schools can and do avoid.

And they is why conservatives like them, the can get around the ADA and the non-discrimination laws.