In 2001, when the [tag]White House[\/tag] decided it would work with congressional Dems on No Child Left Behind legislation, Dems made one thing perfectly clear: no [tag]vouchers[\/tag]. Plenty of ideas were on the table, but there was simply no way Dems would support a national plan that used public funds to subsidize tuition at religious and other private schools when there are still so many public schools that need assistance.<\/p>\n
As it turned out, [tag]Bush[\/tag] didn’t even put up much of a fight. For the White House, vouchers were practically a bargaining chip that was easily discarded through the course of negotiations. Some of the president’s far-right supporters had hoped to use NCLB to help privatize education though vouchers, but the reality was, the president’s heart was never in it. Vouchers, for the most part, have been a non-entity ever since.<\/p>\n
That, of course, was before Republicans decided rallying the far-right base<\/a> was the only way to save their skin.<\/p>\n The Bush [tag]administration[\/tag] and [tag]Republican[\/tag] legislators yesterday proposed a $100 million national plan to offer [tag]low-income[\/tag] [tag]students[\/tag] [tag]private-school[\/tag] vouchers to escape low-performing [tag]public schools[\/tag]. […]<\/p>\n [Education Secretary Margaret] [tag]Spellings[\/tag], flanked by Senate and House leaders on Capitol Hill, said the “[tag]opportunity scholarship[\/tag]” plan would be aimed at helping low-income students “trapped” in poor schools by offering them transfers to other public schools, tutoring, and scholarships to private schools, up to $4,000 per student. The secretary said the plan would cover 28,000 students.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n These guys have interesting timing. Just four days ago, the [tag]Education Department[\/tag] quietly released the results of a massive study, which showed that children in public schools generally performed as well or better<\/a> in reading and mathematics than comparable children in private schools<\/p>\n But this isn’t about letting a little something like evidence get in the way of a political agenda. The plan will give “the children of lower-income families . . . the same opportunities wealthier families have,” said Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Nonsense. The [tag]GOP[\/tag], which recently rejected a modest increase to the minimum wage, wants children of lower-income families to have “the same opportunities wealthier families have”? I’m delighted to hear that. Maybe we can start with those families that can’t afford the same kinds of housing opportunities that wealthier families have. And the same kind of health care. And the same kinds of transportation, nutrition, and political influence.<\/p>\n Also keep in mind, over the last two years, the Bush administration, which never fully funded its own [tag]education[\/tag] plan, has proposed cutting federal support<\/a> for public education. And some of the same congressional Republicans who want private school vouchers because of their heartfelt concern for low-income children also cut funding for housing vouchers<\/a> for low-income families.<\/p>\n With this in mind, the new school voucher scheme is a transparent charade. The GOP isn’t worried about opportunities for low-income kids; they’re worried about opportunities to make James Dobson happy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In 2001, when the [tag]White House[\/tag] decided it would work with congressional Dems on No Child Left Behind legislation, Dems made one thing perfectly clear: no [tag]vouchers[\/tag]. Plenty of ideas were on the table, but there was simply no way Dems would support a national plan that used public funds to subsidize tuition at religious […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7973","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7973","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7973"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7973\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\nIn reality, this isn’t about expanding “opportunities”; this is about a sop to the GOP base, which wants to take steps towards privatizing education and subsidizing private academies.<\/p>\n