The Fraud Of GOP Tax And School Choice Policy Shown In Arizona
Last May, I had the privilege of getting to know the Sidney Hillman Foundation when I was in New York with Marcy Wheeler to see her receive the Hillman Prize. One of the announcements at the May ceremony was an expansion of Hillman Foundation activities to include, in addition to the yearly Grand Prizes, a monthly award, known as "The Sidney," for outstanding progressive journalism and an ongoing blog, Full Court Press, featuring press writers and critics Charles Kaiser and Sydney Schanberg.
Here I want to draw attention to the August winner of Hillman’s "The Sidney", an investigative series by Ryan Gabrielson and Michelle Reese in the East Valley Tribune Newspaper, from metropolitan Phoenix, about taxpayer subsidized school tuition credit abuse in Arizona. One of the constant refrains emanating from the conservative right is "school choice" and, of course, their standard refrain on tax policy. Both areas are flimsy fronts for class warfare and further unjust enrichment of the already privileged. Gabrielson and Reese have exposed a dirty example of this particular area of the GOP mantra.
In the mid to late 1990s, a group of dogmatic conservative Republican leaders, led by Arizona Congressman Trent Franks and a leading GOP school reform and voucher advocate, Lisa Graham Keegan, saw an opportunity to implement some of the pet school reform projects of national conservative Republican think tanks in the Arizona school system as test cases. The results were as predictable as they are bleak:
The state’s Private School Tuition Tax Credits program covers the cost of private education, often for children whose parents could afford to pay it themselves – while allowing affluent families to reduce the amount of income tax they pay into the state’s general fund.
To date, Arizona’s main bank account has lost $350 million to private schools. The price tag is growing as the state grapples with the most serious financial crisis in its history, and people who depend on the general fund – public school children, the disabled, the poor and the sick – face severe cuts in services.
Under the program, taxpayers give money to nonprofit charities called school tuition organizations, or STOs for short. STOs give scholarships to children for private school tuition, and the state provides donors a dollar-for-dollar tax credit in exchange for their contribution.
The tax credit law, signed by Gov. Fife Symington in 1997, is touted as a tool to make private education more accessible to families who could not otherwise afford it.
Instead, it has fostered a rigged system that keeps private education a privilege for the already privileged.
The full investigative series is in several parts, long and in depth, including multimedia and charts, data etc.; if this is a subject you are interested in, have at it. If you just want the basic gist though, this lead article from the series relates the situation quite nicely and is well worth the read.
As a glaring example of what this Republican gilding of the wealthy lilly has produced, the authors cite the case of a Phoenix suburban pair of married attorneys:
Only God and the health of loved ones rank higher with Beth and Doug Fitch than an elite education for their two boys.
The $20,000-a-year cost is exorbitant, Beth said, even though the Fitches are both personal injury attorneys and own an Ahwatukee Foothills home valued at a half-million dollars, Maricopa County property records show. But the Fitches haven’t had to worry about the bill.
Arizona has paid the price.
…
"I understand that there is quite a dispute as to whether this is something that should continue in Arizona," Beth said of private school tax credits. But she feels justified in soliciting donors for her kids, even though she and her husband were paying the bill themselves before tapping into tax credits. "My two children would have fallen through the cracks at a public school."
The Fitchs are both very successful long time attorneys living in not just an affluent, but exclusive, mountain suburb. They live near the best elementary and high schools in the Kyrene School District, a national and state award winning school district perennially rated among the very elite in the entire state of Arizona. Yet Ms. Fitch thinks public schools, even some of the best in the state, are just not good enough for her children; if they were to attend public schools they would "fall through the cracks".
The state of Arizona has lost over $350 million dollars in desperately needed revenue in order to support this type of attitude. My daughter has been in public schools since her first day of kindergarten, just started high school, and is doing just fine academically and socially, thank you very much. She has not fallen through any "cracks".
Now, as the East Valley Tribune notes, there are a few instances of the Arizona Private School Tax Credit Program actually being applied for legitimate purposes but, by far, the vast majority is lost to the unjust enrichment of the wealthy and privileged. The benefit of the wealthy and powerful few, to the detriment of the many. This in a state that is in such dire financial straits it is literally selling its state capitol buildings to raise cash:
It is an indicator both of the depth of the fiscal crisis facing states and the extraordinary lengths to which they will go to try to avoid steep tax increases.
In Arizona, the sales could put between $350 million and $700 million into state coffers this year – but it’s a quick fix. The state would pay between $60 million and $70 million to lease back many of the properties, meaning the transactions will cost taxpayers more in the long run.
“It just shows how deeply the recession really has affected state finances,” says Todd Haggerty, a research analyst with the National Conference of State Legislatures.
“Desperate times call for desperate measures,” adds Linda Lopez, the Democratic House minority whip from Tucson.
It seems that $350 million given away almost exclusively to wealthy parents of private school children might have come in handy since it looks to be about the exact amount Arizona is going to net from selling off its state capitol, state parks and historical properties. Tragic symmetry. Who could have predicted?
But were it that was the only instance of conservative Republican pet policy blight on the Arizona school system. There is more; much more. Arizona was also the test bed for another of the conservative Republican educational memes, charter schools. Arizona, again under the direction of the same national Republican education reform experts and think tanks described above, enacted the broadest and most comprehensive charter school program in the country. And how did that work out? Not so well.
Although there are many quite good charter schools, many have been rife with mismanagement, fraud, scandals and the oversight by the state has been lax at best. But the worst part is, for all the diversion of money and resources from Arizona public schools, Arizona charter schools are significantly underperforming compared to Arizona public schools (Report from the Stanford University study here).
This is what happens when conservative Republicans put their charming policies into action, the rich win and the people and the states lose; it is not a bug, it is a feature. Republicans constantly tout themselves as the party putting "money back in the taxpayer’s pockets"; just keep in mind whose pockets they are really talking about, because in practice it is only the pockets of the wealthy, powerful and privileged. Our public school systems should not be weakened by such class warfare and redistribution of public wealth.
…Arizona charter schools are significantly underperforming compared to Arizona public schools….
(You buried your lead..)
Decadence and lassitude – the hallmarks of ALL Republican initiatives.
It’s as though they view problems and encourage their adherents to throw money at it, (and steal what you can.)
That would be a great lead for another story, but this story about upward “re distribution” is pretty important too. the rich are getting public money to send their Kids to AFFLUENT private schools.. we’re not talking about working class parents getting 4 or 5 thousand to send all thier kids to st. marys of the desert,or something( which is what they sold the program as) these are wealthy tax attorneys sending their kids to the fucking Gilman Academy or Mcdonough boarding school at the expense of low and middle income tax payers; about 20,000 APIECE! THAT IS OBSCENE!
It’s hard not to conclude that Charter Schools and Vouchers are Swindling Schemes for the Entitled to Get Their Way at the expense of the Rest of US.
But, the Rest of US had better buy that Health Insurance, dammit, or there will be fines!
The Arizona state legislature passed a bill and the governor signed it into law that allowed Arizona taxpayers to keep an average of $30 million a year of their own money and help private educational institutions carry on. That’s just awful. If you think the Kyrene School District doesn’t have enough money why don’t you just send them a check? They’d cash it.
What I think is my tax money ought to go to fund the public school system; if people want to send their children to private schools, that is great, but they should pay for it, not the taxpayers.
I don’t think someone’s fear of their kids falling through the cracks is contradicted, bmaz, by the fact that your daughter is doing fine. Some kids really are more likely to fall through the cracks at big public schools, especially kids who aren’t interested in sports or are just a little different. I’m glad public school has worked out for your daughter, but it’s really not a point in an argument.
Yeah, well actually the comparison is dead on the money i guarantee you. The oldest child of the couple in question is almost the same exact age as my daughter. The couple are the same age and demographics, almost exactly, as me and my wife, and the respective public schools are almost a dead on match. I know exactly what the situation of that couple is in relation to the public schools their children would have attended, I used to live in that same exact district. Pooh pooh all you want, I know exactly the score here and can tell you it is a legitimate comparison in every sense of the word. Oh, and by the way, the children of the couple in question are not “a little different”.
another impact on arizona school funding is the exemption from paying school taxes of many, if not all, of the sprawling senior housing developments, the sun city group for an example.
I’m not a fan of the so-called “school choice”. If there are problems with the public schools (and there are), fix them.
That said, let’s talk about Dayton OH. First, they implemented busing. This resulted in not just white flight, but money flight. Dayton couldn’t pass a school levy and the schools decline accellerated. Dayton passed a residency rule to try to get people to move to Dayton. Our public employees demographic chart said that most had no school age children and city demographic should that few people with school aged children moved in. School board members sent their children to private schools. Confidence in city schools dropped to nothing.
They got rid of busing for a magnet school plan and managed to pass a school levy. But the population of school age children continued to decrease. And the schools continued to suck. So Dayton qualified for the Voucher program, Ohio’s school choice program.
Charter schools exploded. Most of them produced no better results than the public schools and the ones that did were accused of cherry picking students. Lot’s of them have closed, some new ones have opened.
But the year that Dayton started the charter schools saw an increase in the population of school age children and that slight increase has continued.
The above longwindedness is simply to point out that average folks have lost confidence in public schools in general and large public schools in particular. And until that changes, we’re going to continue to see affronts like in Az.
IMO the first step is to enable Admin to fire poor teachers promptly. The union in Dayton fanatically protects all teachers, even the terrible ones. Then we need to remember the goal is education, not football.
Go back to what we did in the 60’s & 70’s. SOMETHING there was working that isn’t working now.
Fund the schools. You can buy two good teachers for the price of one sorry administrator.
Deal with the discipline problems, even when it forces you to address ugly issues. Dayton was thinking of a special school for problem students, but that got killed when they realized the school would be almost entirely black and they’d spend millions on lawsuits.
Boxturtle (But I don’t feel strongly about this at all)
Go back to what we did in the 60’s & 70’s.
Yeah, I remember that. My high school was great and I got an excellent education.
Of course it was all white, with the exception of “the jew.” And it was funded by property taxes in what was a wealthy area with high housing prices. All that tax money stayed in our district instead of being “wasted” on the poor parts of the state where the students were all destined to be manual laborers anyway.
The “retards” and “crips” all went to a special school across town–housed in an ancient building that didn’t meet earthquake codes–so they weren’t around to slow us down.
If for any reason you couldn’t keep up academically, you were pulled from school and sent to the “alternative” school along with the delinquents and pregnant girls. Strangely enough, that school had a high dropout rate.
So even though my family existed on the bottom rung of the area, and never could have sent me to a private school, I got a good education. But pardon me if I don’t long for a return to those days.
It’s only the hoi poloi who engage in subversive-by-definition class warfare. The elites engage in upward distribution of everyone else’s income so as to maximize their income and minimize their outgo. It’s medieval, from the days when the economy was so stagnant that the only way to obtain more was to steal it. That’s such a rude word, they called it chivalry. Republicans call it Reaganomics, a religion dear to the hearts of Blue Dogs.
Here’s hoping Arizona’s burgeoning new population revises the characters in its state house. As for the latter, as with I-bank induced sales of other states’ infrastructure, I here that the aggregate lease costs exceed the revenue from the sale. Another example of Republican pay me now and pay me later economics in action.
I’ll take your response as confirmation that your daughter is popular and good at sports.
You should not, because it doesn’t have a damn thing to do with popularity or sports. The private school being compared to the public one here has plenty of students and quite competitive sports teams. You are pitching a completely irrelevant and impertinent point. Just why exactly do you think the state of Arizona should pay completely for extremely wealthy people to send their children to extremely expensive private schools when there is a fantastic public school right next door? Do you think we should pay for their Mercedes and Land Rovers too? How much of the state’s general coffers should just be handed over to these people? Is there any limit you have in mind?
One of the BIGGEST proponents of charter schools for years now has been the Walton family,of WalMart infamy.
The charter schools are publicly funded but are not under federal jurisdiction standards that public schools are,to my understanding.
Therefore,curriculum that may disallowed in public schools is permissible in these private charter schools.
The Walton Foundation disbursements for Education are most generous with charter schools-the Imagine Schools being one of the recipients of such largesse.
The Imagine Schools have created quite a controversy in Florida recently, by using their funding to buy mostly real estate -then leasing it back to themselves . Sounds like a WalMart REIT to me.
Incidentally, these charter schools are also a way to get around hiring NON-union teachers.
You are exactly right.
Skdadl @12 – You are dead on the money too.
Public education is one of the necessary fundamental structures of democracy. Punkt. There is no way around that principle. Maybe it’s a measure of how bad education in North America has been that we don’t have a population who grasp the principle.
If people want to send their children to private schools, that’s fine with me (and in democratic theory), as long as they pay the full cost. Taking money out of the public system to fund elite or sectarian schools is just plain wrong.
We’ve had bad experiences here in the now fairly distant past with forcing minority groups to accept public education (the Sons of Freedom Doukhobors, eg), which is why I resist the “secularist” demand that everyone be required to be part of the public system. We also have a historical-constitutional complication in some provinces that has produced taxpayer-funded Catholic schools, although those are arguably just a particular part of the public system. And there’s no reason a public system can’t be flexible enough to run dedicated schools, for those who are in danger of falling through a number of different kinds of cracks.
But we shouldn’t be using the school system as a means to transfer wealth away from the public to the privileged few. We should be using the school system to grow citizens, for pete’s sake.
I think there’s the possibility that Charter Schools can meet the cultural needs of a particular community, and because of that, increase the chances the families will be involved and because of that, improve educational outcomes.
But we ought to be demanding the same kinds of outcomes for the same money.
I don’t necessarily disagree with that; however the Republican idea of a charter school program contemplates minimal oversight and accountability. And depending on how many charter students there are, there does after a point become a drag on the overall funding for public schools because, at least here there is a per pupil equivalency given to charters irrespective of their particular need. And, as Gitchee, pointed out, there is a problem with non-standard textbooks and curriculum, even in core subjects as well as the employ of questionable teachers. It all goes back to regulation, oversight and accountability. Problem is, those are curiously minimal in the GOP iterations. Arizona passed the GOP dream system; I wasn’t kidding that we were the test bed; they got pretty much everything they wanted. And it has produced some fantastic charter schools; but, as with the best public schools, it turns out the best are only in extremely wealthy areas where the parents donate extra money, time and equipment lavishly. In schools that are evaluated as comparable public to charter, what the Sanford study found is precisely what has been observed locally, except for the creme the charters either are no better and many underperforming.
Think those values voters from last weekend don’t see tha value in tax funded schools that would enable them to teach children that humans walked with dinosaurs?
Schools Matter: Imagine Schools, Inc. Becomes Funnel for Public …Sep 12, 2009 … Imagine Schools, Inc. could be the poster corporation for the kind … taking his marching orders the Walton Clan, …
schoolsmatter.blogspot.com/…/imagine-schools-inc-becomes-funnel-for.html – Cached – Similar
Schools Matter: Low Prices for Education the Walmart WayApr 10, 2008 … Besides lobbying for friendlier charter school laws, the Waltons have provided … Imagine Schools, Inc. Becomes Funnel for Public Do. …
schoolsmatter.blogspot.com/…/low-prices-for-education-walmart-way.html – Cached – Similar
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Bmaz, my main point here is that you’re relying on your specific experience with your daughter and on your personal knowledge of the couple you’re writing about to make sweeping generalizations. My problem with public schools in Los Angeles is the lack of accountibility. That’s my personal experience, which is as valid as yours. I’m happy to leave our daughters out of the discussion if you are but I’m also capable of using my daughter’s specific experience to make general points if you prefer.
Re: Report from Stanford University in main thread:
Now THAT’s ironic….
Stanford Report, May 9, 2008
John W. Gardner Center gets $8 million endowment
BY AMY YUEN
A $4 million gift matched by Stanford University will establish an $8 million endowment to support the work of the John W. Gardner Center for Youth and Their Communities.
The endowment was made possible by a $4 million gift from the Walton Family Foundation. The gift was recommended to the foundation by Stanford alumni Carrie Walton Penner and her husband, Greg Penner. Stanford’s Office of the President will match the gift.—————
Stanford University Press Release
Also, please note that my argument is that private school is more appropriate for some kids even if certain people think the public school is fantastic. I never advocated the public paying for it. Where do you see that in this thread?
Well, that is the point of the entire thread; so if I misunderstood your point in this regard i am sorry. I have no problem with people sending their kids to private school I just do not think the state should pay for the entirety of their tuition straight out of the general fund in direct tax credits. What parents do with their own money is their business.
Public money should not be used for private schools. That’s the point here.
Private schools may be good schools, but, outside of religious reasons, I don’t see a great need for them. Most of the non-religious private schools seem to exist for the snob appeal: ‘my kid went to …’, with the implication that your kid, who didn’t, is somehow less worthy.
Let me see, a tax “credit” is money that’s deducted from my tax obligation. The state isn’t writing me a check drawn on its account, right? It is my money. So, the state isn’t paying for private education, no matter how you cut it. The elected representatives of the people decided that, to broaden the educational possibilities and encourage diversity in education, financing of private schools would be something that they would encourage private individuals to do. If enough citizens find this abhorrent, they can certainly change the make-up of the government and have this 12-year old program eliminated. Regardless, lowering someone’s tax obligation for whatever reason, is not synonymous with “the state paying for it”.
That is just blatantly a bogus statement. It is money directly deducted from what the state coffers would otherwise have. But for this nonsensical law, that money would be in the state’s general fund. Your convoluted rhetorical contortions are totally disingenuous.
(too many polysyllabic words, I bet)
actually, a tax credit shelters considerably more income than the amount of the credit. if you have a tax cedit of $5000.00 that means you don’t have to pay taxes on whatever amount of income in your tax bracket it would take to create $5000.00 in tax liability…. if you pay 10% tax on your taxable income, a $5000.00 dollar tax credit shelters $50,000.00 in income. you are sheltering considerably more money than you are spending on your child’s tuition.
Right, I’m a renter. How is it that rich home buyers get a mortgage tax credit but I don’t? Then those filthy rich homeowners sell the house and get the money. I got nothing to sell but rent receipts. Waaaaaaaa.
Actually there are states (or at least one state – New York) that gives a tax break for renters on state taxes.
“Underperforming” (by objective criteria) is a feature, not a bug. The attraction of such non-public schools to rightwing parents is precisely their desire to “educate” their children in an environment that shelters them from diversity and science and secularism, censors historical progressive achievements and inconvenient post-mortems of American economic exceptionalism and military shame, and cripples their childrens’ innate skepticism and ability to develop critical thinking skills — all necessary to inculcate the desired worldview in a new generation of conservabots.
When push comes to shove, public school resources ought to come first. Charter schools and their ilk must come second. Tax abatements for the wealthy to send their Fauntleroys to private schools at taxpayer expense ought not to be a legislative or taxpayer priority at all.
Public subsidies for charter and other private schools are like a city buying bottled water and selling it at a premium and a loss, rather than fix rundown public water works. It’s expensive, avoids tackling the real problem, and benefits a few at the expense of the many. But then, that approach is a defining characteristic of the Republican Party.
Phoenix,Arizona Imagine School received a grant of $230,000 from Walton Foundation for the year 2007,according to Walton Family Foundation Education grants website.
[PDF] Helping Parents Provide the Best! Education Possible for their ChildFile Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat – View as HTML
Imagine Schools at Desert West, Phoenix AZ. Imagine Schools at East Mesa, Mesa AZ … Campus, Washington DC. Imagine Hope Community Charter School, Toison …
http://www.imagineschoolsstpetersburg…..ochure.pdf – Similar
Phoenix ,Arizona Imagine School at Camel Back Campus also recives $230,000 for the year 2007,according too Walton Family Foundation Grants website.
Imagine Elementary at Camelback – Phoenix, Arizona – AZ – School …Imagine Elementary at Camelback located in Phoenix, Arizona – AZ. Find Imagine Elementary at Camelback test scores, student-teacher ratio, parent reviews …
A child “falling through the cracks” is many a parent’s fear. But only a tiny percentage of parents can solve that problem by paying for private tuition; even fewer can or ought to be able to solve it by sending their children to private schools on the taxpayer’s dime – or rather 200,000 of them in the case cited here.
Improving public schools ought to be the legislature’s public concern. If it’s public system is first rate and it has a surplus – or is willing to raise taxes for the specific purpose of helping private schools that charge high tuition – it could fiddle at the edges with low-cost assistance to schooling in general, public and private.
No matter what the issue, a public legislature’s job is the common weal, not the private one, no matter how much that obligation is honored in the breach. And if public schools are in great shape, something else needs attention: roads, bridges, public safety (not the militarization of local law enforcement), libraries, parks, administration of justice and the panoply of local needs – from well-kept land titles and public records to refuse collection.
I can’t imagine a single local, state or national legislature in America has all those problems cured. Most are wrestling badly with all of them. In DC, the public water quality is about what it was when Lincoln was in office; the schools are more crowded, but not much better. So fixin’ or subsidizin’ private schools (which has roots in racism, as well as education) really ought not to be on the public agenda.
I like that idea, but I wonder if we’re putting the cart before the horse. If public school districts were not burdened with health insurance costs for staff, would our communities see improved curriculi and staffing levels in these public schools?
The word accountability has more than one meaning here. There is accountability to the public, in terms of standards and testing and oversight and regulation. Most parents are much more concerned with accountability to them in particular. That’s what’s lacking at public schools in Los Angeles, and there’s no enforcement mechanism, short of suing. Private schools tend to be more responsive, because of the financial incentive, in my experience.
The problem I have with the AZ solution to that problem is that you then have a better experience for a small minority (they can’t afford to give private school tuition tax credits to more than a very small percentage) and the underlying problem doesn’t get fixed. If there is a problem with the laws or the unions or anything else, the parents should be organizing to make their schools more accountable, not playing a game of who can bail out first and leave everyone else behind. If they really want to bail, they can do it with their own money and leave the public funds in the public system to help the many. If a voucher/charter school system were set up to benefit the many, I would be more inclined to go along with that. But we simply cannot support a system that benefits the few at the expense of the many and expect a strong democracy to flourish. Trickle down education doesn’t work any better than trickle down economics or trickle down public health or anything else.
Republicans want to subsidize “charter” schools – often a euphemism for a religious school or a substitute for an integrated public school – but remove them from state oversight and the obligation to comply with non-discrimination laws – which itself becomes a subsidy for the hiring of those with narrow religious or political views only.
Texas, I think, has a notorious record of child endangerment and abuse in and failure of its oversight-free charter schools. If memory serves, that record was so bad that a Republican legislature, which rarely meets, overrode a Gov. Bush-era rule and mandated public oversight. That would have required one hell of a backlog of corruption.
Private schools that receive no state funding should be reasonably free to set their standards and curriculum, though states should still determine what constitutes minimum primary and secondary educational standards. Such schools should still be subject to oversight as a child safety matter, and to public laws, such as those regarding non-discrimination in hiring. Private schools that receive public funds should be subject to greater oversight.
Texas had a helluva record involving sexual abuse at juvenile facilities,too, and Alberto Gonzales helped to sweep it under the rug.
That’s why the board of the uNiversity where he has been given a teaching postion is outraged..well, not only for that….
Excellent points Earl. I want to relate an experience of mine about 15 years ago when i worked as a reporter for a weekly newspaper in NJ. The conservative state senator in my area was actually opposed to tuition vouchers (this was actually before charter schools became in vogue in the Northeast) because he feared that accepting the vouchers would tie the private schools to state standards in curriculum, sex ed, etc. NJ actually has a clause in the state constitution which guarantees a right to a thorough and efficient education, so IMO a reasonable argument existed for either requiring private schools to adhere to state standards in lieu of vouchers or that the voucher system itself was unconstitutional since taxpayer funds were being diverted to schools which could not guarantee a thorough and efficient education.
A few years later, I moved up to Boston to attend grad school and get my teaching credentials. Mass. had just passed a law which established the creation of charter schools and my class would make visits to some of those new schools. It turns out one of my classmates worked at the conservative Pioneer Institute and so the director Jim Peyser was invited to speak to our class. The gist of what he said was that the state wasn’t specifically concerned w/ the quality of education at the charters, but was more interested in how the school was managed. This led me to conclude that the conservatives were merely interested in establishing an entrenched charter school system to drain money away from the public schools. More than a decade later, numerous studies in Mass. consistently show that charter school students actually perform worse than their counterparts in public schools. This undermines the rationale which led to the creation of these charter schools in the first place since the meme was students would get a better education at charter schools. The fact that these charters got to cherry pick their students and could conveniently exclude non English speakers, special education, students w/ behavioral issues, etc. and they still underperformed public schools, proves that the schools exist only to syphon money away from public education.
I’ve got multiple generations of school teachers on both sides of my family. One of the constants they have and had noted was that the best way for accountability in a school was for the parents to be fully engaged with the school and their children’s teachers.
They would complain about the parents who may not understand what was being taught but they would applaud that parent for taking the time to know what was going on.
Now I might be an idiot, but it seems to be that if parents are afraid that their children “would fall through the cracks” at a public school, then they must not be much of an advocate for their children.
I worked with a guy who was engaged with his kid’s education, and his complaint was that the school administrators (the principal, in particular) didn’t want parents involved. (The principal was very proud of her doctorate in education.)
None of my aunts/cousins have been administrators with the closest being one cousin who became the first special ed teacher for the hometown school district.
And FTR, I attended a private military high school in the late ’60s where my mother was the librarian. At the time, one of her benefits was my tuition. And among the more common reasons for parents to send their sons off to military school at the time were:
1. He’d been in trouble of some type and it was an alternative to juvenile homes.
2. Parents divorce and after a re-marriage, the step parent didn’t really care to deal with the kids so military school.
3. It actually was a decent education due to small class size, grading periods of two weeks (with grades to home every six weeks),enforced study hall every night.
@31
[PDF] Chapter 1. Texas and its Juvenile Justice System Everette B. Penn …File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat – View
Youth Commission and the Texas Juvenile Probation Commission which includes the 168 juvenile ….. a sex abuse scandal that had erupted within the TYC. …
http://www.sagepub.com/juvenilejustic…..er%201.pdf – Similar
[PDF] Stability eludes Texas Youth Commission a year after sex scandalFile Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat – View
Stability eludes Texas Youth Commission a year after sex scandal …. Juveniles at McFadden “have consistently reported that they do not file grievances …
http://www.criminaljusticecoalition.o…..candal.pdf – Similar
As you are no doubt aware, bmaz, many Minnesotans retire to AZ for at least part of the year. About five years ago we vacationed there in March and had occasion to visit both my wife’s cousin (a retired surgeon) and one of her former coworkers, and their spouses. Both couples lived in senior developments with no-children restrictions, one near Fountain Hills and the other in one of the Sun City communities. Both said that one of the main factors in their decisions on where they settled was the fact that there were no local school taxes in their communities. Are you aware of any studies that might have been done on how much revenue local school districts are losing by these conditions?
By the way, aside from the fact that my wife and I abhor the idea of living in a child-free community, we also believe that a tax structure that enables some people to wall themselves off from their responsibilities to subsequent generations is deeply immoral.
Somebody gets to pay no school taxes? No education taxes?
Good night. I never had children of my own (I’m a good stepmum), but I have always paid and been happy to pay education taxes.
These privileged layabouts think that just because they don’t have kids in the system any longer, they shouldn’t have to invest in the system? What’s their position on the portion of the local highways they will and won’t contribute to? How about the sections of utility pipes they are and aren’t willing to see maintained?
There is something in the right-wing brain that just does not get the logic of taxes, as the wingers don’t get the logic of insurance either. Do they demand part of their home insurance back every year because the house didn’t burn down? They talk about health insurance that way.
This is all so much a problem of sheer propaganda. All public services, roads, utilities, education, health care, all of them, insured/paid for privately or publicly, are socialized and have to be, can’t be paid for any other way. If the bottom falls out for the working class, then a lot of those comfortable middle class people who want to pick and choose among the taxes they will pay are going to find that the bottom is falling out for them too because maintaining anything but a system for elites relies on numbers, contributions from huge numbers of people. Impoverish the people, and very few will be left with a decent standard of living at all.
I believe there are well over 100,000 people in the combined several Sun City locations; additionally there are other designed retirement communities by Robson, Rossmor and McCullough that also have the exempt status, so there are is a lot of lost revenue from this.
Is Sun City a Del Webb creation? Since there is also a Sun City, FL here in southern Hillsborough County that I believe is a Del Webb created set-up.
Yep
Wouldn’t it be great if we could pick and chose which gov’t programs we like and fund those, and isolate ourselves and exempt us from paying what we either don’t need or want as in the case of Sun City residents. I would opt out of funding the war in Iraq (my taxes would only cover defensive weapons), bailing out wall st., tax breaks for KBR, Blackwater, Wal-Mart, etc.
Don’t like Sun City residents? You must hate old people.
Typical.
Do you actually pay any income taxes anyway?
I would accuse you of being a paid troll, but your comments are far too simple minded and pathetic for that. Get lost.
Incidentally, the facilites that these abuse occurred under the auspices of the Texas Youth Commission were ALL run by private contractors-any of whom had had other facilities shut down in other states.
Ah yes,this is indeed what happens when Texas Republicans put their charming policies into practice…I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the staff didn’t later hire out as torture contractors in Iraq.
Texas Civil Rights ProjectGEO Group Inc., which runs Texas’ largest private juvenile prison in Coke County, … Agency officials told the newspaper they were reviewing policies on … Legislative reforms passed in the wake of the TYC sex abuse scandal largely …
http://www.texascivilrightsproject.org/?s=misdemeanors – Cached – Similar
The Sun City and McCullogh retirement communities are huge; it is a LOT of revenue lost.
Again, my experience is that public school was not competent or accountable in addressing basic concerns. They were overwhelmed and only capable of handling cookie cutter kids. If you had a better experience, that’s great. I understand bmaz’ point, I was challenging the logical foundation, which seemed partly anecdotal. I wasn’t aware we had to accept posts in their entirety or challenge them in their entirety, with no points on the periphery. That is new.
Arizona. Just another brick in the wall.
The irony, of course, is that Ms Fitch’s children’s crack-falling potential is greatly enhanced by the public schools being robbed blind by her and her fellow privilegettes in order to prop up private school enclaves. The worse the public schools become because of being starved, the more true her crack-falling illogic becomes.
Sort of like the Bushie approach to government at any level: “It sucks — elect us and we’ll prove it!”
yup, they want us paying their bills, they refuse paying their ow
hers’s a dark secret under everyone’s nose, nobody recognizes but once told is obvious;
private schools are further subsidized by public schools since most of the teachers who work there come from public education!!!
combine those middle class dollars, add to it the roads which are publicly funded, electric lines, water lines and bing, the public funds private schools FAR more then even those vouchers suggest
THEN
you add to it the fact that the teachers can be non-union, no retirement and lower wages you get further redistribution of middle class dollars to the wealthy
of course maintenance is going to go to day laborers and lower paying wage jobs instead of union and we see just how much these vouchers are costing the middle class
if a person wants to send their kids to private school they need to pay the price, they should never then get the right to stop paying the bills that keep our society growing
Nice piece. Let’s not forget that the Democrats have been promoting charter schools as much as the Republicans. The President and Arne Duncan are big fans of charter schools, as demonstrated by all the funding for charter schools in the stimulus. The June 15th copy of The Nation had a great article on the Democrats and charter schools. Here’s the link, but unfortunately you can only get it with a subscription: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090615/goldstein
Book Salon up at the Mothership with David Swanson’s Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union hosted by Glenn Greenwald
The whole Charter School concept is weird. First of all, they’re usually in shopping centers around here. Since a public high school requires about 40 acres and an elementary requires ten, there’s no way a charter can afford the land. Buildings for public schools are required to be up to code for earthquake and ADA, but for some reason charters can get around these issues. Parents at charters often want life easier for their kids, so they go to school twice a week, say, rather than five days. They want their kids away from the browns, and as no public transportation is offered to charters, it becomes the white school. Textbooks don’t have to be on the state matrix, so can be purchased for considerably less, ie old texts that public schools are required to replace every seven years. I’ve know of cases where high school kids can get PE credits for riding their skateboards after school, or take English 9 and 10 simultaneously for the purpose of early graduation. No cafeteria, library, health office, speech therapy or special ed. required.
It’s all a scam, and a rip-off to the taxpayers. It’s no wonder that the charter schools are generally not doing as well as public schools. (And don’t get me started on the mess NCLB has wrought!)
No union involvement, though they normally get the same pay, benefits and retirement. So benefits that union members pay for…
BUT…the average daily attendance money is the same as public school.
I’m surprised that WalMart hasn’t leased those empty stores to the charter schools yet-hey,its already paved ,lots of parking,and the building can be converted to a school.
I’m waitng for WalMart to start converting to WalMartels-since Rob Walton and Goldman spent a billion $$$ investing in Hyatt Hotels.Now, each have a seat on the Hyatt Board.
Now, this is some visionary thinking. I’m sure we haven’t long to wait now.
LooHoo @56: The whole Charter School concept is weird. First of all, they’re usually in shopping centers around here. Since a public high school requires about 40 acres and an elementary requires ten, there’s no way a charter can afford the land. Buildings for public schools are required to be up to code for earthquake and ADA, but for some reason charters can get around these issues.
In many of the bigger cities these problems have been evaded by capture of the board of ed or other controlling body, so that charters become the mechanism of choice for restructuring schools. NYC, Chicago, and New Orleans (post-Katrina, naturally) have taken the lead in the installation of charter modules into existing school buildings, under various catchy small-school names. See, e.g., the comments of others above about Arne Duncan.
Some of the LA public schools have become ‘charter schools’ while remaining public. Not quite sure how that works. I haven’t heard that any of them have become better-performing enough to justify the changes.
I’m sure there are good charter schools…Obama’s big on them…
Charters have to be under a district, or if not, under the county dept. of ed. They just don’t have to follow the same rules as the district schools or even county court schools.
I just haven’t seen any good come of them.
RetAZED, I’m delighted that I could retire too.
I saw on the news a few years back that they were celebrating a charter or magnet school’s huge achievement of having the best state test scores in the LA district. The school was for gifted students, but nobody seemed to catch on that may have something to do with that major accomplishment they were all celebrating. From what I have seen of private school studies, this is not the exception. The ones that do well and are touted by those who want programs such as AZ’s cherry pick the best and the brightest and the ones with the most support at home. When they are not allowed to do that and must take a mix more like their neighborhood public schools, they don’t compare as well. There are plenty of problems in the public schools, but the private schools haven’t shown themselves to be that much better in educating your average American student.
I won’t even start with all the private and home school programs set up in my area specifically for evangelicals who are afraid of what the public schools will teach their kids and expose them to. I will say that even though I think it harms our nation as a whole to let parent opt out of having their children actually educated and able to think critically, I am okay with the parents choosing to do so as long as they are willing to pay the price themselves. The usual is not only to try to get the taxpayer to pay for it, but to take the money away from the public schools so those of us who are not crazy can’t get decent public school educations for our kids or private school educations because the private schools cater to the crazies.
Ya think?? Republicans take every opportunity they can to help the rich and deprive the rest of. It is just Republican standard SOP
Well, if you’re not from Arizona, why do you care about this issue at all? And if you are a Zonie, why not make the donation to the SOT and help a deserving student escape the clutches of mediocrity and lower your taxes besides?
I’ve been reading FDL for a while now but felt compelled to register for this subject. I just retired from 30 years in education, 24 in AZ. I feel it is important that readers here understand what the scam is here. This law was passed with the promise that it would help poor students pay for private school tuition. What has happened is wealthy people are getting friends and relatives to donate in their child’s name. Meanwhile, public school funds are cut. My husband has taught in charter schools and scams abound there. Tucson has one of the highest ranking charters in the counry, Basis. It advertizes itself as in the European model, accelerated. That means if your child can’t keep up, make another choice. It is a very good school. I know many of its students because they were gifted students who received a very good education at the public elementary school where I was employed. Other charters appeal to the other end of the spectrum, passing students with as little effort by them as possible. I have never understood one thing about conservatives. They believe in personal responsiblity for everyone except their own children. I guess this is true of many liberals as well. Today’s Tucson paper had a big article about the increasing number of teachers being attacked by students. After a few days of suspension, those students end up back in class. I could rant on but, with the increasing pressure and prejudice against public education, I’m glad I could retire.
First off, welcome RetAZED, and thanks for all the years of service as a techer. Thanks for registering, please participate often here at Emptywheel.
Secondly, you are exactly right about the funding scam of the Private School Tax Credit Program and that it is utilized almost exclusively by the wealthy that are more than capable of paying their children’s tuition to the private schools but now don’t have to. The one thing I would add is, as the East Valley Tribune series pointed out, parents are grouping together to “donate” to each other’s children so that it is the equivalent of parents simply donating for their own kids and then recovering every cent of their tuition donations as direct tax credits. It is not like a bunch of philanthropists are independently donating; it is a circular scam.
This is similar to Mrs. John McCain’s considerable taxpayer subsidized donations to her children’s private school – in the years when they were attending it.
If the wealthy want the benefits of living in America, but without the social costs of doing so, I suggest they all Go Galt. Perhaps we could sell them an long-term lease on a tropical island under de fact US jurisdiction. Gitmo comes to mind. Relocating them there, with ferry rides to Miami once a week might be the carrot of a program that House millionaires need to relinquish their opportunistic ban on closing Gitmo.
As with social clubs and churches, a citizen can’t just buy a membership, they have to be a member, which means everybody has to pay dues and clean trash cans and locker rooms before they can use the pool.
Curious, too, that Cindy McCain thinks the gov should put out $5,000,000 for migrane headache study since she gets terrible migraines.
Five million bucks isn’t much for her, and what a write-off she could carry over many years.
Migraines are a terrible, debilitating thing and deserve more research. But I agree that the meme being dissed here is that the haves seem to want public dollars going only to solve their personal problems, not those afflicting so many others or which don’t give them an immediate, direct feedback.
My complaint about Ms. McCain’s charitable giving was that it appeared to have a similar focus. I believe she eschewed wider societal concerns and focused her relatively limited donations in a way the fed back directly into her children’s lives, while leaving so many unattended.
I appreciate that it is her right to do so and that that’s how many of us give. We give to our own churches and Planned Parenthood associations and Scouting organizations, our old schools and colleges and social clubs.
I guess my point is that dependence on private charity is acceptable at the periphery. Things like health care and putting out fires, and controlling physically and financially violent crimes and abusive business practices cannot be left to “self-regulation”. That’s a contradiction in terms; it’s like asking successful thieves to be nice and stop thieving. The odds of success are miniscule and no one would propose that who wanted the thieving stopped.
Nor can such things be left to private charity. They have to be part of what we have government do for us that we cannot or ought not do ourselves. Or because having tried a market approach, and having seen it miserably fail and grossly abuse its customers, we should recognize that failing and try another approach.
What are you talking about cleaning things up to use the club pool? That’s what illegals are for, silly!
My parents had a small cabin off a private road with a maintenance association and fee; some of the newer year-round residents of the area objected to paying the fee. I don’t know whether they thought it magically graded and gravelled itself every year, or whether they thought that they should be exempt somehow.
It’s the same mindset, I think: ‘I’ve got mine, too bad for the rest of you.’
Charter schools in TX receive $19 million from state, red flags …11 posts – 7 authors – Last post: yesterday
Charter schools in TX receive $19 million from state, … There are more problems in Texas schools, the Imagine Schools in McKinney are …
http://www.democraticunderground.org/…..hp?… – Cached – Similar
@69
Ken Silverstein had a good article in Harper’s,February 2008 about John McCain’s charitable giving.
Forthwith an excerpt,with linky to follow:
Collectively, McCain’s kids’ private schools rank as the largest recipient of his foundation’s money. The largest individual recipient is the U.S. Naval Academy Foundation, which received $210,000 in both 2001 and 2002.
The McCain Foundation also has given large amounts to medical causes of various kinds, with a focus on craniofacial research, and the Halo Trust, a landmine-clearing organization.
Small amounts have gone to the Valley Youth Theatre ($200) in Phoenix; Cool our Troops ($500), which provides Misty Mates to troops in Iraq; the Child Crisis Center in Phoenix ($250), which provides emergency shelter and programs for abused kids; and the American Cancer Society’s Neighborhood Cancer Program ($50)..
I contacted McCain’s campaign to ask about the foundation’s contributions. A campaign spokesman, who asked to speak anonymously, said the foundation is funded nearly entirely by proceeds from McCain’s book sales.
It’s impossible to know how much McCain has saved in taxes through his foundation’s donations since he has thus far refused to release his tax returns (and won’t commit to releasing them after formally becoming the nominee either). It’s not exactly the pattern of giving you’d expect from someone who has cultivated an anti-elitist image. (Feb.2008)Ken Silverstein,Harper’s
John McCain’s Charitable Contributions—By Ken Silverstein …The charitable contributions of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have received a fair amount of press scrutiny. The same is not true of John McCain, …
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2008/02/hbc-90002519 – Cached – Similar
What is wrong with McCain legal and legitimate charitable donations in addition to paying his children’s tuition? The US tax code is set to encourage charitable donation; I see nothing wrong with donating to schools his children attend or have formerly attended, millions of families across the country do the same thing. Getting a deduction is a completely different thing than the direct tax credit that serves to pay tuition as is being done under the program discussed in the post.
I could write a dissertation to rival Mary when she’s on a lengthy subject:
I live in Florida…..
– No state income tax to fund schools
– Retirees that already “got theirs” (kid’s educations) and have a nominal 80% voter turnout (say something bad about Social Security and see how long you keep your elected office here)
– Incredible corruption built into the state system of government
– “Right to work” state….(barf)
– Deserved reputation of turning out illiterate kids
Then
There’s……
Eight years of Jeb who once reasoned that since his rich friends already sent their kids to private schools then they are paying for seats that are going empty and he needed to get that extra money back to them.
EXTRA MONEY??? in one of the worst funded school systems in the county???
And don’t even get me started about 3rd graders studying all year just to pass an FCAT test, (written and graded by a private company not even in Florida, and we are not even allowed to see the test questions) or get held back a grade….
Oh yeah… if the school doesn’t do well on the FCAT….they get their funding CUT!
Thanks, bmaz–
I’m forwarding this to my local network of progressives in Flagstaff.
Bob in AZ
bmaz,
Thanks for addressing this subject. It is an issue which is destroying state education funding for public education and creating a system of systemic selfishness.
I could write for days on the subject. It is near and dear to me.
bmaz-
You may want to look in at 538 regarding an investigation of polling operation Strategic Vision, LLC. Nate’s preliminary findings are that SV,LLC made up poll results out of whole cloth. Commenters on his site have speculated that SV, LLC existed solely to drive public perception and serve as supporting documentation for the advancement of right wing ideology.
How this relates to AZ schools is convoluted but not tenuous so please bear with me. There are 3 or so recent posts on this developing story with one regarding a recent “poll” conducted by SV, LLC, of Oklahoma students which yields some incredibly dismal results as to knowledge of basic civics. Buried in the “data” are a couple of nuggets re: private/charter school performance vs. public school performance and naturally the private/charter schools did better. With the newfound knowledge that SV, LLC was in all liklihood simply releasing poll data to suit the end users purpose it seemed pretty clear that the point of the OK poll was to destroy confidence the public school system while bolstering the charter/private system.
I know this is absurdly roundabout but the commenters on 538 happened to mention that SV, LLC released almost identical polling data for AZ at the behest of the Goldwater Institute. The “polls” were of the same questions with AZ faring slightly better than OK but not much. Here too, the private/charter schools outperformed the public schools. These “polls” and others from SV, LLC were commissioned by the Goldwater Institute and cited prominently in GI policy briefs in support of the tax incentives that you mention here.
http://www.goldwaterinstitute.org/article/3657
Above is a link to a policy brief in support of tax incentives for private/charter schools that is supported entirely on what is extremely likely to be fraudulent data provided by SV, LLC.
I thought perhaps if the the SV, LLC story blows up (and it very likely will), that there may be some hay to be made with the AZ legislature. If the rationale for the tax incentives was based upon a false premise perhaps some type of injunction can be put in place while the matter is investigated.
Sorry for the completely byzantine nature of this but I’d been reading 538 and dropped in here and tied the two together.
-Emma
Yep, Strategic Vision has a Luntz like mainline tie to the conservative right. Thanks for the link.
Thanks also to Phil Kovacs and JohnnyTable
This is not just a conservative issue, it is a neoliberal issue, and the Obama Dept. of Ed. is bribing states to start charters with its Race to the Top Fund. In many senses, the current administration is worse than the previous one for parents who are trying to retain communities with successful public schools b/c it’s pretty hard to turn down billions of dollars from the federal government.
The fact that study after study shows charters schools almost always underperform public schools, and the fact that Sec. of Ed. Duncan is pushing them as a panacea for school reform, should make progressives nervous.
In reading the comments to this item, I hope progressives don’t fall into the Republican trap of ignoring information that challenges or refutes strongly held beliefs. The question of charter student academic performance v. traditional public school academic performance is a lot less clear cut than many posters have presented here. To cite one relatively unbiased source, Edsource (a California organization that aggregates information on ed policy issues, in reference to California charter performance: “Certain patterns in the performance have emerged based on these categories. For example, reports in 2007 through 2009 showed that, after controlling for differences in student background and school size, charter elementary schools do not perform as well as traditional elementary schools, while charter middle and high schools have outscored their traditional counterparts. Similarly, conversions tend to outscore start-ups, but not always by statistically significant margins. Further, classroom-based charters have consistently outperformed nonclassroom-based charters. ” While the relative merit of charter school models is mixed, what has been well documented is the systemic failure of many large urban public school districts to produce acceptable academic outcomes for most of their students (and unlike many posters here, I would be glad to prduce multiple citations backing this statement). Based on my understanding of the data available, I think the failure is in part due to inadequate funding (and the diversion of tax funds cited above to private schools and the affluent is an example of the poor policy decisions many states have made), but also due to poor deployment of available resources and flawed models of school organization. Simply put, to ignore the poor performance of many school systems is foolish, and to ignore delivery models that produce success, as some traditional public and some charter schools have, is the equivalent to acting like Republicans. Our children are best served when we approach educational policy with the same rigor in inquiry we use to approach environmental or foreign policy.
I agree with that; however, how are you going to “fix” public schools if you keep diverting off money, resources and students to alternatives? I don’t have the answer, and I haven’t seen one. At some point, I have a feeling the situation is simply hampered by the continued allowance of powerful local control of schools; it breeds inefficiency, inconsistency and control by idiots and nefarious interests. I can just imagine the screeching if it were taken away though; and even I as a mental image am not excited by national control. So what to do?
There’s clearly no simple fix. From a policy perspective, I think realizing all children can learn but many children are disenfranchised (often, but not exclusively the same children whose parents are disenfranchised) is a start, and hence setting federal policy to rectify local inequities is absolutely critical. Practically, this means more federal funding of education and higher taxes. Federal funding aside, I have seen grass roots methods work in other social policy areas, and I think they are applicable to educational issues, which at least at one level leads to a degree of local control. Probably the most important element is to be dispassionate in evaluating the success of different models while being extremely passionate about the need to create schools where there is an outstanding teacher in each classroom working with school leadership and the local community to make sure each child succeeds. Practically, that means a lot of citizen involvement and a willingness to listen to opposing points of view and work toward success, and tolerating some goofiness from parents and community members you disagree with provided that a common end result can be defined. The “Race to the Top” policy that the Department of Education is pushing actually makes sense to me, though I am wary of its possible disconnection from community input.
Just had a neighbor use those words. I was not surprised to them out of her mouth.
Charter School Expenditures from 1998 – 2006
Since the late 1990s, the Walton Family has been at the forefront of the charter school movement. Over the years, they have given hundreds of millions of dollars to various charter schools and ally organizations around the country. From the Walton Family Foundation 990 forms from 1998-2006, we have identified the various charter schools who have received donations from the Foundation and have also been able to generate trends and patterns that have emerged over the past decade in this area:
•In 1998, the total amount of donations to charter schools was $1.9 million
•In 2006, the total amount of donations to charter schools was $48.2 million. From 1998-200617, there has been a 2434% increase in the Walton Family Foundation’s donations to charter schools
waltoninfluence.com
The Anatomy of the Walton Family’s Right Wing Agenda | The Walton …The Walton Family’s support of the school voucher and charter schools movement is unparalleled in the United States. According to the 2006 Walton Family …
http://www.waltoninfluence.com/influe…..ive_agenda
Let’s not forget that the Waltons are in Arkansas, Blanche Lincoln and Mike Ross’ home turf.