Part Two: Scools out forever

"It's very easy to set up a one-room shop in a strip mall, give every kid a Chromebook and a plaid skirt, tell parents they're on an accelerated curriculum and take that $7,000," said Lewis. But it's equally easy for those schools to "close up shop whenever they want," as numerous low-quality voucher schools have been known to do, leaving students stranded partway through the school year. When that happens, said Lewis, "There's no recourse to claw those funds back."

As Arizona's new law was making its way through the legislature, reported Arizona's 12 News, Democratic lawmakers tried to add accountability and t***sparency measures, including testing mandates, background checks for employees hired with ESA funds and demographic tracking to ensure the program wasn't just subsidizing private school tuition for rich families who didn't need it. But none of those things made it into the final bill, shot down by arguments like that of bill sponsor and House Majority Leader Ben Toma, who argued that parents must serve as the "ultimate authority. They know what's best for their children, and we should trust them to do the right thing."
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Unfortunately, said Carol Corbett Burris, ESA programs have already demonstrated problems with that approach, through numerous cases of fraud, in which parents used the funds for things other than their children's education.

"There are no real checks to make sure children receive the education they deserve, no proof parents have to provide that their children learned," said Burris. Even among the vast majority of parents who would use the funds as intended, she added, "You have people with absolutely no education credentials in charge of students, and nobody checking to ensure the education is of any quality at all."

"It's like an insurance company giving parents of a sick child $7,000 and saying, 'We don't care if you go to a physician or a dentist — take that money and do what you believe is best," Burris continued. "Parents may know best about many things, but they're not professional educators any more than they are doctors, dentists or nurses."

"It's like an insurance company giving parents of a sick child $7,000 and saying, 'We don't care if you go to a physician or a dentist — take that money and do what you believe is best.'"
Advertisement:

What's more, SOS Arizona pointed out, the ESA funds could also be used to send taxpayer funding to the sort of private school being established by Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk, who recently announced plans to start a network of anti-"woke" Turning Point Academies, first in Arizona, then around the country. The first such school, with more than 600 students, is set to open in Glendale this fall, as the result of a partnership between Kirk and Phoenix megachurch Dream City. According to Newsweek, the academy will ban CRT, the New York Times' "1619 Project" and what it calls "radical L**T agendas." Those 600-plus students, Lewis notes, will add up to some "4 million taxpayer dollars that go straight into Kirk's academy."

* * *

On a larger level, the new law also speeds up the same sort of death spiral that has afflicted public schools across the country, by steadily draining funds away from public education. While the immediate cost of ESA expansion — for students already outside the public school system — will draw on Arizona's general funds, the money to cover children who leave public schools in coming years will be deducted from public school budgets.
Advertisement:

"When that happens, especially in rural areas, if enough kids leave the system, they leave behind all kinds of stranded costs," said Burris. Schools will still have to pay staff and keep the lights on, but will receive substantially less support to do so. "Then you have a vicious cycle, where the quality of education in public schools starts to suffer, which means more people leave, and the more people leave, the more the quality of education deteriorates."

That problem is compounded, adds Lewis, by the fact that private and charter schools are allowed to"cherry-pick" high-achieving students without special needs, while leaving higher-needs students in public schools as those schools are systematically drained of the resources to teach them well. That pattern, she continued, already means that one of Arizona's top charter schools regularly starts each of its classes with hundreds of students, but only a few dozen remain by graduation, since the school has pushed most lower-performing students out. And if such charters convert into private schools, as they're allowed to do, ESA expansion will mean they get more money and even looser regulation.
Advertisement:

"We know historically that when systems are opened up for everybody, students of color and low-income students never get the long straw, ever," said Lewis. "They use this terminology of choice, but what they fail to acknowledge is that it's the school's choice, every time."

Already, Arizona's investment in public education is dismal, ranking second-to-last in per-pupil funding nationwide. Last Friday, alongside the ESA expansion, Arizona's legislature also passed a budget that included a $400 million increase in public funding — enough, SOS Arizona noted, to potentially nudge Arizona's ranking up to 45th-worst — but that's complicated too. As Network for Public Education founder Diane Ravitch noted earlier this month, only half of that money is recurring, and all of it is contingent upon the voucher bill becoming law. That "poison pill," wrote Ravitch, was a clear effort to preempt a replay of public education advocates' 2018 b****t initiative, by holding the increase in school funding hostage to a privatization agenda.

To SOS Arizona, it amounted to "adding more money to the top of our education funding bucket while drilling massive holes in the bottom."
Advertisement:

"I think we're witnessing the dismantling of public education in our state," said Lewis. "Will it happen overnight? No. But the effects will be felt quickly and the blow to public schools will be unsustainable." If even a few kids leave a neighborhood school, the difference in funding is noticeable. If six or seven do, "that's a whole teacher [salary] down." In her own school, where Lewis teaches third grade, that sort of downsizing would mean the immediate increase of her class size of 27 students to more than 40. "Or do you make the cuts elsewhere? Do you cut special education, which has already been cut to the bone? Or music, arts and after-school programs, which have already been cut to the bone? Do you not have an assistant principal? Then how many students don't get what they need?"

"We are going to stop this by any means necessary," Lewis said, including e*******l work, public education, and possibly another b****t initiative, even if that means risking the "poison pill" cancellation of the state's newly increased public school funds. "All options are on the table."
Advertisement:

But all options, suggests Charles Siler, are also on the table for the other side. "One of the things people never fully comprehend is how far privatization advocates want to take things," he said. "They want to get rid of all public funding for education. Eventually vouchers will die off too." What will remain, he argues, will be a self-funded primary education system, funded by a lending market much as colleges are. Or as Lewis says, a "system of haves and have-nots."

Read more on the right's systematic assault on public education:

A new age of f*****t politics brings a war on youth — but young people are ready to resist
Betsy DeVos and Ron DeSantis: GOP dynamic duo team up to defund public schools
The guy who brought us CRT panic offers a new far-right agenda: Destroy public education


By Kathryn Joyce

Kathryn Joyce is an investigative reporter at Salon, and the author of two books: "The Child Catchers: Rescue, Trafficking and the New Gospel of Adoption" and "Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement."
MORE FROM Kathryn Joyce

Part Two: Scools out forever

"It's very easy to set up a one-room shop in a strip mall, give every kid a Chromebook and a plaid skirt, tell parents they're on an accelerated curriculum and take that $7,000," said Lewis. But it's equally easy for those schools to "close up shop whenever they want," as numerous low-quality voucher schools have been known to do, leaving students stranded partway through the school year. When that happens, said Lewis, "There's no recourse to claw those funds back."

As Arizona's new law was making its way through the legislature, reported Arizona's 12 News, Democratic lawmakers tried to add accountability and t***sparency measures, including testing mandates, background checks for employees hired with ESA funds and demographic tracking to ensure the program wasn't just subsidizing private school tuition for rich families who didn't need it. But none of those things made it into the final bill, shot down by arguments like that of bill sponsor and House Majority Leader Ben Toma, who argued that parents must serve as the "ultimate authority. They know what's best for their children, and we should trust them to do the right thing."
Advertisement:

Unfortunately, said Carol Corbett Burris, ESA programs have already demonstrated problems with that approach, through numerous cases of fraud, in which parents used the funds for things other than their children's education.

"There are no real checks to make sure children receive the education they deserve, no proof parents have to provide that their children learned," said Burris. Even among the vast majority of parents who would use the funds as intended, she added, "You have people with absolutely no education credentials in charge of students, and nobody checking to ensure the education is of any quality at all."

"It's like an insurance company giving parents of a sick child $7,000 and saying, 'We don't care if you go to a physician or a dentist — take that money and do what you believe is best," Burris continued. "Parents may know best about many things, but they're not professional educators any more than they are doctors, dentists or nurses."

"It's like an insurance company giving parents of a sick child $7,000 and saying, 'We don't care if you go to a physician or a dentist — take that money and do what you believe is best.'"
Advertisement:

What's more, SOS Arizona pointed out, the ESA funds could also be used to send taxpayer funding to the sort of private school being established by Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk, who recently announced plans to start a network of anti-"woke" Turning Point Academies, first in Arizona, then around the country. The first such school, with more than 600 students, is set to open in Glendale this fall, as the result of a partnership between Kirk and Phoenix megachurch Dream City. According to Newsweek, the academy will ban CRT, the New York Times' "1619 Project" and what it calls "radical L**T agendas." Those 600-plus students, Lewis notes, will add up to some "4 million taxpayer dollars that go straight into Kirk's academy."

* * *

On a larger level, the new law also speeds up the same sort of death spiral that has afflicted public schools across the country, by steadily draining funds away from public education. While the immediate cost of ESA expansion — for students already outside the public school system — will draw on Arizona's general funds, the money to cover children who leave public schools in coming years will be deducted from public school budgets.
Advertisement:

"When that happens, especially in rural areas, if enough kids leave the system, they leave behind all kinds of stranded costs," said Burris. Schools will still have to pay staff and keep the lights on, but will receive substantially less support to do so. "Then you have a vicious cycle, where the quality of education in public schools starts to suffer, which means more people leave, and the more people leave, the more the quality of education deteriorates."

That problem is compounded, adds Lewis, by the fact that private and charter schools are allowed to"cherry-pick" high-achieving students without special needs, while leaving higher-needs students in public schools as those schools are systematically drained of the resources to teach them well. That pattern, she continued, already means that one of Arizona's top charter schools regularly starts each of its classes with hundreds of students, but only a few dozen remain by graduation, since the school has pushed most lower-performing students out. And if such charters convert into private schools, as they're allowed to do, ESA expansion will mean they get more money and even looser regulation.
Advertisement:

"We know historically that when systems are opened up for everybody, students of color and low-income students never get the long straw, ever," said Lewis. "They use this terminology of choice, but what they fail to acknowledge is that it's the school's choice, every time."

Already, Arizona's investment in public education is dismal, ranking second-to-last in per-pupil funding nationwide. Last Friday, alongside the ESA expansion, Arizona's legislature also passed a budget that included a $400 million increase in public funding — enough, SOS Arizona noted, to potentially nudge Arizona's ranking up to 45th-worst — but that's complicated too. As Network for Public Education founder Diane Ravitch noted earlier this month, only half of that money is recurring, and all of it is contingent upon the voucher bill becoming law. That "poison pill," wrote Ravitch, was a clear effort to preempt a replay of public education advocates' 2018 b****t initiative, by holding the increase in school funding hostage to a privatization agenda.

To SOS Arizona, it amounted to "adding more money to the top of our education funding bucket while drilling massive holes in the bottom."
Advertisement:

"I think we're witnessing the dismantling of public education in our state," said Lewis. "Will it happen overnight? No. But the effects will be felt quickly and the blow to public schools will be unsustainable." If even a few kids leave a neighborhood school, the difference in funding is noticeable. If six or seven do, "that's a whole teacher [salary] down." In her own school, where Lewis teaches third grade, that sort of downsizing would mean the immediate increase of her class size of 27 students to more than 40. "Or do you make the cuts elsewhere? Do you cut special education, which has already been cut to the bone? Or music, arts and after-school programs, which have already been cut to the bone? Do you not have an assistant principal? Then how many students don't get what they need?"

"We are going to stop this by any means necessary," Lewis said, including e*******l work, public education, and possibly another b****t initiative, even if that means risking the "poison pill" cancellation of the state's newly increased public school funds. "All options are on the table."
Advertisement:

But all options, suggests Charles Siler, are also on the table for the other side. "One of the things people never fully comprehend is how far privatization advocates want to take things," he said. "They want to get rid of all public funding for education. Eventually vouchers will die off too." What will remain, he argues, will be a self-funded primary education system, funded by a lending market much as colleges are. Or as Lewis says, a "system of haves and have-nots."

Read more on the right's systematic assault on public education:

A new age of f*****t politics brings a war on youth — but young people are ready to resist
Betsy DeVos and Ron DeSantis: GOP dynamic duo team up to defund public schools
The guy who brought us CRT panic offers a new far-right agenda: Destroy public education


By Kathryn Joyce

Kathryn Joyce is an investigative reporter at Salon, and the author of two books: "The Child Catchers: Rescue, Trafficking and the New Gospel of Adoption" and "Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement."
MORE FROM Kathryn Joyce