AZ: Families Are Banking Taxpayer-Funded Voucher Money

Arizona continues to be demonstrate how taxpayer-funded school vouchers actually work. Spoiler alert: it is not to rescue poor students from failing schools.

Of course, like other states that embrace taxpayer-funded vouchers, Arizona's choice boosters have used the old familiar pitch. When Arizaona made its taxpayer-funded vouchers universally available to all families in 2022, no matter how wealthy, then-Governor Doug Ducey declared "These kids are trapped in failing public schools. It's time to set these families free."

But that's not how it worked. 

12News has offered solid coverage of taxpayer-funded shenanigans in the billion-dollar program. None of the stories are pretty. While schools went begging for Home Ec supplies, families were using their taxpayer-funded vouchers to buy high end kitchen equipment. Plenty of wealthy families are using millions of taxpayer dollars to buy voucher families private dance lessons and other sorts of activities that public school kids (you know-- the ones that haven't been set free) can only dream of. A $16,000 cello. Dune buggies.

Shouldn't there be oversight of the program. Well, about that. 12News reported last December that state had a huge backlog of undistributed vouchers, so to clear the decks, state ed honcho Tom Horne decreed that they would distibute the money now and audit later. 

12News did some digging into the program and found that the taxpayer-funded vouchers were being used mostly by wealthy non-rural families, and that those families were "escaping" some of the top-rated public and charter schools in the state.

Noe 12News has a new report that reveals yet another layer to the program-- families that bank their taxpayer-funded voucher dollars for later. 

More than 10,000 famillies have over $10,000 banked from vouchers. 200 accounts have over $100,000.  Ten have over $200,000. The law says that these funds, collected from taxpayers, can be rolled over for use as college funding. All told, it amounts to about $440 million sitting in private bank accounts. Nothing is escaping here except all the money "escaping" from taxpayers. Arpund $50 million is sitting in acounts that are inactive.

As always in Arizona, if you're expecting GOP lawmakers to say, "Well, that's gone a little too far," you will be disappointed. Reported 12News:

State Rep. Nick Kupper, R-Surprise, said in a written statement: “If there is around $440M sitting in the accounts of the 85,000 students using ESAs, I would say it sounds like it’s a popular program.”

He added: "Interestingly, there are mechanisms for getting unused ESA monies back when a student leaves the program, but there aren’t the same mechanisms to do that with public school monies. Perhaps we should take a look at correcting that.”

Yup. Why make the taxpayer-funded voucher program more accountable when you can just put the screws to public schools, again.

Taxpayer-funded vouchersb run about $7-8 thousand in Arizona. Considerably more for students with special needs. 

But this is the future of most voucher programs-- eventually universal, thereby establishing an entitlement for the wealthy, paid for by everyone else. Paid, in fact, twice--once by the cost of their own tax dollars going to fund the vouchers, and again by either increased taxation or reduced services in the local school district. Ane eventually, Arizona's unsustainable program is going to felt by all the residents of the state as the budget collapses, leaving everyone (well, almost everyone) in a sort of financial and educational desert.

ICYMI: Wedding Edition (7/27)

We are just a little scattered here at the Institute these days. Family health issues, the apparent unfixable dysfunction of the desktop computer, and yesterday's wedding of my nephew (aka the sportswriter who is the only person in the family to make a living writing) have taken up a lot of attention. And I have to work on the mobile office, aka the laptop computer (you can tell when I'm on the mobile office because typographical error output dramatically increases over my usual not-inconsiderable production level).

There was actual good news this week as the feds decided that they would go ahead and hand over the billions in education dollars that they were legally obligated to distribute. Howeve, let that whole frozen funding flap serve notice that those are dollars they intend to cut in next year's budget.

What else have we got this week? Let's see.

College Cheating Regrets

The indispensable Mercedes Schneider delves into the problems that ensue when you CheatGPT through school and emerge knowing not much of anything.

About 1 in 6 U.S. teachers work second jobs

Pew Research offers this fun new factoid. It doesn't count coahing or advising clubs as extra jobs, nor does it look at families where the spouse is the breadwinner and teaching IS the extra job, but it's still an interesting data point.

Pennsylvanians want state investing in schools

Speaking of polls, turns out that plenty of Pennsylvanians would like the state to observe the court ruling that requires the legislature to fix our grossly unfair funding system. (Meanwhile, we still can't get the state budget done on time...)

Board members: TV in Ryan Walters’ office displayed nude women during executive session

Education dudebro Ryan Walters continues to not make friends with the new education board in Oklahoma. Coverage includes the usual hostile response from the press office. Remember, immoral sexual materials are evil and bad, except sometimes.

Charter school run by group Walters partnered OSDE with faces shutdown in Arizona over failing grades

Walters has also teamed up with cyber charter American Virtual Academy, which would be fine except AV has a massive failure problem.

Texas Is Letting Parents Dictate What All Students Read

Marium Zarah at The Progressive looks at the newest Texas inituiative for increasing censorship for school libraries.

Vouchers Deliver Blow to Rural Schools: ‘They’re Taking Money From Our Students.’

NEA Today looks at how voucher programs are particularly hard on rural schools.

Kicking Away the Ladder

Jennifer Berkshire looks at education policy in the context of unprecendented wealth transfer from the poor to the wealthy.

AI Cheating: The SAT-ACT Em dash Controversy

You may have heard the folk wisdom that em dashes are a sign of ChatGPT at work, but Akil Bello would like to fremind you that theb ACT and SAT test students on a small set of mpunctuation marks-- and the em dash is one of them

Stop the Grift: Florida’s School Vouchers Are Scamming Taxpayers and Sabotaging Democracy

Colleen Conklin is back at Flagler Live with this takedown on Florida's terrible voucher scam systems.

EdChoice Fight Pure Politics

Stephen Dyer's meticulous and thorough coverage of Ohio's battle over choice has been informative and illuminating. It continues here. Are politicians worried about educating children?  Ha.

AI companies have stopped warning you that their chatbots aren’t doctors

Add to the list of things teachers and parents need to tell young humans because the rsponsible parties aren't going to.

This week at Forbes.com I wrote about an international push-back on AI in education by actual educators including an open letter that you can still sign.

Here's something a little romantic for a wedding weekend.

You're invited to sign up for my newsletter, so that you never have to miss s single typo! Free, now and always.

In Praise of Extruding AI

Emily Bender and Alex Hanna have performed a huge public service by writing The AI Con, The book is insightful, incisive, and totally accessible. You need to read it, and then you need to give a copy to your uncle or boss or favorite think tank honcho who thinks that AI is magical and can Do Things.

Among their many well-made points, Bender and Hanna solve a very specific problem.

One of the most insidious pieces of the AI marketing blitz (including the term "artificial intelligence," which is itself more marketing tool than accurate descriptor) is the way we keep anthropormorphizing it, talking about it as if it's a living, thinking thing.

It's hard to avoid. When we talk about AI producing strings of words, we frequently resort to terms like "wcomposing" or "creating" or "telling" or "writing," which are all handy for talking about the process of arranging words in a meaningful way. But these terms are inextricably connec ted to human intelligence. There really isn't a term to use in talking about the manufacture of meaningful strings of words with no intelligence behind the act. (Even Capote's famous slam, "That's not writing, that's typing" only comes close, because people type).

But Bender and hanna, who throw a variety of careful language at AI, hit on one that is an apt substitute for synthetic word string production-- extrude.

It's a genius choice because there is nothing human about it. There are no circumstances under which a real live human extrudes anything. It's strictly a machine function. The machine extrudes soft plastic into a mold and shapes it. The playdoh fun factory extrudes some dough to be cut into shapes for some reason. The machine extrudes pink slime waiting to be turned into some simulated version of food. The machine extrudes a sentence or paragraph of words to manufacture an artificial simulcrum of language.

Language is still catching up with AI, which does not read or analyze or interpret or summarize or write or tell no matter how many times we say it does. Better to reach for language that more accurately describes what the machine does. It's not easy and not yet automatic, but I do believe that more precise and accurate language is always important (and misleading and inaccurate language in the service of a massive bullshit generator is always dangerous). 

I've been reluctant to use extrude more often because it feels like theft, so this post is about assuaging my conscience so that I can borrow from Bender and Hanna with a clearer conscience and acknowledge their contribution to the discourse-- exactly the kind of contribution that GenAI is never going to make.

Charters and Miracle Shrinkage

The IDEA charter school chain has a checkered history, but it continues to demonstrate the many ways that charter schools can go wrong and game the system while they're at it.

IDEA made big headlines back in 2021 when it turned out that one of the major functions of Texas's largest charter chain was to make life sweet for its top executives. These are the former Teach For America whiz kids who used the charter's funds to get a private jet and a luxury suite at San Antonio's AT&T Center. Heads rolled, the state investigated, and eventually placed the schools in conservatorship-- and remember, this was in Texas, a state that has no small tolerance for charter school shenanigans.

There have been other misadventures, like the IDEA schools in Louisiana that tagged out of the charter business, but couldn't seem to do anything useful about helping their students find a new school. 

But that's part of the brand-- IDEA likes to bill their schools as "public" schools, except they are very unlike public schools in ways that matter-- a lot. They are a business, and they make decisions about whether to stay open or close (even in the middle of the year) based on business reasons. 

Now, in El Paso, IDEA has pulled one of the classic charter school tricks-- the Incredible Shrinking Cohort.

As reported by Claudia Lorena Silva in El Paso Matters, the two El Paso IDEA campuses, Edgemere and Rio Vista, had a combined total of 256 eighth graders in 2021. Four years later, 124 seniors graduated.

So, a hair over a half of the class lost.

If an actual public school had a dropout/flunkout rate of 50%, that would be cause for alarm. IDEA's Regional Director of Operations says not so fast. "All the students who left IDEA, for whatever reason, were not dropouts. They either transitioned to the schools or the districts that they came from, or they transitioned to other schools outside the area."

This is part of what we're talking about when we say that true public schools have a mission to serve all students and charters do not. For a public school, every student who lives in the boundaries of their district is the district's responsibility. For a charter, once that student is out the door, he's not the school's problem any more. 

A charter can, like IDEA, just claim that their curriculum is too rigorous for some students. When a student is struggling in a true public school, the school's job is to help that student. When a student is struggling at a charter, they can just show that student the door and wash their hands of him (and in some cases, they are more than happy to do so, because good numbers on test scores are an important marketing tool). 

We've known this for years and years-- when measuring a charter school's success, an important data point is the number of students that were jettisoned on their way to graduation. How large is the cohort shrinkage between entering and exiting? If a charter is touting its miraculous results, but not including that data point, there's a reason-- those two factors are related. A 50% shrinkage rate means that these schools have failed to serve half of the students they were entrusted with. It's not an impressive addition to the IDEA record. 

MAGA Gunning For NEA

One of Project 2025's stated goals was to strip the National Education Association of its federal charter. Once again, MAGA Republicans in Congress are attempting to do just that.

HR 4450 was introduced last week by Rep. Mark Harris and was referred to the House judiciary committee. If you're wondering which fine folks are helping push this, here's one part of the crew.

Corey DeAngelis and the Moms for Liberty crew sending happy greetings from DC. 

What effect would the measure have? Well, the NEA is the only union with a federal charter, and it was granted in 1906. They have invoked it pretty much never. The American Federation of Teachers doesn't have one. 

So repealing the charter (which has been tried in both the 117th and 188th Congresses) wouldn't really be anything more than a big middle finger to the union.

Not that some folks wouldn't love to see more. The Freedom Foundation, a virulent anti-union outfit, just happened to release a screed the same day the bill was introduced, arguing that Congress should bar the NEA from engaging in electoral politics, lobbying, and collecting dues, as well as forbidding any strikes ever. Also, submit an annual report to Congress, and none of that DEI stuff.

MAGA has been demonizing teachers every which way for years, but Republicans are particularly irked by teachers unions that are a huge source of money and support for the Democratic Party (unlike the GOP, which prefers to get its piles of money from dark money funnels for Very Rich Guys). That and the whole thing where teachers and their unions insist that they are deserving of respect and decent work conditions and some say in how they conduct their professional lives, rather than just being compliant servants who do as they're told by their betters. Also, that whole thing where they stick up for the public education system that MAGA wants to dismantle and privatize.

Teachers unions are just generally in the way of the MAGA agenda, as well as making a convenient enemy to demonize. Expect more of this baloney. 

ICYMI: Just Hangin' In Edition (7/20)

It's been a week here at the Institute. Family health stuff, technological breakdowns, and a bunch of what-have-you. But I still have some stuff for you to read. Here's the list.

 

Most Pa. cyber charters back mandatory weekly wellness checks for students as Senate moves to tighten law

You would think that doing an eyes-on wellness check of students would be an uncontroversial issue, but Pennsylvania's leading profiteers in the cyber school biz would rather not, thank you.

Which is worse: Sugary snacks or bad schools?

Checker Finn, honcho emeritus of choice-loving Fordham Institute, continues to argue for some sort of regulation on vouchers. We don't let food stamps pay for junk food-- why wouldn't we have similar limits on vouchers?

Florida schools didn’t want those millions of dollars anyway

In response to the Trumpian withholding of funding, Stephanie Hayes unleashes some Grade A snark at the Tamps Bay Times

28 Bills, Ten Commandments and 1 Source: A Christian Right ‘Bill Mill’

David Barton has made a huge career out of peddling fake history that "proves" this is a Christian nation. Turns out he's also helping create the wave of Ten Commandments legislation in this country. Mark Keierleber at The74 does a bang-up job with this story. If you only read one item on the list this week...

SC schools can hire noncertified teachers under new law

South Carolina once had a great program for convincing students to pursue teaching, but now they're joining the crowd that figures any warm body can do the job just fine.

Teachers Work in Systems We Did Not Create

Nancy Flanagan is among those of us with eyebrows raised at AFT's decision to "help" bring AI to the classroom.

The TROUBLING Teacher Union Connection to Open AI, Microsoft, and Anthropic

Nancy Bailey is also unimpressed with this team-up idea.

AI Will Never Be Your Kid's Friend

Guest posting at Larry Cuban's blog, Russell Shaw offers a thoughtful explanation of why ChatGPT is not a suitable playmate for your child (or anyone else's). 

Supreme Court Acquiesces to Trump’s Move to Abolish Education Department

Jan Resseger looks at the latest ruling from the MAGA Supremes and how it will accelerate the end of the Department of Education.

State Budget Robs Poor Kids to Overfund Rich Adults

Stephen Dyer continues to track the details of Ohio's royal shafting of public education.

Kicking Away the Ladder

Jennifer Berkshire looks at the larger trends behind the regime's attack on, well, all sorts of things.

They're Literally Angry at Superman for Being Nice

From Parker Molloy, a look at the right wing flap over Superman (the movie). Not directly related to education, except that it shows the kinds of values MAGA objects to in movies and schools and anywhere else.

This week I'm sharing an old ad from the BBC with an extraordinary group of performers making blink and you'll miss it appearances. Maybe it's a little overproduced, but oh that song.

Feel free  to sign up for my newsletter, where all my stuff appears. 

\

OK: More Woke Panic (Less Food)

Oklahoma's Edubro-in-Chief may not be able (or willing) to explain what exactly "woke" means, but he has announced his intention to by damn keep teachers from smuggling it into his state. Also, he's found another way to defund public schools.

Walters is a serious Trump fanboy, and that seems to include an interest in exerting powers he doesn't necessarily have. Take his new idea to "reform" the school meal system and "end bureaucratic bloat." The problem, apparently, is that taxpayers paid money for students to eat food last year. And somehow this is related to administrative bureaucracy? Here's part of his explanation:

Last year, Oklahoma families were slapped with a staggering $42 million bill for school meals—on top of their taxes—while administrators pocketed a 14% salary hike. This isn’t just incompetence; it’s a betrayal of our kids and communities. “Oklahoma taxpayers are being triple-taxed to cover lunches while bureaucrats fatten their wallets,” said State Superintendent Ryan Walters. “We need less administrators in our schools. We need to get taxpayers dollars to the students, not to grow bureaucracy.”

Yes, that should be "fewer" bureaucrats. But I have to say, his "solution" to this "problem" is very "creative." Walters has directed school districts to fully fund school lunches with their own money (which is somehow different from taxpayer money because reasons?) and if they can't submit a plan to do so, then "the OSDE will suggest cost-cutting measures and request that the budget be re-submitted." Because that will force them to cut spending on other stuff. And if the district is not compliant, Walters will cut off state funding (because that will really help solve the problem punish the disobedient). Also, he's going to implement a new rule to require "all meals/snacks served in Oklahoma’s schools are free of seed oils, artificial food dyes, ultra-processed foods, pesticide laden foods, and junk food vending machines to name a few." Because that kind of nanny state overreach is really bad when Michelle Obama tries to implement it, but totally okay when God-fearing MAGAbros do it. And there's even a petition to sig, because he's not trying to cut school funding-- he's trying to save the children. Come one! Think of the children!

But Walters already moved on to his next batshit crazy idea, which is to get PragerU to screen teachers coming from "woke" states so that none of their wokitude gets spread to Oklahoma's young humans. 

If you are somehow unaware of Prager University (God bless you), it's a propaganda operation founded in 2009 by far right wingnut Dennis Prager and producer Allen Estrin. It is, if you can imagine such a thing, even less of an actual university than Trump University. They're a far right, low accuracy, christianist nationalist baloney farm that specializes in short, cute, full-of-baloney videos. PragerU is to education what McRibs are to pigs. 

But Walters wants to make sure that anyone who tries to bring their teaching certificate from naughty states like New York or California (you know-- the wokey ones) aligns with Walter's commitment to an education "rooted in truth, patriotism and core values," and aimed to instill "pride" in the nation's history among students.

"We’re sending a clear message: Oklahoma’s schools will not be a haven for woke agendas pushed in places like California and New York," said Superintendent Ryan Walters. "If you want to teach here, you’d better know the Constitution, respect what makes America great, and understand basic biology. We’re raising a generation of patriots, not activists, and I’ll fight tooth and nail to keep leftist propaganda out of our classrooms." A PR release from the department said the test would evaluate teachers on, among other things, Constitutional knowledge, American exceptionalism, and "their grasp of fundamental biological differences between boys and girls."

"We’re thrilled to join Oklahoma in answering parents’ urgent call against senseless woke indoctrination," said PragerU CEO Marissa Streit. "This assessment will stop extreme leftist ideologues from harming children and ensure teachers champion America’s greatness and future potential."

News4, which has covered Walters shenanigans pretty thoroughly, submitted some questions to his office, such as was there a competitive bidding process for creating this test, how much will Prager be paid, and who will oversee this? They got no answers to those questions, nor to one of the best ones they asked--

Exactly what statute does Walters think gives him the authority for any of this?

Longtime Walters critic State Rep. Forrest Bennett (D-Oklahoma City) has pointed out that Oklahoma has a teacher shortage already and this is unlikely to help. And all of Walters actions in office happen against the backdrop of Oklahoma's almost-bottom-of-the-national-barrel rankings for education. 

"It's a grift," says Bennett, who argues that treating all of Walters edicts as if they are legitimate and deserve to be taken seriously simply elevates them. Bennett points out that Walters notified Fox News before he notified the people of Oklahoma. 

It's a fair point, but I think Walters deserves a little attention because he is the answer to the question, "How bad can these back-bench MAGA grifters get, and how badly can they screw things up on the state level?" Walters may not be able to, in the words of Captain Steven Hiller, "do all that bullshit you just said." But these various MAGAfied edicts can sow uncertainty and fear. They certainly aren't actual solutions to the real problems of education in Oklahoma, but they're a fine example of how a hustler can raise his profile by standing on the backs of children.