ALEC Education Task Force Advances More of the Cash-for-Kids Agenda
“ALEC’s Education Task force persists in pushing a legislative agenda focused on funding private education institutions, including religious-based private education organizations, and using education laws to give tax credits to lessen the taxes paid by corporations.
“In Arizona, ALEC will be presenting the Digital Teaching and Learning Act, based on legislation that has already passed in Utah. This bill prescribes a $75,000,000 funding scheme for technology in schools that would siphon funds for public schools and mandate those funds be used for technology in both public and private charter schools. In Utah, educators were concerned about how this legislation cut into an already tight public education budget.
“ALEC is also proposing an amendment to its bill entitled ‘The Parental Choice Scholarship Program Act.’ This legislation was originally adopted by ALEC in 2004 and modified in 2009. The update to this legislation–a bill that directly takes money from public education funds and makes it available to private charter schools–changes the definition of eligible students by using an income qualifier and creates different responsibilities for schools based on if they receive more or less than $250,000 from this legislation annually.
“ALEC will also be hosting two presentations, one called ‘God and Man Disinvited at Yale,’ a presentation based on William F. Buckley, Jr.’s. God and Man at Yale in which the conservative activist criticized Yale for embracing non-religious ethics or secularism, and another called ‘The Future of Blaine Amendments,’ which refers to constitutional provisions that exist in 38 states that prevent direct government aid to religious educational organizations…
“ALEC will also be promoting other legislation that provides tax benefits for its corporate funders. These include an amendment to ALEC’s ‘Great Schools Tax Credit Program Act,’ [a version of which passed in Kansas in 2014] which was originally adopted by ALEC in 2004. The update to this legislation allows corporate entites and individuals to obtain a tax credit for up to 100 percent of their tax liability, up from 50 percent in the previous version of this legislation. [Kansas’ provision is a 70% tax credit.]
“This means states would receive less money from taxes which usually translates into less money in the budget for public schools.
“Another bill, the ‘Growing Our Workforce Investment Now Act (Go Win),’ would provide an income tax credit to employers for each of their employees enrolled in an apprenticeship program. This legislation does not place any requirements on employers to get such an off-set in the taxes they would otherwise owe to fund services provided to state residents.”
Read more here: http://www.prwatch.org/news/2015/11/12981/alec-agenda-scottsdale-2015