Article Top Line: “New report says “Opportunity Scholarship” voucher programs undermine public education, foster division, and undermine children’s development while also costing the state millions.”
We fully expect to see efforts to expand Kansas’s tax credit scholarship program and launch other voucher schemes. We continue to watch other states and oppose such efforts based on what we see over and over-expansions continue despite the damage these programs do and despite data showing they do not generally improve academic outcomes for students. “‘Financial concerns are just one negative aspect of voucher programs – even if the Opportunity Scholarship program saved the state money, there would be good reason to eliminate it,’ Nordstrom said. ‘These programs fundamentally seek to reimagine schooling as an individualistic pursuit. Like other market-based schooling schemes, vouchers pit schools and students against each other, whereas a strong public school system recognizes and builds upon the shared benefits that a quality education imparts on students as well as the broader society.’”
From the report itself:
It is unlikely that Opportunity Scholarship voucher students are receiving a superior education in their private schools. Recent studies of statewide voucher programs in Indiana, Louisiana, Ohio, and Washington, DC, have all found that vouchers reduce scores on state tests, especially in math.9North Carolina’s voucher schools are not required to meet any minimal standards for teacher or school quality:
• Teachers do not have to be licensed and schools do not have to be accredited
• Only the school’s leader is subject to background checks
• Approximately 77 percent of private schools receiving vouchers are using curricula that do not comply with state standards
• Many of the schools rely on religion-based curricula that downplay slavery and claim that humans and dinosaurs lived together
It is no coincidence that North Carolina’s voucher schools and pro-voucher lawmakers have resisted any attempts to meaningfully measure the program’s academic outcomes.
Read more here: https://www.ncpolicywatch.com/…/must-read-report…/…
Posted to Facebook December 30, 2020.