Voucher Explosion: What Changed?
The First "Laboratories of Autocracy" Excerpt--"2021: The Starting Gun Fires"
I received many responses to my newsletter yesterday (“A Breathtaking Letter”) describing Ohio’s school voucher program. Most involved outrage.
But among the responses came a fascinating blast from the past. A friend sent me an article from 1998, when the very first voucher pilot program in Cleveland had spiked $5 million over budget largely because kids had been attending those initial schools in….wait for it….taxi cabs!
The Governor at the time asked the statehouse to bail out the struggling program. How did statehouse leadership respond?
Here was the Cincinnati Enquirer’s account:
“Senate President Richard Finan, R-Evandale, said GOP legislative leaders rejected Mr. Voinovich’s request this week to include $5 million to bailout the voucher program in House Bill 650, a $5.23 billion education budget bill making its way through the General Assembly.
‘We’ve got enough problems already,’’ said Finan, who wants to focus instead on finding a [public] school funding formula that would comply with last year’s Ohio Supreme Court order….”
“Mr. Finan said he isn’t sure how the state should respond to the voucher program’s financial problems. His Democratic counterpart, however, insisted that the program should receive no more state money.”
“‘I can’t see even talking about more money for private schools until we get the public schools taken care of,’’ said Senate Minority Leader Ben Espy, D-Columbus.”
Who publicly complained about this cold shoulder?
“David Brennan, an Akron-based developer who founded two schools that benefit from the voucher program. [Brennan went on to become one the Ohio GOP’s largest donors in the coming years, and later made millions out of his poorly performing for-profit charter schools]….If more state money isn’t provided, Brennan said his schools will be forced to end plans to continue expanding the program by a grade a year.”
What a contrast.
Finan said no to $5 million for a small and targeted pilot program because the state had not yet addressed its public school funding shortfalls.
$5 million.
Today, according to this morning’s Cleveland Plain Dealer, the estimated cost of universal vouchers (subsidizing private schools across Ohio with no income limits) keeps exploding: “The state is on the hook for $239.8 million for private school tuition vouchers it expanded this academic year. It’s a figure that could more than double in coming weeks.” All this when Ohio has still never complied with the Court order Finan referenced, and as the quality of Ohio’s schools has plummeted since those days.
What an absolute travesty—and tragedy—to see how far we’ve fallen. For the state, for taxpayers, for families, and, worst of all, for our kids. For our future.
Now what explains the difference in response? State legislators then whose instinct was to serve public outcomes, versus those now, shoving public dollars hand over fist into the coffers of private players?
Funny you should ask!
I wrote an entire book (“Laboratories of Autocracy”) explaining it, as well as why the same downward spiral in statehouses turns out to pose a grave threat to democracy itself.
And today, as promised, I’m sharing my first short excerpt from the book. (When you’re done with these excerpts, you'll understand fully why legislatures like Ohio’s do exactly what they do today, and will keep doing so until we stop them).
So let’s get started:
INTRODUCTION
2021: The Starting Gun Goes Off
As 2021 arrived in America, a starting gun was fired across the country.
A race among states began, in a deeply disturbing direction.
On voting rights, like Ohio, statehouses across the country jammed through voter suppression bills with ruthless efficiency and at breakneck speed. Dozens of them. Many bills bore remarkable similarities to one another, while few addressed legitimate voting issues from the prior election. As with drop boxes, most were wholly disconnected from what voters in these states actually want to see happen. In some cases, so-called “reforms” dramatically defied the popular will of that state.
Beyond attacks on voters, these same statehouses rushed through…
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