There is a vibrant debate going on about how to improve our system of public education. While there is reasonable debate about various reforms, there has historically been one right-wing policy which Americans have opposed — giving students taxpayer-subsidized school vouchers to use at private schools, which undermines and undercuts the public education system. Between 1966 and 2000, vouchers were put up for a vote in states 25 times, and voters rejected the program 24 of those times. Yet despite this historic unpopularity, voucher programs are exploding across the United States, with legislators from Pennsylvania to Indiana to Wisconsin championing the scheme. So what’s responsible for the current shift? A handful of billionaires, corporate-backed foundations and non-profits, and Political Action Committees (PACs) are using their influence to set up front group after front group, determined to spread voucher progra ms across the country, taking aim at the heart of our public education system. It is up to Americans to educate themselves about this assault on public education and defend our public schools.

PRIVATIZING EDUCATION, NOT HELPING OUR KIDS: Voucher advocates, who often refer to their movement as about “school choice,” say that the purpose of pushing their programs is to ensure that “low-income families can access the best schools for their children.” Yet the historical record of vouchers shows that there has been little to no improvement in student achievement among kids who attended private schools with vouchers versus those who attended traditional public schools. The longest-running voucher program in the country is in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Started in 1998 “in response to the low academic performance of African-American students, the voucher program survived legal challenges and now serves some 20,000 low-income students in 111 non-public, mainly religious, schools.” Yet the latest state test scores, released in March, show that students in Mi lwaukee’s “school choice program performed worse than or about the same in Milwaukee Public Schools in math and reading on the latest statewide test.” Additionally, the voucher schools had a student body with far less special education children — only “1.5 of voucher students are in special education, while in the public schools, the figure is about 19 percent.” Shortly after the release of state data on Milwaukee’s voucher program, a University of Arkansas study was released that found that “voucher-school students in Milwaukee” were “achieving lower levels of reading and math proficiency than students in Milwaukee Public Schools.” The much-touted Washington, D.C. voucher program, the Opportunity Scholarship Program (OSP), got similar results, despite claims by right-wing legislators and former D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee that it improved student performance. The Department of Education’s 2010 final report on OPS found that there was “no statistically significant overall impact of the Program on reading or math achievement after at least four years.” Yet despite these failures, conservatives continue to push vouchers. Joseph Bast, the president and CEO of the Heartland Institute, may’v e explained the real thinking behind vouchers in 2002, saying, “The complete privatization of schooling might be desirable, but this objective is politically impossible for the time being. Vouchers are a type of reform that is possible now, and would put us on the path of further privatization.”

RAPID EXPANSION: Despite the lack of evidence that they actually comprehensively improve our education system, voucher programs are exploding across the country, as newly-elected conservative legislators are drawing up voucher schemes and signing voucher legislation into law. Two weeks ago, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels (R) set off “a new era for education in Indiana” when he signed into law one of the most expansive school voucher laws in the country, opening up a huge fund of tax dollars for private schools. A few days later, the Wisconsin state Assembly vastly expanded school vouchers, freeing up tax dollars even for private religious schools. GOP legislators in the Pennsylvania Senate say they have the votes to pass a sweeping voucher bill of their own. And on Capitol Hill, House Republicans successfully revived Washington, D.C.’s voucher system after it was killed off two years ago. Meanwhile, school choice movements in Florida, Kansas, and elsewhere continue to make progress in advancing legislation friendly to vouchers. This rapid expansion of voucher programs is perhaps unprecedented in recent history. One major defeat for vouchers occurred in Tennessee, where the state Senate passed sweeping voucher legislation yet the House decided to table it, wanting to study the effect of v ouchers elsewhere before diving into untested waters. “We have a lot of reform going on. We have made an extreme amount of changes in education,” said Richard Montgomery (R), urging caution and studying the effects of vouchers elsewhere before passing any legislation.

BILLIONAIRES VS. OUR SCHOOLS: This rapid expansion of voucher programs is not occurring simply because of some grassroots uprising. A small clique of wealthy individuals and their foundations are pushing these pieces of legislation. The most prominent of these individuals are Dick and Betsy DeVos, the power couple who inherited their fortune from billionaire Amway co-founder Richard DeVos, Sr. In a speech before the Heritage Foundation in 2002, Dick DeVos explained that conservatives should start referring to public schools as “government schools” instead to undermine public support for them. The DeVos family has poured millions of dollars into the school choice movement, launching a variety of front groups, including but not limited to Children First America, the Alliance for School Choice (ASC), Kids Hope USA, and the American Federation for Children (AFC). AF C spent $820,000 — the seventh-largest single PAC spender during the election — in Wisconsin during the last election, a huge sum which included $40,000 donations to each of several Republicans who were elected and then proceeded to champion radical voucher legislation. Its clout was strong enough to bring Govs. Scott Walker (R-WI) and Tom Corbett (R-PA) together with former D.C. School Chancellor Michelle Rhee together for a school choice event in Washington, D.C. Meanwhile, the organization’s sister organization, ASC, handed out gigantic grants to school choice organizations across the country, effectively hiding the DeVos’s role, granting $530,000 to the “Black Alliance for Educational Options” in Washington, D.C., for example. ASC is funded by powerful right-wing and corporate ideologues, thousands of dollars from Charles Koch, and hundreds of thousands of doll ars from the Jaquelin Hume Foundation, the brainchild of an ultra-wealthy California businessman who helped bring Ronald Reagan to power. Meanwhile, the Bill and Susan Oberndorf Foundation, set up by an investment firm fortune couple, has been siphoning money off to school choice groups across the country. In 2009, it gave $376,793 to AFC and $50,000 to the Brighter Choice Foundation. At a recent education panel, Bill Oberndorf was credited with giving “tens of millions” of dollars to the school choice movement, and called the Indiana voucher law the “gold standard” for what should be done across America. Americans have to arm themselves with the facts to avoid that fate.