10/1/24

Arizona's voucher plan a $400 million black hole

Blurring one line between church and state America's founders extolled the virtue of education as local schools were run both by christian sects and by local municipalities under the Tenth Amendment to the US Constitution. But, in the late 19th and early 20th Century the Ku Klux Klan and those on the losing side believed John Wilkes Booth was a patriot who took out the US President that started the American Civil War directed by a Marxist Illuminati. Then after World War I the Klan grew to some 4 million members, got involved in education and its leader, Hiram Evans complained that the control of school textbooks had been taken away by "un-American forces." 

The concept of a charter school began in 1971 as a progressive movement but especially in red states has since been hijacked by the far white wing of the Republican Party to advance the New Apostolic Reformation. Dominion theology supposes christians must control the seven “mountains” of government, education, media, arts and entertainment, religion, family, and business in order to establish a global christianic theocracy and prepare the world for Jesus’ return.

The Trump Organization was simply the latest obstacle to public education because it hates people of color and social equity, too. Add it all up: Rupert Murdoch, a a not-so-closeted racist himself, the Kochs, the John Birch Society, the American Legislative Exchange Council or ALEC, the Council for National Policy, the National Rifle Association, Fox News, Tucker Carlson, their attacks on public education and their fear of the "Great Replacement." 

On Monday WBUR's On Point aired its second episode on school vouchers as part of a partnership with ProPublica and revealed that vouchers don't have to meet the level of transparency that Arizona requires of public schools.
In terms of transparency, I mean, as a reminder, this is all of our money as taxpayers, is public money being spent on private schools and homeschooling. It seems to me that that should come with some level of accountability. So, like, I, as a reporter or any other citizen of the state can't see private schools' budgets to see how our taxpayer dollars are being spent or homeschoolers' budgets. There are states like Arizona where there aren't testing requirements. [Eli Hager, ProPublica]
In my home state of South Dakota public money for private schools and homeschooling is still an explosive topic, too. 

ip photo: Saquaro National Park near Marana, Arizona.
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