Q: Why don’t you support School Vouchers and Government-Regulated School Choices?
A: Education Savings Accounts are not about parents choosing the school of their choice, but rather, about who will regulate and control education choices. The state of Texas has big goals for all its students, but most Texans have no idea how these goals will redefine the purpose for public education. Through using taxpayer funding to pay for private school choices, the following goals will most likely be achieved:
Goal #1: The state of Texas will have centralized control of the standards, curriculum, and accountability assessments for all government-regulated public-private school choices. This includes public school, corporate charter school, homeschool, and private and parochial school choices.
Goal #2: The state of Texas will have the legal right to regulate all school choices using accountability mandates without representation and parental participation. Private corporations and investors will assume the role of representation for parents and citizens.
Goal #3: The state of Texas could defund public education and our neighborhood schools by means of increased unfunded mandates, corporate charter school expansions, underfunded student allotments, and school closures.
Goal #4: The state of Texas will deregulate representation to shift control to private investors and corporations by displacing elected school board and State Board of Education members with executive business councils that help fulfill public-private economic sustainability plans and initiatives.
Government-regulation of school choice is education without representation. Texas families cannot have true education freedom to choose curriculums, teaching methodologies, library books, technologies and tests if they do not govern their own local public schools. School choice surrenders the local education governance to unelected corporate privatized schools in public-private partnerships with state and federal bureaucracies.
Goal #5: The state of Texas will mandate individual computerized instruction and learning on a device for all government-regulated school choices rather than hiring certified and experienced teachers to lead instruction and meet the individual needs of their students. Adaptive-learning software and assessments condition students to respond more to virtual learning stimuli and less of their own natural curiosities about the world and personal beliefs, values and experiences.
Additionally, Universal Education is the privatization of “school choice” and is being implemented around the world. This public-private partnership is not proven to be more effective than the traditional separation of government public schools and private schools.
Resources:
Book: School World Order: The Technocratic Globalization of Corporatized Education, by John Klyczek