Florida Governor Rick Scott
Through popular school choice efforts several states like Indiana and Louisiana have adopted school vouchers. While that seems great, and I am a proponent of school choice, vouchers seem to have unintended consequences for those who pushed for them – in that they give government a foot-in-the-door so to speak. Because of this I’m concerned about a collective silence from private schools about the Common Core State Standards.
And Florida Governor Rick Scott is pushing for that very thing. He said that students who receive tax dollars should be held to the same standards that apply to public schools.
That would be the Common Core folks.
Florida has adopted them. Louisiana has some strings attached with their voucher program in the form of assessments. Iowa even though they don’t have a voucher system (they offer a tax credit for donations made to school tuition organizations) private schools who are accredited through the Iowa Department of Education. This is the only body who can accredit non-public schools at the moment. Let’s put this in perspective failing public schools in Iowa are accredited. Parents also can only access school tuition organization money if they are sending their child to an accredited non-public school. Non-public schools don’t have to be accredited, but their parents can’t receive the tuition assistance.
So private school parents, teachers, administrators and boards – wake up. You need to be concerned about the Common Core State Standards. If you are forced to adopt these standards what choice will we really have?
Shane Vander Hart
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You may be interested to see Education Liberty Watch’s Private School Choice Freedom Grading Scale available at: http://tinyurl.com/8h9ev3j that delineates those states that have strings of the state tests requiring the Common Core and those that don’t.
The author is implying that Common Core is the problem associated with private schools (corporations) getting our tax dollars; but, he misses the mark entirely. The problem is that private schools are taking public money knowing full well that, in doing so, they are becoming agents of the state.
“Publicly funded and privately serviced” is unconstitutional & unAmerican no matter the rest of the story.
Does the author want us to forget that private schools are not being forced to take vouchers? If they don’t want Common Core, the solution is a simple one: stay private — don’t accept government assistance of any kind. Afterall, that is the definition of “private school”.
A very important point seems to keep being left-out of the discussion: “School Choice” IS designed to be THE END OF PRIVATE SCHOOL EDUCATION WHETHER COMMON CORE STANDARDS OR STATE STANDARDS ARE UTILIZED.
What states are really being asked to decide in the “School Choice” debate is: do you only want government education–do you want to end the choice of parents to private education??
Unfortunately, this cold, hard fact has been totally lost in all of this. To keep it lost, Common Core is what School Choice proponents would have us focus on.
Too bad for them, I can’t and won’t stop fighting for the rights of Americans to NOT have their money that should be starting, expanding or securing their own businesses taken from them by the state and given to other corporations.
I can’t and won’t stop fighting to ensure that my grandchildren and their grandchildren will have the same opportunity that I gave to my children: a private education free of government interference in schools not sullied by participation in public-private partnerships.
Publicly Funded + Privates Serviced = Nothing Resembling the U.S of A.