Wisconsin taxpayers have paid about $139 million to private schools that ended up being barred from the state's voucher system for failing to meet requirements since 2004, according to a newspaper report.So, Walker and his friends stole nearly a billion dollars from our children's education fund and gave it to these fly by night operations that took the money and ran.
State Department of Public Instruction data shows more than two-thirds of the 50 schools terminated from the state's voucher system in the last 10 years had stayed open for five years or less, according to the Wisconsin State Journal. They were all in Milwaukee.
Eleven schools, paid a total of $4.1 million, were terminated from the voucher program after just one year.
To add to the insult, the money that was siphoned off from our kids went to the education profiteers, who in turned used some of that money to pay the propagandists. It's a Mobius strip of corruption.
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ReplyDeleteThose failing schools were terminated. But not the failed public school system in Milwaukee, in which 10% or fewer of the students were considered proficient, according to the Wis Dept. of Public Instruction annual report card, 2014. The Milwaukee public school system was the only district in the state to grade F for failure. The price tag: $361 million siphoned off the taxpayer. If you want accountability, shouldn’t the Milwaukee public schools be terminated? No, I didn't think so.
ReplyDeleteHmmm. Take away tens of million in state funding, kill teacher unions, cut teacher pay and benefits, force hikes in classroom sizes, meddle with local infrastructure decision-making at the state level, saddle MPS with total responsibility for special education while luring away some of the district's best students, and consign the district to improve despite an increasingly impoverished set of neighborhood, wherein state lawmakers mostly ignore poverty, joblessness and resulting family dysfunction except to score cheap political points. And then declare, despite contrary evidence, that crappy, for-profit private schools that haven't a fraction of the transparency or accountability mandates assigned to MPS are a "solution." Despite right-wing ideology, schools shouldn't be run like businesses, because then the "product" of education is at most a favorable quarterly financial report. The entire voucher and private charter movement clearly was designed to destroy public education, and it's having an effect. At some point, however, taxpayers are going to notice that paying to operate competing school systems is counterproductive, way too expensive, and an affront to democracy
Deleteand what, let the kids there go without schooling until the "market" figures out how to make a profit off them? as usual, conservatives have no real answers (hell, they don't even try), just ideology and bluster.
DeleteHey Dave, lets forget that the corrupt voucher system is stealing money from my kids school in rural Wisconsin. Anyone supporting the use of voucher money, even after the voucher kids test far worse than most schools across Wisconsin, even after criminal abuse of the program has been shown, and even after we see that private investors are paying pols to support it, is an idiot.
DeleteWhen the voucher schools operate under the same rules as the public schools you might have something to say david blaska.
ReplyDeletehey dave i hear you on NPR sometimes. you sound like a bully. at least with public schools us taxpayers know how our money is being spent. we can't find out a thing what our tax dollars are doing in the private voucher schools.
ReplyDeletehey, who is bankrolling your lawsuit by the way ? why are you afraid to tell us who your dark money sponsors are ?
Milwaukee public schools were failing long before vouchers. Apple computer makes a profit because it delivers a good product. But it's clear you folks support the teachers union, not the kids.
ReplyDelete