A Red Flag Voucher “Shout Out” from Milwaukee

A Red Flag Voucher “Shout Out” from Milwaukee (414-444-9490)

From: Leon “T”—A Public School Voucher “Shout Out” from Milwaukee? (414-444-9490)

Brothers and Sisters beware of the “Voucher Hustle,” we have been had for 20 years in Milwaukee:

• In 1990 when the voucher bill passed, we thought our children would be saved from failing schools, but all we got was hustled by the religious schools.

• Catholic, Lutheran, and Jewish schools collected nearly 90% of the billion dollars spent since that time. I understand that the same thing will happen in New Jersey if the voucher bill—the so-called Opportunity Scholarship Act-- is passed.

• The voucher schools hired teachers without high school diplomas until 2005 when they got “outed,” and then they required all voucher school teachers to have at least a high school diploma.

• We had whole voucher schools full of so-called teachers and administrators where not a single person had a degree—e.g., “Noah’s Ark,” “Alex’s Academics of Excellence,” and “Sarai Excellerated Academy (sic).”

• The “grifters and hustlers” came out of the woodwork and feasted on the voucher dollars because the regulations were so loose, the same as the voucher bill proposed for New Jersey which is modeled on Milwaukee’s.

• After 20 years Milwaukee’s voucher schools are not doing any better than the public schools and often worse!

• The same people who are promoting vouchers in New Jersey (excuse the brothers and sisters out front)—the Bradley and Walton Foundations and their friends—spent millions of dollars trying to keep Obama from becoming President.

• Black and Latino children are being used by conservative White corporate leaders and politicians as pawns to transfer billions of dollars to the private sector—similar to what they did with the sub-prime loans on Wall Street—where White investment bankers made a mint and Black and Latino homeowners had their homes foreclosed.

• Please note that parents will have less choice in voucher schools than they already have in public schools.

• The reality is that parents get to apply to be chosen as voucher schools can decide which students they admit, and they have more discretion in admissions than charter schools which at least have to go through the charade of conducting a lottery.

• Then, when students are accepted by voucher schools, their parents have to “sign a paper” so the money is sent directly to the voucher school. Parents never touch the money. So much for choice!

• When a student is put out of the voucher school, the remaining dollars stay with the voucher school for that semester.

• The child, if s/he is under the age of 16, is mandated by law to return to a public school, but does so without any funding.

• Each year in Milwaukee, Ohio, Florida, and Washington, D.C., where vouchers are in force, the “dirty little secret” is that thousands of students are expelled/dismissed/counseled out—an involuntary drop-out or push-out rate—that is far greater than in public schools.

• This is what “so-called school choice” will do in New Jersey and has already done wherever it has been tried.

Hit me back at the number above—414-444-9490—to discuss these issues if you want.