...One of the constant refrains emanating from the conservative right is "school choice" and, of course, their standard refrain on tax policy. Both areas are flimsy fronts for class warfare and further unjust enrichment of the already privileged...
In the mid to late 1990s, a group of dogmatic conservative Republican leaders, led by Arizona Congressman Trent Franks and a leading GOP school reform and voucher advocate, Lisa Graham Keegan, saw an opportunity to implement some of the pet school reform projects of national conservative Republican think tanks in the Arizona school system as test cases. The results were as predictable as they are bleak:
"The state’s Private School Tuition Tax Credits program covers the cost of private education, often for children whose parents could afford to pay it themselves – while allowing affluent families to reduce the amount of income tax they pay into the state’s general fund.
To date, Arizona’s main bank account has lost $350 million to private schools. The price tag is growing as the state grapples with the most serious financial crisis in its history, and people who depend on the general fund – public school children, the disabled, the poor and the sick – face severe cuts in services.
Under the program, taxpayers give money to nonprofit charities called school tuition organizations, or STOs for short. STOs give scholarships to children for private school tuition, and the state provides donors a dollar-for-dollar tax credit in exchange for their contribution.
The tax credit law, signed by Gov. Fife Symington in 1997, is touted as a tool to make private education more accessible to families who could not otherwise afford it. Instead, it has fostered a rigged system that keeps private education a privilege for the already privileged."
http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2009/09/27/the-fraud-of-gop-tax-and-school-choice-policy-shown-in-arizona/Full expose here:
http://www.eastvalleytribune.com/page/taxcreditsThese are the same fucks who brought you the "Papers, bitte" legislation.
Can there be any doubt that the same fascist programme underlies all this crap?
Oh, & BTW: Charter schools "significantly underperform" public schools in Arizona:
http://credo.stanford.edu/reports/statepressreleases/Arizona.pdfWhich is significant also because Az is the state with the most charter schools & one of the longest histories with them.
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