The State tracks the money trail to House voucher vote

Following the money led Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein to the Nixon Watergate scandal, and the Washington Post to a Pulitzer Prize.

This Easter weekend, The State newspaper hopped down the money trail to last month's vote on the House voucher bill and found dozens of voucher bunnies collecting their own Cadbury eggs from donor Howard Rich of New York.

More than half of the S.C. state representatives who voted in favor of a school choice bill that passed the House have received campaign donations from New York businessman and school-choice advocate Howard Rich and his affiliated companies.

Rich has made campaign contributions to 38 of the 65 House members – 58 percent – who voted for the bill, which passed 65-49.

Collectively, those representatives, all Republicans, received $188,000 in campaign cash from Rich and his limited liability corporations, or LLCs, from 2008 to 2011. That dollar figure does not include dozens of contributions totaling thousands of additional dollars made by Howard Rich associates who also favor school choice.

And more donations from Rich could be on the way.

All House members and state senators are up for re-election this year and are raising campaign cash now. Lawmakers must report new donations next week to the State Ethics Commission.

The House-passed proposal now heads to the state Senate, where it faces an uphill battle. Any one senator effectively can block consideration of a proposal, but school-choice opponents likely will not have to resort to filibustering to kill the idea. While the Senate is controlled by Republicans, the body’s ruling majority actually is a loose confederation of Democrats, most of whom who oppose the House-passed school choice bill, and moderate Republicans, many representing areas with good public school districts that they are determined to protect.

Also, Rich has directed little of his financial clout toward the Senate thus far.

Rich has given to only 11 of the Senate’s 46 members, and one of those recipients said late last week that he will oppose the House proposal.

In the House, two members, state Reps. Wendell Gilliard, D-Charleston, and Curtis Brantley, D-Jasper, accepted donations from Rich but voted against the school choice bill, which aims to give tax deductions to parents who send their students to private schools or who home-school their students.

Which reminds me of Arthur Ravenel's old dictum: If you can't take their money and vote against their interests, you have no business in politics. Cracks me up every time, imagining how Ravenel delivered the line.

The remaining 47 House members who opposed the bill – all but five of them Democrats – did not receive donations from Rich.

Critics of the school-choice legislation point to Rich’s donations and the late March House vote as proof that outside influence continues to shape education policy in the Palmetto State.

“It’s very sad that a large amount of money has come in from out of state to pressure legislators into doing something that most South Carolinians are against,” said Molly Spearman, director of the S.C. Association of School Administrators, which opposes the bill. “(This bill) erodes the support for public education in South Carolina.”

But lawmakers who voted for the legislation say it only makes sense that they would get donations from contributors, including Rich, who agree with their school-choice stance.

“What can he possibly gain from this? Other than he understands that education is important and requires out-of-the-box thinking? He gets no financial benefit from this,” said state Rep. Bill Herbkersman, R-Beaufort, who received $6,000 in Rich donations in 2010 and 2011.

Herbkersman, who says he has talked to Rich on the phone a few times but never met the New Yorker, added: “You can send as much (state) money as you want to any school. But if you don’t have a full parking lot on parent-teacher night, it’s going to be a failing school.”

He added, “This bill gives parents and students, who are really interested in an education ... a choice. The status quo is not working. It’s time to try something else.”

I'm in full agreement on this point: The status quo is not working.

What is the status quo?

Simply put, the status quo has been that South Carolina consistently under-funds public education and consistently diverts support and resources from public schools to any number of alternatives, effectively offering incentives to parents who will leave public schools and propping up private education, where profits can be made by corporate interests and campaign donors. Results of this status quo have been damaging to the state's public education system, and to the state's standing in the nation.

Obviously, the status quo isn't working.

And just as obviously, the solution is to foreclose the diversion of public funds to private alternatives, fully fund the base student cost for at least the length of one student-cohort's term in public school -- 13 years -- and then weigh the outcomes.

But that's not the solution that privatizers and voucherites prefer.

Libertarian-leaning and low-profile, Rich has been hesitant to speak with the S.C. media about his school-choice advocacy.

His multiyear S.C. effort for school choice has sparked controversy, inspiring a now-defunct blog that tracked his S.C. campaign donations and a 2008 statewide tour by one prominent Democrat, Phil Noble, who called on candidates to return his donations.

Accused of taking tainted money, some candidates returned Rich-affiliated money, including state Rep. Deborah Long, R-Lancaster, who sent back $12,000 received from Rich’s associates.

Bill opponents also charge Rich and other school-choice proponents with nasty campaign attacks on GOP lawmakers who did not support past school-choice bills. During last month’s House debate, state Rep. Boyd Brown, D-Fairfield, said voting in favor of the bill was approving of those tactics.

“What you’re saying with this bill is that this is the way to get things done,” Brown said on the House floor. “When it comes to school choice, that’s what it took to get this passed. All it took was legally being on the take from Howard Rich. Instead of voting on the interests of Howard Rich, you need to vote in the interests of your constituents.”

In his email to The State newspaper, Rich defended his right to fund candidates and said he does not “own any property in South Carolina or have anything to gain personally from passage of school choice legislation.”

He said he supports “efforts like this because I believe in freedom of choice and a parent’s right to have a say in the education of their children. Nothing more.”

Rich also has backed other conservative causes in other states, including term limits and limited-government initiatives. “I make donations to candidates in many states,” Rich wrote. “Given the continuing low performance of S.C. public schools, I would think the benefits to more parental involvement would be self-evident.”

In a 2008 video interview by then-state GOP chairman Katon Dawson, Rich said, “If I want to do something that I strongly believe in, like empowering parents – whether it’s in South Carolina or Georgia or California or any place – I should be allowed to do that.”

I wanted to watch this video again, and would have linked it here for everyone's benefit, but the video has been deleted from YouTube and all links to it across the internet are dead.

The fight over whether to offer tax breaks to parents who home-school their children or send them to a private school has been a fiery debate in the S.C. Legislature since 2004, featuring regular bouts between the two entrenched sides.

On one side are public school groups and organizations that have argued the state’s public schools are not adequately funded. They say it is unfair to give tax breaks to private school and home-school parents that reduce the state’s income, which could go to finance better public schools. They also say private schools and home-schooling families are unaccountable, not as subject to state scrutiny as public schools are, and possibly offering subpar educations.

Well, truth is truth.

On the other side, school-choice advocates say a one-size-fits-all approach to educating students is a misguided idea ensuring that some students will fail. They say tax deductions would make it possible for more parents to consider education alternatives that work better for some students.

Ah, we must provide all options at all costs for the one percent, even at the expense of the ninety-nine percent.

Isn't it always the case?

Nationally, more than 20 states have enacted some form of school-choice legislation, ranging from vouchers to tax deductions. Last week, for example, Louisiana’s General Assembly expanded its voucher program.

I heard about this. Rumor has it that Governor Bobby Jindal promised to use his line-item veto to strike out road projects for any legislators who voted against his education package. And since Louisiana's legislators all have four-year terms, in both houses, alongside the governor, a lot of lawmakers foresaw dire times ahead for their constituents who couldn't get road repairs. Shades of ol' Huey Long.

Despite the many school-choice proposals presented over the years, all ultimately failed to pass either the state House or Senate – until last month.

The House’s 65-49 vote on March 28 marked a major triumph for the school-choice movement and could be a sign of changing legislative sentiments.

This year’s proposal is different from previous ones. It grants tax deductions rather than the previously proposed tax credits.

The proposal would:

• Give up to a $4,000-a-year tax deduction for each child enrolled in private schools.

• Give up to a $2,000-a-year deduction for expenses for families who home-school their children.

• Make poor and disabled students eligible for private-school scholarships; those who donate to nonprofits that would provide those scholarships could claim tax credits.

“Is this the legislation I would have written? No,” Rich wrote The State newspaper. “Is this an acceptable framework that has been developed to meet South Carolina conditions, created by South Carolinians with the support of a wide array of groups and individuals? Yes, I think it is.”

Should the bill become law, it would cost the state about $37 million in lost revenue in its first year, 2012-13. That cost would continue – and could increase if more families opt for private or home schools – in future years.

Indeed, a number of lawmakers who spoke against the voucher bill last month said it represented only the beginning. As soon as the barnyard gate is thrown open, watch for the wolves to be back at the henhouse door next year, asking for more meat.

School-choice advocates say there has been inappropriate influence in the school-choice debate, but not by Rich and his allies. Instead, they point to emails, acquired through the state’s open records law, that show principals and other school officials have encouraged public school teachers to phone lawmakers to express their opposition to school-choice legislation.

“No matter one’s stance on school choice, this practice is fundamentally threatening to democratic institutions,” said Neil Mellen, spokesman for South Carolinians for Responsible Government, a school-choice advocacy group. “It replaces rule of law with political patronage. It makes voters and taxpayers subservient to the government.”

Spearman, of the Association of School Administrators, and other public school advocates say the law is followed in those communications and educators have the right to be informed.

“School personnel are extremely careful in following the letter of the law on that,” Spearman said. “SCRG has harassed school districts on this topic, hoping to keep them from staying informed. We won’t let that happen.”

Firing back, school-choice opponents long have called on the Responsible Government group to reveal who pays for its operations.

Mellen said his group has a range of individual and institutional donors but provided no specifics. He added his group does not receive any money from public sources, as opposed to some of the education groups fighting school-choice legislation whose members are dues-paying school districts.

This is comical: The gang who demands transparency and accountability offers no transparency and accountability, all the while impeding professionals from knowing what's happening to their professions.

In family counseling, the person demonstrating this behavior is called an "undisciplined disciplinarian." On the playground, he's called a "bully." In either case, his credo is simple: Do as I say do, not as I do.

The bill next heads to the Senate, where it faces a more difficult path as Democrats and moderate Republicans easily could join forces to block the bill.

Asked if he thought the choice bill could pass the Senate, Rich wrote: “I don’t know. Of course, I hope the bill passes out of the Senate, but I am not a lobbyist and certainly don’t have a crystal ball. If it does, it will be a huge opportunity for a lot of middle and low-income families. That would be great.”

Based on his contributions, Rich’s Senate influence is not strong.

Of 46 state senators, only 11 have received money from Rich, including two Democrats, Sens. Robert Ford, D-Charleston, and Darrell Jackson, D-Richland. Collectively, those 11 senators have received $102,000.

Jackson, a former Richland 1 school board member, said he does not support the legislation that passed the House and doubts it can pass the Senate.

“It’s late in the session. You would need nearly a consensus to get it passed before time runs out,” Jackson said of the legislative session that ends in June. “And this will likely be controversial.”

Jackson said he only has met Rich briefly once, a couple of years ago when the New York millionaire made a rare stop by the State House to meet lawmakers. Jackson added he is not sure why Rich donated $9,000 to his campaign in 2010, but suspects it is because of his advocacy for charter schools, consolidating school districts and other non-traditional approaches to help failing schools.

But, Jackson added, “I’m a longtime supporter of public education. This bill won’t help our kids.”

'Ed deform' and 'choice' agenda reveal Bizarro Robin Hood

Educator PLThomasEdD, who posts frequently at DailyKos, last week authored a column at SchoolsMatter.info, in which he described corporate education reform as a "Bizarro Robin Hood" universe.

Once I learned more about the "Bizarro" concept, I concluded that Thomas has devised an ingenious way of looking at not only corporate education deform but all the rest of the astroturf foolishness masquerading as grassroots activism.

"Bizarro," it turns out, was a character created to be a negative opposite of Superman, by the creators of Superman. In some ways, he's the mirror-opposite of Superman -- as evidenced by the backward-facing "S" on his strange pale-blue and toxic red costume -- but he's also somewhat larger, less human and definitely malignant. Picture Superman as an evil, steroidal, anti-human zombie, and you're in the right ballpark.

Thomas suggests we apply the same twist to Robin Hood for his thesis. Easy enough: Robin Hood is altruistic humanist, more concerned for the needs of the poor than the wealthy, an inspirational leader of courageous men, willing to defy tyrants and break unjust laws to ensure that the powerless are protected.

Bizarro Robin Hood, then, is a greedy corporatist, more concerned about profit than people, who pays a mercenary band of thugs to carry out his agenda, ignoring Constitutional protections of civil liberty, and buying the loyalty of lawmakers who will change and pervert statutes for his benefit.

With that image in mind, here is Thomas's text:

In the DC Universe exists an opposite (of sorts) to Superman -- Bizarro Superman.

In the corporate education reform universe exists an opposite to Robin Hood -- Bizarro Robin Hood.

This opposite, the school choice advocate, lacks the irony and dark (and sometimes slapstick) humor of the comic book alternate universe because school choice Bizarro Robin Hoods steal from the poor to give to the rich -- while claiming they are serving the poor. Yes, these Bizarro Robin Hoods are real-world personifications of George Orwell's doublespeak and doublethink.

South Carolina appears closer than ever to falling for the school choice propaganda. School choice advocacy, funded by Howard Rich and Koch money across the U.S., has become a moving target, but the newest bizarre ploy has been to claim that choice is primarily for the impoverished children and their families -- a beacon of hope to lure the public into believing in both the power of the free market and (ironically?) the power of the government to afford people in poverty the same choices as the affluent.

A typical argument comes recently from Randy Page, president of the Orwellian-named South Carolinians for Responsible Government: Private choice helps students, schools.

This, however, is Bizarro Robin Hood propaganda. Here is what the school choice advocates always fail to share:

• Private schools (of the free market) do not outperform public schools when student characteristics are considered.

• School type (public, private, or charter) is not the determining factor in educational outcomes, but the most powerful influence on student achievement remains the home and community of the child.

• Throughout the history of choice models, the outcomes have never lived up to the choice advocates' claims; see Minnesota, Milwaukee, and Florida (despite the claims otherwise). Choice has, however, produced some corrosive outcomes, including re-segregating schools.

• School choice involves much more than tuition or per-pupil expenditures. To have choice, families must have access to transportation and often have to incur costs related to supplies. No current choice package provides families in poverty the enormous funding needed to produce genuine leveling of the playing field.

• Tuition tax deductions are available ONLY to those families paying taxes, result in only a small percentage of the deduction amount, and are therefore in practice lining only the pockets of the affluent.

• Choice plans always create transient student populations. Few parents ever take the choices offered, and then those few who do, tend to return to their home schools in just a few years. This shifting of populations isn't healthy for students and distorts the data needed to determine if educational quality is being addressed.

• Parents often (if not primarily) choose schools based on factors other than educational quality—factors including religion and socio-economic stratification.

Beware Bizarro Robin Hood claiming that school choice is for poor families...

What a great way to look at these folks.

I've seen Randy Page's name crop up somewhere else recently, but I'll save that for a bit.

Part 2: FreedomWorks peddles vouchers in Spartanburg

The second half of Dennis S's first-hand account of last Thursday's FreedomWorks dog-and-pony show in Hub City.

After loading up with enough school choice propaganda to do Pravda proud, I surveyed the room for a table with a close-up view of both the speakers and an escape route.

I spotted a partially filled table about 10 feet from the speaker’s podium and 5 feet from the door. I surmised the table hadn’t been completely filled because it was occupied by 3 little kids, ages in the 5-8 range. Who would want to sit with three little kids at a school choice meeting? Also seated at the table were mom and I would guess, grandma. I put down my propaganda haul and sat down. Two other chairs remained empty. The adults at the table were nice enough during our exchange of maybe 10 words. The youngsters were well behaved and very quiet.

At the podium, the local Tea Party head gave a brief welcoming speech before giving way to the inevitable radical anti-public school rhetoric. The first speaker was America’s most conservative senator, Jim DeMint. He teleconferenced the group from Washington via a TV monitor.

DeMint threw out about 2 minutes of predictable red meat and then fled as if Sarah Palin was waiting just off camera in her running shorts.

After one other irrelevant TV public education basher, the meeting was finally treated to a live human being – too live for my taste. He was an overweight, twenty-something Dick Armey protege in the employ of FreedomWorks. His name was David Spielman and he was a campaign coordinator for school choice. He bragged about standing with Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker as he fought the unions. Though young, Spielman was the perfect mouthpiece for the subject of the night, ripping ‘government’ schools. The right-wingers call public schools ‘government’ schools in adopting a meaningless advertising agency name that’s supposed to evoke a fearsome image of jack-booted ‘government’ administrators.

Spielman informed the crowd that his wife was a teacher in Maryland. His mother, father and had also taught. Teaching in Maryland, his wife most likely belongs to either the American Federation of Teachers or the Maryland State Education Association. A fact not shared from the podium.

Young David said he didn’t remember the last time our schools were kid-focused. Has this ‘expert’ even set foot inside a classroom? How about the most recent school day being the last time our schools were kid-focused. Let’s check out the Winter edition of NEA Today, a quarterly from one of those teachers unions he castigates. In the magazine, President, Dennis Van Roekel’s column is about the union’s Priority Schools Campaign dedicated to accelerating student (kids) learning. There’s an article on the price children pay in the budget-cutting orgy initiated by state legislative Tea Party types. There was a story on the questionable efficacy of No Child Left Behind and how being forced to teach to the test impacts ‘kids’. The NEA is attacking that problem. There were at least a dozen more articles and columns that were “kid-focused”. The overwhelming majority of this union magazine is dedicated to kids.

Spielman knows this, of course, but he’s got a future to think about and borderline operatives like his boss can eventually lead him to millions as a lobbyist. That’s where Armey made most of his money after leaving Congress. Later, Spielman lamented that the Democrats were in bed with the unions to the clueless cheers of people who want their kids in schools where teachers are less educated, get paid less and the boss is in it for the money. For a guy who claims all those ties with teachers, his ignorance of the profession is staggering. I confess to a huge bias for public schools. My dear wife is a Special Ed teacher of the emotionally disabled. She holds a Masters degree. She and her colleagues are 100% kid-focused. She works at least 10 hours in the school setting, often longer. She sits in front of her home computer another couple of hours and puts in the equivalent of an 8-hour-day over the weekend.

Spielman was followed by Chad Connelly, the South Carolina Republican Party Chair, who may just be the most annoying man on the planet. He talked a mile a minute for way too many minutes and felt constrained to tell us his first wife committed suicide (no comment).

He insisted his education enmity was not about the teachers who he described as scared to death of the system and the union working against them. In this state, the union can mail out literature, lobby and email to their heart’s content, run a website and bitch. Neither the NEA nor any other union has any collective bargaining rights. What teachers are ‘scared to death’ of is school policies being driven by a bunch of uninformed, pseudo- religious hypocrites like Spielman and Armey who couldn’t answer a single Masters level question about education if their lives depended on it.

After mercifully shutting down his one-man distortion speech, Connelly gave way to the featured speaker of the night, Dick Armey, current head of FreedomWorks.
...
Armey informed the local audience that his wife had once been a teacher, but quit. He claims her principal told her, “It’s always the good ones that leave.” I wonder if she was that same ‘good’ one who left Armey?

Armey claimed that for 200 years “we did education better than anybody; better because we did it ourselves.” In the period Armey is apparently referencing (beginning roughly with the signing of the Declaration of Independence), schooling was so diffuse throughout the states, there would have been no way to quantify a national performance model. Secondly, school attendance was almost the exclusive domain of the rich until the mid-1800’s. Jefferson would have made the move to public schools many decades earlier.

Armey kept talking; somebody whose life has been dedicated to enriching himself from the public teat (he once sued to keep his government health care) is now hustling the Tea Party crowd. As he launched into his latest extremist tirade, I got up and walked out. I hope it looked like I was walking out on the speech because I was. I wonder if Armey shared the facts that bills like HB 4576 only benefits those with incomes high enough to declare such credits and parents of public school students essentially pay the tab estimated at nearly $100 million Carolina dollars the first two years of this farce.

I apologize to my dedicated teacher wife for Armey and his band of opportunistic BS-peddlers. Armey and company should have been hooked up to polygraph machines.

Dennis S, thanks so much for attending this event in person and giving us a bird's-eye view. You stayed a lot longer than was healthy.

Dog-and-pony show pushes vouchers in Spartanburg

Pleased to share a first-person account of last week's voucher rally in Spartanburg, sponsored by the Koch-funded Freedomworks organization, an astro-turf outfit that pretends to be a grassroots concern.

After several consecutive years of watching their voucher legislation defeated voucher legislation in Columbia, our corporate overlords who wish to privatize schools and every other public institution chose to begin a new offensive in Spartanburg. That city and county is home to six House members who, as the Herald-Journal reminded us last week, voted against the voucher bill last year. This being an election year, convention wisdom suggests those six might be a little more open to the idea if a few dozen rabid voucherites gnaw on their public image a bit.

FreedomWorks, which estimates it will spend between $500,000 and $1 million this year in a statewide school choice campaign, will co-host a Thursday evening rally at Spartanburg’s Cleveland Park with the Spartanburg Tea Party and South Carolinians for Responsible Government.

FreedomWorks and its grass-roots supporters, of which the group claims 20,000 in the Palmetto State, are betting that its financial and organizational muscle will force legislators to do something they’ve failed to do in every session since 2004: Pass a bill implementing the system.

The top priority is turning the votes of six House Republicans from Spartanburg who voted against last year’s bill, which was killed by one vote, or backing challengers who will support the legislation.

“We were asked by our activists and by people on the ground to come in and help drive that grass-roots support so we could put pressure on those guys to actually pass something this time,” said David Spielman, campaigns coordinator for FreedomWorks.

That last bit is laughable -- "We were asked by our activities and by people on the ground to come in..." -- on its face.

Adopting a statewide voucher bill has been on the right wing's bucket list for a decade, and the aging funders of that agenda -- who live far, far from South Carolina's borders -- are getting desperate for a win. They smelled it last year, could taste victory in their gold fillings, but had their meal snatched from them by a single vote. So they -- not any activists and not by any people on the ground -- likely began planning this dog-and-pony show as soon as the legislature finished its business last summer.

Why is this a reasonable speculation?

The six House members, Derham Cole, Steve Parker, Doug Brannon, Rita Allison, Eddie Tallon and Mike Forrester, were dubbed the “Spartanburg Six” by tea party supporters after they voted to table last year’s bill that would have provided tax credits to families to send their kids to private schools.

The six have said their votes centered on a lack of support from constituents and cost concerns.

Ching-ching. It's all about the money, boys. The so-called Spartanburg Six looked at the financial impact statement of voucher legislation and saw the mile-long costs down the road. They voted the will of their constituents rather than the will of Deep Pockets From Off, including the funders of FreedomWorks -- which sounds vaguely fascist, doesn't it? -- and our own South Carolinians for Reprehensible Government.

An estimate by the S.C. Board of Economic Advisers, the state’s official economists, showed the state would save $2 million in the first year of the bill’s implementation because of students transferring out of public schools. But the proposal would cost the state in each subsequent year, leading to an annual cost of more than $133 million starting in 2023-24, when all of the tax credits associated with the legislation would be fully implemented.

Hard to defend putting your children and grandchildren in hock for $133 million in annual deficits. Everybody has a limit.

Voucherites -- and Deep Pockets from Off -- were incensed, but that's natural. You see, the ultra-wealthy and the ultra-righteous in America -- and the very worst among them, the ultra-wealthy-righteous of America -- have what we might call an inflated sense of entitlement. They want what they want, and they're used to getting it, by hook AND by crook, and usually through fear so they don't have to actually pay for it.

Representative democracy is the fly in the ointment for these ultra-wealthy-righteous people. Simple folk such as you and me have simple expectations, and among these is the expectation that we elect people to represent us in the state government. When this does happen, it infuriates the ultra-wealthy-righteous, and they're inclined to send their dragoons into our midst to tell us what we should do and say.

So they got incensed, and they commenced to jabbering at us: Jabberjabberjabberjabberjabberjabber, they said in Spartanburg last Thursday night. (This is truly what they sound like.)

As the Herald-Journal wrote, in part, "Supporters of the bill, including Spartanburg Tea Party organizer Karen Martin, say the potential savings" jabber jabberjabber jabberjabber jabber! and "FreedomWorks is pushing a new version of last year’s" jabber jabberjabber jabber "authored by House Ways and Means Chairman Brian White" jabberjabberjabber "cost the state more than $30 million" jabber jabber (give me your money now for my private school vouchers) jabber jabber.

Now listen to this. Chris Connelly leads the conservative party in South Carolina. He's new in the job, relatively, so he may not know that citizens have been bombarded with pro-voucher propaganda since 2002 when Mark Sanford ran for governor, and that lawmakers have been inundated with calls and letters from their people every year since then on this issue. So when Connelly makes a foolish statement like the one below, we must smile and shake our heads together.

Get ready for it:

FreedomWorks is using its money to pay for grass-roots training, voter education events and promotional materials in the run-up to the General Assembly’s vote on the new tax credits bill.

The group says it has distribution centers statewide armed with “tens of thousands” of door hangers, yard signs, district-targeted palm cards, T-shirts and bumper stickers. Spielman confirmed some of the materials highlight votes of the six Spartanburg House members.

He calls five of the members’s support of deductions instead of tax a credits a “cop out.”

“Tax credits are always a fiscally conservative thing to do,” he said.

Spielman is scheduled to speak Thursday night, along with FreedomWorks chairman and former U.S. House Speaker Dick Armey, Martin and state Republican Party Chairman Chad Connelly. U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint of Greenville is set to address attendees via video.

Connelly said the state party won’t recruit challengers to its incumbents, but the party believes competitive primaries are healthy for the party. He said school choice is a platform issue for the state party.

“I think the people that vote against it don’t really understand the issue, and all too often the school boards and the teachers unions are heavily influential,” Connelly said. “The party’s always going to be pushing people to support the platform.”

Did you see it? He said, "I think the people who vote against it don't really understand the issue."

This is 2012. For a decade, these same legislators have been hearing about this issue, year-in and year-out. If after ten years, you say they don't understand it, you're calling them stupid. You're saying they don't comprehend plain English and may not be able to calculate elementary math.

How about this: What if they're not stupid? What if they comprehended plain English all this time, and did calculate the elementary math, and concluded that stealing public revenue to pour into private schools through vouchers is a stupid idea?

Who's stupid then?

But Connelly’s ties to the push for tax credits run deep. He’s a former director of the nonprofit South Carolinians for Responsible Government, one of the sponsors of Thursday’s rally, and has continued to serve as an SCRG officer and a member of the group’s board since leaving the position after 2007. He made more than $90,000 as an SCRG director in 2006-07, according to the group’s tax records.

SCRG is one of the South Carolina groups closely tied to Howard Rich, a New York developer and activist who’s funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars into the state since 2004 to push the legislation.

Well, as I mentioned at the top, I'm pleased to share a first-person account of the dog-and-pony show that rolled into Spartanburg last week.

Blogger Dennis S posted a great note at PoliticsUSA, and I'm happy to share it with you here.

A progressive mingling with Tea Partiers? Guilty! I gritted what teeth I have left and headed for a local TP rally in honor of National School Choice Week, mainly because the featured speaker was going to be the individual who gave the party its national voice, Dick Armey. The event was scheduled for the evening of Groundhog Day, February 2nd.

Groundhog day was a little odd since the dates for National School Choice Week were actually January 22-28. The National School Choice Week website was still up post-event and I noticed the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) icon prominently displayed at the bottom of the page as a supporter. My guess is that ALEC’s support extended to major bucks.

The rally was held in a Chateau-like structure located in a public park. I felt like I should have arrived by ski-lift. Instead I wound my way around the park and backed my pickup into a space about a half-block away from the host building. The lot was already filling up 30 minutes before the official opening.

I had no sooner weaved my way to a stop when a scruffy, somewhat ill-kempt fellow approached my Dakota. He reminded me of those aggressive car salesmen that grab your door handle the minute you stop your engine. I rolled the window down as he greeting me and handed me a single sheet of paper with the heading ‘Preschools Are Using a Marxist’s Theories to Manufacture Collectivists’. I had no idea. The piece was written by one Chuck Roger with a snooty accent aigu over the ‘e’. Seems Chuck is convinced our kids are being ruined by a long-dead psychologist named Lev Vygotsky, 77 years removed from this earth.

The other subject matter on the page displayed a website that listed 24 things that government schools dare not teach. Examples 1, 2 and 3 were staring back at me. The first ‘thing’ the schools DARE NOT TEACH was that all men were endowed with certain unalienable rights (I’ve compressed a bit). The second ‘thing’ the schools DARE NOT TEACH was that to secure these rights governments are instituted among men and finally, schools DARE NOT TEACH the meaning of liberty.

I’d like to give you the address of the website so you can read the entirety of these first 3 of these forbidden fruits and the remaining 21, but I DARE NOT!

I quickly thanked this poor wretch and headed in a fast walk to the Chateau.

When I took one step inside the door I felt an immediate thump on my lapel. A lady had affixed a decal on my sports coat like the one with your name on it at gatherings where most of the attendees are strangers. I never bothered to write my name. Upon returning home, I discovered that for the night I had been a human billboard featuring the words ‘SCHOOL CHOICE is the RIGHT choice. So, for this one night, I was a decal-wearing school choicer.

The decal was far from the only school choice propaganda of the night. Tables lined the entire length of one wall, all stacked high with assorted literature, mostly glossy, colorful and expensive.

I quickly skipped over the dessert table, loaded with every high-fat cookie imaginable and its frosted first cousins. And these people want to repeal health care?

The first table piece I ran into was a cryptic single-page in black, white and orange that had Speak/Act in giant letters. The page referred repeatedly to the website of South Carolinians for Responsible Government. SCRG is most obsessed with Superintendent pay and further down the table, SCRG literature headlined Top Ten Overpaid Non-teaching “Educators” named names and showed pictures. Note to SCRG. If you’re competing with the private sector, you’re going to have to pay a fairly high wage to get good people. The average hospital CEO makes $450,000 as of last year. The top Superintendents listed don’t make half that, some far less.

I'll pause here to comment on the dissemination of rational thinking with this disclaimer: The opinions represented herein, rooted in rational thinking and fact data, are applauded by those who have been starved of such thinking for a long time.

Now, to continue:

The piece also described how far below the national average the district’s SAT scores were and how lousy GPA’s were and criticized shortfalls in graduation rates.

Let’s get something else straight. If a child comes from an impoverished background, teachers can have no more than a 15% impact on that youngster’s future. There are many other factors involved in the success or failure of these young people. That’s why many private schools cherry-pick the best students, giving an artificial picture of their SAT, GPA and graduation numbers. Given the odds, it’s extraordinary what public school teachers still manage to do for those unfortunate socio-economically challenged students.

Still further down, SCRG also offered a ten-page mini-tome breaking down the costs to the state and locals of every school district in South Carolina, plus a boatload of every educational expenditure extant. The distorted explanation of teacher job losses was painful to read. If there are fewer teachers, it’s because they leave of their own accord. Firings? Maybe a few. Ignored is the fact that over the past two years public schools have lost over $750 million in state funding. Lemme see – what page was that on? Thousands of teachers were laid off, with salary freezes in the offing for those who remained.

In August of 2011, The South Carolina Superintendent of Education Mick Zais and his fellow birdbrain, Governor Nikki Haley, refused to go after $144 million in federal money from the federal Education Jobs Fund. It was money for school districts impacted by the economy and forced to lay off teachers. No other state, red or blue, was that ignorant or insensitive to the lives of school employees. Zais said the money would result in unwanted ‘federal intrusion’.

But the piece de resistance of the table top displays was a glossy, 33-page, full-color booklet with pictures of every member of the state General Assembly and their contact information. At least 500 copies had to be printed given the crowd estimates of 350-400.

And the final item, rather nice T-shirts (you can guess the screenprints) weren’t cheap either.

I’ve got a call in to a printer friend of mine. I’ll share his estimates in part two of my school choice visit. You’ll also hear what Armey and his sycophants had to say about your horrible public (government) schools after I sat down with three little kids.

Ooooh, I hate a cliffhanger. But rest assured, I'll bring you Dennis's second part, too.

Stay tuned.

Herald-Journal: "Public education is not some leftist tenet"

Hosanna.

Why does it take a potential electoral crisis -- six Upstate lawmakers appear to be in hot water for their votes against the most recent iteration of ye olde Sanford-Haley voucher scheme -- for one of the state's daily newspapers to make such a plain and clear defense of public education in South Carolina?

Similarly, why does it take such a crisis for one of our daily papers to openly defy the anti-public education group "South Carolinians for Responsible Government"?

SCRG, whose funding is believed to have roots in New York City and elsewhere (so says A, and B, and C, and D, and E, and F), has played The Woman Scorned since the legislature in May defeated the 2011 version of the same old voucher (or tuition tax-credit, take your pick) plan that Governor Mark Sanford first tried to sell us in 2003. It appears that some of Spartanburg's own lawmakers, including some who have, at one time or another, advocated some sort of school reform, and who may even have accepted campaign donations from pro-voucher sources, are among those who voted down the voucher plan. So these have been branded with their own numerific label -- the ominous "Spartanburg Six," like the "Fab Four" or the "Dirty Dozen" -- and the modern Red Shirts are out for revenge in the name of ideological purity.

It's this purity that the Herald-Journal's editors take up in yesterday's edition, writing, "It’s an odd assertion that a 'true conservative' is someone who wants the government to subsidize private education and that those who want to protect the public schools are somehow phony conservatives."

Indeed, the earliest South Carolinians who advocated for free public education for all of its children were conservatives -- and pro-business conservatives, at that.

But that’s the allegation six Spartanburg lawmakers are facing. They voted against the latest school voucher scheme and fell afoul of the groups established with out-of-state money to push this agenda in South Carolina. They also angered some tea party groups that are quick to believe any allegation of phony conservatism.

The truth is that the Spartanburg Six — Reps. Rita Allison, Steve Parker, Eddie Tallon, Mike Forrester, Derham Cole and Doug Brannon— did the right thing.

The measure billed as “school choice” would not have opened up new choices to parents or children. Its overall effect would have been to make private school more affordable for parents already able to make that choice. It offered such parents a tax credit to help pay the tuition. Poor parents, who can’t pay the tuition up front and don’t make enough money to take advantage of the tax credit, would have been left out in the cold. The bill offered them only the unlikely promise of privately financed scholarships.

The bill would not have improved any schools. It would have taken scarce resources away from the public schools, and it would have eroded the independence of private schools. Government money always comes with government strings. If this voucher bill had passed, it would have been only a matter of time before the General Assembly applied its accountability system and school report cards to private schools. Lawmakers would have declared that the state could not be subsidizing private schools without holding them accountable. Sooner or later, private schools would have to adopt the same tests and curriculum as public schools.

It’s time to get past the lie that parents who pay to send their children to private schools pay for education twice, or that they pay for schools they don’t use. The truth is that we do not pay taxes to support public schools solely to educate our own children. We support a public school system so that we can live in an educated society. We support a public school system because the alternative is an illiterate populace, rampant poverty and a hopeless future.

This has to be the most rational editorial published by the Herald-Journal in recent memory. And though it doesn't name SCRG, the editorial may as well be an open letter to that group and its out-of-state sponsors.

The Spartanburg Six voted to protect the public schools because they recognize that there is no reasonable alternative. It’s not because they don’t want parents to have choices, but they recognize that there will be no free-market utopia where tax credits allow all parents the choice between excellent private academies and the government is out of the education business. That plan simply isn’t realistic.

The Spartanburg Six are not slaves to the teachers’ unions or some liberal agenda. Public education is not some leftist tenet. It is not some new liberal invention. It’s the method this nation has used for generations to create the success we have had. That system isn’t perfect. Our schools are struggling in many ways, but voucher schemes like the one rejected by the Spartanburg Six would not help.

Read these words again: "Public education is not some leftist tenet. It is not some new liberal invention. It’s the method this nation has used for generations to create the success we have had."

What a statement, a declaration of the true good that went into establishing public education and the true good that has come -- and continues to come -- from public education. So I repeat my question: Why does it take a potential electoral crisis for one of the state's daily newspapers to make such a plain and clear defense of public education in South Carolina?

I hope that every district superintendent in South Carolina sends a printed copy of this editorial to every principal, teacher, secretary, custodian, cafeteria worker and bus driver in South Carolina with a thank-you note, as an illustration that there is a strain of common sense and decency that runs underground in our state, that the thankless work our public school personnel do is important, and that the occasional and slight scraps of support issued by a public voice ought to be held up and celebrated. Give the editors of the Herald-Journal some positive reinforcement for their declaration, whatever their motivation, and they may feel courageous enough to say it again, and again.

Contact the editors here (area code 864):

Horeth, Chris - Perspective, letters to the editor
chris.horeth@shj.com Phone: 562-7267
Parris, Lou - Stroller
lou.parris@shj.com Phone: 562-7204
Smith, Michael - Executive Editor
michael.smith@shj.com Phone: 562-7200

On the same day, in the same edition, the same editors invited Rep. Doug Brannon to publish a column explaining his choice to oppose the voucher scheme. It, too, bears reading, and Brannon deserves the same thanks for standing up for public schools.

If the legislature hadn't gone to such a Byzantine system for email communications, I'd post Brannon's email address to make it easier to thank him. Instead, call his legislative office and leave a message of thanks: (803) 212-6876.

Brannon writes in the Herald-Journal:

After significant thought on my part and the urging of many, I decided to write this to explain why I made the motion to table and voted to table H-3407 (the South Carolina Educational Opportunity Act).

There are four primary reasons the motion to table was made.

Reason 1: The cost of H-3407 in terms of reduced general fund revenue is impossible to calculate. Under the proposed bill, there are no limits put upon the amount an individual or corporation may contribute to a scholarship organization, no limit to the number of scholarship organizations that can be formed, and the bill allows for "stacking" of tax credits in such a way that multiple taxpayers could claim tax credits on the same student. Under this proposed bill, all taxpayers could have eliminated 95 percent of their state tax liability.

Reason 2: This bill offered choice to a limited group of taxpayers, and none of these groups was the intended benefactor. Under H-3407, a private school could choose to accept new students or scholarship students. There was no mandate that private schools join in this choice plan. Corporations or individuals could choose to make contributions in lieu of paying state taxes, and those families that can currently afford private school tuition could choose to take a tax credit against their state tax liability.

The average annual tuition at a private school in South Carolina is $8,720.36 Under H-3407, the total scholarship available to low-income families (the only families that qualify) during the first year is $2,878.00. Who will pay the difference? For families that do not qualify for a scholarship, a tax credit is available in the amount of up to $2,878.00. A tax credit does not result in a tax refund. A tax credit does not put money in your hand.

In South Carolina, there are 149 private schools. Of those, 119 are church related. If a private school that is affiliated with a church accepts a scholarship student, under this bill, that school may not ask that student for a profession of faith, to worship or to pray. We would be asking private church-related schools to create a separate secular curriculum. Do we really want separate but equal again?

Reason 3: H-3407 may not be constitutional. In Williams v. Illinois, the United States Supreme Court said that "a law nondiscriminatory on its face may be grossly discriminatory in its operation." As stated here, this bill did not offer choice to the low-income or those in failing schools — it offered choice to those who can afford it.

Reason 4: One person's choice should not come at the expense of others. Because this bill would have resulted in a significant reduction in general fund revenue, this so-called choice would have come at the expense of others in the form of less money for other services provided by the state of South Carolina.

I encourage each of you to read H-3407. Please see for yourself the flaws in this bill and why it was bad for South Carolina.

Educators praise voucher defeat (2011 edition)

Everybody's heard Einstein's famous quote about insanity: it's defined as doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result. To my knowledge, Einstein never came to South Carolina, where our legislature could have schooled the fella.

Hasn't it been the case for the past decade?

We have, in Columbia, a Legislative Homeowners Association. What most of the neighbors have in common is shared wariness and a shared commitment to maintaining some minimum standards -- by minimum, I certainly mean "minimally adequate."

And in our neighborhood, we have a small gang of elected malcontents who aren't satisfied that South Carolina is already trapped in the Wayback Machine with the controls broken off at "Eisenhower."

By the front entrance to our neighborhood is a monstrosity on cinderblocks: our rusty, antiquated system of funding our public schools. Everyone sees it, with its dented 1977 license plate, its yellowed diamond-in-the-back, surrounded by patchy poke salad. It's a blot that gives the whole neighborhood a bad name. People from other neighborhoods -- yonder in Georgia and North Carolina and beyond -- see it and feel smug, superior, better than us.

Our Legislative HOA could fix matters altogether, of course. Raise HOA dues a little, based on property value, and have the decayed monster removed and replaced with something nice and functional. But nobody wants their dues increased, especially not based on property value.

Yes, to some degree, the HOA majority is ashamed of the decayed and neglected school-funding structure in their front yard, but they take so much pride in their live-and-let-live by-laws and covenants that they're loathe to take action, to change the rules, to rewrite the budget, to replace that rusted monstrosity with a school-funding system that works for all kids and their parents.

So the HOA does what it normally does: It pays to have more cinderblocks propped up beneath the chassis, so it doesn't completely fall down.

This, of course, angers the little gang of malcontents, who introduce bills year after year to eliminate the cinderblocks and pay parents to send their children to private schools.

And how does the HOA leaders handle the gang and its bills? They wait until the last minute, give the malcontents time to air out their year's-worth of wingnut angst, then drop the boom on the plan -- usually without a lot of fanfare.

And what happened last week at the State House? Seanna Adcox of The State reports it:

The latest plan to use tax credits to help parents send their children to private school died by slim margins Wednesday in the South Carolina House.

With no debate, representatives voted 60-59 to reject the measure. In a subsequent vote of 61-59, the House refused to reconsider - officially killing the bill. It was a stunningly swift vote on the contentious issue that keeps popping up in the Legislature.

The same bill was rejected a month ago by the Senate Education Committee, also with very little discussion. Senate Education Chairman John Courson said then that lawmakers knew where they stood philosophically on the issue.

And what did the malcontents say to this -- yet one more -- defeat at the hands of the bipartisan majority?

Despite the rejection in both chambers, the group pushing the effort pledges to return for another round.

"We're excited it got that close. We've always seen this as a long-term pursuit," said Neil Mellen, spokesman for South Carolinians for Responsible Government.

See what I mean about schooling Einstein on insanity?

Educators roundly praised the move. Jackie Hicks, president of the state's largest association of education professionals, The SCEA, credited educators themselves with pressing their lawmakers with facts and figures:

These victories in both houses of the Legislature, are the culmination of months of work by the members, leadership, and staff calling the disastrous consequences of this legislation to the attention of lawmakers, policy makers, the media and voters. This is a victorious end to an historic campaign. We spared no effort.

The SCEA campaign began by developing and leading a statewide coalition of civic, educational, and religious groups that were committed to quality public education. The SCEA then commissioned an independent poll of SC residents and learned that a whopping 64% of residents opposed sending millions of dollars to private schools at taxpayer expense.

Armed with this support, The SCEA president, vice-president and other members testified before both houses of the legislature. The SCEA submitted letters to the editor and op-ed articles to the state’s newspapers, noting that the bill would be too expensive and that South Carolina schools need reforms that are proven to work and will prepare our students for the jobs of the future.

Likewise, leaders of the state's association of school boards pointed to the influence of citizens who pressured lawmakers to face facts.

"The bipartisan vote sends a very clear and resounding message that the citizens of South Carolina are not interested in abandoning our public school students," Paul Krohne, executive director of the state School Boards Association, said in a statement. "If nothing else, this issue has galvanized those of us in South Carolina - and there are thousands - who reject the abandonment philosophy."

"The abandonment philosophy." We've come a long way, haven't we, from the same Eisenhower era that malcontents among us recall so fondly, when neighbor cared for neighbor? Today, it's every man for himself, and the most successful among are the ones who collect the most toys -- and who abandon the rest.

The State rightly pointed out the influence of "out-of-state money" fueling this issue. If NCLB has proven anything to the business community, it's that there's billions of dollars to be made in education, if education can be yanked out of the public domain and planted squarely in private enterprise. Privatizing school buses? That's child's play, a piker's game. Wait until public education is shut down and parents are forced into the private market for their children's education -- and the profits begin to roll like mighty waters. Pay attention: There's a reason that Australian billionaire and Fox News Channel owner Rupert Murdoch just purchased 90 percent of an education software company -- and vowed to use his News Corporation to make public education a high-priority issue in the 2012 presidential election.

It's hard not to remain a little skeptical about the timing of this entire ordeal.

At the end of 2010, Rupert Murdoch's News Corp paid almost $400m in cash to purchase 90% of Wireless Generation, a company that bills itself as "the leading provider of innovative education software, data systems, and assessment tools for reading, writing and math,"

On Tuesday, News Corp announced "The Future of American Education: A Presidential Primary Forum."

And lest we forget, voucher bills have always been about money -- not education.

The basics of the latest plan were the same as previous ones: The bill would give tax breaks to parents who can afford to pay tuition up front, while parents could apply for scholarships. The people and businesses that donate money for those scholarships could take the tax break.

The key differences were that the amount of tax credit or scholarship would vary by district, and that parents with children already in private school would get no break for several years, and then a reduced amount. The tax credit or scholarship would be tied to half of whatever the state spends on a public school student there. Next school year, the statewide average would be $2,417.

Tuition at the state's elite private schools can top $18,000 per student. Opponents have said the proposal is geared to well-off parents, since tuition would remain out of reach for poor students, even with a scholarship. But advocates said the average cost of tuition across more than 300 private schools statewide is $4,400.

And so long as the Legislative Homeowners Association honors its laissez-faire by-laws and covenants more than its commitment to funding a good education for every child, the malcontents will keep coming back. After seven years of trying, they've gotten a taste for it now.

“We’re gaining ground every year,” said state Rep. Bill Herbkersman, R-Beaufort, a tax credit supporter. “This was the closest vote yet.”

"Superman" arrives in Australia, gets no respect

Back in November, the happy gang at South Carolinians for Responsible Government sponsored a movie night for South Carolina's lawmakers, and The State reported on it.

Just steps from the State House, a group of S.C. House members, mainly Republicans, crunched popcorn in the darkened Nickelodeon Theatre, watching the new education documentary “Waiting for Superman.”

South Carolinians for Responsible Government, a group fighting for seven years to convince lawmakers to offset the cost of private school tuition, rented out the theater and invited the crowd to the private movie showing. SCRG’s hope: The emotional film, which throws stones at failing, public schools, paired with shifting political winds might spell success for their movement.

No word on whether SCRG charged the standard $18.50 for the large popcorn-and-Coke combo. If they didn't, does the popcorn and Coke count as a campaign expenditure?

No word, either, on whether the lawmakers were moved by the film -- did they laugh? did they cry? did they sleep through it?

But the film has now reached the shores of Australia. And from such an objective distance comes a review that bears note for its quizzical response to American right-wing critiques of public education.

The film tells the heart-wrenching story of five children in urban schools in the US and their quest to succeed in the public lotteries that stand between them and entry into privately run public schools, known in the US as ‘charter schools’.

It’s a seamless piece of neo-liberal propaganda that points to the deficiencies of the public school system, the demonic force that teacher unions represent and the capability of the private sector to save poor children from the fate-worse-than-death that mainstream public education represents. Like all good propaganda, there are a few assumptions that underpin the action that go unarticulated, and as it happens these are some of the big questions that we are currently grappling with on a global scale when it comes to education.

You know, critics in America called it 'propaganda,' too, but they were shouted down by the film's producers, and by Oprah Winfrey, as John Legend sang inspirational songs softly in the background.

Is it propaganda? Let's see: The dictionary definition of propaganda is "information, ideas, or rumors deliberately spread widely to help or harm a person, group, movement, institution, nation, etc." That about covers it. But the Australians explain why it's propaganda:

The first of these is that poor teaching is to blame for educational systems and structures that fail to prepare young people adequately for life.

The truth is that teachers are neither society's heroes nor society's villains. There are some life-changing teachers and some that should probably be on nil-by-mouth. Both of these groups are in the absolute minority. It's the same for GPs, accountants, social workers, shop assistants and lawyers.

The point is that what we need are structures that support all teachers to develop in their professional practice over the course of their careers, and structures that support the very small minority who are unsuited to teaching to exit the profession in a dignified manner. The best way to improve the learning of our children is to support the learning of the teachers who teach them. Blaming the kids or the teachers won't actually fix systems that are outdated or broken, and strategies that will fix the system are expensive and intensive and so it's far easier to go for the quick fix. Enter the next iteration of teacher standards and a series of administrative hoops for teachers to jump through that do nothing to improve the quality of their teaching but make it look to us all like something is being done.

...
The important thing is that our kids leave school with a passion for the acquisition of knowledge and the skills to make it happen.

Apparently, Australians have also heard of America's test-fetish of the past decade, and they are skeptical of its introduction to their own system.

The fact is that focusing on test scores isn't the way to make children better learners, or to equip them for life, either before or after they leave school. Teachers know that the most efficient way to get good results on standardized tests is to teach to them, sacrificing actual education to test scores. Unfortunately that's counterproductive when it comes to preparing students for life. The countries that do the best on the much-lauded OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) scores – like Finland – do so not because a ‘default curriculum’ has taken over schools as teachers teach to standardized tests (like it has in the US and is in danger of doing here: you might see this in your local school as NAPLAN season arrives upon us shortly) but rather because they put resources into teacher development, have very limited standardized testing and have a broad curriculum that goes out of its way to engage students and develop understanding.

And Australia apparently views its teachers differently from us:

It might not be common sense but believe it or not, good teachers have some knowledge of how to 'do' education that goes beyond what you pick up as a school student, even if you're at it for 13 years.