Ohio's Vouchers More Popular with Privatizers Than Parents

As the number of failing schools inevitably escalates in NCLB's school failure race to 2014, Ohio will have in place the perfect school privatization law, which offers vouchers to any parent, regardless of income, whose child attends a public school in the lowest two state performance categories. These publicly-funded vouchers may be used to send children to secular or religious schools, it matters not. With the White Hat for-profit charter team in place, Ohio will have (unless David Brennan is indicted in the meantime) a one-two punch that will effectively eviscerate the public education system in the state.

That is, if they can get any customers for their new voucher giveaway, besides the ones who want to enroll their private school children in the publics for the last few weeks of this school year so that they can get the voucher money in the coming fall when they re-enroll their children in their church schools (see story here).

Meanwhile, The Toledo Blade reports this past week that only ten applications have been received in Toledo for the new voucher program so far. The deadline is June 9. Maybe parents in Ohio know more than the manufactured crisis mongers give them credit for.

As Ohio politicians try to get a replacement for public education started, Milwaukee continues find more bad apples in the voucher bin. From Milwaukee's Journal-Sentinel May 26 on the Upper Excellerated Academy:

The school, which has received upwards of $700,000 in voucher payments from the state over the last two years, was featured prominently in a Journal Sentinel series on school vouchers last year.

In an article on the more questionable schools in the program, the newspaper reported that Clifford Zigler, the administrator of the school, had an expired license as a substitute teacher. Sa'Rai Nance, the principal, said she had worked as a teachers aide in Milwaukee and Chicago before taking the reins at Sa'Rai and Zigler.

In an order kicking the school out of the program, state officials said they noticed in March that student applications submitted by the school appeared to have forged signatures. The voucher program gives low-income families tuition vouchers to attend private schools. Sa'Rai and Zigler is finishing its second year in the program.