Privatizing Public Education, Higher Ed Policy, and Teachers

Increasing Profits for School Companies, Undermining Teachers, and Promoting "Conservatives" on Campus

This page reveals how ALEC bills would privatize public education, crush teacher's unions, and push American universities to the right. Among other things, these bills make education a private commodity rather than a public good, and reverse America’s modern innovation of promoting learning and civic virtue through public schools staffed with professional teachers for children from all backgrounds. Through ALEC, corporations have both a VOICE and a VOTE on specific state laws to change the American education system. Do you?

You can access these ALEC "model" privatizing schools and higher education here. Download a one-page fact sheet on ALEC and education here.

How are corporations undermining K-12 public education in these bills?

Through ALEC, corporations, ideologues, and their politician allies voted to spend public tax dollars to subsidize private K-12 education and attack professional teachers and teachers' unions by: Promoting voucher programs that drain public schools of resources by using taxpayer dollars to subsidize private school profits, and specifying that those schools must remain unregulated. Voucher programs have been pushed in the following ways: Offering private school vouchers with "universal eligibility" (using taxpayer dollars to subsidize private schools for the rich and others); "means-tested eligibility," (using poverty as the first domino in an effort to privatize public schools); and "universal eligibility with means-tested scholarship." (Here, "scholarship" means using taxpayer dollars to pay private school tuition and/or profits.) Giving tax credits to parents who send their kids to private schools, (see this bill, this bill, and this bill) and to corporations that donate to scholarships for private schools. Creating a scheme to deem public schools "educationally bankrupt" to rationalize giving taxpayer dollars to almost completely unregulated private schools, rather than addressing any problems. Back-dooring privatization by creating voucher programs to subsidize unregulated, for-profit schools or religious schools for specific subsets of students, such as foster children, or children of military families. Evading requirements under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) by preying on parents of children with special needs through subsidies for unproven and profit-driven private schools, which are not covered by the IDEA. (See this bill, this bill, and this bill.) Nearly identical bills have been introduced in Wisconsin and other states. Segregating students with disabilities from non-disabled students by incentivizing the creation of largely unregulated private schools for students with disabilities, and then allowing private schools to refuse children's admission such that the private testing/evaluation scores can be higher than for public schools that must take all students. Setting up low-income students for failure in college by incentivizing early graduation for the students in need of a complete high school education. Taking charter school authorization away from local school boards in favor of a statewide advisory committee, that a governor can pack with pro-voucher people. Promoting climate change denial in education (see also this bill) Certifying individuals with no education background as teachers, a move that would weaken the quality of education, that fails to recognize there is more to teaching than knowledge of a subject, and that would undermine the role and competitiveness of professional teachers (see also this bill). Eliminating tenure for teachers in favor of "performance," allowing districts to fire older teachers in favor of lower-cost young teachers. Undermining teacher's unions indirectly through the above bills, and directly through bills like this one, this one, and this one. See also the anti-union bills on the Worker Rights page. To see a full list of these bills, click here. ALEC bills and resolutions also attempt to change college education by: Promoting right-wing ideology in public universities through the Academic Bill of Rights, a document supported by extremist David Horowitz. See also here. Requiring universities to annually report to the legislature on "intellectual diversity"-- a term that is code for right-wing ideology, an odd requirement considering ALEC’s antipathy toward regulation. (See also this bill). Giving tax advantages to wealthy families who fund their children’s college education by allowing exemptions from taxation for college savings accounts Penalizing college students who study for more than four years Subsidizing private universities by offering taxpayer-funded vouchers to for-profit and religious institutions of higher education, and Treating universities like manufacturers and setting aside significant portions of the legislature's higher education budget to reward institutions for students who complete courses and graduate in greater numbers at lower per-unit expense. To see a full list of these bills, click here. This information is available to download as a two-page fact sheet here.

Some of this corporate agenda has already become law
Undermining Protections for Students With Disabilities The ALEC Special Needs Scholarship Act has been introduced in Wisconsin as AB 110 by Rep. Michelle Litjens, and co-sponsored in the Senate by Leah Vukmir, who was an ALEC "Legislator of the Year" in 2009. The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction said: This bill strips special education students of due process rights and rights to services. It allows for the segregation of students based on disability. It will devastate funding for public education in select districts. It will result in the largest expansion of private school regulation ever seen in Wisconsin and, at the end of the day, no one will have any data to show if it resulted in a better education. To read more about this story, click here or here or here. The "Voucher" Strategy and Requiring Tax Subsidies for Private For-Profit Schools For almost 20 years, a top priority item for ALEC has been the privatization of public schools through school vouchers. Like many ALEC efforts, this one was first implemented in Wisconsin. ALEC has dozens of bills related to this topic, along with books and analysis. in 1993, ALEC gave its first "Adam Smith Free Enterprise Award" to school privatization advocate and funder Richard DeVos. In the early 1990s, under the leadership of longtime ALEC member Tommy Thompson, Wisconsin was the first state in the nation to implement a voucher program using public funds to send children to private schools. This experiment was limited to low-income students in the Milwaukee School District. Although recent tests have revealed that voucher students performed worse in math and reading than public school students, ideological proponents of privatization are nonetheless pushing to expand the Milwaukee program to other areas of the state, as well as to higher-income families. Tracking the ALEC school voucher agenda, Governor Walker's 2011 Wisconsin budget expanded voucher schools throughout Milwaukee County and to the Racine school district, lifted the cap on participation, and increased income eligibility to 300% of the federal poverty level. Other ALEC-originated school choice bills are also in the works for Wisconsin, including the Charter School Reform Bill (AB 51-SB 22) and the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (AB 94). To learn more, click here. Have any of these bills been introduced or enacted in YOUR state? For an updated look at ALEC's education agenda in Wisconsin, see the Center for Media and Democracy's in-depth report, "ALEC Exposed in Wisconsin: The Hijacking of a State." This information is available for download as a one-page fact sheet here.
Julie Underwood on ALEC & Education
Watch Julie Underwood, the eighth dean of the UW-Madison School of Education, discuss ALEC's school privatization agenda. Watch other ALEC Exposed experts here. Read Julie Underwood's article in The Nation here.
READ the "Model Bills" HERE
Click here for a zip file of K-12 and higher education bills For a full list of individual bills from this section, click here For descriptions of some of these bills, click here.

Learn MORE about the "Model Bills" ALEC Corporations Are Backing to Rewrite YOUR Rights
The Center for Media and Democracy analyzed the bills ALEC politicians and corporations voted for. More analysis is available below and also at ALEC Exposed's sister sites, PRWatch and SourceWatch.

Who Is Behind ALEC?
What Is ALEC? Who Funds ALEC? ALEC Corporations Corporations That Have Cut Ties to ALEC ALEC Politicians (all states) Legislators Who Have Cut Ties to ALEC ALEC Non-Profits and Think Tanks ALEC State Chairs ALEC "Scholars" ALEC Boards & Task Forces ALEC's Koch Connection Common Cause Trove of ALEC Task Force Docs

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Lobbying and Ethics Complaints ALEC & NCSL Comparison Democracy & Voting Privatizing Education Repealing Labor Rights Health & Tobacco Limiting Environmental Protections Changing Civil & Criminal Law Immigration Corporate Prisons

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