Department of Justice vs School Choice

 

Claiming that private schools in Milwaukee are discriminating against students with disabilities, the Department of Justice (DOJ) sent a letter to the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction (DPI) demanding that private schools participating in the Milwaukee school choice program comply with Title II of the Americans With Disabilities Act. As Professor Patrick Wolf explains over at Education Next, the DOJ is wrong on the facts and wrong on the law.

Wolf is part of a team of researchers that has studied the Milwaukee school choice program over five years. Their statistical analysis “confirmed that no measure of student disadvantage—not disability status, not test scores, not income, not race—was statistically associated with whether or not an 8^th grade voucher student was or was not admitted to a 9^th grade voucher-receiving private school.” This is exactly what the law requires. Wisconsin law forbids discrimination on the basis of disability and requires schools participating in the voucher program to accept students on a random basis. 
Moreover, the DOJ is wrong on the law in treating private schools participating in the program as though they were government contractors. As Wolf explains:

Private organizations normally are exempt from Title II of ADA but the DOJ argues that the law applies to private schools in the MPCP because the government is contracting with them to provide a public service (the education of K-12 students). This claim flies in the face of the facts and case-law surrounding the program. The voucher program does not involve any contracts, of any kind, between any government organization and the participating private schools. Students need to meet certain eligibility restrictions to participate in the program, as do interested private schools. Once both are deemed eligible by the state, students choose schools and government funds flow to the private schools based on the choices families have made and consistent with the laws governing the program, not based on any “contract.” In fact, the Wisconsin State Statute that governs the MPCP, §119.23, is entirely separate from Wisconsin State Statute §119.235 entitled “Contracts with Private Schools and Agencies.” Nothing could make the point clearer that the MPCP is not a case of government contracting for education services.

Wolf suspects that the DOJ’s letter came as a result of the Wisconsin DPI’s report that 1.6 percent of choice students have a disability. Since the DPI is not authorized to collect that information, they estimated the number of students with disabilities using the number of choice students given accommodations on the state accountability exam. However, as Wolf explains, that is a highly flawed proxy since only a minority of students with disabilities are given such accommodations. Wolf’s team of researchers estimated that the number of choice students with disabilities between 7.5 and 14.6 percent, with their best estimate being 11.4 percent.

The DOJ’s overreach may be unsurprising in light of other recent scandals, but it also sets a terrible precedent. Parents choosing to use their vouchers at private educational institutions do not render those institutions “government contractors” any more than grocery stores become “government contractors” when citizens use their EBT cards to purchase food there. The Obama administration’s unlawful and misguided attempt to hamper school choice programs with additional red tape should be vigorously resisted.

Another Great Article From: THE CATO INSTITUTE

REMEMBER WHEN? Holder called for anti-gun info campaign: 'Brainwash people into thinking about guns in a vastly different way'

 

President Obama promised “meaningful action” to prevent gun violence, but he didn’t explain exactly what that meant. Although a push for some kind of gun control legislation seems likely, there’s also the possibility of an anti-gun “informational campaign” as described in 1995 by then-U.S. Attorney Eric Holder.

Holder, now Obama’s attorney general, proposed using various levers of media and pop culture to attach a social stigma to guns, just as smoking has been stigmatized in recent decades.

“One thing that I think is clear with young people and with adults as well, is that we just have to be repetitive about this,” Holder told the Women’s National Democratic Club while discussing how to curb gun violence in D.C. “It’s not enough to simply have a catchy ad on a Monday and then only do it every Monday.  We need to do this every day of the week and just really brainwash people into thinking about guns in a vastly different way.”

To that end, he called for the “creative community” — “those ad agencies that create these snappy ads and make me buy things that I don’t really need” — to focus on convincing young people that “it’s not acceptable, it’s not hip to carry a gun anymore.” He emphasized that newspapers and television need to devote prime space to these ads.

Holder also called for people who have influence over youngsters, entertainers,  athletes, to be involved in this program as well” — an idea that could plausibly be revived in the wake of the murder-suicide recently carried out by the Kansas City Chiefs’ Javon Belcher.  “But not only them – community leaders, Jesse Jackson, Mayor Barry,  people who have credibility with young people should be on the television, on the radio, as much as we possibly can and telling these youngsters that it’s wrong to carry a gun,” Holder added.

To be sure, Holder came up with this idea 17 years ago to address a problem of local gun violence; there’s no guarantee he’d revive it now. But the Obama administration has hired public relations firms to promote Obamacare and crafted advertisements to drive participation in the food stamp program, so it’s not implausible that the president’s team adopt similar tactics on the gun issue.

Courtesy: The Washington Examiner