Flunking school reform.

• Author: Conniff, Ruth
• Position: Political Eye - Column

In November, Americans held a national referendum on whether we want to live in a decent, humane society or an Ayn Randian dystopia ruled by the super rich. Dystopia lost.

Progressive values--the politics of what Fighting Bob La Follette used to call "the public interest versus private greed"--won the day.

But it didn't take long for the same forces that backed Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan to push ahead in the states.

The most glaring example was in Michigan, where a Republican governor, aided by the Koch brothers and Dick DeVos of the Amway family fortune, succeeded in turning the cradle of industrial unionism into a right-to-work state.

"Can Wisconsin be far behind?" asks Jane Slaughter, editor of Labor Notes, a union activist magazine based in Detroit. "Are we going to be a right-to-work nation, except for New York and California?"

If the rightwing billionaires have their way, we will.

The coordinated attack on unions continues across the country.

So does the coordinated attack on public schools.

In Wisconsin, the Republicans who control the state legislature and the governor's mansion are reviving some of their worst ideas since Scott Walker declared war on teachers.

Republicans and their corporate sponsors plan to expand school vouchers, revive the idea of a charter school district that would siphon public school funds into online schools, and bring back a special-needs voucher plan that deprives disabled children of their right to a flee, appropriate public education in exchange for a paltry cash grant.

Like "right-to-work" laws that promise more jobs and a better economy--but that actually bring down wages and make working conditions worse--school "reform" schemes are built on a lie.

The big lie behind school reform is that putting public money into private education plans improves education, especially for poor students.

Or, as Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal disingenuously put it in a speech at the Brookings Institution recently, "I think there is a moral imperative that it's not right that only wealthy parents get to decide where their kids go to school. If you are a low-income parent residing in an urban area in America, it is more likely than not your child attends a failing school. And, unless you are fortunate enough to live in New Orleans, or Milwaukee, or Cleveland, you have no options, no recourse."

One glaring problem with this argument is that the outcomes for those lucky kids in New Orleans and Milwaukee have not been so...