ALEC's Efforts to Privatize and "Conservatize" Education
The bills on this page represent ALEC corporations' efforts to privatize public education, crush teacher's unions, and push American universities to the right. These Model Acts would make education a commodity rather than a public good, and reverse America’s long history of promoting learning and civic virtue through public schools. These "model bills" are drafted at American Legislative Exchange Council conventions with input from, and approval by, Big Business, then introduced in state legislatures to limit educational opportunities for all Americans. Politicians are elected to represent the people, not corporations; through ALEC, corporations have both a VOICE and a VOTE on specific state laws. Do you?
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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.
How are corporations attacking K-12 public education in these bills?
Corporations, ideologues, and their politician allies VOTED to privatize K-12 education and attack teacher's unions by:
Promoting voucher programs that drain public schools of resources by the use of taxpayer dollars for private schools, and specifying that those schools must remain unregulated. Voucher programs have been offered in the following ways:
Evading requirements under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act by pushing children with special needs into private schools, which are not covered by the IDEA (here, here, and here). Nearly identical bills have been introduced in Wisconsin and other states.
Segregating students with disabilities from non-disabled students by incentivizing the creation of deregulated, private schools catering to students with disabilities
These are just a few of the bills that attack public education; to see the full set of ALEC K-12 education bills and send them to your computer individually,click here.
How are corporations attacking higher education in these bills?
Corporations, ideologues, and their politician allies VOTED to corporatize higher education by:
Promoting right-wing ideology in public universities through the "Academic Bill of Rights," a document supported by Islamophobe David Horowitz and similar in purpose to the infamous 1971 Powell Memo (also here). ALEC corporations are also promoting this goal by:
These are just a few of the bills that attack public education; to see the full set of ALEC higher education bills and send them to your computer individually,click here.
Did You Know about these Bills?
Some of this Corporate Agenda Has Already Become Law
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 named a "Legislator of the Year" in 2009 by ALEC).
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.
For almost 20 years, a top priority item for ALEC has been the privatization of public schools through "school vouchers." Like many of the ALEC efforts, this one was first implemented in Wisconsin. ALEC has dozens of bills related to this topic, along with books, analysis, and legal opinions; in 1993, ALEC gave its "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 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-SB2) and the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (AB 94). Learn more [(link to bills, Mary's article) here].
(Have any of these bills been introduced or enacted in YOUR state? If so, please add that information to the ALEC Exposed page on your state by searching for your state's name in the search engine at the top of this page.)
ALEC Exposed is a project of the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD). CMD does NOT accept donations from for-profit corporations or government agencies. More information about CMD is available here. You can reach CMD's Executive Director, Arn Pearson, via editor AT ALECexposed.org. Privacy policy: Other than material you post to this wiki in your name, our privacy policy is that we will not disclose private personally identifiable information or data about you, such as your name, email address, or other information, unless required by law. On copyright: ALEC Exposed considers contributions to this wiki to be released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License or in accordance with law. Information on how to provide us with notice regarding copyright is available at this link. Notices regarding copyright or other matters should be sent to our designated agent, Arn Pearson, via email (editor AT ALECexposed.org).
