Wisconsin is marching inexorably down a path toward two separate publicly-funded education systems for our K-12 students. One is our traditional public schools; the other is a system of private voucher schools largely funded by taxpayer dollars.

The ultimate objective of private school voucher advocates is a statewide system of private school vouchers for all Wisconsin school children. Voucher expansion is not only bad education policy. It is bad fiscal policy as well.

Sold as a way to “empower” parents to improve the education attainment of their children, school choice initiatives take on many forms, including vouchers, “scholarships,” and tax credits. The most radical form of school choice is the so-called “parent trigger.” But rather then uniting parents in doing what’s best for children, the parent trigger bring deception, division and disruption to the community and leaves parents overwhelmed and powerless.

States are given a clear choice in this report: either you care about students, or about StudentsFirst. There’s little room for both. Here’s a list of 5 reasons why this State Report Card is a veritable wish list for privatization advocates and a recipe for failure for everyone else:

In her annual Message on Public Education, Jan Resseger, Minister for Public Education and Witness at the United Church of Christ Justice, denounces the privatization of public education as the abdication of our responsibilities as citizens of a democratic nation to provide all children with a fair and substantive opportunity to learn. The 10-page Message also functions as a primer on how different aspects of the privatization movement (from vouchers to education management organizations to charters and online schools) are undermining the principles of fairness and opportunity that our country holds so dear.

How's this for school choice? Of the hundreds of thousands of eligible Louisiana students who could have applied to the state's new voucher program ( which is backed by Gov. Bobby Jindal), 98 percent of them elected not to apply for a voucher. 

Diane Ravitch thinks Louisiana might just make the cut as the "worst state in the nation" in terms of its commitment (or lack thereof) to fostering a strong public education system that serves the needs of all students.

Advocates for high-quality public schools for all children suffered a setback this week when reports surfaced of a compromise between the Obama administration and Congressional leaders that would once again provide funding for the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program in the FY2013 Financial Services Appropriations bill.

Bloggers, activists, and policymakers converged on Providence, Rhode Island, last week to swap ideas, skills, and strategies to move the progressive movement forward. There were a number of panels and workshops at Netroots Nation on education — and I was glad to see that every single education session was packed beyond capacity, which is indicative of a larger, important trend.

A new breed of voucher programs, called tax-credit scholarships, allows corporations to fund scholarships (read: vouchers) through handpicked nonprofits and receive a tax-credit from the state in return. As a result, taxpayers lose control of where their tax money goes and high-income taxpayers -- who owe more in state taxes and are thus more likely to donate through tax-credit programs -- take power away from low-income parents.