Read on Twitter
The whole movie is very worth watching, but if you want to understand SC's education "reform" efforts, you have to watch the section on ALEC, who has written a number of our education bills.
One of those bills is S.556, a voucher bill intended to move public funds to private schools. Shane Massey, who claims to have no connection to ALEC, sponsored the bill. You can see in the images some of the near-identical language. https://www.alec.org/issue/education/model-policy/
Parts of last year’s big education reform bill were also lifted from ALEC draft bills. https://www.alec.org/model-policy/school-turnaround-and-leadership-development-act/
In summary: the same organizations and institutions which profit from privatizing prisons, bail, and modern slave labor are also, not incidentally, profiting from privatizing schools. (See also, Palmetto Promise and its president who runs EOC, which picks the state tests.)
(Realizing now I should have written, “ALEC, *which* has...” ) Curse you, ALEC, for confusing me by having a name that, as John Oliver put it, sounds like “the name of a high school lacrosse player who just got baked and wrecked his dad’s SAAB”.
One reason for ALEC’s history of interest in school privitization is probably its links throughout the years to for-profit education companies (some of whom are going to profit mightily from the pandemic). https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/alec-exposed-starving-public-schools/
It also seems possible that sometimes SC legislators don’t even know they’re using ALEC model bills, because they are so fond of plagiarizing legislation from states like Tennessee, whose history with ALEC is partly covered here: https://mobile.edweek.org/c.jsp?cid=25919971&bcid=25919971&rssid=25919961&item=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.edweek.org%2Fv1%2Few%2Findex.html%3Fuuid%3D3BC2A86A-5D7C-11E1-8016-76E301ADD654
For example, SC and Tennessee seem to have used the same ALEC model voucher bill. (Tennessee’s was just declared unconstitutional. https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/tennessee/articles/2020-05-04/judge-rules-tennessees-voucher-law-is-unconstitutional) SC’s law: SC’s bill: https://www.scstatehouse.gov/sess123_2019-2020/bills/556.htm
ALEC bill: https://www.alec.org/model-policy/the-education-savings-account-act-2/
TN law:
ALEC bill: https://www.alec.org/model-policy/the-education-savings-account-act-2/
TN law:
I know we talked about most of this, but meant to tag @laurinmanning in this thread.
