Wisconsin state Assembly Representative Mark Pocan has long been a hero in the effort to expose ALEC. ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, is a secretive but immensely powerful right-wing organization, where conservative state legislators sit down with the big corporations to draft secret model legislation for state legislatures to copy and enact, as soon as they've got Republican majorities. (For much more about ALEC, see the amazing ALEC Exposed website by the Center for Media and Democracy).
Rep. Pocan is himself a member of ALEC, though not a welcome one -- as a progressive Democrat, he's about as far from their core constituency as one can get! He wrote in The Progressive back in 2008 about his experience crashing an ALEC policy summit: Inside ALEC.
Last night on the floor of the Wisconsin Assembly, Rep. Pocan made a remarkable speech about ALEC in the context of debate on AB110, the so-called "Special Needs Scholarship Act," an ALEC-sourced attack on public education via vouchers targeting students with disabilities.
Video after the squiggly cheese curd!
Yesterday was a marathon meeting for the Assembly. The legislative session ends on March 15, and anything that doesn't pass by then is pretty much dead in the water. So they had much, much more on their calendar than they could ever hope to get to. But one of the things that they wanted to be sure to advance was the voucher scheme for students with special needs. I've been writing about this one since it first reared up in Wisconsin last May: Piratizing Special Education in Wisconsin: AB110. The bill would allow families of children with special needs to take the taxpayer dollars being used to educate their child in public school, and spend them to send their child to private school instead. Any child with an Individualized Education Plan (IEP) at a public school would be eligible, regardless of income. Here's what the Department of Public Instruction had to say about the bill at the time:
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.
The bill did not make it out of committee that May, but all of a sudden it re-emerged as a substitute amendment on a fast-track this February, trying to cram through under the radar. The new version makes a few improvements but remains a devastating money-grab. I testified in a public hearing before the Senate Education Committee about the
abuses revealed in a similar program in Florida. The Department of Public Instruction testified that they CANNOT administer the bill as currently written.
But the fast-track continued, and so the bill came to the floor last night, and Rep. Pocan let them have it about ALEC! I've transcribed a few snippets below the video:
When I went down to New Orleans to the ALEC convention last August, I remember going to a workshop and hearing a little bit about a bill they did in Florida and some other states, part of their efforts to dismantle public education. And there was a proposal to provide special needs scholarships. And lo and behold, I come back to Wisconsin and what gets introduced? Get ready, I know you're going to have a shocked look on your face... a bill to do JUST THAT, the exact model legislation!
...
So Mr. Speaker, this is the travesty that we have in front of us today. This is supposed to be "Education Day" when really it's "ALEC Day" or it's "Scott Jensen Day." [Note: Scott Jensen is the disgraced former Republican speaker of the Assembly, who now lobbies for the "school-choice" outfit American Federation for Children.] But it has very little to do with Education Day, because this is a bill that they have recommended state by state, and I went to workshops on how they offered this and other bills on how to dismantle public education. You do it drip by drip, and this is one of those bills that will do just that.
Video link:
Mark Pocan - Special Needs Scholarship Program (AB 110) was written by ALEC
As your new constituent under the embattled Republican redistricting, and as the mother of a young student with disabilities in the Madison public schools: Thank you, Rep. Pocan! Thank you for speaking the truth, and exposing AB110 for the travesty it is.
The upshot of last night's floor action was: AB110 did not pass the Assembly last night. The Democrats delayed it until the next time the Assembly comes to the floor. Meanwhile, over in the Senate, there is reportedly some hesitation on the part of a number of Republican state Senators -- pressure applied to the offices of Sens. Olsen, Schultz, Ellis, Wanggaard, and Cowles would be particularly apropos right now.
Repeating my plea from a diary on Feb. 22:
Wisconsin Kossacks: please help push back! E-mails, phone calls to legislators (Who Are My Legislators?) would be most welcome!
For the quick 5-minute advocacy version, the Wisconsin Educators Association Council (WEAC) has put up this nifty site for generating messages to your state legislators in opposition to the special needs voucher plunder.
Please, take five minutes and send a message now!
We can still block this ALEC attack on Wisconsin's public schools!
