Yesterday Gov. Tom Corbett proposed a scaled-back voucher package that would only permit the lowest rung of families to move their children from low-performing schools into private schools. The language is similar to a piece of legislation proposed by Republican Rep. Jim Christiana in last season’s legislative session. The American Independent outlined his bill here.

The governor also wants to expand a tax credit program that rewards businesses and families for raising scholarship money towards private school enrollment, called the Expanding the existing Educational Improvement Tax Credit (EITC). The House approved the measure before the summer recess, but the senate failed to take the bill to a vote. SB1, a bi-partisan proposed voucher law introduced in the senate, never came out of committee despite much fanfare and hype.

“We are on board with the reforms [the governor] suggested, “says Brendan Steinhauser, director of state and federal campaigns at FreedomWorks in an exchange with TAI. “We are ramping up the emails, phone calls and other grassroots activity around the state in the days and weeks to come.”

FreedomWorks had an outsized presence in the Keystone state in the final weeks before the legislation session closed in June, even rattling Republican lawmakers who felt their aggressive campaigning for a package of school choice laws did more harm than good.

The Pennsylvania State Education Association (PSEA) opposes the renewed interest in vouchers, arguing the governor’s priorities are mislaid following a 2011-2012 budget authorization that cut $900million from public education spending. PSEA is a state affiliate of the largest teachers union in the U.S., The National Education Association.

“No matter how you slice, Pennsylvania public schools have fewer resources than last year,” PSEA spokesperson Wythe Keever told TAI. “Governor Corbett refused to go along with extra funding despite the fact when the budget was signed there was an additional $700million in surplus revenue available to the commonwealth and he refused to use it.”

Michael Wood, a research director at the Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center, a left-leaning non-profit, told TAI the 2010-2011 fiscal year enjoyed a $786million budget surplus as a result of better than projected revenue. Roughly $300million is expected to come in this year over the revenue haul from 2010-2011, Wood adds.

While a voucher program would not directly pull money from public school spending, education and healthcare take up the lion’s share of the general fund budget, meaning money to subsidize a child’s private school tuition with tax dollars would likely hurt public school spending.

The state will likely have to wait until after lawmakers return from their two-month summer recess following a last-minute failure to cobble together legislation both chambers could approve. Sen. Jeffrey E. Piccola (R), chairman of the Senate Education Committee and co-sponsor of the controversial proposed voucher legislation SB1 accused the House of being “unable or unwilling to engage in any meaningful discussions to finalize” a compromise.

That remark did not sit well with Republican Rep. Curt Schroder, who authored two bill proposals that would establish a school voucher program in the state. “All I know is that for six months [the Senate] was telling us they would send a school choice bill and they didn’t do that,” said Schroder in an interview with TAI. “Failure to do that can’t be pinned on the House. So it is beyond me as to why they’d be using that reasoning or excuse to hide behind in this instance.”

A spokesperson for House Majority Floor Leader Mike Turzai repeatedly told The American Independent the representative would consider any bill from the Senate, but as TAI has written before, the upper chamber never put a school voucher bill to a floor vote.

Brendan Steinhauser, director of state and federal campaigns for FreedomWorks, a group that at times used blunt tactics and organizing efforts to compel Republican legislators to support SB1, told TAI in an email:

I think the entire General Assembly and the Governor can share the blame for botching this. I’m especially curious to know how much PSEA money it took for Mike Turzai to find a way to kill this effort. I guess we will know soon enough, but I suspect tens of thousands. The Republican Party in Pennsylvania really missed an opportunity here, and the teachers unions are grateful for that.

For Schroder, however, the conservative group did more harm than good. “Instead of trying to shove one bill or concept down everyone’s throat they need to back off and let others of good will try to come together to form a consensus,” he said. “FreedomWorks is spewing their venom and poisoning the well.”

The representative’s criticism is consistent with the frustration Turzai’s office expressed in a previous interview with TAI, in which the spokesperson accused FreedomWorks of harassment and bullying. And both offices agree out-of-state groups like FreedomWorks need to reconsider their game plan.

Schroder puts the blame on timing as well, explaining budget negotiations for the 2011-2012 fiscal year, due June 30, pushed aside necessary dialogue between the two chambers over what a school voucher bill should look like.

“Part of the problem now is people who support school choice have not been able to agree on parameter,” he said. “We should use the summer as an opportunity and work out the differences between the chambers and versions of the bill.”

Supporters of school vouchers, which would use public funds to pay for a child’s private school tuition, were hopeful the Senate would tack on voucher language to HB1330, a proposed expansion of the state’s popular tax credit to donors subsidizing private school costs for students.

A total of five school choice bills including SB1 were on the table in the Legislature, with four attempting to create an expansive voucher program that would use public tax dollars to fund child education at a private school.

The three voucher bills in the House vary in their proximity to the terms in SB 1. One would place no income eligibility or geographic restrictions on who could qualify for the tuition vouchers, set at $5,000. Another proposed law, written by Republican Rep. Jim Christiana, is more restrictive than the Senate version, capping the income eligibility to 250 percent of the federal poverty line versus the upper chamber’s 350 percent. A third bill would grant $5,000 to students enrolled in a persistently struggling public school. TAI has written extensively on what each bill entails and their associated costs.

The full message [click on red font in the next page to listen to the entire recording] was obtained by The American Independent, in which the voice of FreedomWorks’ director of state and federal campaigns Brendan Steinhauser urges listeners to call Turzai. He says, in part:

“We’re very close to getting the school choice bill passed in the general assembly, but we need your help to get this done. Please take action now and tell House Majority Leader Mike Turzai to pass a school choice bill now.”

A second voice tells callers to contact the representative to ask him to support SB1 by pressing 1. Republican Senate Education Chairman Jeffrey Piccola and Democrat Sen. Anthony Williams introduced that piece of legislation in January. It has yet to come to a full vote in the Senate. An email from Steinhauser to TAI said the calls were going out to thousands of FreedomWorks members, connecting them to Turzai’s district and Harrisburg offices.

The robocalls target Turzai despite the representative supporting at least two school voucher bills that were proposed by colleagues in the House. Those pieces of legislation vary in their proximity to SB1, with one seen as a more watered-down version while the other places no eligibility requirements on the thousands of dollars of public dollars students can use towards private school tuition.

Turzai also helped successfully pass an expansion of the state’s Educational Improvement Tax Credit–HB1330–a program that awards tax credits to families and third party groups that make funds available for low- and middle-income students to attend private schools. That bill passed the lower chamber 190-7 but awaits approval in the Senate.

To Steinhauser, that effort is not enough. In a separate e-mail he wrote: “The House could pass years 1 and 2 of SB1, which would add a voucher component to HB1330. That’s something we’d like to see the House do. I don’t think Turzai has agreed to do that yet, which is why the senate hasn’t passed its version out yet. Turzai is the key to passing the voucher component we want.”

Turzai’s spokesperson, Steve Miskin, told TAI yesterday during an interview putting pressure on a House member to back a bill in another chamber that has not been passed is absurd. “It appears they only want to be attack dogs,” he said. Miskin was at times furious during the conversation over FreedomWorks’ blunt tactics, accusing the organization of harassing Turzai.

A total of five school choice bills including SB1 are on the table in legislature, with four creating an expansive voucher program that would use public tax dollars to fund child education at a private school.

The three voucher bills in the House vary in their proximity to the terms in SB 1. One would place no income eligibility or geographic restrictions on who could qualify for the tuition vouchers, set at $5,000. Another proposed law, written by Republican Rep. Jim Christiana, is more restrictive than the Senate version, capping the income eligibility to 250 percent of the federal poverty line versus the upper chamber’s 350 percent. A third bill would grant $5,000 to students enrolled in a persistently struggling public school. TAI has written extensively on what each bill entails and their associated costs.

Yesterday the Pittsburgh Tribune Review wrote that Gov. Tom Corbett, whose budget proposal for the coming year would cut $1 billion from public education, supports Christiana’s bill. From the article:

Kevin Harley, Corbett’s spokesman, said a plan by Beaver County Republican Rep. Jim Christiana “seems to be a viable compromise that would be good for children” and a “likely vehicle in working a compromise that everybody could live with.”

Christiana’s bill would make school vouchers available to low-income children who attend the lowest-performing 5 percent of Pennsylvania schools.

The vouchers would be available starting in the 2012-2013 school year. The bill also would open up Educational Improvement Tax Credit scholarships to families earning up to $60,000. Last year, only families earning $50,000 or less qualified for the scholarships.

Rep. Tom Quigley, R-Montgomery, said school voucher legislation could be bundled with charter school reform and a teacher furlough bill to gain support.

The bills vary in their proximity to the terms in SB 1, the senate bill originally sponsored by Republican Senate Education Chairman Jeffrey Piccola and Democrat Sen. Anthony Williams. The proposed law would gradually roll in a program that would provide public dollars for students of lower economic status to attend private schools. The bill has been slow to win support from conservative senators who view the legislation as too costly.

But with a June 30 deadline looming, Piccola has indicated he is open to coming up with new language towards a voucher bill. An e-mail from his office stated Piccola “welcomes the introduction of additional school voucher bills by members of the House and is more than willing to negotiate a compromise regarding years one and two and the EITC program.”

EITC stands for the state’s Educational Improvement Tax Credit, a program that rewards tax credits to families and third party groups that make funds available for low- and middle-income students to attend private schools. Williams chose not to comment on legislative activity in the lower chamber.

The bill likely to gain the most traction is House Bill 1708, proposed today by Republican Rep. Jim Christiana and sponsored by House Majority Leader Mike Turzai, also a Republican.

The representative’s proposal differs from the Senate voucher bill in several ways. A narrower swath of the population would be eligible, and as a student’s household income increases, the value of the voucher will go down. Below is a breakdown of Christiana’s eligibility requirements, with FPL standing for the federal poverty line.

Up to 100 percent of the FPL: 1.0
101 percent to 150 percent of the FPL: .90
151 percent to 200 percent of the FPL: .75
201 percent to 250 percent of the FPL: .50

SB1 would cap income eligibility at 350 percent of the poverty line, the equivalent of just over $78,000 for a family of four.

The Pennsylvania State Education Association, the state’s largest teachers’ union and an affiliate of the National Education Association, is opposed to school vouchers of any kind that use taxpayer dollars, says Wythe Keever, a spokesperson for the NEA. Keever says Christiana’s bill would cost the state $400 million, a figure based on the number of students eligible through HB 1708.

The price tag is not the organization’s only concern. “There are no measures requiring students from public schools participating in the voucher program to take state-administered tests,” Keever says.

The current school choice legislation is “cloaked in this guise of helping low-income students, “ he says, “but the rhetoric is to help private students already in private schools.”

An article critical of SB 1 that appeared last week in the Patriot-News indicates the Senate’s own fiscal note projects only 8 percent of the students attending the 144 worst schools in the state will take part in the program. The authors also wrote that, “However, 65 percent of the students who would receive a voucher under the amended version of S.B. 1 are already attending a private and parochial school.”

Keever is also skeptical any school voucher bill will come before Gov. Tom Corbett–who has long endorsed a “mobile” option for public education dollars–explaining legislators have been promising a vote in both chambers since SB1 was introduced in January. While Pennsylvania’s student-age population has declined since 2006, private school enrollment has fallen nearly 15 percent since 2006 in the state compared to 3 percent in public schools.

Critics of school voucher legislation have called the proposed legislation a bailout for private schools, but Keever explains not even all Republicans have an incentive to shift tax dollars away from public schools.

“The parochial schools are clustered in and around the larger cities (Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Harrisburg, Allentown, Erie, Scranton/Wilkes-Barre),” he says. “Therefore, the issue doesn’t play well with many Republican legislators representing mostly rural areas, where there are few if any private schools of any kind.”

The other two bills coming out of the House were introduced by Republican Rep. Curt Schroder yesterday. In a press release announcing the legislation, Schroder said the following:

House Bill 1679… is broad-based school choice bill that would offer a $5,000 voucher to all students who attend or live within the attendance boundaries of a persistently low achieving school.  Unlike Senate Bill 1, which establishes income limits for voucher eligibility, my legislation ensures all students attending a failing school would receive a school choice option.

His other piece of legislation, House Bill 1678, would offer a $5,000 scholarship to all students regardless of income or residency.

In an article by The Pocono Record, Schroder says the costs of his proposals have not been determined, nor would he estimate how students would take advantage of his legislation.

Brendan Steinhauser, director of federal and state campaigns for FreedomWorks, the conservative political group that has aggressively pushed for school choice expansion in Pennsylvania, told TAI that universal vouchers would be preferred, but Christiana’s proposal is a “good start.”

He said, “politics is about getting what you can; if we need to do this incrementally, we will.” Steinhauser also indicated FreedomWorks could come back in the fall to pursue legislation that would make eligible a wider swath of students.

For him, any successful school choice bill is a defeat for the teachers unions. “Teachers are good people; teachers unions are bad, ” he said. “I really believe that.”

Steinhauser opposes any lobbying group that seeks benefits from the government, but indicated FreedomWorks is out to show “teachers unions can’t control a monopoly market on education.”

However, Keever of PSEA views the involvement of FreedomWorks in Pennsylvania affairs as questionable. “They say we line the pockets of legislators with money… even though Piccola accepted donations from us.” “FreedomWorks is an outside group from out of state,” Keever says. “We’ve voters in every district of the state.”

Lawmakers have set deadlines for education legislation before June 30 to have laws on the books before the end of the fiscal year. General Assembly leaders have scrambled topiece together a budget that would honor the governor’s request of  $2.6billion in spending cuts, including $1billion in public education.

A FreedomWorks employee wears a Panda suit in goading pro union Supporters during a labor-sponsored event in Washington, D.C. on February 22. Freedom Radio host Tabitha Hale appears in the foreground. (Caption: Mikhail Zinshteyn)

On Monday an installment of Freedom Radio, a podcast production of FreedomWorks, outlined the conservative action group’s involvement in the school choice movement of Pennsylvania.

The Keystone state is in the midst of a heated campaign over SB 1, the state Senate bill that would put the state in the company of Indiana as having the most expansive public-funded student voucher program in the country.

The podcast identified the guest, David Spielman, as one of FreedomWorks’ point men in organizing rallies in cities across Pennsylvania. During the exchange, Spielman told host Tabitha Hale, “We sent a message, lets just say, that people want SB 1.” Hale followed up that “we’re in a position of facilitating what’s already going on there.”

Spielman accused organizations opposing the voucher bill of misappropriating the proposed law’s key features. In particular, he pointed to “the teachers unions” who are “spreading around messages that are upsetting conservatives,” like arguing the bill is unconstitutional and would raise taxes.

Though Hale and Spielman note support for the piece of legislation is bipartisan, the organization is putting pressure on Republican lawmakers exclusively to see the bill become law. The FreedomWorks website has posted their names and phone numbers, and during the podcast, House Majority Leader Mike Turzai and Sen. Kim L. Ward were singled out for waffling on whether they will vote for SB 1.

FreedomWorks returns to Pennsylvania next weekend, this time to the neighborhoods of Scranton and Wilkes-Barre. The group came to national prominence during the 2010 election season as one of the main supporters of tea party candidates. Former Republican House Majority leader Dick Armey is a co-chair of the organization.

Between 2007 [PDF] and 2008 [PDF], FreedomWorks received $200,000 from The Richard and Helen DeVos Foundation. In 2008, the foundation controlled over $70 million in assets, according to 990 tax filings, and donated tens of millions of dollars in those two years to Christian foundations, churches seminaries and other conservative political groups like Focus on the Family ($1,000,000) and The Heritage Foundation ($4,000,000).

Richard and Helen DeVos are the parents of Dick DeVos, whose wife leads the American Federation for Children, a leading school choice advocate that moves millions of dollars to support local legislation expanding voucher and public-to-private school initiatives. The Richard and Helen DeVos Foundation also donated $200,000 to the Alliance for School Choice between 2007 and 2008, a Washington, D.C.-based school choice organization that support public funds paying for students private school tuition costs.

“Upshot: Without access to Armey’s data, we couldn’t plumb his methodology. Meantime, our spot-check of Texas A&M’s recent study of faculty costs, which some critics said undercounted faculty contributions, suggests that way more than 49 faculty members accounted for more than they cost in 2008-09,” the site said. “We rate the statement false.”

Armey is the chairman of FreedomWorks and the author of Give Us Liberty: A Tea Party Manifesto.

Politifact reporters found that in a Texas A&M report analyzing professors’ worth, that “We quickly counted more than 49 faculty members credited with generating more than they cost in the studied year, in just the first three of dozens of the university’s academic departments. Specifically, the report lists 21 faculty in Agricultural Leadership, Education and Communication; 17 in Agricultural Economics; and 18 in Animal Science–56 total–as net income generators. In those departments, 45 teachers ran in the red, so to speak, according to the report.”

Armey, a former economics professor, made the statements, along with other controversial suggestions, in an April 17 opinion piece in the Houston Chronicle.

“Eliminating tenure offers an important step toward improving education,” he said. “ My university experience suggests that tenure provides everyone who has it the ability to bully everyone who does not.”

In the column, he also criticized professors for focusing on research: “A professor’s main goal should be to serve the educational needs of students. Yet in most Texas universities research has displaced teaching. A Texas Performance Review found that the average professor at a research university teaches only 1.9 courses per semester. Roughly 22 percent of faculty members do not teach a single course. We could easily remove administrative bloat and reduce tuition by requiring universities to separate research and teaching budgets.”

Read prior reporting by the Texas Independent analyzing Armey’s statements in the column.

The petition drive comes on the heels of an opinion column on the topic by FreedomWorks president Dick Armey, the former U.S. House majority leader, that appeared in the Houston Chronicle.

“I applaud Gov. Rick Perry for courageously tackling much needed higher education reform,” Armey said in the column defending the ‘seven breakthrough solutions’ by Texas Public Policy Foundation board member Jeff Sandefer.

Armey, a former economics professor, said, “Eliminating tenure offers an important step toward improving education. My university experience suggests that tenure provides everyone who has it the ability to bully everyone who does not.”

He also blasts professors for focusing too much on research instead of classroom instruction. He wrote:

“A professor’s main goal should be to serve the educational needs of students. Yet in most Texas universities research has displaced teaching. A Texas Performance Review found that the average professor at a research university teaches only 1.9 courses per semester. Roughly 22 percent of faculty members do not teach a single course. We could easily remove administrative bloat and reduce tuition by requiring universities to separate research and teaching budgets.”

The claim that research university professors teach 1.9 courses per semester also appears in a TPPF higher education guide for state legislators. That statistic appears in a 1996 Texas Performance Review report on higher education from the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts. The final TPR report on any topic was published in 2003.

On the contrary, according to University of Texas System reports, UT-Austin faculty teach an average of four courses per semester. UT-Austin tenure/tenure-track faculty spent an average of 36 hours per week on instruction and instruction-related activities — not including research, institutional service or other paid/unpaid service, according to information provided by the UT System Office of Strategic Initiatives, headed up by Sandra Woodley, who has stepped into the role of advising regents after the firing of former UT senior adviser Rick O’Donnell.

The claim that 22 percent of faculty do not teach a single course also appears in the TPPF guide — although that number is qualified as being a national statistic, not a Texas-specific one.

Armey calls for the publicizing of performance metrics similar to the spreadsheet put together on A&M faculty. He said:

“Disclosing the salaries of tenured professors would be another useful reform, along with how many students they teach and how many funded research dollars they bring in. At Texas A&M University, only 49 out of 3,000 faculty members brought in enough money to pay for their salaries and overhead over the past five years.”

According to the initial draft of the A&M spreadsheet that was withdrawn after numerous errors were found, 249 of the roughly 3,300 faculty members listed brought in more than $1 million apiece in grants over the last five years. Of those bringing in more than $1 million in the past five years, 211 were tenured faculty members, 36 were on tenure track, and two were non-tenured.

(Image by Matt Mahurin)

On Tuesday, a number of tea party organizations are gathering at a FreedomWorks “Restoring America Summit and Rally” at Pittsburgh International Airport’s Embassy Suites to soak up insights from the likes of FreedomWorks’ own founder Dick Armey on school choice, public unions, tort reform and the privatization of Pennsylvania state entities, among other issues.

Scheduled to speak alongside the former U.S. House majority leader include: Freedom Works CEO Matt Kibbe; Frederick Douglass Foundation Chairman Timothy F. Johnson; Fox News contributors Deneen Borelli, Mary Katherine Ham, and Tammy Bruce; The War Room’s Rose Tennent, and “Thomas Paine,” the character Bob Basso plays on YouTube.

Other event co-sponsors include Washington County PA 9.12 Project, PennsylvaniaTeaParty.com, Mercer County TEA Party, Protective Precious Metals, Marley Financial Group, Watchdog Radio, We the People Greene County and the Pittsburgh Tea Party Movement.

The rally is the third FreedomWorks-sponsored event happening in Pennsylvania this month. Previously the group partnered with the Kitchen Table Patriots for a school choice event in Doylestown, Penn., and with the Lehigh Valley 9.12 Tea Party Group for an event in Center Valley, Penn., that focused on ending teacher strikes.

FreedomWorks has been outspoken about trying to abolish collective bargaining rights for all Pennsylvania employees and recently started a petition calling for legislation that would do so.

The Frederick Douglas Foundation’s emphasis on this particular event appears on the issue of school choice, pushing the notion that charter schools are the answer to high dropout rates among black youth — and that state teachers unions are part of the problem.

In a statement on Tuesday’s event, the FDF’s Tim Johnson said:

“We have to stop this ‘School to Prison’ pipeline and provide all parents with real educational choices like charter schools. Educating children is not about satisfying the teachers unions or the bureaucrats who are more concerned about keeping their healthy salaries or job security! … If we are serious about leaving our children and grandchildren with an America we had the opportunity to grow up in, we better make sure they are able to read, write and perform basic math skills. If they can’t get these basic and essential survival tools from their local public schools at taxpayers expense, we better make sure they get them from somewhere.”

Senator Jim DeMint has proposed that all Republican Senators commit to a moratorium on all federal earmarks. The issue is set to be decided early next week, during a special meeting that Senate Republicans have scheduled, but some are already balking at the proposal.

To you and me, last week’s elections were a clear message that the culture of bloated federal spending and business-as-usual Washington politics will no longer stand.

Unfortunately, some Republicans in the Senate don’t seem to be getting the message…at least not yet.

We need to TAKE ACTION NOW — if you are represented by a Republican Senator CLICK HERE to use FreedomWorks interactive call center that will directly connect you with your Senator’s office. Call them, and find out whether they intend to support Mr. DeMint’s conference-wide moratorium on earmarked spending. Then encourage your friends and family to do likewise.

Odds right now still indicate that it will be an uphill battle to get enough votes, but the more attention Tea Partiers bring to the rather symbolic, nonbinding vote, the greater the chances they’ll pressure enough GOP senators into voting for it.

The New York Times obtained a draft of a confidential memo to be distributed to all incoming House Republican lawmakers, in which Armey and FreedomWorks president Matt Kibbe tell lawmakers that working to repeal health care reform is “nonnegotiable,” and they’ll become the target of a major backlash if they don’t succeed in doing so.

“Politically speaking, your only choice is to get on offense and start moving boldly ahead to repeal, replace and defund Obamacare in 2011, or risk rejection by the voters in 2012,” Armey and Kibbe wrote.

Meanwhile, Erikson wrote yesterday, “We have a significant opportunity to improve the Senate GOP through some primaries [in 2012],” and he provided a list of all the Senate Republicans up for re-election in the next cycle:

John Barasso (WY)
Scott Brown (MA)
Bob Corker (TN)
John Ensign (NV)
Orrin Hatch (UT)
Kay Bailey Hutchison (TX)
Jon Kyl (AZ)
Richard Lugar (IN)
Olympia Snowe (ME)
Roger Wicker (MS)

Note that this is just the list of Senate Republicans running. Not all will be targets, but it will be from these men and women that the tea party movement starts looking for targets.

Now, before you all get giddy about Olympia Snowe, I would respectfully suggest that Corker, Hatch, Hutchison, Lugar, and Wicker make better targets as we have a much greater certainty of both beating them in primaries and also winning the general election.

Wicker and Corker in particular make exciting prospects for the tea party movement.

At this point, the aforementioned writings represent idle threats and not any sort of movement with real popular backing. But with the experiences of their successfully primaried colleagues like Sen. Bob Bennett (R-Utah), Rep. Mike Castle (R-Del.) and Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) fresh in the minds of most Republican congressmen, such threats might be enough to keep them marching in lockstep with the Tea Party’s demands throughout the next legislative session.