The Voucher Lobby
Lobbying for school choice provides big money for Republicans.
Jeff Fitzgerald
The word was out last year that Republican Assembly Speaker Jeff Fitzgerald intended to retire and make the big money working as a lobbyist. Two days after his term was up, he signed up as a lobbyist for School Choice Wisconsin.
Fitzgerald’s decision underlined the ironic facts of life in Wisconsin. Choice Schools may be badly underfunded, getting just $6,442 per pupil in public funding (about half of what public schools get), and may often pay lousy salaries to teachers. But those who lobby for school choice are doing just fine, thank you. Indeed, the pay is so good that three former Republican Assembly Speakers now do lobbying and advocacy for school choice.
The first to jump aboard the gravy train was former Speaker (and key figure in the legislative caucus scandal) Scott Jensen, who works for two Washington D.C.-based groups that work to increase School Choice funding: the American Federation for Children and the Alliance for School Choice, two sister organizations located at the same address, 1660 L Street NW, Suite 1000. Both groups have a key consultant, Chartwell Strategic Advisors, the one-man consulting company run by Jensen from his Brookfield home. In 2011, the most recent for which these groups filed federal income tax forms, Jensen earned $202,972, including $102,7346 from the American Federation for Children and $100, 236 from the Alliance for School Choice.
These groups have often worked to influence issues and elections in Wisconsin. A report by the American Federation for Children bragged that “With expenditures of $2,392,000, [AFC] engaged in hard-fought, successful battles to ensure educational choice majorities in both chambers of the Legislature” in Wisconsin, as the the Badger Herald reported.
School Choice Wisconsin has also used former Speaker John Gard as a lobbyist. The group garnered about $5.4 million in grants and contributions from 2006 through 2011, and spends about $20,000 a year on lobbying in 2009 through 2011. School Choice Wisconsin has relied on the Mequon-based Simons Plantenberg Consulting to do its fundraising: it raised $661, 875 in 2011 (and was paid $90,954) and $836,200 in 2010 (and was paid $87,683).
Jay Heck, Common Cause Director told the Associated Press it was “pretty amazing” that three former speakers now lobby on school choice issues. “I’ve never seen that,” Heck said. “I wonder if the three of them will get together on a conference call and plot strategy.”
School Choice and Special Education
Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Justice recently wrote a directive informing the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction it must take steps to insure that voucher schools do not discriminate against special education students. This could change the landscape for school choice in Wisconsin.
The directive cited the complaints of advocacy groups for disabled children, who filed a legal complaint in June 2011 which claimed that just 1.6 percent of the 21,000 students enrolled at the time in private voucher schools had special education service plans, compared with 20 percent of students in Milwaukee Public Schools.
Voucher supporters have taken issue with these figures, pointing to a study of school choice in Wisconsin which estimated that 11.4 percent of voucher students had a disability, compared with the 20 percent of MPS students.
Either figure suggests voucher schools have a much smaller percentage of special education students. The percentage in MPS has been steadily growing, both because the overall number of special education students keeps rising and because the percentage of regular students in MPS declines as ever more attend choice schools. This has imposed huge costs on MPS because federal and state requirements to provide expensive special education services have never been fully funded. For the 2011-2012 year, MPS spokesperson Tony Tagliavia notes, the state paid just 23.75 percent of special education costs and the federal government paid just 18.64 percent of the costs, leaving MPS to pay for nearly 58 percent of the costs.
Voucher supporters have long resisted having any oversight of choice schools by DPI, arguing that freedom from state standards and requirements is a key factor that makes these schools unique. This federal ruling opens the door to more oversight by DPI.
However, it could be a staff-intensive task for DPI to patrol every mom-and-pop choice school to determine whether it is rejecting special education students. And you can bet the Republican-controlled legislature and all the ex-Republican Assembly speakers who are now part of the voucher lobby will do their best to oppose the use of any DPI funding to police this federal directive.
Short Take
The Wisconsin Democracy Campaign has filed a complaint against the American Federation for Children “for allegedly failing to disclose about $2 million in funds used to influence races.”
All told, the group spent $2.4 million in influencing races, although it only disclosed $345,000 to the GAB, the complaint charged. The complaint cites the report by the American Federation which bragged about spending $2.4 million to elect educational choice majorities in both houses of the Legislature.
Technically, the $2 million additional spent on these elections was in the form of “issue ads,” which are not supposed to be used to influence elections. But as Wisconsin Democracy Campaign head Mike McCabe noted in a story by Milwaukee Journal Sentinel columnist Dan Bice about the American Federation, “They’re saying candidates won, in part, because of…phony issue ads. This shows what a sham this whole game is.”
Correction: An earlier version of this column grossly inflated the amount that Simons Plantenberg Consulting received from School Choice Wisconsin in 2011 and 2010; most of that money it raised went to School Choice Wisconsin and the consultant received a portion of it back as a fee, as noted in corrected paragraph. The column also inflated the amount the group spent on lobbying. My apology for the errors.
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What about Fields and DFER? The rumor is that Lena may also get speaking fees (from DFER). You punted on Fuller, who is some ways still coordinates.
Fuller is not listed as a lobbyist in state records which track this.
The best thing we can do, especially after looking at the scores, even after spending far more money the last 30 years, is to give every kid a voucher for $7,000 and let the families find their own education, even home schoolers.
We are losing thousands of kids every year cause they cannot read. We spend $13,000 plus and the schools cannot teach kids to read. The can in Bangladesh, China.
I keep thinking that if the energy spent by both sides of the voucher controversy was instead devoted to really figuring out how to reach kids growing up in poverty, we would all be better off. There is way too much pointing of fingers and way too little problem solving.
With regard to reaching kids growing up in poverty, there have been lots of studies that document the benefits of early childhood education, the earlier the better. The Wisconsin Policy Research Institute which is considered a conservative organization strongly supports early childhood education. Sadly, a recent report states that “state financing for preschool programs fell close to 10 percent in the 2011-12 school year. Instead of providing money to voucher schools which studies indicate do not have better results than public schools, would it not be better to devote that money to early childhood education?
Lobbyists are only evil when they lobby for conservative ideas. Bruce would be better serving his readers if he countered his point with an explanation how WEAC used taxpayer paid health insurance premiums laundered through WEA Trust to lobby for the bloated and dysfunctional education establishment.
actually, I have written about WEAC in the past. It was THE lobbying group years ago. But it is a shadow of itself today.
I’m not sure if these figures are that different from the average lobbyist who covers such things. $200K is good for Jensen, but nothing obscene. The average lobbyist salary in the USA makes $100,484. Mitchell making $200K over many years is not taking in that much as a significant portion of her salary. I think cherry picking high earners tax returns doesn’t tell a lot. For a low wage earner, big numbers stick out, but for most professionals, its typical. Half of it is taxed away anyway, so big earners need big pre-tax numbers to bring in modest take home pay. Political causes as a whole are unfortunately expensive.