The Public Funds Public Schools (PFPS) webinar series continued on Thursday, October 19, 2023 with an event featuring the book, The School Voucher Illusion: Exposing the Pretense of Equity, which examines the false promise that private school vouchers would provide more equitable educational opportunities to underserved or marginalized students.

Professor Janel George of Georgetown Law moderated a discussion with the book’s editors: Gary Orfield, Distinguished Research Professor at UCLA and Co-Director of the Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles; Kevin Welner, Professor at the University of Colorado Boulder School of Education and Director of the National Education Policy Center; and Luis A. Huerta, Professor of Education and Public Policy at Teachers College, Columbia University and Chair of the Education Policy and Social Analysis Department.

You can access a recording of the webinar here.

PFPS webinars explore issues related to private school vouchers and the campaign’s goal of ensuring public funds are used to maintain, support, and strengthen public schools.

Receive a discount when you order the book from Teacher’s College Press and use code PFPS for 15% off plus free shipping on The School Voucher Illusion.

Links to fact sheets, policy briefs, and other tools for advocates, can be found on the Advocacy page of the PFPS website. Visit the Research page for a comprehensive list of studies showing the harms of private school voucher programs on students and public schools, and use the PFPS bill tracker to monitor proposed voucher legislation across the 50 states and in the U.S. Congress.

MORE ABOUT THE SPEAKERS:

Gary Orfield is Distinguished Research Professor of Education, Law, Political Science and Urban Planning at the University of California, Los Angeles. He was co-founder and Director of the Harvard Civil Rights Project, and now serves as Co-Director of the Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles at UCLA. Professor Orfield is a member of the National Academy of Education. His research includes more than 12 co-authored or co-edited books and scores of articles and reports. He has served as an expert witness or special master in more than three dozen class action civil rights cases and helped organize amicus briefs to the Supreme Court on major education cases.

Kevin Welner is Professor at the University of Colorado Boulder School of Education, specializing in education policy and law. He is also the co-founder and Director of the National Education Policy Center, housed at CU Boulder, which works to build bridges between the research world and the broader public. Professor Welner has authored or edited 18 books and well over 100 articles and book chapters. He is a Senior Research Fellow at the Learning Policy Institute and an American Educational Research Association Fellow.

Luis A. Huerta is Professor of Education and Public Policy at Teachers College, Columbia University and Chair of the Education Policy and Social Analysis Department. He teaches courses in policy analysis and implementation, school finance, and organizational sociology. His research and scholarship focus on school choice reforms and school finance policy. He is the author of recent articles on school choice and school finance published in Educational Policy, Journal of Education Finance, Teachers College Record, Peabody Journal of Education, Journal of Education Policy and Phi Delta Kappan. He recently served as co-editor of the journal Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis.

Janel George is Associate Professor of Law at Georgetown Law, where she focuses on racial stratification in public education, and is the founder and Director of the Racial Equity in Education Law and Policy Clinic. Her commentary has been published in numerous outlets and she has also spoken across the country about issues of racial inequality in education. Her work and scholarship are informed by her experience as a congressional staffer and as a legislative lawyer with several non-profits, including as a civil rights attorney with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc.

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