News Alert to Michigan Media

ROCHESTER PTA USES CHILDREN TO ADVANCE ANTI-SCHOOL-CHOICE POLITICAL AGENDA

(Rochester, MI, September 8, 1999) We thought you'd like to know about a troubling incident that may be reoccurring all over Michigan state!

        The mother of a student at North Hill Elementary School in Rochester, Michigan was outraged by a leaflet her child brought home from school last week.

        She received the attached communication, which is sloppy in both style and substance.

        With no apparent logo or letterhead, the leaflet begins by quoting author Jonathan Kozol, whose own research into schools has been questioned, saying, "People who support vouchers tend not to know very much about vouchers."

        The leaflet attempts to connect choice-supporter Milton Friedman - a world-renowned Nobel Prize winner - to Chilean "Fascist" Dictator Augusto Pinochet. Friedman, now in his 80s, has virtually nothing to do with existing programs other than his written and acknowledged support.

        In this political bulletin, an obvious response to the current initiative drive to put vouchers on the ballot for a vote in 2000, the PTA spews more lies when it says that vouchers started as a means to segregate black from white children.

        Race baiting, name-calling and falsifying documents are hardly the stuff PTAs should be about.

        Nowhere does the leaflet explain or mention that existing school choice programs nationwide serve predominantly minority children and that their schools are more integrated than the public schools from which many of them came.

        The programs in Cleveland, Milwaukee and Florida were started with the help of African-American leaders.

        Please call us for more information on this issue. See also our library About School Choice.

        Link to: full text of anti-voucher leaflet.
        Link to: Detroit News Editorial: The PTA Smear Campaign.

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The Center for Education Reform is a national, independent, non-profit advocacy organization providing support and guidance to individuals, community and civic groups, policymakers and others who are working to bring fundamental reforms to their schools. For additional information on school choice or education reform please call CER at (202) 822-9000.

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