Indiana Vouchers Set to Expand Again

FOLLOWING IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF DANIELS, BENNETT, AND PENCE

Ten years ago the Indiana General Assembly established the state’s voucher program to “provide children who attend failing schools grants to attend a school of choice.” At that time, the state provided tuition help for low-income students to attend religious schools (it’s actually “private” schools, but nearly all are religious). Families earning more than $60,000 were not included. The inflation rate over the last ten years has been about 16% so that $60,000 cap would be about $70,000 today. The General Assembly, however, wants to double that and the Indiana House will vote on the bill tomorrow (February 15).

We’ve spent more than half a billion dollars on vouchers since 2011. Has it helped poor students? Has it improved learning? Has it improved public schools as voucher proponents claimed it would? The state has yet to evaluate the program for anything other than political contributions. As with other voucher programs around the country, the voters have never directly chosen to spend all that money.

In 2011 the goal of the voucher program was to help poor students “escape” from “failing” [read: high-poverty] schools. Now the program goal is to provide “choice” for private and religious schools to accept middle-class families who would have sent their kids to their schools anyway.

The money for vouchers comes from the state’s education budget, so the voucher students in one county are draining away public funds that could be used for public school students in other counties around the state. The money also goes to mostly religious schools despite the state constitution prohibition (Article 1, Section 6). How does that pass legal muster? The state Supreme Court agreed to allow the state to launder the money through parents. Parents choose the voucher recipient (assuming that the school accepts their child, of course), and the state sends the cash directly to the school — state funds, directly from tax dollars to religious schools. It doesn’t matter if the school discriminates against certain students, hires unqualified teachers, or teaches religious doctrine as scientific fact.

Meanwhile, funds for high poverty public schools are being capped, public school teacher salaries are ignored again, and charter schools are also getting a budget boost.

How does this keep happening? The Indiana electorate, including the parents and caretakers of the 90% of students who attend public schools, continue to vote for people who hate public schools.

Betsy would be proud.

Bill lavishes more money on favored private schools

Freshman state lawmaker Jake Teshka was incredulous. He had just listened to the president of the Indiana School Board Association criticize a sweeping expansion of the school voucher program as benefiting wealthy families.

“Do you believe, that in 2021, $140,000 in a family of four is considered wealthy?” the South Bend Republican asked Robert Stwalley during Feb. 3 testimony on House Bill 1005.

“I would certainly consider it to be wealthier than the original program was designed – for the low income. Absolutely,” the Purdue University engineering professor replied. “For a family of five, that brings you up to $160,000 a year in income. That’s pretty wealthy, sir.”

Median household income in Indiana is $57,603, according to census data. For a family of four, it is $90,654.

Teshka isn’t the only House Republican out of touch with Hoosier families. His colleagues on the House Education Committee, as well as all Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee, voted unanimously to support HB 1005. The bill goes to the full House on Monday, where the super-majority caucus appears dead set on removing already-generous income limits on vouchers and adding education savings accounts, a costly program with an extensive record of abuse in other states.

Hoosiers should demand to know the justification for handing millions in tax dollars to high-income households and private and parochial schools. How many more ways can GOP lawmakers find to take money from the schools serving 90% of Indiana’s students, including the neediest?

🚌💲🚌

2021 Medley #2 – Privatization, the Free Market, and Propaganda

Privatization and the Free Market

Truth, Lies, and Propaganda

PRIVATIZATION, AND THE FREE MARKET

Betsy DeVos might be gone from our federal government, but she and those who support her privatization schemes for public education are still around.

It’s “School Choice Week” & I Choose…

Stu Egan, who blogs at Caffeinated Rage wrote this about school choice week. In it, he reminds us that “Our public schools are better than many lawmakers and ‘pro-choice’ advocates portray them to be – many of whom have never spent time as educators.” The privatizers define the parameters in order to place public schools in a poor light…and then claim that public schools are “failing.”

Supporters of public schools must change the narrative.

With the constant dialogue that “we must improve schools” and the “need to implement reforms,” it is imperative that we as a taxpaying public seek to understand all of the variables in which schools are and can be measured, and not all of them are quantifiable.

And not all of them are reported or allowed to be seen.

Betsy DeVos’s March, 2018 assertion on 60 Minutes that America’s schools have seen no improvement despite the billions and billions of dollars thrown at them was a nearsighted, close minded, and rather uneducated assessment of public schools because she was displaying two particular characteristics of lawmakers and politicians who are bent on delivering a message that public schools are not actually working.

The first is the insistence that “they” know education better than those who actually work in education. DeVos has no background in statistical analysis, administration, or teaching. The second is the calculated spin of evidence and/or the squashing of actual truth.

The premise of DeVos’s argument was the performance of US students on the PISA exam. She was trying to control how the public saw the results. She framed the context to promote a narrative that her “reforms” were the only solutions.

Legislators propose expanded vouchers, ESA’s

What is the purpose of America’s public schools?

Privatizers believe that education is an individual choice. They claim that all parents must be “in it for themselves” to get the best education for their child. Education, looked at this way, is a consumer good…something that one must shop for. If that’s true, then there will be winners and losers. As a society, we can’t afford to maintain an education system in which a large portion of our children end up as losers.

In the 2012 presidential campaign, Republican candidate Mitt Romney said [emphasis added], “…I want to make sure that we keep America a place of opportunity, where everyone has a fair shot. They get as much education as they can afford…” What about those who can’t afford any education? Will we, as a society, have to support them if they’re unhireable? It’s in society’s interest to make sure everyone is educated.

Public school advocates believe that public education is a common good. Let’s change “in it for themselves” to “we’re all in this together.” As the late Minnesota Senator Paul Wellstone said, “We all do better when we all do better.”

Under HB 1005, families that make up to three times the limit to qualify for reduced-price school meals – which is over five times the federal poverty level — would become eligible for vouchers in 2022-23. For a family of five, that’s $170,274 a year, more than three times the median household income in Indiana.

Families would also receive more generous voucher funding under the legislation. Currently, only the lowest-income families receive a full voucher, worth 90% of the per-pupil funding that their local school district gets from the state. Higher-income recipients get 50% or 70% of that amount.

Under HB 1005, all families with vouchers would receive 90% of local per-pupil state funding. In effect, families that make several times as much as the average Hoosier household could get about $5,500 per child from the state to pay private school tuition.

Constitutionally enshrined schools deserve our ongoing protection

The Indiana Constitution, Article 8, Section 1, states that,

…it shall be the duty of the General Assembly…to provide, by law, for a general and uniform system of Common Schools, wherein tuition shall be without charge, and equally open to all.

The only tuition-free schools, open to every child in the state, are the public schools. Private/Parochial schools can refuse students for a variety of reasons including, but not limited to, gender identification, sexual preference (as well as the sexual preference of the parents), and religious beliefs.

Charter schools can, and sometimes do, choose their students based on socio-economic status, academic achievement, physical/academic disability, and the ability to provide their own transportation.

Until charter schools and private/parochial schools accept all students regardless of academic ability, economic status, or any other limiting factor, they should not receive state support. Public education dollars should go to public schools.

I have no problem with parents choosing which school their children attend. They have the right to send their children to the school of their choice, be that public or private. I willingly pay taxes to support public school education.

However, I vehemently object that my taxes also are providing vouchers to pay for non-public schools. Every dime that goes to the non-public schools takes money away from education for public schools. At the expense of public schools, taxpayers are paying for a multi-education system instead of the one system, open to all, established by our Indiana Constitution.

These Textbooks In Thousands Of K-12 Schools Echo Trump’s Talking Points

In the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, Thomas Jefferson wrote,

…to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical; that even the forcing him to support this or that teacher of his own religious persuasion, is depriving him of the comfortable liberty of giving his contributions to the particular pastor whose morals he would make his pattern, and whose powers he feels most persuasive to righteousness; and is withdrawing from the ministry those temporal[ry] rewards…

So why are our tax dollars going to support schools which teach a “skewed version of history” and religion as science?

Christian textbooks used in thousands of schools around the country teach that President Barack Obama helped spur destructive Black Lives Matter protests, that the Democrats’ choice of 2016 nominee Hillary Clinton reflected their focus on identity politics, and that President Donald Trump is the “fighter” Republicans want, a HuffPost analysis has found.

The analysis, which focused on three popular textbooks from two major publishers of Christian educational materials ― Abeka and BJU Press ― looked at how the books teach the Trump era of politics. We found that all three are characterized by a skewed version of history and a sense that the country is experiencing an urgent moral decline that can only be fixed by conservative Christian policies. Language used in the books overlaps with the rhetoric of Christian nationalism, often with overtones of nativism, militarism and racism as well.

 

Free Market Facts And School Choice

“…the free market doesn’t foster superior quality; the free market fosters superior marketing.”

…the last two months of U.S. history are more than sufficient to demonstrate why allowing citizens to make a free market selection of their own preferred facts is bad for us as a country. Free market fans like to argue that only the best products win in the marketplace. But the free market doesn’t foster superior quality; the free market fosters superior marketing. And in the free market of ideas, sometimes the most effective marketing is simply, “Wouldn’t you rather believe this?”

There is no benefit to society in encouraging parents to choose post-truth fact-impaired education for their children, certainly not enough benefit to justify spending taxpayer dollars to pay for it. Choosing your own preferred facts from a wide open marketplace simply enables willful ignorance, and that is never good for society as a whole.

TEACH YOUR CHILDREN WELL

Our founders were not perfect. The US Constitution excused slavery. The Civil War ended the legal practice of slavery, but was followed by a failed “reconstruction” which ushered in an era of Jim Crow laws, punishment, and death for former slaves. The “second reconstruction” yielded some relief, but law and social pressures still worked against the advancement of political, economic, and social equality.

The first century and a half of the country’s existence were also dedicated to the subjugation, through lies and deceit, of the people native to the land. The so-called treaties made in the name of the United States were ignored. The payment for the land taken was often reneged upon. Entire communities were uprooted and moved, often at the cost of human lives.

Now, nearly 250 years after our founding, we’re still grappling with racism, inequality, and white supremacy. Should we lie to our students and tell them that nothing has ever been wrong with the nation or should we tell them the truth?

The following three articles from Kappan deal with teaching students the truth, how to differentiate the truth from lies, and how to protect themselves from propaganda.

The silence of the ellipses: Why history can’t be about telling our children lies

In September 2020, President Donald Trump stood in the great hall of the National Archives to denounce what he called a leftist assault on American history: “We must clear away the twisted web of lies in our schools and classrooms,” he said, and teach our children a kind of history that will make them “love America with all of their heart and all of their soul.”

Love built on a lie is false love. It achieves its mirage by making truth its victim. The goal of historical study is to cultivate neither love nor hate. Its goal must be to acquaint us with the dizzying spectrum of our humanity: lofty moments of nobility mixed in with ignominious descents into knavery. When history’s mirror intones a single phrase — that we’re the fairest of them all — it freezes us in childhood and stunts our growth. History that impels us to look at the past, unflinchingly and clear-eyed, does not diminish us or make us less patriotic. The opposite, in fact, is true: It makes us grow up. Understanding who we were allows us to understand who we are now. Only then can we commit to doing something about it.

That should be the goal of history education. Our children deserve nothing less.

Taking a reasoned stance against misinformation

In this time of widespread dissemination of alternative facts and misinformation, teachers have a responsibility to turn classrooms into spaces where reason and inquiry trump ignorance and hyperbole. But doing so often requires teachers to take a stance regarding what issues are worthy of deliberation and what information warrants consideration, and the decisions teachers make may be risky, as teachers are generally expected to be politically neutral, and expressions of their political beliefs can expose them to accusations of bias (Journell, 2016). That’s why it’s important for teachers to follow established criteria for making pedagogical decisions.

Having a clear framework that enables them to justify their decisions to students, parents, and administrators will hopefully mitigate the risks that come with opening the floor to discussion of controversial topics. More important, modeling thoughtful discernment and being transparent about which topics are open for deliberation and what information is acceptable to bring to a discussion is a valuable lesson unto itself, one that students can use outside the classroom and into their adult lives.

Understanding propaganda: A conversation with Renee Hobbs

Renee Hobbs is professor of communication studies at the Harrington School of Communication and Media at the University of Rhode Island…

…when I started offering college courses about propaganda, many years ago, a lot of students thought this meant I’d be teaching history classes. In most secondary schools, the only time anybody talks about propaganda is in the context of the Second World War, so students tend to associate it with the Nazi era. I often have to explain that propaganda isn’t some bygone issue from long ago and far away. Actually, it’s something we’re all swimming in every day…

In 2019, for instance, the National Council of Teachers of English passed a resolution calling for a renewed emphasis on teaching ”civic and critical literacy,” including efforts to “enable students to analyze and evaluate sophisticated persuasive techniques in all texts, genres, and types of media” and to “support classroom practices that examine and question uses of language in order to discern inhumane, misinformative, or dishonest discourse and arguments.” Well, that sounds like propaganda analysis to me.

Plus, I think we’re seeing a lot of young people becoming more eager than they have in years to embrace civic life — whether they’re interested in politics, racial justice, the environment, you name it. And to participate in civic life effectively, they need to be able to speak persuasively, activate emotions, simplify information, appeal to people’s deepest values, respond to attacks from opponents, and so on. In short, they need to learn about rhetoric and propaganda. So, our students are certainly ready for this kind of instruction, and they may begin to demand it, too.

🚌🚌🚌

DeVos Still Haunts Indiana

ADVANCEMENT OF GOD’S KINGDOM

Betsy DeVos is gone…and her boss will be gone in less than a week, but that doesn’t mean that the party of low taxes for the wealthy has forgotten what Princess Betsy stood for…the advancement of God’s Kingdom in the battleground of “educational reform.”

The Indiana General Assembly for the 2021 session already has thirty-seven bills dealing with “school.” Most notable among them is House Education Committee chair, Bob Behning’s HB 1005 which would…

…create state-funded Education Savings Accounts that certain K-12 students could use for various educational services, including private school tuition.

Just a reminder…in Indiana “private school tuition” means parochial schools more than 99% of the time. Advancing God’s Kingdom, indeed.

Remember when Governor Mitch Daniels told us that it was important for anyone using vouchers to attend a public school for at least a year? Remember when Governor Mitch Daniels told us that vouchers were for poor kids to “escape” from “failing schools?“

You probably wouldn’t be surprised to learn that fewer than half of 2019-2020 voucher recipients ever attended a public school.

And that thing about kids in poverty escaping “failing schools?” That was never the actual intent.

…the real intention of voucher supporters was and is: 1) hurt teacher’s unions; 2) subsidize religious education; and 3) redirect public education money to friends and well-wishers of voucher supporters. Also, a reminder: vouchers do not improve educational outcomes.

This year, the “advancers of God’s Kingdom” in our legislature want to offer more voucher money to more, and wealthier, people. Steve Hinnefeld in his School Matters blog, explains…

Legislators propose expanded vouchers, ESA’s

Under HB 1005, families that make up to three times the limit to qualify for reduced-price school meals – which is over five times the federal poverty level — would become eligible for vouchers in 2022-23. For a family of five, that’s $170,274 a year, more than three times the median household income in Indiana.

Meanwhile, the legislature will likely neglect schools filled with poor kids who need extra help.

And will standardized tests, which are good for only one thing — identifying which schools enroll children of poverty — still be given this year of the pandemic? After all, that’s how schools are labeled “failing.”

Betsy DeVos still haunts Indiana!

📝🏫🚌

2020 Medley #24: No More Political Ads Issue

The 2020 Election, Racism,

Online learning, Kids in high poverty schools, School “choice”, Discrimination using public funds

 

As of this writing (11 AM ET, Nov 4, 2020), the 2020 election is not completely over. Ballots are still being counted in the swing states of Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Georgia. The Democrats have likely flipped two Senate seats (Colorado and Arizona), but lost one (Alabama). Other Republican Senate races are not called but are likely to remain the same. So with a net gain of one seat, the Senate will remain under the control of Mitch McConnell.

HEALING WILL TAKE TIME

The Racist Genie is Out of the Bottle (again)

This post by Russ Walsh was originally published on November 11, 2016. Even if Joe Biden eventually gains enough electoral votes to become president, the rise of white supremacy during the last four years is not likely to disappear quickly.

Read the whole post. Not much has changed since 2016.

This morning the New York Times published an editorial asking that the President-elect directly and immediately denounce the hate and let his supporters know that this targeting behavior is not OK. But once you let the hate genie out of the bottle, it is devilishly difficult to put it back in. Racism, xenophobia, and misogyny are never far from the surface in this country and when these baser instincts of humans seem to have the imprimatur of the leader of the country, it may take a lifetime to tame them.

As teachers, we need to be on guard and vigilant. We must re-double our efforts to make sure the classroom, the hallways, the cafeteria, the locker room, the campus are safe for all people, including Trump supporters, who will almost certainly be the targets of backlash as well.

In 1992, Rodney King, the African-American victim of a brutal police beating in Los Angeles asked, “Can we all get along?” Apparently not, Rodney. Not yet, anyway. There is still a lot of work to be done.

EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION IN THE TIME OF COVID-19

Kindergarten Pandemic Learning Fears Should Not Be Tied to Screen Time and Rigid Drilling

Play is children’s work and it is the way in which children learn, make sense of the world, and acclimate themselves to their culture. Online instruction can’t reproduce the benefits of play.

Online learning is a relatively new phenomenon, and drilling five-year-olds, making them sit and face screens for long periods, can’t be good for them or instill a love for learning.

Most childhood specialists are not excited about online learning, and they discourage formal reading instruction in kindergarten. They disapproved of this push before Covid-19, so why would they like it now?

The benefit of online connection for kindergarteners is being linked to a kindergarten teacher and other children, to feel some semblance of a kindergarten class during a lonely time. Teachers who demonstrate love and kindness, introducing children to exciting and funny information they will find memorable, create the best foundation.

 

WASTING PUBLIC MONEY

Instead of Funding Public Education, Oklahoma Bankrolled a For-Profit Virtual Charter School

The pandemic has given privatizers permission to defund public education. Sometimes the money diverted from public schools ends up in the hands of charlatans.

Back in May, as Oklahoma state leaders sent traditional public schools contradictory messages on online, hybrid, and in-person learning during the fall semester, families flocked to Epic as an alternative. Now, Epic has about twice as many students as the Oklahoma City Public School System.

This shift amounts to a massive drain on traditional public schools, which receive funding based on student numbers, as they face the increased costs of adhering to health and safety guidelines.

Epic, while currently experiencing a surge in enrollment, has been mired in controversy since 2013, when it first came under scrutiny for financial irregularities by the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation, the state’s education board, and the legislature. Throughout the investigation, Epic refused to cooperate, and used expensive lobbying and advertising campaigns to delay the process.

Much of the Epic scandal was predictable, as Oklahoma funded a for-profit charter without creating an accountability system with the power to oversee its financial practices or education outcomes.

PUBLIC SCHOOLS AREN’T FAILING

Kids in poor, urban schools learn just as much as others

Test scores of children in high poverty schools are generally lower than those of wealthier children. However, the scores are more a reflection of what happens outside of school.

“Martin Luther King Jr. said, …we are likely to find that the problems of housing and education, instead of preceding the elimination of poverty, will themselves be affected if poverty is first abolished.”

Instead of being “engines of inequality” – as some have argued – this new research suggests schools are neutral or even slightly compensate for inequality elsewhere.

Disadvantaged kids start with poorer home environments and neighborhoods and begin school behind students who come from wealthier backgrounds, Downey said.

“But when they go to school they stop losing ground. That doesn’t agree with the traditional story about how schools supposedly add to inequality,” he said.

“We are probably better off putting more energy toward addressing the larger social inequalities that are producing these large gaps in learning before kids even enter school.”

Downey emphasized that the results don’t mean that school districts don’t need to invest in disadvantaged schools.

“As it stands, schools mostly prevent inequality from increasing while children are in school,” he said.

“With more investments, it may be possible to create schools that play a more active role in reducing inequality.”

 

SCHOOL “CHOICE” IS NO CHOICE

Two posts by Peter Greene (Curmudgucation) on how school choice is being used to discriminate, and who really benefits from school “choice.”

School Choice Is Not For Those People

The message to LGBTQ students could not be clearer–“we don’t want your kind here.”

And if that wasn’t clear enough, Alabama has been making it clearer. Back in January, an application from Birmingham AIDS Outreach to open up an LGBTQ charter school was turned down by the Birmingham school board. Alabama has a Public [sic] Charter School Commission that stands ready to overrule local school boards in case the charter is turned down, but the board has now shot down Magic City Acceptance Academy twice–first last May, and again just last week. Last week four of the eight board members abstained, three voted in favor of the school, and one against, which adds up to no.

So school choice is only for some students, and those decisions are not going to be made by elected officials are answerable to the public, nor are choice schools going to be bound by the same rules that operate in the public school world.

School Choice Disempowers (Almost) Everybody

With no collective or empowered group to stand against them, privatizers get that much closer to living in the land of Do As They Please. It’s not better for students, for families, for education, for the country; it’s better for them.

This is a unifying them for the “democracy is not the point–liberty is” crowd– collectivism is bad. Well, bad in the sense that in order to be part of a collective, like a team or a board or a democracy or a functioning society, you have to give up some of your individual liberty. But the rich and powerful have accumulated a huge amount of liberty for themselves, and they would like to give up as little as possible. A publicly owned and operated school system is just one more obstacle to their perfect liberty state. Disempowering all the Lessers just helps them get closer to that fabled state.

PUBLICLY SUPPORTED PRIVATE SCHOOLS DISCRIMINATE

Another gay teacher fired. LGBTQ students face expulsion. Discrimination continues in Florida schools | Commentary

Once you accept tax money you should follow the laws made on behalf of the taxpayers. Firing someone because of who they are is not allowed in this country.

…discrimination against teachers is just the tip of this intolerance iceberg.
Dozens of publicly funded voucher schools in Florida have policies that blatantly discriminate against LGBTQ students and families.

Many schools spelled them out in writing on their websites — until the Orlando Sentinel started reporting on them. Then, some of these faith-based schools started scrubbing their sites. Few came out to say they were no longer discriminating; they just wanted to erase the evidence.

One Volusia County school that received more than $1 million a year told students that simply uttering the words “I am gay” was “basis for dismissal.” A Merritt Island school that received more than $700,000 told students they could be suspended for five days for lying or cheating but expelled for being gay.

All told, the Sentinel found more than 80 schools with blatant, written policies — against students and their parents.

 

 

🚌🚌🚌

2020 Medley #6: Public Schools Week

Public schools for the public good,
The failure of “choice”,
Where will we find teachers for tomorrow?

PUBLIC SCHOOLS FOR THE PUBLIC GOOD

Public Schools Week ends today, though for ninety percent of American schoolchildren the celebration of public education takes place every day during their local school year.

Why do the vast majority of our K-12 students choose public schools? Because public schools don’t choose their students. Every child has a place in public schools. No child is turned away. All children are welcome: children with different gender preferences, children of any color, any or no religious affiliation, rich, poor, athletically or academically gifted, or physically or academically challenged.

We support public schools because it’s important for us to have a society in which everyone is educated. Educated citizens make informed citizens. Informed citizens make informed choices. Informed choices make for a better society. Jefferson wrote (perhaps naively)…

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be…Where the press is free, and every man able to read, all is safe.

John Adams envisioned a public school system that provided for publicly supported schools across the nation.

The whole people must take upon themselves the education of the whole people, and must be willing to bear the expenses of it. There should not be a district of one mile square, without a school in it, not founded by a charitable individual, but maintained at the expense of the people themselves.

Public Schools Serve The Public Good

The public good is a concept that has always had to fight for survival against human selfishness and it’s no different in today’s world. Tribalism has replaced a shared public responsibility. We have become a nation in conflict, not cooperation.

Vouchers were born out of a desire to avoid integrating schools. When so-called “separate but equal” schools became unconstitutional in the United States proponents of segregation chose to close public schools and set up private schools using voucher programs. Today’s voucher programs benefit mostly religious schools that have the option to choose their students. Only certain students are allowed.

During Public Schools Week, we must recommit ourselves to defend the educational system that serves 90 percent of America’s children: our public schools. One way to do that is by opposing private school voucher schemes.

Reasons to oppose vouchers abound: The plans violate church-state separation and individual conscience because they force taxpayers to pay for private religious education. Voucher schools don’t improve academic performance. Many private schools engage in discriminatory hiring and admissions policies. Vouchers don’t require schools to be accountable to the public.

But there’s another equally compelling reason to oppose vouchers that often gets overlooked: Voucher plans subsidize private schools that serve a private interest, not the public good.

Five Threats To America’s Public School System

Those who feed the forces of tribalism distrust the concept of the public good. Since privatizers are in power, they are a very real threat to public schools.

President Donald Trump…

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos…

Private school lobbying groups…

Anti-government extremists: The simplistic idea that anything the government does is bad has a powerful hold on conservative thought in America. Because public schools are a very common manifestation of a public, government-provided service, they’re a high-profile target for ideologues who favor privatization of as many public services as possible…Never mind that public schools educate the vast majority of American schoolchildren and serve the public good.

Millionaires looking to make a profit: In her new book Slaying Goliath, education writer Diane Ravitch focuses on a band of millionaires (in some cases billionaires) who have decided to make education “reform” a priority. The problem, Ravitch writes, is that these would-be reformers don’t have backgrounds in education and naïvely insist that “market solutions” from the business community can be applied to a public service like education…

National Poll Shows Strong Voter Support for Public Schools

Americans support their public schools and are willing to pay for them, while most are unwilling to pay for private schools. That’s why voucher plans usually fail when put to a popular vote. States rely on legislators to fund voucher programs. [emphasis in original]

We surveyed likely voters. Here’s what they said:

Funding for Public Schools

• 64% think funding for public schools should be increased

• 26% think funding should be kept the same, and only 6% thinking funding should be decreased

• Of those who believe funding should be increased, eight out of ten would support an increase in funding even if it meant they would pay more in taxes.

Public Funds for Private Schools

• 73% agree with the statement we should NOT take away public funds from our public schools to fund private, religious, and home school education

• 64% of voters are…less likely to vote for an elected official who supports taking away funds from public schools to give to private schools, including 47% who would be much less likely to do so

Schools And Other Shared Public Spaces

Curmudgucation’s Peter Greene is a fan of public education, the public good, and shared public spaces…

I remain a fan of public education in no small part because it is one of the last shared public places left, even as it is being whittled away. It is a space that reflects the big unruly mess that is a democratic-ish country, and yes that means conflicts and negotiations and an unending clash of conflicting values and goals. But the proposed alternative–these people want something different so they’ll just go over there by themselves–requires a continued breaking of relationships, a repeated running away from conflict in place of resolutions. In fact, a worsening of conflict, because once separated into private slices, everyone can just create cartoon strawman versions of Those People Over There to revile and deride.

I’ve been reading about the ideal for years–if you want to send your kid to a private school for left-handed druids who don’t believe in evolution but do believe in global warming, and who want to play in a marching band, well, then, you should be able to make that choice. Everyone should have their own choice of a hundred separate different school systems. But we already know how well “separate but equal” works out. And by demanding that such a ecosystem of parallel schools be organized by free market forces, we guarantee failure, because the free market is great for picking winners and losers, terrible for creating equity among disparate groups.

THE FAILURE OF “CHOICE”

National School Choice Week is actually about promoting certain choices over others

Those who are privatizing our public education systems are creating a system of winners and losers.

Surely some well-meaning parents and students celebrated. But they were joined by powerful people who, despite what they say, don’t believe that every child deserves a great school. Instead, these people believe in a certain kind of choice over all others. In their worldview, market choice is more important than democracy, parents are consumers rather than members of a broader community, and education is a competition between students, with winners and losers.

School choice costing taxpayers

I’d be remiss if I didn’t include information about the charter school scandal now swirling in Indiana…where virtual charter school operators paid themselves and their own businesses $85 million. The money came from state tuition support and included funds for students who were never enrolled in the so-called schools.

The legislature blames the Department of Education, despite the fact that the privatization laws passed in the Indiana General Assembly were lax enough to allow such cheating and conflicts of interest to happen.

This is not unique to Indiana. Privatizers around the nation regularly steal tax money from public schools. The Network for Public Education has been tracking charter school scandals. The current list includes more than two dozen scandals from across the nation in January 2020 alone.

For further reading: Still Asleep at the Wheel: How the Federal Charter Schools Program Results in a Pileup of Fraud and Waste

Blaming the Department of Education for the abuses of charter school operators is like blaming the BMV for the actions of a drunk driver. Responsibility for lax regulations and oversight for both charter schools and voucher schools falls squarely on Bosma and the GOP supermajority. In cozying up to the deep-pocketed school-choice community, they ignored glaring examples of corruption here and elsewhere. It was almost 11 years ago when The Journal Gazette first reported on the suspicious real estate deals surrounding two Imagine Inc. charter schools in Fort Wayne – schools that eventually shut down with $3.6 million in outstanding state loans.

Charter school scandals are so common that the Network for Public Education began collecting them on a website and tagging them on Twitter: #AnotherDayAnotherCharterScandal.

WHO WILL BE TOMORROW’S TEACHERS?

The Number Of People Who Want To Teach Has Dropped By More Than Half This Decade

Public schools are being starved by privatizers diverting tax money to charters and vouchers. Teaching in underfunded schools isn’t easy, so it’s no wonder that young people are turning their backs on careers in education.

Federal data shows during the 2008-09 school year, 18,113 people were enrolled in teacher preparation programs in [Indiana]. But in 2016, that number was cut by more than half; the programs training future teachers saw only 7,127 people enrolled.

What message are we sending to the future?

🚌🚌🚌