Lara Chapman has written a valuable analysis of the religious, libertarian case for school vouchers. Thank you, Laura, for doing this prodigious research for the benefit of everyone else.
Laura writes:
“Long post. The author of the Friedman Foundations for Educational Choice “research,” Dr. Greg Forster ends his report–titled “A Win-Win Solution: The Empirical Evidence On School Choice, Fourth Edition–with the following:
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“Ultimately, the only way to make school reform work on a large scale is to break the government monopoly on schooling. The monopoly is not just one powerful obstacle to reform among many; it is what makes all the many obstacles as powerful as they are. The monopoly ensures that no meaningful accountability for performance can occur, except in rare cases as a result of Herculean efforts. The monopoly empowers a dense cluster of rapacious special interests resisting efforts to improve schools.
“Worst of all, the monopoly pushes out educational entrepreneurs who can reinvent schools from the ground up. Only a thriving marketplace that allows entrepreneurs to get the support they need by serving their clients better can produce sustainable innovation.
In any field of human endeavor—whether education, medicine, politics, art, religion, manufacturing, or anything else—entrepreneurs who want to strike out in new directions and do things radically differently need a client base.
….
“School choice has the potential to solve this problem by providing enough families (size) with enough dollars (strength) and enough choice (suffrage) to support educational entrepreneurs. Unfortunately, existing school choice programs fall short on all three dimensions. Only universal choice can open the door to the full-fledged revolution in schooling America needs in the new century. “ p. 36
“The author is preaching the gospel of the Friedman Foundation, but also a bit more. The author is a devoted believer in “universal choice,” evidently so religious schools can flourish and be tax-subsidized.
“I reach this conclusion from Forster’s discussion linking charters school programs to civic virtues and to religious values (pp. 30-31), and to his faculty position at Trinity International University a regionally accredited school operated by the Evangelical Free Church of America, headquartered in Deerfield, Illinois. His main job there seems to be serving as the director of the Oikonomia Network at the Center for Transformational Churches.
“The Oikonomia Network includes over 100 “theological educators theological educators and 18 evangelical seminaries” initially funded by the Kern Family Foundation. The network operations include a newsletter, website, network-wide events and “content creation.” The content creation includes “Theology that Works,” a paper written by Greg Forster that explains “how theology as a discipline can be in fruitful dialogue with the world of economic disciplines and activities.” More here. http://oikonomianetwork.org/economic-wisdom-project/
“Forster also has a faculty post at Acton University, where his bio says that he “has a Ph.D. with distinction in political philosophy from Yale University. He is the author of six books, most recently Joy for the World: How Christianity Lost Its Cultural Influence and Can Begin Rebuilding It.” http://university.acton.org/faculty/dr-greg-forsterhttp://oikonomianetwork.org/about/
“Acton University’s website opens with a display of one reason to sign up:
“Faith & Free Market Economics.”
“Acton University is an opportunity to deepen your knowledge and integrate philosophy, theology, business, development – with sound, market based, economics. “
“Acton University seems to be a holding company for lecturers who offer on-line courses and also appear in scheduled face-to-face sessions for people who pay fees to participate in four days of lecture-filled conferencing. A full list of “course lectures ” is here. http://university.acton.org/2016courses The lectures are available for purchase at http://shop.acton.org/acton-university-2010-to-2013-lecture-bundle.html
“The Win-Win report from political philosopher Greg Forster is written as if it is a comprehensive meta-analysis of credible empirical studies that offer irrefutable conclusions. The report is not that, but the casual reader looking for all of the charter school positives will be drawn to the pretense of scholarship and miss all of the wobbles and switcheroo’s between Forster’s criteria for the inclusion/exclusion of studies and his inferences based on these studies.
“The author’s identification of charters with religious values reminded me that Education Next surveys, conducted since 2007, have questions designed to provide marketing insights about the connections between a preference for charters and race, ethnicity, religious beliefs, political alliance, and much else.
“Here are the questions in the EdNext 2008 questions under the category of Religion, which mapped responses for people who said they were “born again” offering comparisons with responses from Public School Teachers, African Americans, Hispanics, and Whites. (I found no copyright on any of the Surveys)
“24. Do you think the public schools in your community generally promote the values that you think are most important, or do you think that the values emphasized at school often come into conflict with your own?
“25. In some public school districts, parents have requested that some time in each day be set aside for silent prayer and reflection. What do you think about this proposal?
“26. (Each respondent was randomly assigned to one of the following five questions):
“26A. How would you feel about a group of religious students organizing an after-school club at your local public school?
“26B. How would you feel about a group of Mormon students organizing an after-school club at your local public school?
“26C. How would you feel about a group of Muslim students organizing an after-school club at your local public school?
26D. How would you feel about a group of atheist students organizing an after-school club at your local public school?
“26E. How would you feel about a group of Evangelical students organizing an after-school club at your local public school?
“The 2014 and 2015 surveys had three (and ONLY three) questions about the respondents’ background.
“32. Apart from weddings and funerals, how often would you say that you attend religious services?
“33. Would you say that you have been born again or have had a born-again experience — that is, a turning point in your life when you committed yourself to Jesus Christ?
“34. Are you a member of a union or an employee association similar to a union? http://educationnext.org/files/2014ednextpoll.pdf
“The Education Next surveys are produced by Knowledge Networks, which specializes in “market research services, including survey design, information analysis, and data collection to produce syndicated reports and custom market research for a variety of FORTUNE 500 companies. Specializing in consumer research, it offers clients insight in such areas as advertising effectiveness, product development, segmentation, and media planning. Founded by Stanford researchers Douglas Rivers and Norman Nie in 1998, Knowledge Networks was acquired by global market research firm GfK in January 2012. “http://www.google.com/finance?cid=11462635
“About a week ago, (May 13, 2016) Peter Cunningham, whose Education Post has a partnership with the 74Million propaganda machine, cited an Education Next poll in a rant about needing to protect students from a bloated educational bureaucracy in Los Angeles.
Cunningham: Does LAUSD Want to Protect Children or a Bloated Bureaucracy?
“The Education Next surveys, like Greg Forster’s work parading as research, are designed and hyped to deliver propaganda and with a clear intent to tap veins of race-based and religious and ethnic prejudices. These are enlisted to rant against public schools, teachers, their unions, their salaries, the curriculum, and more. It is no accident that the Forster “study” has 14 reference citations from Education Next, and 50 others recycled from the Friedman Foundation.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I don’t see how a true libertarian would be able to argue that one person should be taxed to pay for the education of another person’s children at all. The pseudo-libertarian argument for vouchers is a total non-starter.
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He’s not a true libertarian. He’s a fundamentalist xtian extremist who wants to institute sharia, oops I mean xtian law and wants us to pay for it. No thanks Mr. Forster. Go back to your closet and pray. (see Matthew 6, 5-7:
5 And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.
6 But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.
7 But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions [monopoly], as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking.
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Yes, I know.
The Church of Friedmanology promotes vouchers — their Invisible Foot in the Door — only as a transitional means to their greater end, the elimination of public education as a democratic social institution. Vouchers are a form of Monopoly™® Money, designed to get people thinking of education as an individual property rather than a common resource.
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Friedmanesque libertarianism is exposed as anti-democratic by its insistence that alleged “individual choice” take priority over the common good. The historical, integral connection between a vibrant, well-supported public school system and true democracy is well known.
As we are now seeing, the ‘racial’ segregation already present in the U.S. due to ‘race’ and class-based residential practices is exacerbated by the supposed school “choice” offered by charter schools which can reject students public schools must accept.
Continuing to divide us by ‘race’ (a social, not a biological construct) and class deliberately weakens any chance we have at democracy while strengthening the oligarchy for the 1% Parasite Class already running (and ruining) this nation.
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“. . . is to break the government monopoly on schooling.”
Oh, please Mr. not so wise man Forster explain how over 13,000 individual school districts governed by almost the same amount of locally elected school boards can be (mis) construed as a “monopoly”??
Jabberwocky anyone??
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The usual BS conflatulence of monopoly with sovereignty by people who are always bullish about sovereignty on any other occasion.
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God, and I commented only after reading that sentence. As I continued reading what I read sounds like this blah, blah, blah, monopoly this, blah, blah, blah, monopoly that, blah, blah, blah, monopoly this, blah, blah, blah, monopoly that etc. . .
One of those existential questions came to mind: If Forster repeats monopoly ad infinitum does it gurantee his argument is right???
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Duane Swacker: yes, the disconnect between the rheephorm-minded and reality is stunning.
Apparently the Catholic and other religious schools, and private schools, and home schooling, and everything else that I heard of and saw during my entire lifetime—
Never existed. Rheeally!
But not really…
😏
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Excellent research and analysis Lara. As Diane says, thank you for this contribution.
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If you “break the government monopoly on schooling” you don’t lead to freedom of choice. What you get is schools that exclude the students who are difficult to teach” namely those who are special needs, have behavior problems, GLBT, homeless or move frequently, not motivated by the usual reinforcers, single parents even those who are of minority religions or are not religious. In other words students who are challenging become uneducated, illiterate and on the pipeline to pregnancy, poverty and drug dealing and prison. This already happens because the unwanted children are kicked out of charter and voucher schools.
I get the impression that this survey has an intentional fundamentalist Christian bias. And why would you compare Christians TO public school teachers? At many of the schools where I worked not only were most of the teachers Christians, many were either pastors or the wives of pastors!!! There goes that old conservative saw that was promoted by the hate group, American Family Association, that public school teachers are not Christians because they don’t read the Bible and pray at school (Oh, really! Some days the only one who can get you through is God.)
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Rhonda, the survey responses to the questions I have highlighted serve as “evidence” for rants against teachers by people and groups who want to have tax-subsidized religious schools, specifically for “born again” indictrination, otherwise there could be more general questions, or none at all connected to religion.
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“How Christianity Lost Its Cultural Influence and Can Begin Rebuilding It.”
This is a frightening, shuddering thought that Christianity would regain its often forced influence over our lives.
This is what happens when Christianity controls government and forces its cultural influence on the people:
1. the Crusades that lasted for several centuries starting in the 11th century and created the environment that led to the terrorist threat from al Qaeda and ISIS today (There were Crusades that were also waged against other Christian sects). It has been estimated that 1.7 million people died in total.
2. the Inquisition (1220 – 1834). How many were tortured? How many were executed? How many lives were destroyed? How many people shuddered in fear that they would end up being the next victim. The Inquisition was no different than the threat from ISIS today.
3. Western colonialism, genocide and the forced and brutal Christian conversion of native populations. Wherever the Christian European colonial powers went, Christian priests went with them to force the Christian religion on the natives to save their souls even if it meant killing them by the hundreds of millions not counting those who were forced into slavery by both the Church and the Western Capitalists. I’s estimated that 80% of native Americans died because of the spread of Western Christian Capitalism.
4. The European wars of religion waged in Europe from 1524 to 1648 as the Catholic Church struggled to hold on to its power as the overlord of all people and their leaders. It is estimated that more than 15 million people died in the wars between the Protestants and the Catholics.
These are a few of the reasons that help explain why the U.S. Founding Fathers kept religion from being an established element of our elected government. The Founding Fathers wrote the First Amendment in response to two centuries of state-sponsored religious conflict and oppression in America, and with a keen understanding of the religious persecution in European nations resulting from official state religions and religious wars.
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WELL said. And I don’t know if anybody else out there has read Margaret Atwood’s THE HANDMAID’S TALE? ooogh.
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Not that Christian colonial powers didn’t outright kill a goodly number of native Americans, but I think the most devastating hit was the diseases they brought from Europe. I believe I heard that the natives returned the favor or at least tried to with the venereal diseases that those good upstanding gentlemen took back to Europe.
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The American Indians also gave the White man tobacco.
On October 15, 1492, Christopher Columbus was offered dried tobacco leaves as a gift from the American Indians that he encountered. Soon after, sailors brought tobacco back to Europe, and the plant was being grown all over Europe.
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I just read a post in Valerie Strauss’ Answer Sheet entitled, “Schools are now ‘soft targets’ for companies to collect data and market to kids — report”. Full, free market globalization is the end goal of privatization and computerized teaching and testing. It is not that religion is the currency of thought behind today’s Milton Friedman followers; it is that they are corporatists who follow the religion of currency. When they write enviously of monopolies, they do not mean monopolies of managerial or pedagogical practice. They do not mean monopolies of religious or secular thought. They mean monopolies of money. They want the money. They want to control how tax monies are spent. They want data that lead to more money. They want private control that leads to more money. They worship in the Church of Latter Day Currencies.
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…And if schools wind up more segregated, while to us that means racial discrimination, to them it means more homogenous demographic groupings for more targeted advertising.
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LeftCoastTeacher: your comment of 11:15 AM is, IMHO, truly insightful.
Thank you for sharing it with us.
😏
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Thanks, Laura.
Three of the colleges/universities that Oikonomia listed as “Our Major Partners”, Samford (Beesom Divinity School), Azusa-Pacific and, Biola, appear on Greenpeace’s Koch grant list.
The Oikonomia site states, “Economies flourish when people have integrity and trust in each other.” Reconciling that with reports about the Koch’s, may prove difficult.
Is Acton linked to State Policy Network? I think SPN is a Koch thing.
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Yes, the evidence of Acton having some connection to the sState Policy Network is here and oddly noted in the context of great beer in the city where the annual meeting is being held. https://www.atlasnetwork.org/event/state-policy-network-annual-meeting
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Meeting in Michigan, DeVos land and home to, lead in the children’s drinking water. It fits.
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For those that are just becoming aware of the Charter School Reform movement, could you please post links to the original post. Thank you.
Also, you might be interested in the livestream listed on the bottom of this site.
http://app.mx3.americanprogressaction.org/e/es.aspx?s=785&e=974229&elqTrackId=c5c5cb5f7e724f5ba2a732552280773a&elq=4b6181a065be42f4a4ef903d866e8f94&elqaid=30192&elqat=1
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This isn’t libertarianism. It’s standard neoliberal economic policy, which the name of the organization—Friedman—should have made clear. Milton Friedman’s neoliberal economics has as one of its three foundational pillars the total privatization of public services, on the grounds free-market competition is the most efficient way to get things done.
Privatization of public education has been and continues to be one of the goals of our current political organizations. Along with privatizing everything else now provided as a public service, except for law enforcement and the military. Those will be allowed to continue as government services for the protection of property. It’s Koch-style libertarianism, yes, but it’s not limited to that mindset. It’s based on a flawed economic policy that’s been destroying the planet since Friedman turned it into doctrine.
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Hello, I’m going to post some links pertaining to the origins of Libertarianism. SPOILER ALERT: it’s a bogus political ideology created by Friedman at the behest of big business lobbying personalities. Bill Black leads off. http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/06/bill-black-hayek-helped-worst-get-top-economics-ceos.html
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Milton Friedmans involvement in the creation of Libertarianism. http://www.alternet.org/visions/true-history-libertarianism-america-phony-ideology-promote-corporate-agenda
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And, as always, the failure of Friedman’s cherry picked ideas concerning education. This is an important article as it thoroughly refutes the pseudo intellectual basis for vouchers and school choice.
http://horacemannleague.blogspot.com/2013/01/asymmetric-information-parental-choice.html
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One of many articles referencing George Akerlof’s famous article “The market for lemons: quality uncertainty and the market mechanism.” It deals primarily with the financial market but it’s easy to see how this applies across market sectors. http://scholarfp.blogspot.com/2014/10/greshams-dynamic-why-bad-actors.html
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By Akerlof, the back story on how the article came to be written and published. http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economic-sciences/laureates/2001/akerlof-article.html
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An irony to be pointed out: They called it RTTT, niaevely assuming that all players in the newly opening education market place would compete on a level playing field at high noon, that only the best would rise to the top, the exact opposite of what all those involved would proceed to do. It was instantly the law of the snake oil jungle rather than the moral and ethical pinnacle that the sales pitches promised, as if such corrupt practices and machinations hadn’t been seen countless times before.
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I do apologize for the number of posts I’ve submitted, but here’s a doozy to close with, a post on a blog quoting, with an edit, Rothbard which illustrates the profoundly delusional assumption that the best and the brightest rise to the top by merit, skill, intelligence, etc. alone, and that their actions are therefore always moral and just. And that this is the natural way of things. Clench your teeth together so your jaw doesn’t break your kneecaps off on the way down. ”
Murray Rothbard:
“If, then, inequality of income is the inevitable corollary of freedom, then so too is inequality of control. In any organization, there will always be a minority of people who will rise to the position of leaders and others who will remain as followers in the rank and file. Robert Michels [fascist sociologist] discovered this as one of the great laws of sociology, “The Iron Law of Oligarchy.” In every organized activity, no matter the sphere, a small number will become the “oligarchical” leaders and the others will follow.
In the market economy, the leaders will inevitably earn more money than the rank and file. Within other organizations, the difference will only be that of control. But, in either case, ability and interest will select those who rise to the top.
“If, then, the natural inequality of ability and of interest among men must make elites inevitable, the only sensible course is to abandon the chimera of equality and accept the universal necessity of leaders and followers. The task of the libertarian, the person dedicated to the idea of the free society, is not to inveigh against elites which, like the need for freedom, flow directly from the nature of man. The goal of the libertarian is rather to establish a free society… In this society the elites will be free to rise to their best level… we will discover “natural aristocracies” who will rise to prominence and leadership in every field. The point is to allow the rise of these natural aristocracies”.
http://mises.org/fipandol/fipsec4.asp“
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“A society in which men recognize no check on their freedom soon becomes a society where freedom is the possession of only a savage few.”
The evidence-
“…reformers…. declare ‘ We’ve got to blow up the ed schools’ “.
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Thank you Jon for a compendium of useful links that will serve as an archive lomg into the future.
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Imagine a future education scenario where large numbers of students do a majority of their schooling either online or in informal learning-eco systems of community-based partnerships (not in a school building with certified teachers). Add credit-bearing ELOs (expanded/extended/enhanced learning opportunities) into the mix. Besides ed-tech companies, who would else would stand to benefit from such a system?
Well, if you led an organized religious group that held distinct values, and you felt the need to shelter the youth from broader worldly influences, the option to have children do “school” online at home for a few hours a day and earn credit towards graduation by participating in hands-on learning projects (that not coincidentally provided free labor for your mission) would certainly be a win/win. I do believe that evangelical leaders have a hand in these 21st century transformation of education initiatives.
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“School choice has the potential to solve this problem by providing enough families (size) with enough dollars (strength) and enough choice (suffrage) to support educational entrepreneurs.”
To support educational entrepreneurs? Did he just say, that’s the purpose of the whole thing?
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educational entrepreneurs = carpetbaggers = profiteers = pirates
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The connection between Friedmanism and Evangelical teaching is not accidental. If you could spirit yourself back into the churches of the 1950’s, you’d find wide, mainstream preaching & Bible Study (even in RC churches) on the dangers of govtl meddling in the ‘natural’ order of things via welfare et al safety nets. The thought was that each individual is responsible for his own salvation, & govt must not interfere with his freedom of choice to pull himself up by his own bootstraps.
Of course, that seeming cold-heartedness was balanced by charity/ volunteer social services far more robust than what we see today (due to the decline in church membership). But it fit neatly into various bugaboos. I suspect the driving force was fear & loathing of USSR-style communism & its banishment of religion. There was also disdain for the socialism of Scandinavia; anecdotes abounded citing lassitude & total lack of ambition there due to govtl overreach. This notion also rounded up all the old-fashioned Protestants [god helpf thofe who help themfelfes 😉 ] who conveniently branded the poor as slothful. Which was heartily bought into by those 1st-gen American immigrants whose Catholic parents had made it into the middle class.
Today these ideas have dwindled but are still maintained by fundamentalist Christians, who cling to ’50’s paradigms (“Let’s make America great again”).
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Acton Institute/University is a member of State Policy Network. Politico reported about SPN, in 11/13/13, in an article titled, “Think Tanks Tied to Koch’s”.
Religious leaders, who glom on to economic oppressors, are false prophets. The increasing concentration of wealth, impoverishes Americans. In the long run, it sows the seeds for lessened religious influence. The landscape that follows, as a result of economic deprivation, is, in most cases, secular. China, after Mao, Germany, after Hitler, Russia and France, after their revolutions. It’s only In nations, returning to the dark ages, like those in the middle east, where religion replaces secularism.
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