People of Kansas: Tomorrow is your chance to vote for legislators who support your community’s public schools!
Vote for the candidate who pledges to oppose Governor Brownback’s tax cuts. Vote for your public schools.
Kansas has become a textbook case of conservative incoherence. Conservatives are supposed to “conserve,” but in Kansas and elsewhere they are destroying traditional institutions. Governor Sam Brownback has cut taxes to stimulate business and cut school budgets. Public schools that were once the pride of their community are struggling to stay afloat. You can be sure that in the wings are charter entrepreneurs and peddlers of vouchers.
The battle is being waged in affluent suburbs, which value their public schools yet elect conservative legislators who slash their budgets. The election this fall will see challenges to many of those legislators.
Kansans are faced with a stark choice: good public schools or lower taxes.
Small-government Republican conservatives face a political backlash in Kansas because of the state’s budget problems and battles over education funding, and the epicenter is in sprawling Kansas City suburbs where residents have cherished public schools for decades.
But the Democrats and GOP moderates hoping to lessen the grip Republican Gov. Sam Brownback’s allies have on the Legislature must contend with a political paradox in Johnson County, home to those affluent suburbs. Its voters regularly approve bonds and property tax increases for schools while electing conservative legislators who’ve backed the governor’s experiment in slashing state income taxes.
More than two dozen conservative Republican legislators face challengers in Tuesday’s primary, including 11 in Johnson County, the state’s most populous. Challengers there have made education funding a key issue.
“You could rely on one thing, and that was public education,” said Gretchen Gradinger, a lawyer and Johnson County native who moved back from Missouri two years ago so her young son could attend the public schools she knew growing up. “For 60 years, you could rely on one thing.”
Kansas has struggled to balance its budget since the Republican-dominated Legislature heeded Brownback’s call in 2012 and 2013 to cut personal income taxes as an economic stimulus. He won a tough re-election race in 2014, but his popularity has waned with the state’s ongoing budget woes.
Meanwhile, the Kansas Supreme Court could rule by the end of the year in an education funding lawsuit on whether legislators provide enough money to schools to fulfill a duty under the state constitution to finance a suitable education for every child. The State Board of Education is recommending phasing in an $893 million increase in aid over two years.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Conservatives like Brownback that fight minimum wage laws and labor unions are waging a war against consumers that have more money to spend that leads to more profits for businesses.
Labor unions fight for higher wages and benefits for workers and that translates into more money to spend on the products the private sector sells.
When workers don’t earn enough money and their jobs are insecure becasue there are no unions to represent workers, then even workers that earn poverty wages become afraid to spend money for consumer products they don’t need.
Every workers should earn a livable wage and every worker should be allowed to belong to a labor union.
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I found this article of a critique of the reform movement. I thought the author had a concise, relevant argument. The Failure of Corporate School Reform: Toward a New Common School Movement
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Sharon Watkins
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Follow the yellow brick road to the house of the Wizard of Kansas and the voters who put Brownback in as OZ.
The definition of “adequate” education in every state constitution is sure to be on ALEC’s hit list. Paring that back or eliminating all state responsibility for a definition of adequacy in education makes everything else easy.
Citizens choose from available options. The state will pay a variable sum (voucher, scholarship, tax credit) depending on the overall condition of the economy and priorities set by legislators. Parents/caregivers are responsible for choosing. Principles might be put into play as an austerity measure: no compulsory education after grade 8 or the equivalent.
I am also reminded of a 1994 proposal from ultra-conservative free-market proponent Myron Lieberman that for-profit schools with user pays for education could forward moral reasoning and action. For example, when parents are required to pay some of the cost, or the full cost of education, they are likely to be engaged in some oversight of the value they receive. Some parents may need to rearrange their priorities in order to pay for education.
According to Lieberman, this would encourage responsible parenting, fiscal self-discipline, and with some likelihood that children will be diligent learners. Home schooling might become more common, with greater oversight of children by their parents/caregivers.
Being personally responsible for paying for your child’s education is thus construed as promoting moral virtue, with overall economy benefiting from profits that can be made from the business of education. That’s the sort of win-win theorizing and policy talk that conservatives love.
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It’s such a lie that we “value” education in this country. We “value” it but no one wants to pay for it? Yeah, right.
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In today’s episode of “Inside the Ed Reform Echo Chamber” I give you the Broad Foundation.
A whole multi-billion dollar foundation with thousands of education experts yet they cannot find a single public school that “works”.
Charter schools are the only successful public schools in the country, apparently.
They should get out more. They’re spending too much time with at ed reform conferences, clearly.
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Is anyone who actually works in a public school invited to the Obama Administration ESSA sessions?
I really don’t want lobbyists and think tank members writing the rules for every public school in the country again. Maybe they could cast a SLIGHTLY wider net this time, and actually speak to a regular person- you know- someone who might actually physically enter a US public school at some point. Maybe someone who actually attended one, or sends their children to one.
Is this all Gates and Broad and Fordham again? Didn’t they make that same mistake last time? Can we mix it up a little? Invite ONE person from outside the echo chamber?
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“More than two dozen conservative Republican legislators face challengers in Tuesday’s primary, including 11 in Johnson County, the state’s most populous. Challengers there have made education funding a key issue.”
This is quite a lot of politicians being challenged. Maybe Kansas is waking up. Guess we will see tomorrow.
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What if we accept the idea of compulsory education is the wrong path. What if we substitute options for getting an education thT are more carrot and less stick. More vocational courses for kids who want to start life a bit earlier. More flexible schedules for students already supporting extended families. Less government penalty if the graduation rate is smaller. More programs for adult Ed when young people find out they need additional skills.
Unfortunately these solutions are not going to,make Alec happy. They are just lookin for a workforce they can blame formtheirmown failure. All of the above ideas are going to,cost more, not less.
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I don’t know if you saw this in yesterday’s NYTimes:
Thank you for flagging these important primary elections. When voter turnout is low, each and every vote is increasingly important!
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rolandsmartin @rolandsmartin 2h2 hours ago
So folks condemn charters for not accepting all students, but magnet schools don’t accept all. But folks cool with that.”
Education reformers really don’t get the difference? They know they’ve been saying charter schools DO accept all students for 20 years, right?
They’re aware of the meaning of the words they say? Magnet schools never claimed to accept all children, which is why we don’t compare magnet schools to charter schools.
Charter schools, on the other hand DO CLAIM to accept all children, which is why charter school promoters compare charter schools to public schools.
If charter schools are actually magnet schools, all they have to do is say that! Easy, right? In fact, the MAIN justification for promoting charter schools over public schools is it’s an apples to apples comparison. If it’s not, then they should SAY that.
The Best and Brightest must understand, this, right? Gosh, even I get it, and I went to a unionized public school and a “non selective” public college! According to ed reformers, I’m barely literate and I understand the difference.
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