John Thompson is a teacher and historian in Oklahoma.
As the Daily Oklahoman’s Ben Felder explains, “Education savings accounts (ESAs) and vouchers have not been easy sells, including in the GOP-controlled Oklahoma Legislature.” Until this November, the same argument which defeated vouchers last year would have seemed to be persuasive. Our schools have been clobbered by a 27% decrease in per-student funding and they can’t stand a further reduction. Even a month ago, a grassroots coalition of educators and families appeared ready to send more teachers to the legislature, and to pass SQ 779, which would have raised teachers’ wages.
http://newsok.com/oklahoma-school-voucher-advocates-see-a-political-opening/article/5529475
Then a well-funded and false advertising campaign helped derail the teacher raise, and Betsy DeVos’ the American Federation for Children, “spent nearly $170,000 in Oklahoma campaigns this year, often in opposition to public school teachers who were also running.” So, Felder now reports, “last month’s election results on both the national and state level have some school choice advocates seeing a political opening.” He cites Republican Sen. Kyle Loveless, “‘There is definitely going to be some movement on education savings accounts this next year in Oklahoma … Last year we were a couple of votes short in the Senate but I think we picked those seats up this year.'”
In addition to American Federation of Children’s money, a series of Indiana corporate reformers have repeatedly come to Oklahoma and pushed the DeVos/Trump/Pence agenda. So, it is doubly important that Oklahoma legislators, like their counterparts across the nation, become aware of what former Gov. Mike Pence and the $1.3 million that DeVos and her political action committee poured into Indiana have bought – and at what price.
Chalkbeat Indiana’s Nicholas Garcia, in “Six Things to Know about Indiana’s School Voucher Program, A Possible Model for Ed Sec Nominee Betsy DeVos,” explains that “the number of students using vouchers rose from 3,911 in 2011, when the program launched, to 32,686 in 2016.” Originally, vouchers were pushed as a way to help poor students in failing schools, but “a growing portion of Indiana voucher users are from middle-class families, and growth has been greatest among suburban families.” Now, “60 percent of Indiana voucher users are white, and about 31 percent are from middle-income families — not exactly the student population that struggles most in the state’s schools.”
Even more disturbing is the way that vouchers have grown into a greater threat to the financial stability of schools, “In 2011, just 9 percent of voucher users had never before gone to public school, Chalkbeat reports, “That was true for more than half of students using vouchers in 2016. So, Indiana isn’t offering an escape from failing schools but a subsidy for many who would never attend a public school.
Moreover, researchers at Notre Dame University conducted a long-term study which found that “students who switched from traditional public schools to Catholic schools actually did worse in math.” They also increase student mobility which undermines student performance.
Of course, student performance outcomes aren’t the outcomes that motivate many voucher advocates. DeVos has said that her goal is not to “stay in our own faith territory,” but to “advance God’s Kingdom.” As Politico’s Benjamin Wermund reports, DeVos sees school choice as a path to “greater Kingdom gain.”
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/12/betsy-devos-education-trump-religion-232150
Given the importance of religious issues in the voucher fights, an analysis by Mother Jones’s Stephanie Mencimer is timely. She found that, “Pence’s voucher program ballooned into a $135 million annual bonanza almost exclusively benefiting private religious schools–ranging from those teaching the Koran to Christian schools teaching creationism and the Bible as literal truth–at the expense of regular and usually better-performing public schools.”
Mencimer looked into the 316 schools receiving vouchers and she could only find four that weren’t religious. However, she found curricula that teaches creationism and Biblical stories and parables as literally true. Mencimer learned:
Among the more popular textbooks are some from Bob Jones University that are known for teaching that humans and dinosaurs existed on the Earth at the same time and that dragons were real. BJU textbooks have also promoted a positive view of the KKK, writing in one book, “the Klan in some areas of the country tried to be a means of reform, fighting the decline in morality and using the symbol of the cross to target bootleggers, wife beaters and immoral movies.”
Moreover, Mother Jones cites a young Muslim student who attended a voucher school for about eight weeks, “as he bounced around several schools on his way to becoming radicalized. In September, he was indicted for providing material support to terrorists after allegedly trying to join ISIS.”
Mother Jones further describes the deplorable student performance of many voucher schools. In 2015, less than 9 percent of the students at a Horizon Christian Academy campus passed the state standardized tests in math and English. And it adds telling details to the Chalkbeat Indiana’s narrative. Mother Jones found:
Some of the fastest growth in voucher use has occurred in some of the state’s most affluent suburbs. The Center for Tax and Budget Accountability, a Chicago-based think tank, recently concluded that because white children’s participation in the voucher program dwarfed the next largest racial group by 44 points, the vouchers were effectively helping to resegregate public schools.
It’s bad enough that Trump seeks billions of dollars to fund vouchers. But, especially in poor states and districts, the DeVos/Trump/Pence policy could be worse than anything previously imagined. Not all states and school districts that have been targeted by Amway billionaire Betsy DeVos are as vulnerable as those in Oklahoma, but as a recent NPR report explains, there are plenty of other systems that are already overwhelmed.
KOSU’s Emily Wendler and WBUR’s Tom Ashbrook, in “Public School Funding at a Loss, in Oklahoma and Elsewhere,” started a national tour of under-funded and challenged school systems to first answer the question “How Low Can a State Go?” and still educate its kids. Second, it asks what effect DeVos will have on these underfunded systems.
http://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2016/11/30/oklahoma-schools-four-day-weeks
Other states have taken the route pioneered by Kansas, Michigan, and Oklahoma and deliberately starve their governmental services. This new voucher campaign, combined with public and private charters, and virtual schools could push many of those states across a “tipping point,” and creating new lows in public schooling, constitutional democracy, and common decency.
You can’t discount the effect of the bully pulpit, either. Trump and DeVos will push vouchers WHILE bashing public schools and they’ll be bashing public schools as representatives of the US government.
Trump does it at every appearance. Try to find a single positive word or statement about US public schools from Donald Trump.
They’re pushing this as a cure-all but the more important message is this- the disease is public schools. They don’t just push vouchers- they actively campaign against our schools.
I have some hope there will be pushback from the public because what Trump and DeVos don’t get is that when they parachute into these places and bash public schools they assume “public schools” are some faceless entity that none of us have any connection to. That simply isn’t true. We built these schools. We funded them. We voted on them and bickered over them. They’re part of our communities.
When they come and bash our schools they’re bashing us- literally. Schools aren’t abstract national service providers. They’re us. My son’s public school is not my enemy no matter how many times national ed reformers tell me it is. The problems in his school are OUR problems. Any time we in the community point at the school as “the problem” 3 more fingers are pointing right back at the community. The two things are inseparable.
This leapt out at me:
“Indiana isn’t offering an escape from failing schools but a subsidy for many who would never attend a public school.”
Again, corporate education reform is just as much about changing hearts and minds as it is about garnering $tudent $ucce$$ for the few at the expense of the many.
Whatever the political coloration it’s about obliterating the idea of a public good, replacing that mindset with a consumer/client/individual POV that assumes there will be only a few winners and many losers and that everyone is on his/her own, the rest be damned. So do what’s best (or seems best) for you and yours no matter the consequences for everyone else.
It means turning an old saw upside down: comforting the comfortable, afflicting the afflicted. And feeling quite smug and proud to do so…
Betsy DeVos just adds a religious tinge to this, much like slavery (and so many things) were supposedly justified, even required, by laws not just natural but divine.
Thank you for your comments.
😎
A subsidy is what it is. It not only is wrong on religious grounds; it perverts the intent of the real estate tax which is intended for public education. As more of these vouchers are used, it has the potential to destabilize the public schools and devalue the local community which are connected to the value of the local schools. I don’t think that is what people in any local community intended when they paid their property taxes. As I have said before, it is like taxation without representation.
It’s not real encouraging to me that DeVos is already lying for political gain.
There is no “federal Common Core” and she knows darn well that isn’t true. Yet she says it because that’s what the gop base and Trump supporters want to hear
If she’s willing to parrot political slogans that she knows are not true how is she credible on anything else? She didn’t put up much of a fight, lying right out of the gate like that.
Some of this is on us. We don’t have to go along with every ed reform fad and gimmick. We can insist our state and local lawmakers do their own thinking and their own research before they buy what will be very slickly packaged and marketed snake oil.
We know better. We have to start acting like it.
If middle class people are allowed to use vouchers, they are essentially using local tax dollars like a personal ATM. Many of them likely would have sent their child to a private school anyway, and they use the voucher to make up the difference. This is another form of disinvestment in the common good, and large numbers of these types of vouchers could topple local public schools and destroy the local community.
to my mind the irony is palpable in the phrase “disinvestment in the common good” — as so many who were swept up into the Trump phenomenon have very little BUT the common good upon which to rely
http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2016/12/bystanding-educators.html#comment-form
From the article and how true it is:
“From top to bottom, schools run on one simple principle– you do as you’re told.”
except I would add “From top to bottom, schools run on one simple STUPID principle– you do as you’re told.
And this:
“This is one of my pettest of peeves– teachers will sit through a meeting or development session, smiling, nodding, quietly agreeing with everything, and then, afterwards, walk out the door and start talking to each other about everything that was wrong with the message. Too many teachers can’t conceive of a middle ground somewhere between being raging asshattery and silent compliance.”
Peter is too nice. They’re all Go Along to Get Along (GAGA) Good Germans in my mind who have no cojones nor ethics in fighting against the mandated malpractices. In the GAGA world of teachers and adminimals personal expediency trumps justice for the students:
“Should we therefore forgo our self-interest? Of course not. But it [self-interest] must be subordinate to justice, not the other way around. . . . To take advantage of a child’s naivete. . . in order to extract from them something [test scores, personal information] that is contrary to their interests, or intentions, without their knowledge [or consent of parents] or through coercion [state mandated testing], is always and everywhere unjust even if in some places and under certain circumstances it is not illegal. . . . Justice is superior to and more valuable than well-being or efficiency; it cannot be sacrificed to them, not even for the happiness of the greatest number [quoting Rawls]. To what could justice legitimately be sacrificed, since without justice there would be no legitimacy or illegitimacy? And in the name of what, since without justice even humanity, happiness and love could have no absolute value?. . . Without justice, values would be nothing more than (self) interests or motives; they would cease to be values or would become values without worth.”—Comte-Sponville [my additions]
To put this nicely: Public Education is up an unsanitary tributary without any visible means of locomotion. Trump and DeVos will destroy public education.
Being an avid canoer, I know the importance of having a back up paddle in case one breaks or gets lost. I don’t canoe without one. And occasionally I’ve had to use the back up paddle. And I’ve also had to make a paddle on the spot when I realized I had forgotten mine.
We still have our back up and improvised paddles to use in this fight. Don’t give up so easily just because a bloviating diehard ignorant will be in charge of the fed DoE. Hell, we survived The Dunkster and King, not to be in the best of shape but still standing, now we will have to fight back all the more.
But Duane, the nation has never had a president who appoints people to destroy the mission of their agency
I’d disagree with that. Think of some of Georgie the Least’s nominees as a manifestation of the Norquist strategy. One might even contend that the Obomber has done the same with the federal Dept of Ed. THETrumpster has just taken it to beyond the level of absurd.
My hope, overall, is that as the people feel, sense, understand more exactly what is happening they will turn their disgust, anger and what they perceive as betrayal into a political whirlwind in the next two elections.
But we, all of us in our own little way, especially through social media, have to continue to shed the light on all the insanities that will be occurring by those appointees.
Is DeVos assuming Bill Gates’ and, the Walton’s, roles in eliminating public education? Or, are they her accomplices?
DeVos will have plenty of bipartisan assistance in dismantling public schools.
So — what’s the actual plan for stopping DeVos? Lots of complaining and hand-wringing, but no detailed, effective plan. We couldn’t even prevent the slide toward more and more charter schools when we had an allegedly pro-public school President. Now we have a pro-charter school President and Congress. So — what’s the plan?
Join the Network for Public Education. Come to our conference in Oakland in October 2017
First, join in/sign the NPE email letter writing campaign. Second and I believe even more important-call your senators because the calls seem to have more “weight” with the senators. It is very easy and takes about two minutes each senator. Do you have five minutes to devote to stopping her confirmation?
Again it is very simple. Start here: http://civilrights.org/action_center/resources/calling-congress.html