Joshua Starr, a former school superintendent who is now chief executive officer of Phi Delta Kappa, reports that the American public opposes vouchers. They like the idea of “charters,” but most don’t know what charters are, that they may be run by for-profit or run by national corporations. They like the generic idea but they are not asked what they know about it. Perhaps they have nmagnet schools in mind.
Starr writes:
“Since 1969, PDK International has conducted an annual poll of the public’s attitudes toward the public schools. The methodology is rigorous, the questions are vetted by a politically diverse group of advisers, the data are robust and the results suggest that DeVos hasn’t been listening very carefully.
“Consider school choice, which DeVos has placed at the top of her policy agenda. Our poll reveals that, in general, Americans like the idea of choice in public education. On the specifics, though, DeVos’s positions are out of tune with majority opinion, particularly when it comes to school vouchers. Most respondents tell us that they disapprove of using public funds to support voucher programs. Since 1993, we have asked Americans 20 times whether they support allowing parents to choose a private school at public expense, and every time a majority has said “No.”
“DeVos is equally tone deaf when it comes to charter schooling, which is her other favored means of promoting choice. While charter schools themselves are quite popular — 64% supporting, 25% opposing in 2015, the last time we asked this question — the secretary’s views on charter school governance (specifically her fierce resistance to any kind of public oversight of these schools) are less mainstream. We asked Americans four times in the early 2000s whether they wanted charter schools to be held accountable to the same standards as traditional public schools and the response was overwhelmingly “yes.” The country is more split now, but 48% still say they want the same standards to apply to charters, compared with 46% who don’t.
“The bottom line: While DeVos may claim to be speaking for millions of average Americans (and at her Senate hearing, she lauded herself as “a voice for parents”), the evidence suggests otherwise. If she hears an insistent clamoring for new investments in voucher programs and unregulated charter schools, then she’s listening to the wrong station.
“If not vouchers and unregulated charters, then what do Americans want? In general, the poll results are complicated, suggesting that attitudes toward public education are much more nuanced, even conflicted, than policymakers admit. On some key issues, though, public opinion is quite clear. For example, a clear majority of Americans tell us that they trust teachers, value their work highly, respect their skills and expertise and want teachers to be paid more. Further, our data have shown consistently over many years that a majority of Americans favor spending more money on the public schools, especially on their local schools (which people tend to rate much more highly than the public schools in general). A majority of people even say that they would be willing to pay higher taxes as long as the money goes directly to education.
“Secretary DeVos may have her reasons for wanting to cut back on some federal programs and to ramp up funding for her preferred forms of school choice. But let’s be honest: Those reasons are grounded in ideology, not in practical experience (she has none) or evidence (she cannot cite any). Her enthusiasm for the president’s budget proposal has nothing to do with the will of the American people and it is more than a little disingenuous for her to claim that she has listened to or speaks for millions of moms, dads, teachers and students.”
Joshua Starr cannot be commended enough for his bravery in denouncing school reform early under the Obama administration. He was there before it become popular to be anti reform. While he lost his job in Montgomery County he should be given a medal. With the orange creature in the White House now it is okay to go after the reformers. With De Vos it makes it pretty easy to denounce the whole reformer scam.
The whole issue of charters, vouchers, privatization, choice and public schools is complex and interconnected. Privateers have conducted a smear campaign against public schools and teachers for the past decade. Using the power of the media privateers have inundated our people with propaganda about the wonders of the school choice and the horrors of our “failure factories” known as public schools.
Most of what people know about choice comes from a propaganda machine that tells the public what they want them to hear. Therefore, opinions have been colored by a dearth of propaganda. Most people do not understand that charters and vouchers harm public schools by reducing funding. Most people do not understand that public schools often offer a lot more choice than one-size-fits-all charters. Most people do not understand that many policymakers backed by billionaires and corporations are leading the campaign to destroy public education. It has only been the last couple of years that some members of the press have been willing to report on all the waste, fraud, abuse and meager results in many charters.. More people now understand that “choice” means turning young people over to corporations and surrendering their democratic voice thanks to the power of independent voices like Diane Ravitch. If parents always knew what was best for their children, CPS wouldn’t be so busy. “Choice” is really about taking power away from people and their communities and putting public funds in private hands.
The so-called reform movement has not only pushed teachers to the edge, it is continuing to push people away from the profession. Charters are notorious for working newer teachers to a breaking point. Remember, no collective bargaining.
Public schools have become masters of micromanagement. Creativity is rarely scripted. I have witnessed the demagoguery of pushing senior teachers, who have had stellar reputations, to file for retirement. To clean this swamp we need more than educational reform. We need solid values clarification!
This is a bigger problem in ed reform than just DeVos, though. Ed reformers routinely ignore public school parents and kids. Other than scolding us about testing, when are public schools parents and kids ever heard from in this “movement”?
DeVos dismisses public school parents and kids as “the status quo” and takes their support for granted because she comes out of this “movement” and that’s acceptable in the movement.
Look at any ed reform plan and see if kids and parents in public schools are heard from or even considered. They’re simply missing.
She doesn’t feel she has to to offer ANY benefit to the “public school sector” when she pushes these plans. None of them do. The assumption is public school parents and kids will go along with anything they do and if we don’t we’re immediately put into the “status quo” box and ignored.
We all saw it with testing and then again with Common Core. Public school kids and parents aren’t even consulted and when they object to ed reform plans they’re ignored.
State legislatures in states run by ed reformers don’t even bother to PRETEND they’re offering anything of value to public schools. They spend whole sessions debating vouchers that will go to a minority of parents. The vast majority of students will get budget cuts.
Reblogged this on Crazy Normal – the Classroom Exposé and commented:
Donald Trump and Besty Devos do not care what the majority of Americans think.
Looks like the SCOTUS is soon to strike down state constitutions that prohibit public funding of religious schools. (They were holding a case until they got a conservative ninth Justice.) State legislatures will be free to ignore the public unless tremendous pressure is placed on individual legislators, an unsustainable level of pressure. “Choice” will grow explosively. Public education will bleed out, dying of a thousand cuts, and Nero reincarnated in Broad and Walton will fiddle. Sing with the
This land is Gates’ land,
It isn’t Our land:
From California to the New York island.
His bank account’s the best; soon we’ll have nothing left:
This land was made for him not you.
Please provide more information about the case that may be sent up to SCOTUS.
It’s the Trinity case. I posted a link to info on the podcast post above. Here ’tis again:
http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-gorsuch-court-impact-20170409-story.html
Arguments will be heard on April 19.
I just remembered that someone recently told me here that the LA Times has a paywall. So, in case it does, here’s an excerpt:
“The Trinity Lutheran Church operates a daycare and preschool center in Columbia, Mo., and it applied to a state program that donates old tires used for “rubberizing” playgrounds. Other nonprofits could obtain the tires, but Missouri officials turned down Trinity’s application because of the state’s ban on funding for churches.
Lawyers for the Alliance Defending Freedom, the Arizona group representing the Colorado baker, sued on behalf of Trinity, contending that the state’s funding ban conflicted with the 1st Amendment’s protection for the ‘free exercise of religion.'”
See, I still don’t see how funding for tire chips on a playground equals vouchers. Already in some states, private schools are allowed to get textbooks and some other supplies from public funding. I don’t see how this will be different. Can someone enlighten me?
Dear TOW: See this video
The case was brought to debate whether the children who play on the school playground in Missouri, are entitled to the same safety consideration, as children who play on a public playground.
The issue is about far more than tire chips. The issue the SCOTUS will consider, is whether the so-called “Blaine amendments” in the about 38 state constitutions, are in conflict with the US Constitution (14th amendment, equal protection).
If the court rules for the plaintiff, the Blaine amendments in all 38 states will be determined to be unconstitutional (under the US constitution).
If this occurs, then the states will be permitted to provide financial support to schools operated by religious institutions. This means money, teacher’s salaries, books, the works.
This case is the most important religious freedom case the SCOTUS has considered in many years.
If the state has to pay to replace the playground in a Lutheran school, it will assume fiscal responsibility for repair of all religious schools.
Perhaps they should give up their tax-exempt status in return for public aid.
see
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2017/04/07/supreme-court-justice-neil-gorsuch-may-be-the-deciding-vote-in-a-major-churchstate-separation-case/
Joshua Starr is fine with government funding the playgrounds of religious schools. That is done all the time in his county where he was the superintendent. The county also funds the construction of religious school buildings. http://mgaleg.maryland.gov/2016RS/bills/sb/sb0444f.pdf
and
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/12/AR2006081200985.html
Thanks left coast teacher. As soon as you mentioned rubberized playground I got it. This could be more important than it looks at first glance.
The deceptive call for “choice” and school vouchers was the first racist response to the 1954 Supreme Court ruling on Brown v. Board of Education in which the Court declared that “separate but equal” public schools are inherently unequal and ordered racial integration of the public schools. That ruling triggered “white flight” from public schools to private schools — but parents quickly realized that the tuition cost of private schools was more than they wanted to pay out-of-pocket. That realization led political and private resegregationists to the concoct the “reform” of vouchers, and to sell it to eager parents by deceptively marketing it then —and still today — as merely giving parents a “choice.”
Reports from the NAACP and ACLU have revealed the facts about just how charter schools are resegregating our nation’s schools, as well as discriminating racially and socioeconomically against American children, and last year the NAACP Board of Directors passed a resolution calling for a moratorium on charter school expansion and for the strengthening of oversight in governance and practice. Moreover, a very detailed nationwide research by The Center for Civil Rights Remedies at UCLA shows in clear terms that private charter schools suspend extraordinary numbers of black students.
The 1950’s voucher crusade faded away when it became clear that because of school attendance boundaries no more than a few token blacks would be attending formerly all-white public schools. In 1972 when the Supreme Court finally ordered busing to end the ongoing de facto segregation, the reform movement rose from its grave and has been alive ever since then trying new tactics to restore racial segregation because it’s unlikely that the Court’s racial integration order can ever be reversed. When it became clear in the 1980’s that vouchers would never become widespread, the segregationists tried many other routes to restore racial segregation, and the most successful has been charter schools because charter schools can be sold to blithely unaware do-gooder billionaires as well as to unscrupulous profiteers who recognized charter schools as a way to divert vast amounts of tax money into their own pockets and into the pockets of supportive politicians at every level of government.
An essential part of the strategy to mask their underlying motives has been for segregationists to sell the public on the necessity for charter schools because public schools are allegedly “failing.” With all manner of “research” that essentially compares apples to oranges against foreign nations’ students, and with the self-fulfilling prophecy of dismal public school performance generated by drastic underfunding of public schools, and with condemnation of public school teachers based on statistically invalid student test scores, the segregationists are succeeding in resegregating education in America via what are basically private charter schools that are funded with public money.
The Office of Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Education has issued a warning that charter schools posed a risk to the Department of Education’s own goals. The report says: “Charter schools and their management organizations pose a potential risk to federal funds even as they threaten to fall short of meeting the goals” because of the financial fraud, the skimming of tax money into private pockets that is the reason why hedge funds are the main backers of charter schools.
The Washington State Supreme Court, the New York State Supreme Courts, and the National Labor Relations Board have ruled that charter schools are not public schools because they aren’t accountable to the public since they aren’t governed by publicly-elected boards and aren’t subdivisions of public government entities, in spite of the fact that some state laws enabling charter schools say they are government subdivisions. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A “PUBLIC CHARTER SCHOOL” because no charter school fulfills the basic public accountability requirement of being responsible to and directed by a school board that is elected by We the People. Charter schools are clearly private schools, owned and operated by private entities. Nevertheless, they get public tax money.
Even the staunchly pro-charter school Los Angeles Times (which acknowledges that its “reporting” on charter schools is paid for by a billionaire charter school advocate) complained in an editorial that “the only serious scrutiny that charter operators typically get is when they are issued their right to operate, and then five years later when they apply for renewal.” Without needed oversight of what charter schools are actually doing with the public’s tax dollars, hundreds of millions of tax money that is supposed to be spent on educating the public’s children is being siphoned away into private pockets.
Charter schools should (1) be required by law to be governed by school boards elected by the voters so that they are accountable to the public; (2) a charter school entity must legally be a subdivision of a publicly-elected governmental body; (3) charter schools should be required to file the same detailed public-domain audited annual financial reports under penalty of perjury that genuine public schools file; and, (4) anything a charter school buys with the public’s money should be the public’s property. These aren’t onerous burdens on charter schools; these are only common sense requirements to assure taxpayers that their money is being properly and effectively spent to educate children and isn’t simply ending up in private pockets or on the bottom line of hedge funds.
These aren’t “burdensome” requirements for charter schools — they are simply common sense safeguards that public tax money is actually being used to maximum effect to teach our nation’s children.