Nikhil Goyal, a graduate student and veteran activist for public schools, is deeply impressed by Senator Bernie Sanders’ ambitious and sweeping plan to pour billions into the schools and to protect public schools from privatization pirates.
Writing in “The Nation,” Goyal describes Sanders’ plan as “the most progressive education platform in modern American history.”
As a historian, I would drop the adjective “modern.” No President or Presidential candidate has offered a proposal so bold and sweeping, which directly addresses the fiscal starving of American public education at the same time that the federal government got into the business of regulating, mandating, and controlling the nation’s schools and classrooms.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
On the state level, teachers have been grumbling about the scourge of unfunded mandates for decades. The mandates are basically intended to let some legislators look good at no direct cost to them.
Diane Two things:
FIRST, the present polemics of distortions and extremes between PARTIES named “conservative” and “liberal,” for instance, has forced on us the need for a new language to express ourselves. It seems to me that what people like Bernie are talking about, as distinct from what has become the Republican ethos, is more about the differences between HUMANE (liberal-progressive) and INHUMANE (so-called conservative/neo-liberal, aka: dollar-minded moral and spiritual degenerates who mistake their totalitarian thought for their conscience), and even between TRIBAL (as in gross provincialism) and CIVILIZED (as in truly public institutions, spaces, and thinking where everyone can grow–remember “raise all boats”?).
SECOND, the much overlooked spectre looming behind the privatization of education, is the comprehensive “hit” that many privatizers want to make on CURRICULUM. The Koch’s are a good example of this, and what they have tried to do with several Universities, e.g., George Mason U. in Northern Virginia where students have organized around the banner: “Un-Koch my campus.” <–Here the Koch’s apparently wanted to choose (economics) professors who teach to the Koch neo-liberal party line.
The great difference is between schools where curriculum is run by ideologies of every stripe, and ones that teach students about the difference between ideology and open public discourse informed by qualified scholarship. <–this is often thought of as “liberal-progressive” rather than what it is: again, humane. CBK
“The disproportionate weight of local property taxes means that wealthy, white children are educated in gleaming palaces, while poor African-American, Latino, and indigenous children are often confined to crumbling schools with crowded classrooms, zero-tolerance discipline, poorly paid teachers and staff, and lack of access to school nurses, librarians, and social workers.”
I would like to point out that some of the places where Trump is King are also suffering these same funding shortfalls (or longfalls, to coin a more appropriate term). Indeed, the largely white, rural places are among the ignored. There are many places where some are getting by while others prosper.
Also, she is exactly right about the property tax idea. Counties next to wealthy suburbs lose experienced teachers to these places in huge numbers. An extra 10,000 and a shorter drive means a lot to teachers. Thus the adjacent counties become training grounds for the more well-heeled counties. This also becomes the pattern when schools who teach the kids who grow up hard often lose their tired faculties to magnets or suburban schools where the job is manageable.
Then there are some who stay. My hat is off to some of you who post here who sound like the ones who stayed because they loved the community.
I would like to see Bernie’s plan get out in the public discourse as Bernie has “thrown down the gauntlet” to other Democratic contenders. They should no longer be able to bob, weave and ignore the issue of how privatization is undermining public education. They should be forced to confront the issue as Bernie has. I hope others that care about public schools with share Bernie’s Thurgood Marshall Plan for public education with others as it is truly transformative. He addresses several key issues that are important to our young people and public schools going forward. They all support the belief that equitable public education should be available to all.
@ retired teacher: “The society that puts equality before freedom will end up with neither. The society that puts freedom before equality will end up with a great measure of both. Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself. ”
Milton Friedman, Nobel-prize winning economist.
Wealthy Americans who benefit hugely from a system rigged in their favor react with hysteria to anyone who points out just how rigged the system is.
Paul Krugman
I believe in a relatively equal society, supported by institutions that limit extremes of wealth and poverty. I believe in democracy, civil liberties, and the rule of law. That makes me a liberal, and I’m proud of it.
Paul Krugman
If you had to explain America’s economic success with one word, that word would be “education”…. Until now, the results of educational neglect have been gradual – a slow-motion erosion of America’s relative position. But things are about to get much worse, as the economic crisis … deals a severe blow to education across the board…. We need to wake up and realize that one of the keys to our nation’s historic success is now a wasting asset. Education made America great; neglect of education can reverse the process.
Paul Krugman
In our country, learned ignorance is on the rise.
Paul Krugman
The key reason executives are paid so much now is that they appoint the members of the corporate board that determines their compensation and control many of the perks that board members count on. So it’s not the invisible hand of the market that leads to those monumental executive incomes; it’s the invisible handshake in the boardroom.
Paul Krugman
Nobody is losing freedom. Poor students gain when they can attend clean, safe, well resourced public schools taught by professionals.
The society that puts (Milton) Friedman before equality will end up with Augusto Pinochet.
And much to the chagrin of economists, there is NO Nobel Prize in economics. Only a cheap wannabe prize established in MEMORY of Afred Nobel by the bank of Sweden in an effort to lend an air of credibility to economics that it does not deserve.
https://www.alternet.org/2012/10/there-no-nobel-prize-economics/
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-economics-nobel-isnt-really-a-nobel/
I really wish I was Buddhist. I’m looking forward to you coming back as a poor black kid, Chuck – I’d love to hear your thoughts on freedom then.
Markets from which most people are effectively excluded are in no sense “free.” It would be amusing that someone could win the Nobel Prize in Economics without understanding this obvious fact IF that lack of understanding were not willful, intentional misdirection–the sleight-of-hand of the academic flim-flam man who knows this, first and foremost about the “science” of economics–that rich people write checks to economists who prepare apologetics for their thievery from the Common.
@Dienne: I am not a wealthy person. I have had to go on food stamps in the past. I have had periods of unemployment. I have accepted welfare (from private charities). And how do you know what race I am?
Teachers’ unions are definitely part of the ‘evil empire’. ‘Choice’ will solve all the problems in education, especially if one goes to a religious school that teaches that the earth is 6,000 years old and people rode on dinosaurs. Poor children will be able to go to schools that charge $50,000 a year tuition and thereby, the poor will have total education ‘freedom’.
Trump definitely picks the best.
…………………………….
DeVos equates lack of school choice with communist East Germany
By MICHAEL STRATFORD 05/17/2019 06:21 PM EDT
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos said Friday that students who lack the means to attend the school of their choice enjoy as much freedom as those in East Germany had under communist rule.
In remarks to the conservative Young America’s Foundation, DeVos recalled her own travels decades ago in which she saw the stark differences between “tyranny and freedom” in East and West Germany. And she lauded President Ronald Reagan’s “purpose and principle” in fighting successfully to tear down the Berlin Wall.
“While that wall was reduced to rubble, there’s another kind of wall that needs tearing down today,” DeVos said at the gathering at the Reagan Ranch Center in Santa Barbara, Calif. “This wall is just as old and just as devastating to those who — through no fault of their own — happen to live on the wrong side.”
DeVos said she was describing a figurative wall in the United States that “separates wealthy, powerful or well-connected students from those who aren’t wealthy, powerful or well-connected.”
Families who aren’t wealthy “have about as much education freedom in America today as East Germans had freedom to do anything back then,” she said….
“Too many students are up against another ‘empire’ — governments, unions, associations of this and organizations of that,” DeVos said. “It’s an education cabal that protects the status quo at the expense of just about everyone else.”…
https://www.politico.com/story/2019/05/17/devos-east-germany-california-1331702
Bernie had a plan for public schools? I’m shocked. All I saw were Bernies plans for charter schools.
Who else has a plan for public schools? Anyone? Anyone at all?
How did all the public school students and families in this country end up as political orphans? That seems…odd. It’s almost like there’s a huge echo chamber operating that deliberately excludes public school students from any consideration or effort by their elected representatives. I wonder how we could remedy that absence of effort.
The responsibility for operating public education at the K-12 level is primarily taken on by the states/municipalities. There is no constitutional mandate for the feds to get involved in education at all. 90%+ of the funding for public schools (K-12) is raised and provided at the state/municipal level.
Public education does not have much “traction” at the presidential level. Most presidential candidates just ignore it, as well they should. In this current campaign, do not be “shocked” if the existing crop of candidates ignore K-12 public education.
You are wrong. Federal aid for the poorest children—Title 1–is crucial because it is costly to provide needed services. Also Congress mandates special education for children with disabilities. When the mandate was passed, Congress said it would pay 40% of costs. It paid only 10-12%. SanderS promises to pay 50%.
Are you suggesting no special services for children with disabilities and the poor?
There is no federal constitutional mandate for the federal government to become involved in public education at all. Congress loves to pass unfunded mandates, and then let the states pick up the tab. Stop the presses.
Sanders has promised to ask congress to pay 50% of the tab. Fat chance.
I am certainly suggesting that there is no federal constitutional mandate to provide special services for children with disabilities and the poor. I cannot undertake to lay my finger on it.
The courts have ruled that children with disabilities have a right to education.
Here’s a typical ed reform analysis of Bernie’s comprehensive plan for public schools:
http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/05/bernie-wants-to-destroy-the-best-schools-poor-city-kids-have.html
Read it and try to find what’s missing. If you guessed “public school students” you are correct. They’re “public education advocates” who exclude every student in an existing public school, so they understandably missed our students and schools again.
It is odd, though. This massive omission. You’d think they drive by public schools occasionally. They’re everywhere.
“…we should treat public education as a public good, not a commodity” says it all. Beautiful! Not Bernie. Us.
One issue that people on both sides of the school choice issue agree on, is that the ludicrous method of financing public education through property taxes, is insane and must stop. This all but guarantees that wealthy areas will have excellent public schools, and economically-depressed areas will have terrible public schools. This fact was written up in the classic book “Savage Inequalities” by Kozol.
The inequality in funding as you describe is the reason for federal aid to schools. Which side are you on? You claim you want equal funding but you want to eliminate the only source of funds thatis not tied to local and state funding.
I certainly support having the feds get their nose and their dollars out of K-12 education, and abolishing the federal dept of education.
The states/municipalities can finance public education, without the use of property taxes. The states can levy and collect income taxes, and sales taxes and other sources of revenue, not connected with property values.
The income tax can be graduated, so that higher income people pay a larger portion than lower income people.
The money raised through taxes other than property, can be used to finance public education. The state can mandated that additional funds go to schools in economically depressed areas.
Proper funding of public schools can be achieved without property taxes, and without federal funding.
Your proposal is simplistic. Forty percent of school funding comes from localities. Some states are rich. Some are very poor. Federal aid is supposed to provide equality of opportunity.