There was a time when Norh Carolina was widely seen as the most progressive stTe in the South. That time ended abruptly when the Tea Party took control of the state in 2010 and began to decimate public services, especially public education. The Tea Party introduced charters and vouchers, killed the state’s successful NC Teaching Fellows Program for career teachers (giving its funding to Teach for America for temps).
Rob Schofield of NC Policy Watch assesses the war on public education and its ties to the Koch ideology of strangling government.
He writes:
There was a time in the United States not that many years ago in which K-12 public education was taken as a given – something as fundamental to the health and wellbeing of society as drinking water and law enforcement and public roads.
It may not have always lived up to this ideal (particularly in places where the great evil of racial discrimination and segregation held sway), but it’s fair to say that the American public school classroom was widely understood to be the glue that brought our broadly middle class society together and moved it into the future, the unifying institution that inculcated the fundamental civic values of democracy, and the place where society combated ignorance and superstition and prepared members of the next generation to build a better world.
Tragically, this began to change in the latter part of the 20th Century. In her powerful 2017 book, Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America, Duke University historian Nancy MacLean makes a compelling argument that the advent of racial integration – and, in particular, the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education) – helped spur a conservative resistance movement that served to undermine the general consensus about public education.
And when this sad development was combined with two other toxic trends – perhaps most notably the aggressive, corporate-sponsored revival of dog-eat-dog, market fundamentalist economics and the explosive growth in what’s-in-it-for-me? American consumerism – it wasn’t long before prominent leaders of the American Right were referring derisively to “government schools” and treating K-12 education as a commodity in which “winners” and “losers” aggressively bargained and shopped for the best deal.
Now, add to all of this a healthy measure of obliviousness from mostly white male elites that could not and cannot see the amazing advantages they enjoy merely by virtue of their race and gender, and you’ve got a recipe for the situation that confronts North Carolina today – a time in which an entire cohort of children will soon graduate from 12th grade, having experienced nothing but declining public education budgets and a sustained ideologically-driven effort to depopulate public schools.
And while some on the political right continue to insist on paying lip service to the notion that they still support public education, a long litany of ills tells a very different story. Consider the following facts about the education system that students and educators return to this week as they begin the 2019-‘20 school year:
Actual state funding for K-12 education is down 6.7 percent (when one adjusts for enrollment growth and inflation) since the 2008-’09 school year – a time when North Carolina ranked 43rd in the nation in terms of per pupil spending and in spending as a share of Gross State Product.
Most per student funding allotments are actually down more than 6.7%. For instance, the state has 9% fewer “instructional support personnel” (counselors, nurses, librarians, etc.), 8% fewer principals and assistant principals, 36% less funding for teacher assistants, 57% less for textbooks, 56% less for classroom supplies, and 17% less for non-instructional support like custodians and bus drivers.
The state’s mushrooming charter school and voucher programs are contributing to declining public school enrollment, increased racial segregation and a pernicious situation in which children with higher incomes and fewer disabilities are “creamed” away and children with greater challenges disproportionately remain.
Despite recent modest improvements for some, North Carolina teachers still earn far less (5% less) than their college-educated, private sector peers. Only five states fare worse by this measurement.
The state faces a school infrastructure need of at least $8.1 billion.
While most states made use of the post-Great Recession recovery to rebuild their public education investments, North Carolina instead enacted a series of aggressive, multi-billion dollar tax cuts that mostly benefited the top 1% and that lowered the state’s overall funding effort (as a share of Gross State Product) to 48th in the nation. Indeed, it would take billions in additional spending just to match spending levels in South Carolina.
it’s up at OpEd news https://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/The-War-on-Public-Educatio-in-General_News-Diane-Ravitch_Education-Costs_Education-For-All_Education-Funding-191001-903.html
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education.
Another publicly-funded event by the Secretary where no one who uses or supports a public school was invited:
“Event Summary
On Tuesday, October 1, AEI welcomed Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, White House Senior Counselor Kellyanne Conway, and several state decision makers to discuss the secretary’s recent proposal for Education Freedom Scholarships, a federal tax credit school choice initiative.
AEI President Robert Doar opened the event with a few words to welcome everyone and introduce the secretary, who subsequently offered a keynote address. Secretary DeVos then participated in a discussion with Ms. Conway and AEI’s Frederick Hess.
The event concluded with a panel discussion, moderated by AEI’s Nat Malkus, with a group of state leaders, including Tennessee Representative John DeBerry, Pennsylvania Speaker of the House Mike Turzai, and Arizona Treasurer Kimberly Yee.”
Public schools need not apply. Not welcome in “public education” DC circles.
Apparently we don’t merit inclusion in policy making that affects our schools or our kids.
Can any of them point to one contribution they have made to any public school anywhere, as a result of their “work”?
It’s ludicrous. We’re paying thousands of public employees who have absolute contempt for public schools and the students who attend them. Every work day is wholly consumed with promoting charters and vouchers and bashing public schools.
Michael Novak (died in 2017) “was one of the most influential theologians of his generation”. He was, for decades, a scholar at AEI.
Opus Dei priest, McCloskey, formerly of the Catholic Information Center in D.C. and one of Robert Hanssen’s priests, is credited with turning Novak from a liberal Catholic into a conservative Catholic (also credited with Koch-funded Gov. Brownback and Newt Gingrich’s conversions). The following was said about Novak, he “preaches capitalism’s virtues to Christians. The breakthrough will come when he simultaneously preaches Christian virtues to his capitalist backers.”
The Information Center will be giving an award to the religious right’s favorite professor, Robert George, who has spoken about a link between contraceptives and promiscuity. My editorial comment about George’s view- – women can’t be trusted so they have to be controlled by men.
AEI is GOP – 95% of the Republicans in the House of Representatives in 2020 are projected to be white men.
The intentional, public disconnect between right wing policy and right wing religion, in the context of school privatization is without defense and it undermines the fight against it. The Koch’s ALEC was founded by the same conservative Catholic who founded the “religious right”- Paul Weyrich.
The political alliance of evangelicals and prosperity Catholics poses a threat to the nation’s future- economic and in terms of liberty for women.
If you think I’m exaggerating read the press release:
http://www.aei.org/events/a-conversation-with-secretary-betsy-devos-and-state-policymakers-understanding-education-freedom-scholarships/
Not a single public school leader, employee, advocate, family or student represented.
They’re planning a massive voucher program with NO input from the schools 90% of US kids attend. Barred, because their schools are ideologically incorrect.
And we’re all paying for this. They return no value, and they’re employed at every level of government. It’s crazy. Complete and utter capture by a lobby that advocates on behalf of maybe 10% of families. They threw public school students out with the public schools bathwater and not only in this FINE in ed reform, they give one another awards for it.
The fact that our country voted for a black president for two terms also caused a backlash of expansion in the right wing. The Tea Party with its libertarian agenda seemed to appear as the direct result of a black man in the White House. In education it didn’t help that Obama’s education policy encouraged the privatization of public education. This acceptance of privatization quickly morphed into the acceptance of vouchers in many states. We have been on a downward spiral ever since.
North Carolina voters voiced their opposition to the right wing trajectory of the state by voting in a democratic governor. Gov. Cooper recently vetoed the expansion of cyber charter schools in the state, but he is still faced with so many right wing legislators that seek to transfer public money into private hands.
“The scholarships have been a game changer for us,” an increase of 600 families.
That’s the quote from the Schools Superintendent for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Raleigh. (News and Observer, “DeVos Pitches School Choice Program in Raleigh -Critics Say It’s Anti-Public Schools”.
Vultures on the common good.- no transparency.
vultures: yes, cleaning the public school funding sources to the bone
James Arthur Pope and the religious right’s favorite professor, Robert George, are both on the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation board. I didn’t see a Black person in the photo array of board members.
The Foundation gave money to the Seton Network of Catholic schools and Cristo Rey.