Jan Resseger writes here about Montana Senator Jon Tester’s deep and well-grounded belief in public education. He says that Democrats would have greater success in red states if they talked about the importance of public schools and the elites who are trying to privatize them.
Think about it. The vast majority of students in the United States attend public schools even when school choice is offered to them. Only 6 percent choose to attend charter schools; about 2 percent use vouchers. By now we know that neither charter schools nor vouchers offer a better education than democratically controlled public schools. Yet the billionaires continue to fund failure.
I hereby add Senator Jon Tester to the blog’s honor roll of champions of public education.
Resseger writes:
In mid-December, the NY Times‘ Jonathan Martin interviewed Montana Senator Jon Tester about his new book, Grounded: A Senator’s Lessons on Winning Back Rural America. Tester, a Democrat and U.S. Senator in his third term, represents a deep red state.
Tester tells Martin: “Democrats can really do some positive things in rural America just by talking about infrastructure and what they’re doing for infrastructure, particularly in the area of broadband. And then I would say one other policy issue is how some Republicans want to basically privatize public education. That is very dangerous, and I think it’s a point that people don’t want to see their public schools close down in Montana…”
Many hope President Joe Biden’s administration will significantly reshape federal education policy. During last year’s campaign for President, Biden, the candidate, declared a public education agenda that contrasts sharply with what happened to federal policy in public education beginning in the 1990s and culminating in the 2002 No Child Left Behind and later in 2009 in Arne Duncan’s Race to the Top. Jack Schneider and Jennifer Berkshire describe the past couple of decades: “Together, led by federal policy elites, Republicans and Democrats espoused the logic of markets in the public sphere, expanding school choice through publicly funded charter schools. Competition, both sides agreed, would strengthen schools. And the introduction of charters, this contingent believed, would empower parents as consumers….”
Now with Biden’s election, many are looking for a turn by prominent Democrats back to the urgent needs of the public schools as a new COVID-19 recession compounds funding problems lingering in state budgets from the Great Recession a dozen years ago and as school privatization through charter school expansion and vouchers continues to thrust public schools deeper into fiscal crisis. Senator Jon Tester believes Democrats can rebuild support in rural America by attending to the needs of rural public education.
Tester’s new book folds policy ideas into memoir, with the back story a tribute to small town public schooling. An indifferent high school student, Tester was encouraged by a debate coach, “who taught me how to articulate political arguments” and “taught us how to structure speeches to build an arc of suspense. He taught us the importance of clarity and simple language.” Tester was elected student body president at Big Sandy High School: “For Government Day, on behalf of Big Sandy’s students, I invited one of our area’s most familiar elected leaders to visit with us about his long career in public service… Senator James was a tall, soft-spoken old farmer who accepted my invitation graciously and visited with us Big Sandy students for the better part of a day. He made the art and war of state politics sound fun.”
A trumpet player and college music major, Tester taught elementary school music at F.E. Miley Elementary School but was forced to resign when the paltry salary, even on top of what he could earn from farming, made it impossible for his family to get by. Tester ran for the local board of education and served for nearly a decade, including stints as vice chair and chair: “To this day, I’m asked about my most difficult job in politics. Without a doubt, my answer is the nine years I spent on the Big Sandy school board; it seemed everyone had strong opinions about public school policies, disciplinary actions, money, pay, taxes, ethics, graduations, grades, teacher performance, coaches, bullies, scholarships—it was a nine-year roller-coaster ride, and I loved every twist and turn.”
There is more. Open the link and read the rest of her piece about this wonderful Senator from Montana.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
We need to inform people that hiring ed reformers to run education policy has real consequences for students in public schools.
Here’s an example, from Ohio. What did the State of Ohio accomplish for the +/- 90% of Ohio students who attend public schools last year?
Nothing. The only thing lawmakers got done was yet another expansion of private school vouchers:
https://fordhaminstitute.org/ohio/commentary/big-steps-forward-ohios-private-school-voucher-programs
If ed reformers run education policy in your state, public school students get nothing. You’ll get massive expansions of charter funding and marketing! You’ll get lavish public funding of private schools! But public school students? They’ll be neglected and ignored like that are in my state.
They didn’t lift a finger for public school students in this state even in a pandemic. They contribute nothing to our schools.
Sometimes we’re so caught up in paying attention to the human flaws in political figures that we fail to see their virtues. Jan’s essay reminds us that we need to step back every now and then to reconsider. (And I’m guessing she’s the most informed person on Montana politics east of its state line! Certainly in Ohio.)
Exactly!
There are some on the left who will likely try to demonize Tester — did you know he spoke at the Center for American Progress’ Ideas Conference in 2019 and he didn’t even support free college for all! Tester is pro-defense. Tester is not to be trusted because some of his positions don’t ally with what Caitln Johnstone, the Australian professional democrat-hater worshipped by a few deluded people on the left, to be acceptable.
Tester is excellent when it comes to public education. I don’t agree with all his views, but even the ones i don’t agree with are far more moderate than the most supposedly moderate Republicans have.
Ohio currently doesn’t have a public school funding scheme. They simply never bothered to do one.
But we get ENDLESS legislation on charters and vouchers. Every single session there’s legislation funding charters and vouchers, marketing charters and vouchers, promoting charters and vouchers, tweaking the charter/voucher laws they passed in the last session, and on and on and on.
Nothing for students and families in public schools. Every legislative session is consumed with a laundry list of demands from charter and voucher lobbyists – public school students are the last priority.
If you allow your state government to be captured by ed reformers, no one will do any work on behalf of public school students. It happens in every state they capture. If you’re a public school graduate, parent or supporter just know that when you elect and hire these folks you’re hiring people who don’t serve public schools. They will accomplish nothing for your schools or students.
If our country continues on this misguided path of privatization, rural America will not only lose public education, they will lose postal service as well. We need to support a functioning public sector. We need democratic public schools because they are our best, most efficient way to build a better future for our people and teach civics so our citizens can become informed voters. We need the USPS to serve our communities or we will regress to a feudal society. As long as we have voting by mail, we need an independent postal service to safely deliver ballots. Public schools, libraries and the USPS are links in the democratic infrastructure of the nation.
“Patty Murray is about to become the top U.S. senator for education policy following Democrats’ wins in Georgia”
Public school students may finally get an effective advocate in the senate. I think Murray is practical and hard working and she doesn’t seem to glom onto every dumb fad that comes out of the consultancy class. Maybe they’ll finally see some real, measurable efforts at improving public schools instead of replacing public schools.
It’s about time. Two decades of neglect and disdain for our students and schools is enough.
I disagree that Murray gets it.
This is awesome. Well deserved.
Also, consider this from the piece:
“Tester was encouraged by a debate coach, “who taught me how to articulate political arguments” and “taught us how to structure speeches to build an arc of suspense. He taught us the importance of clarity and simple language.”
This is great teaching. Concrete procedural knowledge of use in doing something significant, something worth doing.
Such a simple concept. Soooooooo important!
In the diverse school district in which I taught, there is a debate team that almost always goes to the state and sometimes national finals. The team is led by a retired science teacher who is also a practicing attorney. It is always a pleasure to see our diverse students defeat so many all white teams including private school teams. Debate skills are very useful in a democracy at all levels of governance.
The article beginning with, “Jan Resseger writes here about Montana Senator Jon Tester’s deep and well-grounded belief in public education.”
It goes on to say,
“By now we know that neither charter schools nor vouchers offer a better education than democratically controlled public schools.”
…
“it seemed everyone had strong opinions about public school policies, disciplinary actions, money, pay, taxes, ethics, graduations, grades, teacher performance, coaches, bullies, scholarships—it was a nine-year roller-coaster ride, and I loved every twist and turn.”
Based upon the above article, something is missing. No mention was made of the Standards and philosophy that guide the teaching. Without a good
philosophy and methodology no school is going to meet the needs of the students.
In comparing school systems one has to look at the philosophy and methodology supporting the curriculum as the first point of comparison.
Developing thinking skills should be the number one goal – not over loading the memory with facts; the results of a standardized test.
“Children must be taught how to think, not what to think.” Margaret Mead
Standards need to be grounded in the Constructivist /Interactive approach. A teacher must begin with the child and end with the child. Reading instruction, e.g., needs to be guided by Constructive philosophy. A teacher imbued with the Constructivist philosophy engages in a three-prong cueing system: graphophonics, semantics (background knowledge: experiences, conceptual understandings), and syntax (understanding of the grammatical relationships within a sentence patterns.) Teach strategies along with skills. Read to verify, clarify, and develop higher order thinking skills such as visualizing and using literature which students can relate to and appeals to them. Focus is on the interaction of the teacher, reader with his background knowledge, along with the text- language structure: semantic, syntactic, and pictures and phonics, Rumelhart states that the reader is like a detective, bringing a vast store of information and cognitive skills to the text to make sense of the clues provided.
The Constructivist approach to teaching is key to all learning surpassing money, technology, classroom….
Regardless if the school system is in the rural area, suburb, or metropolitan area, public, parochial, or Charter, it must be grounded in a good.
sound philosophy of education if it is going to be a successful institution. A good sound philosophy should be the number one ear mark of every school. All other goals are secondary: ” disciplinary actions, money, pay, taxes, ethics, graduations, grades, teacher performance, coaches, bullies, scholarships.”
A good philosophy irradiates many of the above problems.