Steven Singer identifies a common problem that occurs in newspapers, magazines, radio, and on television. The media likes bad news stories about the public schools (wasteful, inefficient, “failing”). Worse, they take seriously every piece of rightwing propaganda and report it as news.
He gives the latest example: Pittsburgh media printed summaries of a report funded by The Commonwealth Fund, asserting that the public schools in Pennsylvania are flush with cash but want to raise taxes to get more than they need. Singer points out that the money for pandemic aid can’t be used to plug budget holes (that is illegal) and Pennsylvania has one of the worst-funded public school systems in the nation.
He begins:
The Commonwealth Foundation is not a reliable news source.
It’s a right wing propaganda network that provides the motivation behind American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) sponsored bills.
ALEC writes the laws. The Commonwealth Foundation justifies them. And GOP lawmakers pass them (often with help from neoliberal Democrats).
So why are otherwise reputable Pittsburgh television and radio stations running stories based on Commonwealth Foundation reports? …
And he adds:
A real investigative journalist might have just walked into an inner city school to check it out. She would have seen that many schools are literally falling apart.
Or she could look up actual statistics. A full 35 states provide less overall state funding for education today than they did in 2008. Most states still haven’t recovered from George W. Bush’s Great Recession and the subsequent state and local budget cuts it caused. And schools in 27 of those states actually saw per pupil funding fall even further.
Moreover, Pennsylvania is one of the worst. The state government pays only 38% of the cost to educate children leaving the majority up to local communities to make up the difference. That’s the 46th lowest in the country. The national average is 51%.
In fact, our funding inequality is the worst in the nation. According to the U.S. Department of Education, poor schools in the Commonwealth spend 33 percent less on their students than rich ones.
These are the reasons why the parents of six school children, six school districts, the NAACP and a rural schools group are suing the state over education funding.
Not because public schools are “flush with cash” – a characterization right out of the mouth of Donald Trump.
However, the Commonwealth Foundation plays with the numbers to mask this reality.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
As Singer points out, Pennsylvania has a distorted system of funding schools that leaves many schools underfunded. Lazy and right wing journalists repeat the flawed narrative about public education without doing their due diligence. Also, many media companies are owned by right leaning companies, and the owner’s politics influences how events are reported. Sinclair Broadcasting is one of the worst. Right wing propaganda is inserted into the news on a daily basis.
Word choice influences the impact of messages. The “moderate” Democrats are better described a corporate Democrats, while progressive Democrats are often referred to left wing Democrats. Lots of words come with connotations that influence how a message is perceived by the reader or listener.
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Maybe public ed is rolling in dough. After all, we seem to find the funds easily to give to non-existing charters that enroll fake students. We find ample funds to pay fake test makers. Plenty of money to hire someone in the central office to fill out papers required by monitoring programs set up by those who would destroy public ed.
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Despite Florida’s dedication to destroying public education, a brand new K-8 public school will open this fall in this part of North Florida near Pensacola. I believe Republican policymakers found the money for this project because most school age children in this part of Florida are the white children of active duty military and military contractors that work on Eglin Air Force Base. Nobody was screaming for more “choice” as this school was being built.
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In other words, edu-businesses are “flush with cash” while public schools are hanging by a thread. Wall Street is flush with cash while Main Street is strung out.
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A big part of the ed reform voucher marketing is the claim it’s cheaper than a public school system. It is cheaper, too. They’ll cut public education funding in half if they go to the low value voucher system they’re all lobbying for. We of course will no longer have a “public education system”, so there’s a tradeoff, but no one in the echo chamber thinks past the next privatization lobbying success so they’re unconcerned.
You’ll get your 6400 dollar voucher and go purchase ….whatever that buys – it’ll be GREAT. Just ask them. You can “choose” any school or contractor or service. It just can’t cost more than 6400 dollars. See how much freedom they gave you? Just don’t do any math or you’ll likely figure out that it’s a huge cut.
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So many policymakers are the wealthy that they do not use public schools. From their point of view cheaper is better for other people’s children. Their own children will continue to receive a quality private education. It does not matter to them that low value, unaccredited voucher schools are epic failures.
I think decent public schools are a matter of national security to some degree. Voters must learn how to be actively engaged to think critically. We need an educated populace to serve in the military if we should face a national emergency. We also need a skilled workforce that can be retrained for future jobs.
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Yup. And those who I know that support vouchers…. already send their children to private schools. If you are already paying 10 – 20k + on a private school education, a voucher is a nice way to cover 1/2 to 1/3 of that tuition.
One more way the wealthy can get money back for themselves – under the guise of giving “choice” to others.
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North Carolina’s voucher program, which the ed reform lobby just expanded again:
“Nearly all voucher students (92 percent) are attending religious schools, more than three quarters of which use a biblically-based curriculum presenting concepts that directly contradict the state’s educational standards;”
The same people who are demanding to direct every aspect of public school curriculum lobby for public funding of private schools which are completely unregulated in this NC voucher scheme- they can’t even get financial information on them.
This “movement” is incoherent. It doesn’t make any sense, other than as an ideological exercise. They contradict themselves daily and no one in the echo chamber even attempts to explain it, other than saying “choice!” over and over again.
The supply of vouchers exceeds the demand and they just lobbied successfully to increase funding (again)- it doesn’t even make sense as a “market”:
“Demand for the program has fallen short of the General Assembly’s projections, resulting in unused funds in every year since the program’s inception;”
No real analysis or criticism of any of this- just lock step cheerleading and frantic lobbying for more privatization. All criticism and analysis is dedicated to the public schools they oppose- they do NO analysis of their own work.
http://pulse.ncpolicywatch.org/2021/06/03/new-duke-university-study-big-unresolved-problems-continue-to-plague-ncs-school-voucher-program/#sthash.nYdh65iB.dpbs?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=631f0707-6013-4370-a5cf-b7bcb195879f
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I believe that the reason the media publish rightwing propaganda is that they can get away with it. The only ones regulating them are concerned citizens, and there are not enough gadflies on the wall like Steven Singer doing the work. It’s easy for ALEC to spend money propagating lies. It takes hard work to call out the lies. We live in a terribly unequal society.
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Because they’re lazy, stupid and think ratings matter more than journalism (a concept they do not understand).
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