Steve Hinnefeld, Indiana blogger, reviews recent polls and reports that the public continues to prefer public schools to school choice. The public schools are the heart of their communities. They are democratic, overseen by elected boards. They belong to the public.
If ever there was a time for parents and the American public to turn against public schools, you’d think this would be it. But two recent polls show it hasn’t happened.
The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted schooling for a year and a half, forcing children to learn online. Schools have been under relentless attack for requiring masks and teaching about racism. State legislators have bashed public schools as they pushed to expand school choice.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“The public seems tired of disruption, change, and uncertainty,” the authors write. “Enthusiasm for most, perhaps all, policy innovations has waned.”
The public largely supports their community public schools, but are they willing to defend them? Privatization is a creeping amoeba that consumes public school budgets. Parents should understand that public schools cannot do their best work when their budget is constantly being drained by private schools. During the pandemic while everyone has been concerned with public health, many red states have been expanding vouchers behind the scenes. Surprisingly, a large percentage of the public still believes that vouchers are sound policy. Parents need to understand that vouchers are a waste of public funds, and they have tremendous capabilities to destroy pubic schools. Another trend during the pandemic is expanding cyber instruction. Many states like Florida are eliminating standardized testing in favor of CBE, testing all the time with massive data collection and violation of students’ privacy. None of these trends are a benefit to real public education.
I found this list of parent suggestions on the Florida Opt Out page on social media. If parents want their public schools to provide socially acceptable instruction, they may want to consider some of the suggestions. In opposing wearing masks red state governors claim that parents should have the ultimate say in their child’s education. Then, red state governors should abide by parents’ demands.
“In addition to opting out of end-of-year testing, there are other important steps we need to take to safeguard our children’s access to human teachers and to protect their data, their vision, and their emotional health. There is no set playbook, but here are some ideas to get us started.
1. Opt your child out of Google Apps for Education (GAFE).
2. If your school offers a device for home use, decline to sign the waiver for it and/or pay the fee.
3. Does your child’s assigned email address include a unique identifier, like their student ID number? If yes, request a guest log in so that their data cannot be aggregated.
4. Refuse biometric monitoring devices (e.g. fit bits).
5. Refuse to allow your child’s behavioral, or social-emotional data to be entered into third-party applications. (e.g. Class Dojo)
6. Refuse in-class social networking programs (e.g. EdModo).
7. Set a screen time maximum per day/per week for your child.
8. Opt young children out of in school screen time altogether and request paper and pencil assignments and reading from print books (not ebooks).
9. Begin educating parents about the difference between “personalized” learning modules that rely on mining PII (personally-identifiable information) to function properly and technology that empowers children to create and share their own content.
10. Insist that school budgets prioritize human instruction and that hybrid/blended learning not be used as a back door way to increase class size or push online classes.”
Oh, heck yes, retired teacher! I am going to have to ban laptops from my classroom shortly. The school used the pandemic as an excuse to make laptops and every single one of the ten problems you listed universal. As a result, many of my students are wasting time and energy learning less and likely having their futures narrowed by data profiling. I am wasting time monitoring screens for video games, texting, and Instagram. Enough tech.
And enough charters, already. The parents of my students are thrilled with my classes, but they would be more enthralled if my school district would spend our funds to lower class sizes and increase the support we receive instead of throwing money out the window at charters, testing, and tech. There is only one way to reform education. Hire and retain teachers. Pearsonalization is regressive.
CBE is a nefarious way to privatize from the inside out. It is a slippery slope. Remember how charters morphed into vouchers. CBE will morph into all cyber programming all the time, and Bill Gates will dance on public schools’ coffin.
with plenty of buy-in from richy rich profiteers like the Netflix guy and Steve Jobs’ wife, and probably an ultimately takeover by Bezos
CBE is the end of education.
“but are they willing to defend them?”
That’s the question.
I wonder how many of those polled recognize that their public schools are under attack, simply by virtue of fed ESSA law: annual stdz test scores if deemed under par for 3+ yrs, open them to disruption via firing all staff/ state takeover/ closure/ release to whatever other pubshs or charters/ vouchers will take their kids.
I think popular support for public education is an apt example of “a mile wide and an inch deep.”
Since when if ever have Tea Party, ALEC libertarains, neo-liberals and neo-conservatives (two sides of the same tush-stamped coin), and MAGA Trumpists cared what the majority of the people think?
Parents of public school students should advocate for human instruction for their children. Many communities are moving students into CBE without parents even knowing about it. We know that wealthy companies buy politicians and administrators to encourage the adoption of various cyber learning platforms despite the fact there is no evidence that supports their widespread adoption. It is up to parents to question their use and application in schools. Computers have uses in education, but trained teachers should be making the decisions.
Lloyd, exactly. And retired teacher, again yes.
Oh, ed reform will continue with the “public schools suck” message anyway. It’s really central to the “movement”. What isn’t central to the movement is actually doing anything to benefit public schools or public school students. We have thousands of people who work full time in the field of “public school criticism”, but no one who actually delivers anything positive or productive for public school students.
We somehow ended up with a huge group of “experts” who claim to work in “public education” but loathe the whole concept and work full time on abolishing existing public schools. It’s mystifying, but no one questions it.
Bribery in the form of targeted grants combined with blackmail in the form of school closure threats are powerfully persuasive to the individualist in education. Bribery and blackmail are not the tools of a progressive reformer; they are the tools of a drug cartel. Caring about the public, about education, and about public education is not a characteristic of a cartel.