The Network for Public Education created a website where. Parents could express their views about their schools. This post was written by Jessica Piper, a mom and a farmer in rural Missouri.
She writes:
I am a rural woman. I am a subsistence farmer raising hogs and chickens in Northwest Missouri in a town of 480 people. I live in a century-old farmhouse on a few acres on the Iowa border that we purchased for less than the price of a new car. I was also an American Literature teacher for sixteen years, and my children are all products of rural schools. Our youngest is still in school and her class, the entire fourth grade, consists of 16 children.
Public schools are the heart of rural Missouri. The school bus picks up my daughter at the end of our driveway every morning, avoiding the chickens pecking in the gravel. She arrives at a tiny school that supports her and knows her well. She eats in the cafeteria that also serves as the gym. We mark the cafeteria Thanksgiving meal on our calendars to eat lunch with our kids—the turkey is pretty good but we really come for the annual tradition and because our kids expect us. Entire communities gather for Christmas pageants and band and choir concerts in our rural schools. We attend Friday night football and basketball games and reserve the rest of the evenings for softball or baseball. We know the teachers and we support schools with raffles and by buying apples and beef jerky from the yearly FFA sales. Nearly every event in our small community revolves around our school.
I tell you the story of rural schools because we are in a fight to keep our public schools funded and open in Missouri. In my state, we are 49th in funding for public schools. We don’t provide public schools with enough for the basics. The state funds just 32% of schools’ budgets, which means that residents must pay for the bulk of their local school expenses through property taxes. That means that our system is highly inequitable. The defunding of Missouri public schools has happened over the last decade, but has been on warp speed in the last five years. The school funding formula was adjusted to lower the amount a few years back, meaning we lowered the funding bar to be able to claim we met the bar. And now, even more bad news for Missouri rural schools: a voucher scheme.
In 2021, Missouri Republicans devised and signed into law a system for vouchers that will further defund public schools. This is how it works: Missouri taxpayers can receive a dollar-for-dollar tax credit that will pay for private school vouchers. In essence, public tax funds will be diverted to private or religious schools with no oversight or accountability for student performance. Missouri will allow folks to essentially pay their taxes directly to the private school of their choice, defunding public schools in the process. In rural Missouri, our schools are already strapped for resources. Diverting money away to any fly-by-night charter, or a private school that accepts vouchers will devastate our rural schools.
When schools are defunded, the next move is often consolidation. When a school consolidates, students may be travelling to and from school for over an hour a day. School consolidations also ravage small communities and often cause ripples that can be felt for years. In my town, the school is the largest employer. Community members who work for the school district receive health insurance through their employer, while disadvantaged children are fed through the school year through the school free lunch program. School closures cripple small businesses and decrease property values. Our main streets empty out with the loss of a local school. When schools consolidate, rural communities lose their economic epicenter.
We must fully-fund public schools in an equitable way for all children to have the opportunity that a public education promises. Rural students and our small communities count on public schools. Charter and privatization schemes purposely funnel public tax money into private hands. That’s harmful to rural Missouri public schools and to our kids.
Jessica Piper is a candidate for state representative in rural Northwest Missouri. She received her BA in English and her MA from the University of Arkansas at Monticello. She was a tenured American Literature teacher and frequently writes about rural schools and school funding. She lives on the Missouri/Iowa border with her husband, children, and two dogs. Piper is a farmer who raises hogs and chickens.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Ms Piper paints a vivid picture of how rural communities are damaged when the public schools are defunded and closed. I hope she wins a seat in the Missouri legislature so that rural communities can be heard in the state capital. Every community should have a right to a decent public school. It is sad that elected representatives ignore the needs of some communities. They do not consider the vital community value the public schools perform, and they do not care about local governance. Transferring public funds to the private sector while the public sector shrivels and dies has widespread economic impact on small, rural communities. A disinvestment in public schools is a disinvestment in local communities.
American humorist and writer Garrison Keillor wrote years ago, “When you wage war on the public schools, you attack the mortar that holds the community together. You’re not a conservative, you’re a vandal.” Ms. Piper’s story illustrates this all too clearly.
The critics of ed reform, the people who said it was all about privatization and would do nothing for either public schools or students who attend public schools, have been completely vindicated. Every warning about this “movement” that was issued 20 years ago has come true.
Remember when they all swore up and down it wasn’t about privatization?
It’s all they do. They perform no other other work of any kind other than lobbying for one or another flavor of privatization.
Other than as consumers, they’ve completely excluded the “public” from “public education”.
“Public education” been reduced to selecting a set of services from a private contractor with a low value government voucher that doesn’t come near to covering the cost.
The current ed reform “movement” is much more radically far Right than even Barry Goldwater’s “vision” for public education- Goldwater never dreamed we’d be eradicating public schools completely.
Well, whatever happens next ed reform owns it- the ed reform echo chamber designed and engineered these privatized systems and they shoud be held solely responsible for the results of their “vision”. I don’t want to hear any excuses about how “no one could have predicted” the downside of privatizing K-12 education. No one in ed reform ever even considered the downside risk and they created an absolute echo chamber where no dissent or real debate was permitted.
I think we’ll regret allowing 5 billionaires and the billionaires obedient employees “redesign” K-12 public education – we’ll be sorry we let them eradicate public education when it’s gone.
Privatization is all about opportunism, not civic responsibility. If state representatives attack their own schools and communities, why should people pay their taxes to be ignored and abused? Privatization hides behind the misinformation that it is about improvement in education. That’s nonsense. It is an attack on the common good. Education vandals including representatives on the privatization payroll want to offload the state’s responsibility to educate its young people. They see it as an avenue to cut costs and eliminate union membership. As Ms. Piper shows, it is about abandoning rural communities.
“Alexander
alexanderrusso
Lamentable that the Post chose Valerie Strauss to cover this story when she’s on record as a charter school critic. Laughable that they ID her as a “reporter.”
No criticism or questions about charter schools are tolerated. It must be 100% positive “analysis” on each and every billionaire initiative.
They shouldn’t worry. There won’t be any criticism or real analysis of Bloomberg’s huge push for charters- there never is in ed reform. I don’t think I’ve read a single criticism of any Gates, Bloomberg, Broad or Koch initiative in the ed reform echo chamber, ever.
Apparently the Gates, Walton, Bloomberg and Koch foundations have never made an error of any kind.
Ed reformers have already announced the huge success of all the voucher programs they lobbied for- they are a huge success before they even begin because they met the one requirement for success- they comport with ed reform’s ideological goals.
You have nailed exactly what is wrong with Russo and others who believe in the Russo/Fox News definition of “fair and balanced journalism”
Alexander Russo goes on record as saying that to be a “proper” education reporter,there is no critical reporting of charter schools allowed? Critical reporting is “bias” when it comes to charters.
Notice that Alexander Russo doesn’t consider whether the reporting is true or not. Truth is irrelevant to so many education reporters like Russo who believe that reporting “both sides” as equal is the mark of a very fine journalist.
It is certainly much easier to be a stenographer and simply write whatever a side tells you is true, and when called on it deny culpability because “didn’t you see that I had a disclaimer at the end that the anti-charter teachers’ union disagrees”?
So far, Alexander Russo’s Fox News definition of “bias” has not quite infected science reporting, because Russo would be attacking science reporters “Lamentable that the NPR chose XXX to cover this story when XXX is on record as a Dr. Simone Gold critic. Laughable that they ID that science writer as a “reporter.” I wonder if Russo also wants science reporters to obey his orders not to be critical of medical professionals offering false information about Covid and demand they not be considered journalists anymore for writing critical stories about doctors who push COVID misinformation?
Russo seems to misunderstand the difference between journalism and propaganda. Presenting both sides as equal, regardless of whether one side is misinforming the public, is not “unbiased journalism”. Truthful about charters that dares to be critical is not “biased”.
Alexander Russo is the perfect journalist for the pre-fascist era.
In case anyone was still delusional enough to believe these new privatized systems the echo chamber are designing will be regulated or in any way transparent, forget it:
“While the announcement doesn’t mention charter authorizers, it does mention partnering with local and national organizations. Karega Rausch, president and CEO of the National Association of Charter School Authorizers, said there’s room for improvement in the way authorizers evaluate new applications so the process isn’t so “burdensome and bureaucratic” but also ensures a school has a “high chance of doing great things.”
Along with their work to privatize the whole K-12 system they’re also ideologically opposed to any regulation or oversight of the contractors, so “markets” will be the only regulatory mechanism, and there won’t be any transparency on public dollars at all.
I hope the anti-public school activists enjoyed visiting all those school board meetings- there won’t be any public school board meetings in the privatized systems ed reformers design. They won’t have anywhere to go to protest against masks or civil rights curriculum. A system composed of private contractors has no duty to the public at all.
https://www.the74million.org/article/bloomberg-who-championed-school-choice-as-nyc-mayor-announces-750m-effort-to-grow-charter-sector-in-20-u-s-cities/
Every time you read an ed reformer demanding “transparency” from public schools be aware that they demand no transparency at all in the privatized systems they design- in fact, they lobby against transparency for charters and publicly funded private schools.
Only public schools have transparency duties- they exempt the schools they prefer from those requirements, although now all these schools are publicly funded. This blatant double standard is never addressed in the echo chamber- and why would it be? It’s an echo chamber. There’s no internal accountablity or debate at all. One would need a dissenter to have someone raise questions, and they allow no dissent.
https://ballotpedia.org/Jessica_Piper
Missouri legislators would read this, maybe say thank you, actually understand the effects of the proposal and respond — BUT WE DON”T CARE!
They want to tell you what you can and cannot do if it aligns with their beliefs – and don’t want laws for anything else.
Guns, NON-DISCRIMATION POLICIES, helmets on motorcycles, guns, segregation, guns, MASKS, guns, VACCINES, guns – “No one can tell you what to do”
No taxation, Vouchers, regulations (on anything), privatization, women’s rights… SORRY – “We will tell you what to do and not”
This is the state that held two “hearings” on critical race theory – one only inviting white people because no one has heard from them and second on the first day of school so no educators could attend
This is the state that the Governor wanted to file charges against the reporter who reported (with delayed publication for safety) that private financial information of the 100,000 Teacher Retirement members could be hacked – –
Parson is a tool. Xtian fundie reich winger.