The citizens’ group “Public Schools First NC” has published a scathing critique of the double standards that the General Assembly has inserted into the laws that govern education.
Double Standard!
Proponents of school choice, especially voucher program supporters, are often the most committed to holding public schools accountable for how public funds are spent. They point to the need to monitor the value provided by our tax dollars. Yet these same choice proponents are remarkably silent when asked to apply similar standards to the private schools receiving public tax dollars.
There are many notable contrasts (or rather, contradictions) evident in the 2021-23 budget when it comes to spending on education. The accountability double standard for public dollars spent on public schools versus private schools is especially glaring. For public schools, NC has a well-established NC Report Card that provides a range of information about academic performance and school statistics such as class size and teacher qualifications. In addition, the NC School Finance Dashboard, launched in 2019, provides basic financial information about public schools such as the source of funding and how the funding is spent. For private schools receiving public funds through the school voucher programs (e.g. Opportunity Scholarships), there is no school report card or other public-facing accountability mechanisms. Nothing.
The NC, A-F grading program, one component of the NC Report Card, assigns every NC public school a letter grade. Widely disparaged for their outsized reliance on student achievement test scores, the A-F grades were first assigned to NC public schools in the 2013-14 school year. Each school’s grade is based on a formula where 80% of the grade is based on achievement and 20% on growth. The data used to calculate the achievement scores vary by grade and include end-of-grade and end-of-course test scores, passing rates for Algebra II or Integrated Math III, ACT scores, and graduation rates, There have been a number of bipartisan proposals to change the formula to 50% achievement and 50% growth, but no change has yet been made. NC is an outlier among states with letter grading systems in the resistance to developing a more balanced approach. Kris Nordstrom’s report School Performance Grades: A Legislative Tool for Stigmatizing Non-White Schools describes the grading system and some of its problems in detail.
As NC legislators funnel more money to private schools through voucher programs they are failing to require of private schools similar levels of transparency about student achievement and school finances as contained in the NC School Report Card and School Finance Dashboard. For example, although private schools are required to test students in grades 3, 6, 9, and 11, there is no mandatory public reporting requirement. In addition, individual schools select which test to administer, which creates a system where there is no standardized way to compare student achievement across schools or to public school student achievement. Interestingly, for 11th grade, the guidelines state that “Each private school should establish a minimum score on an achievement test to be administered on or before 11th grade which ensures students possess a minimum of skills for high school graduation.” In other words, each school sets its own passing standard. In the public school setting, this is equivalent to allowing each school to determine its own passing (Level 3) score on an EOG or EOC test.
In addition, private schools are not required to share information about their curriculum, qualifications of instructional staff (teachers are not required to hold a college degree or be certified) , or even basic information such as class size and technology resources. This chart showing the essential differences further illustrates the striking contrast.
Yet with the 2021-23 budget, even though in previous years, demand for Opportunity Scholarships has lagged behind the funds allocated to them, with millions left unspent, the legislature allocated even more money to this unaccountable voucher program. By law, funding for Opportunity Scholarships was set to grow by $10 million each year (on top of base funding) regardless of whether the money was spent. With the 2021-23 budget, the increase was bumped to $15 million each year. More than 3.1 billion will be spent on the program over the next 15 years. To drum up demand, they earmarked $500,000 to market the Opportunity Scholarships. At the same time, the legislature failed in its constitutional obligations to fully fund public schools. Members of legislative leadership have even taken the extreme measure of filing an appeal to stop the courts from requiring that dollars are allocated to fund education at the minimum required by the NC constitution.
So why is there such a double standard?Why are our legislators so resistant to an equal evaluation of public and private schools when private schools are spending public tax dollars? Are they concerned that the private school sector won’t hold up to a fair comparison? Ask your legislator! With the abundant unspent voucher school funds, they could build a private school online dashboard just like the public school dashboards so taxpayers can see all aspects of how tax dollars are being used for education. Better yet, let’s put the public taxpayer funds back into our public schools where it belongs.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Accountability and transparency for the public schools they oppose ideologically, a complete lack of accountability and transparency for the publicly funded private schools they fund, promote and market.
It’s a great deal for private schools. All of the public funding, none of the public duty.
How do public schools get this deal? Do we have to hire a well-connected ed reform echo chamber lobbyist? There are loads to choose from.
Anyone who has watched this “movement” over the last 20 years who thought public schools were going to be treated fairly alongside the privatized systems ed reformers prefer is a fool. There is never even a consideration of public schools or public school students when ed reform is pushing a new privatization drive. They’re not even mentioned. Our schools and students are the dead last priority in ed reform schemes, only discussed as an afterthought (“the status quo, the failing public schools, the government schools”) and only AFTER every “choice” demand has been met.
You won’t hear a single complaint or even a discussion of this inequitable treatment in the ed reform echo chamber. Any criticism of charter or voucher systems is strictly forbidden. All charter school systems are excellent and all voucher schemes are perfect. All criticism and questions must be directed exclusively to public schools, with all marketing, cheeleading and promotion allocated to “choice” schools. No one bucks this rule, no one breaks ranks.
“All of the public funding, none of the public duty.” This is taxation without representation. Even if there is representation in theory, there is no genuine representation of the common good when politicians can be bought to represent special interests.
It would be a shame if the ed reform lobby and their foundations and university departments redesigned the US system of vocational education, too.
That’s all we need. Another billionaire-backed and directed education sector, designed by the same 150 lockstep ed reformers who have captured half the state legislatures and most of the federal government.
Low wage, vehemently anti-union, opposed to workplace regulations and Right wing economically, now designing training programs for 9th graders. What could go wrong? You mean Jeff Bezos and the Walton family should NOT be designing worker training programs for 14 year olds?
Expect it. The new VP of Ed. at CAP is from Lumina (Gates).
like following a horse’s lineage these days
Privatization has always been an anti-democratic, special interest policy representing the interests of billionaires, corporations, segregationists and religious zealots. Public education is no more that the host to private parasites in this crooked scheme that weakens public education while it feeds the private sector. Even when the hypocrisy is clear as in this case, there is little interest in change because education is not the main objective. Moving public funds into private pockets is the goal.
Double standards-
When 90+ % of SCOTUS judges were confirmed, no one suggested that they were less qualified because of their race and gender.
Georgetown (private, Catholic) hired Ilya Shapiro from Koch’s Cato Institute for a position in administration at Georgetown’s Law School. It’s not going well for him which Georgetown’s top management could have anticipated. Shapiro’s tweets about Biden’s choice for SCOTUS are predictably obnoxious.
Women who vote Republican are stupid. Various people associated with colleges, e.g. Robert P. George, came to Shapiro’s defense, signing a letter. Only 7 names on the list of signers can be identified as female, while more than 100 are male.
White justices just have to be “qualified”.
Black justices have to be “the most qualified and if we can point to any person who has so-called better credentials, then that person should not have the job”
It works that way for affirmative action, too. Even back with the Bakke decision, when I was a young teenager, I knew there was something very wrong when a white man was extremely offended that anyone who wasn’t white would be admitted with lower credentials, but wasn’t bothered at all by all the white students who were admitted with lower credentials.
It’s an extreme double standard. And a sign of implicit racism. It’s fine to give preference to white candidates and everyone twists themselves into knots to justify why admitted a supposedly “less qualified” white candidate over a more qualified white candidate is perfectly fine because both candidates are “qualified”.
But it’s not fine to give preference to an underrepresented minority who is also qualified over a more qualified white candidate because then suddenly only the “very most qualified” must be admitted.
There is so much implicit racism in the acceptance in this country that a less qualified (but still qualified) candidate should be admitted because his family can donate lots of money, but a less qualified (but still qualified) candidate can never be admitted for any reason where white folks will not disproportionately benefit. That’s even true for athletics, where selective colleges might give athletic preferences to 20 sports predominantly played by white students and the focus is only on athletic preferences in the 2 sports where black students are more likely to get those preferences. If a lot of white privileged students weren’t benefiting from athletic preferences, you can bet that the right wing and their media lapdogs would suddenly start expressing outrage that this would be allowed.
This happened with Nikole Hannah-Jones who got excoriated for not meeting some supposed “standards” that privileged white folks did not have to meet.
Agreed.
Georgetown was well aware that Ilya Shapiro “lectures regularly for the Federalist Society” before the school hired him. Americans are going to continue to be screwed unless Georgetown’s influence in D.C. government decisions is lessened and unless Ivy League grads in both parties get pushed out making way for people who actually represent the 90%.
Linda, you think law schools should not hire professors who give lectures to the Federalist Society?
Should law schools give hiring preference to professors who give lectures to the Federalist Society over more qualified professors who have not?
Affirmative action for Federalist Society members and those in favor with Federalist Society members? Are those professors really better than every other professor that could have been hired instead?
Lecturers and administrators who are from the Koch network and who have expressed racist and sexist views may be hired by Georgetown because they are a good fit.
Americans should wake up to the warning. If Shapiro had not tweeted then, neither D.C.spheres nor other communities would have any way of knowing or anticipating the impact of his influence.
If an overwhelming number of Georgetown”s faculty and students do nothing, implying agreement with the hiring decision, the conclusion is evident. Some number of Catholic universities are right wing. Racist libertarians appear to be fueling their move farther to the right.
The sexism of the Catholic Church is on record.
Recently, Shapiro ran for school board in Falls Church, Va., and lost.
Linda, speaking of this outrageous double standard, check out how an NFL football team chooses the “most qualified” white guy for the coaching job, while faking having an open hiring process.
It’s in the news day.
It turns out that Patriots coach Bill Belichick — Trump supporter extraordinaire – thought he was texting one of the crowd — a white football coach — and accidentally texted a black football coach with the same first name.
Belichick texted his congratulations to the white football coach for getting the job — BEFORE the black football coach even had his sham interview so that the football team was pretending it was open to finding the “most qualified”.
Belichick felt very confident texting early congratulations to a white football coach telling him he had the job before the sham hiring process was complete because of course he knew that the white football coach up for the job would think it was perfectly normal that he was already chosen.
It isn’t just that Belichick made this mistake.
it is that he knew that other white folks think it is perfectly normal to have sham interview process and wouldn’t think twice about how they benefit from affirmative action for white guys.
If you have qualifications that favor white people – “recommendations from prominent people” – it’s considered “merit”. If you have qualifications that don’t benefit white folks, it is “affirmative action.”
I hope the class action lawsuit costs the NFL a fortune and all those discriminated against based on race, take home large settlements.
Some white men, the ones who expect entitlement to protect them from competing on a level playing field against other demographic groups, prove, in the process, their own inadequacy.
Well, I think most of us know why there is accountability for real public schools and little or no accountability for publicly funded private schools.
The CEO’s and/or owners/backers of these publicly funded private schools do not want anyone to know what they are doing with the public’s money and with the children that go to those schools.
Stop for a moment and imagine what a publicly funded private sector charter school would be teaching children if that school was owned and controlled by Traitor Trump or any of his staunchest followers/supporters.
What the traitor would do is what most if not all of the CEOs and or owners/backers of charter and voucher schools in the US have been doing for decades, already.
I think there are two goals: make money to feed their endless greed and program the children to raise a generation of citizens that think like they want them to think: complacent, loyal, silent, consumers.
Isn’t that what FOX news has also been doing since its launch?
What these greedy fascist Trumpish, or Walton, or Koch libertarians are doing isn’t anything knew.
Mao did it in China during his Cultural Revolution when he replaced all the textbooks in China with his Little Red Book of Mao quotations designed to indoctrinate the youth. That worked great and gave birth to the Little Red Guard where millions of children and adolescents took to the streets by the millions, turning in their parents, teachers and anyone else they thought was a traitor to Mao. That resulted in millions of deaths and suicides.
Before Mao, Hitler did the same thing with children in Germany.
Before Hitler, Stalin used similar brutal tactics murdering millions of Ukrainians and Russian’s, and Putin has brought that world of fear and hate back over there.
Off topic as usual, but here’s a photo of New York Governor Kathy Hochul—who at 63 years old is in a high-risk age bracket—relaxing maskless with some masked elementary students.
flerp,
Can you provide proof that Hochul pulls down her mask “every chance she gets”? What is the source for this? Where is your evidence for this? I want to see the statistic for Hochul pullling down her mask “every chance she gets” – that is clearly false because I have seen Hochul wearing her mask in many photos when she has her hands free and could pull it down.
Should we do what you like and have a conversation right now about whether this outrageously false statement undermines the entire argument against mandatory masking?
I certainly hope flerp is not condoning the false statement that Hochul pulls down her mask every chance she gets. Is it okay just because someone uses that outrageously false statement that flerp agrees with?
Talk about hypocrisy. Talk about a double standard.
By the way, I find it interesting that you get your news from “Krystine Cal”. Is this person even real?
If “Krystine Cal” isn’t real, then why is she your source for information?
I tried to find a conservative news source for this that actually exists. The NY Post didn’t seem to cover this.
I find these kinds of conversations tiresome, as it would be interesting to discuss mask mandates with people interested in having a real conversation, but that is no longer possible with the Republican Party where the ends always justifies the means and might makes right.
This photo of the current Governor is from last July (when she was Lt. Gov), before the variants, when it was perfectly reasonable to allow fully vaccinated adults – who were not spreading the virus – to go without masks. That is why the law specifically allowed fully vaccinated adults like Hochul to go without a mask inside.
(By the way, had fully vaccinated people been required to wear masks indoors in early July, when there was no evidence that they could spread covid, the outcry by anti-maskers would have been deafening. What hypocrites they are.)
It was also perfectly reasonable for the law to also have mask mandates of UNvaccinated people indoors, which obviously affected children as the vaccine had only just become available to 12 year olds, and younger kids had no vaccine.
It was also perfectly reasonable for the law to change, as it did once it was clear that the new variants could be spread by fully vaccinated people.
This photo is intended to mislead people into believing that the lie that Gov. Hochul pulls down her mask every chance she can get is true.
Why someone would post this tweet here seems obvious.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/02/01/yes-more-variants-may-emerge-future-thats-why-we-should-lift-restrictions-now/
What is Krystine Cal’s opinion about this, flerp? I don’t want to comment until I can see what one of the sources you trust says.
Is this a link to a source that provided evidence to support the claim that Gov. Hochul pulls down her mask “every chance she gets”?
If it isn’t true, the entire anti-mask movement is undermined.
I am posting at the risk of being attacked for being too mean or too wordy. But our country is at a crossroads, and while it might be too late to stop the dangerous pre-fascist road we are on, I think we need to try. Because as long as we bend over backward to legitimize those who believe the ends justifies the means, those folks will continue to lie and mislead and destroy the truthful public discourse that is absolutely necessary for democracy to survive.
flerp posted a link above to a tweet by someone named “Krystine Cal” — I am doubtful this is a real person (and I made an attempt to learn more) but maybe she exists. Suffice it to say it would be as absurd to consider that a reliable source.
It took some time, but I finally tracked down where that photo came from. Last July, when many adults were fully vaccinated and COVID rates were declining and there were no new variants that caused significant breakthrough cases, it was perfectly reasonable for NY State law to allow fully vaccinated adults to be maskless indoors. Unfortunately, the vaccine was not available to children at all at that time, and it also was perfectly reasonable to require children in those crowded indoor settings to wear masks – not just to protect one another but to also protect the vulnerable siblings and family members they had at home.
Kathy Hochul was the Lieutenant Gov last July, and there was absolutely nothing wrong in this photo in which she was a fully vaccinated adult. The kids are masked because they are not vaccinated. Presumably the teacher who is sitting at the table wearing a mask was not fully vaccinated.
Now many folks would just go right past that and possibly think “oh well, sure there’s some hypocrisy”. Just another bit of evidence internalized by the public about the hypocrisy and lies of democrats.
Other folks – anti-maskers – would be outraged and their hatred at democrats would be stoked.
For too long we just ignored this or played right into their hands. We decided “it wasn’t important” and treated these people the way the media treats Ted Cruz. He can promote lies one day and be a “trusted source” on something else another day.
People no longer pay any price for lying. Trump pays no price for lying. Posters on this board pay no price for posting lies.
Some ethical folks police themselves, so to speak. The Democrats generally do this — if they are caught saying something that isn’t true, they correct it or clarify it so that people do not believe something false. The right wing doubles down on their lies because the intent was always to believe something false. It is the difference between Fauci and the medical quacks promoting some new COVID “cure”.
I hope flerp will post an apology. The photo is of Kathy Hochul last July when it was perfectly reasonable for fully vaccinated adults to be allowed to be unmasked indoors and perfectly reasonable to protect the unvaccinated and prevent the spread of COVID by requiring masks for unvaccinated children.
Now that can be debated. But it should be debated with facts and argument, not by trying to demonize those who have a different opinion by misleading folks into believing that they were doing something wrong or hypocritical.
If Hochul has been taking off her mask while visiting schools and interacting with youngsters since COVID rates began rising last August, I’m sure the far right propaganda machine would have a photo. The fact that they want to mislead the public by using this old photo speaks volumes. The fact that someone would try to make their point by posting a misleading photo speaks volumes.
I believe that if we continue to condone this in our discourse, we are complicit.
It’s okay to be wrong. It is not okay to double down on being wrong by refusing to correct posts that are deceptive and misleading.
Aren’t charters dishonest. A student’s father asked me this morning to fill out a recommendation form for a charter school in Colorado. “What’s that,” you say, “charter schools are regulated to make sure they at least pretend to admit students using a fair and public admission system like s “lottery”. There can’t be a requirement for letters of recommendation, That must be illegal.” The school is the Vail Ski and Snowboard Academy, part of the Eagle Academy charter chain.
A school for professional athletes. Oh joy.
Here’s how it works. You have to be admitted to the sports program before you can be admitted to the “school”. To be admitted to the sports program, you must meet academic requirements. So, to be admitted to the school, a complete private school application must be filed and standards met. It’s a fully private school taking tax dollars away from the public schools. What a scandalous scam.
Oh yes. As I was writing the (admittedly too long) rant above, I was thinking that the condoning of dishonesty in our discourse regarding public education has been one of the most damaging things to public education. The public accepts without question so many misleading things about public schools.
It’s so interesting to see polls where most parents are satisfied with their own public school (aside from wanting more funds spent or smaller class sizes) and satisfied with their kids’ teachers, but their visions of OTHER public schools — especially the ones in large urban areas – is entirely warped. And that’s because they have been propagandized. When that propaganda came for their public school, it was entirely rejected.