Inspired perhaps by the anti-public school rhetoric of Betsy DeVos or funded perhaps by billionaire Charles Koch or encouraged by Trump’s white evangelical base, Oklahoma Republicans are proposing a bill that would crush public schools.
Not content to open more privately managed charters or to offer more vouchers to disgruntled parents, Republicans want to use public money to pay for whatever parents want to do. Jeanne Allen of the pro-privatization Center for Education Reform has for many years referred to this approach as a “backpack full of cash.” Give parents the money that previously went to public schools and let them decide whether to spend it on home-school, charters, vouchers, computers, tutors or whatever.
Jennifer Palmer of Oklahoma Watch writes that the ultimate goal of this approach is to abandon the state constitution’s pledge to support a public school system, replacing it with a ragtag array of choices. She doesn’t say it, but I will. This plan, if enacted, will undermine the quality of education in the state and set back the education of Oklahoma’s children. Instead of improving schools, it will turn the money for public schools into a grab bag.
She writes:
Of the 2,300 bills filed by state lawmakers for the upcoming session, which starts Monday, the one I will be watching most closely is Senate Bill 1647 by Senate leader Greg Treat. He’s calling it the Oklahoma Empowerment Act.
The legislation would create universal vouchers by giving any parent a state-funded account for their child’s education.
The funds could be used on private school tuition, homeschool expenses, tutoring, books, computers, supplies, transportation to school and many other qualifying expenses. The effect would be moving public funds to private entities lacking in accountability and transparency.
The bill envisions each student in the state with a backpack full of money and carrying it to the educational options their parents choose. It’s similar to Epic Charter School’s learning fund but on a much larger scale (and Epic’s learning fund is under audit for possible misuse of public funds for private gain by the school’s co-founders.)
Groups advocating for school choice, like ChoiceMatters and Every Kid Counts Oklahoma (whose executive director is Ryan Walters, secretary of education and a candidate for state superintendent), champion the idea with slogans like “fund students, not systems.” The mantra is also repeated by Yes. every kid., a social welfare organization started by Charles Koch, the billionaire owner of Koch Industries…
The Oklahoma State Constitution says: THE LEGISLATURE SHALL ESTABLISH A SYSTEM OF FREE PUBLIC SCHOOLS WHEREIN ALL THE CHILDREN OF THE STATE MAY BE EDUCATED.
The Legislature is specifically charged with maintaining a system of public schools. The bill, if passed, could be challenged on these grounds.
That’s not the only concern I’m hearing. As written, there is no testing requirement for students in the bill, which is required by most other states with voucher programs, according to a2021 comparison by the Education Commission of the States.
That means there would be little way for the public to ascertain the quality of the education these students are receiving. Oklahoma already has the most lax homeschool law in the country, and private schools report almost no data, even when they receive funds through the current school choice programs: the Lindsey Nicole Henry Scholarship Fund and the Oklahoma Equal Opportunity Education Scholarship program.
Treat’s bill does not prohibit private schools from discriminating against students if they are LGBTQ or pregnant or for a number of other reasons (private schools can’t, though, discriminate on the basis of race if they are tax-exempt.) The proposal states an education provider “shall not be required to alter its creed, practices, admissions policy, or curriculum” to accept payments from the program.
Treat, recognizing the sure-fire opposition to this proposal, in a video with ChoiceMatters last week said: “There’s going to be plenty of criticisms to hear. Just put on the armor. Get ready for the fight. It’s going to be a fight. But our kids are worth it.”
So says the legislator whose plan violates the state constitution, destroys the state’s public schools, and guarantees that the quality of education will sharply decline as the grifters and religious zealots make their pitch for taxpayer dollars.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This, sadly is nothing new. This is what is generally called an ESA program. Nine states have such programs, and they are now the favorite program of the Libertarian Right. They are, without a doubt, the most irresponsible and reckless of all of the voucher programs. In none of the nine states where they are now are students required to take state tests, and no matter how you feel about testing, it is a way to compare student performance between public, charter, and voucher systems.
Arizona has the oldest program. Parents do not have to provide ANY EVIDENCE at all that their children are learning. None. The program is full of fraud. Yet they get 90% of what would have been spent on the child in a public school.
Some states let relatives be paid as “tutors.” Background checks? Forget those little details. As of January 1, 2022, there were 60 direct or indirect voucher programs in the U.S. At the end of this legislative session, there will be more.
CRT, mask debates, book bans…. all of it is a marketing tool to push parents into undersubcsribed voucher programs and motivate them to demand more charters and vouchers. They are the sideshow to rev up the crowd for the main event–the destruction of public education.
Some right-wingers such as Betsy De Vos like them because they got more than a little touch of the zealot whacky.
Most are pushing these programs because the ultimate plan is to reduce the money in the backpack and require parents to fund more and more of their children’s education. Public education is usually the largest line item in state budgets. They want that gone. And frankly, a well-educated public is anathema to their goals.
That’s the playbook. Don’t get too distracted by the sideshows. That is exactly what they are counting on.
Organize and fight these bills. NPE can help.
ESA??
For those of us self-diagnosed with AIIDS* please explain.
*Acronym Identification Impairment Disorder Syndrome. To be included in the DSM-X.
Education Savings Account.
Thanks!
Authored by the Senate Leader…Committee chairs will have to hear this or lose their own leadership in the Senate. This one will be so hard to crush. Pastors and parents and educators are fighting.
how we all wish your summation would finally say LEGISLATORS are fighting…
SOME are…but with a GOP Supermajority, and every GOP Senator beholden to the Leader for PAC money and leadership positions, those fighting do not have as much clout.
“The funds could be used on private school tuition, homeschool expenses, tutoring, books, computers, supplies, transportation to school and many other qualifying expenses’
And, add… fund distributed with no accountability, no government necessary bureaucracy to follow the money and investigate the fraud and scandals, no monitoring of parochial schools who will claim to take down the symbols and no religion classes, no monitoring of discrimination, no special education…
It will backfire but far too late after the damage is done.
I was happy to hear Nancy MacLean refer to the right as the “radical right.” The right has lost its mind and conscience. They are poised to “throw out the baby with the bath water.”
There are several motivations for such bills. Most obvious is this:
This bill is a gift
To the masters of grift.
Another is to kill the teacher’s unions and public goods funded with taxes.
Yet another is to midwife the birth of thousands of fundamentalist Christian madrassas to indoctrinate the next generation of young people in an extremist, nationalist ideology and so reverse the hemorrhaging of support from young people for the policies of the now overtly fascist by aging Repugnican Party (the Greying Old Party, or GOP). So, it’s a way for the Pugs to address what is for them an existential crisis and rise Phoenix-like from the ashes of democracy and the Commons.
cx: from the now overtly fascist and aging Repugnican Party
This is what I think will happen once parents are given a backpack full of public cash. If they can spend it anyway they want, the greediest, and or poorest parents will enroll their children’s in the lowest cost voucher schools and keep them home or shove them into a harsh, boot camp charter school where their spirit and curiosity will be broken.
The money the parents keep may go for food, rent and/or drugs, luxuries, cigarettes, and alcohol.
If the money has to all go to a voucher or charter school, religious or not, then some if not all of those schools will offer cash back bonuses/incentives for enrolling their children to encourage greedy and poor parents to sign up and then they will have some cash back to spend on drugs, essentials, or luxuries.
The end result down the line will be most if not all of these children will end up with a subpar education, taught to hate labor unions, support fascists, and become the kind of workers, voters and consumers the extreme right wants. In short, fascist zombies that do as their told, think as they have been programmed, and keep their mouths shut.
Oklahoma is in the middle of a huge charter scandal, where the state gave 144 million dollars to a charter operator, no one regulated it, there was no transparency at all, and they’re cutting a bckaground deal to let the charter operator off the hook:
Looking at this, ed reformers decided to shift more public money to completely unaccountable operators, so the contractors can rob more public money, I guess.
Ohio’s charter scandal was 60 million, Indiana’s was 70 million, anf Oklahoma’s is 144 million. The sums on the public funding robbed are going up dramatically.
Remember- when you hear ed reformers talk about “reinventing public education” this is the quality of the governance systems they design. They’re junk. They want push this junk to the whole country. They COULD have designed regulated privatized systems that weren’t absolute garbage- they chose not to.
These privatized systems where the public is being robbed of tens of milions of dollars were designed by the best and brightest in ed reform- this is the best they can do.
When they succeed in abolishing public schools this is all we’ll be left with- unergulated, low quality, for profit contractors who are politically connected so steal with impunity
Anyone who continues to claim the “ed reform movement” isn’t 100% about privatizing public schools is either willfully blind or on the payroll of the ed reform movement.
They do nothing else BUT privatize public schools. They perform no productive work of any kind that doesn’t end in a privatization scheme. If you’re hiring them to cosult or advise on public schools you’re doing public school students a real disservice. They return no value to our students.
Can I make a suggestion? If you’re a public school try hiring people who value and support public schools. That’ll work out a lot better for your students than hiring anyone out of the ed reform echo chamber. Serve public school students. Find people who are willing to do that. You won’t find them at Gates or Walton or any of the others tens of ed reform orgs. Look elsewhere- outside the echo chamber.
Can I make a suggestion? If you’re a public school [system], try hiring superintendents who value and support public schools.
That would be a refreshing change
Been there… done that…
Every voice counts – but where’s the voice of 1,000 superintendents? 1,000 doctors? 1,000 research scientists? 1,000 Education journal editors (fact checkers)?
That’s why people scream at school boards. That makes the front page. All of the above are “this week in the news” on p.8
Hmm, an idea!
The radical Right turn of the ed reform movement is interesting because I actually believed some of the would break ranks and defend public education.
None of them did.
You could announce you were closing every public school in the country and turning it all over to some national, low quality private contractor and no one in any of the ed reform orgs would object or even register mild disagreement. They simply don’t break ranks It is an echo chamber. They all move in and between the same orgs, they’re all paid by the same billionaires and they all say exactly the same things. There’s no dissent, no real debate, and no real ideas other than “privatize everything that isn’t tied down”
I wonder what it would take before any of the lavishly funded national ed reform groups would defend public education. They will march along lockstep until public schools are gone completely. If the public doesn’t save public schools there isn’t going to be anythign left worth saving. They’ll have privatized and monetized all of it.
Utah is attempting the same thing. Despite vouchers being voted down just 15 years ago, another voucher bill is in the Legislature. This one would pay up to $9500 per voucher. Utah only pays about $7800 per pupil.
Utah is attempting the same thing. Despite vouchers being voted down just 15 years ago, another voucher bill is in the Legislature. This one would pay up to $9500 per voucher. Utah only pays about $7800 per student.