School choice is rooted in a history of segregation and racism. Katherine Stewart wrote about this sordid history in her book The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism. I wrote about that history in The New York Review of Books in an essay called “The Dark History of School Choice,” where I reviewed Stewart’s book, Derek Black’s Schoolhouse Burning: Public Education and the Assault on American Democracy, and Steve Suitts’ Overturning Brown: The Segregationist Legacy of the Modern School Choice Movement.
Nancy MacLean, the William Chafe Professor of History at Duke University, is the author of the brilliant book Democracy in Chains, which dug deep into the roots of libertarianism, the role of the Koch brothers in funding it, and the danger to democracy of unfettered libertarianism. She and I will join in a webinar to discuss the coordinated attack on public schools on February 3; you are invited to join us.
MacLean wrote in The Washington Post about the perverse way that the school choice movement distorts the meaning of “freedom” and “choice” to hide their true goal, which is to protect racial segregation and privatize public education.
She wrote:
The year 2021 has proved a landmark for the “school choice” cause — a movement committed to the idea of providing public money for parents to use to pay for private schooling.
Republican control of a majority of state legislatures, combined with pandemic learning disruptions, set the stage for multiple victories. Seven states have created new school choice programs, and 11 others have expanded current programs through laws that offer taxpayer-funded vouchers for private schooling and authorize tax credits and educational savings accounts that incentivize parents moving their children out of public schools.
On its face, this new legislation may sound like a win for families seeking more school options. But the roots of the school choice movement are more sinister.
White Southerners first fought for “freedom of choice” in the mid-1950s as a means of defying the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, which mandated the desegregation of public schools. Their goal was to create pathways for White families to remove their children from classrooms facing integration.
Prominent libertarians then took advantage of this idea, seeing it not only as a means of providing private options, but also as a tool in their crusade to dismantle public schools altogether. This history reveals that rather than giving families more school options, school choice became a tool intended to give most families far fewer in the end.
School choice had its roots in a crucial detail of the Brown decision: The ruling only applied to public schools. White Southerners viewed this as a loophole for evading desegregated schools.
In 1955 and 1956, conservative White leaders in Virginia devised a regionwide strategy of “massive resistance” to the high court’s desegregation mandate that hinged on state-funded school vouchers. The State Board of Education provided vouchers, then called tuition grants, of $250 ($2,514 in 2021 dollars) to parents who wanted to keep their children from attending integrated schools. The resistance leaders understood that most Southern White families could not afford private school tuition — and many who could afford it lacked the ideological commitment to segregation to justify the cost. The vouchers, combined with private donations to the new schools in counties facing desegregation mandates, would enable all but a handful of the poorest Whites to evade compliance.
Other Southern states soon adopted voucher programs like the one in Virginia to facilitate the creation of private schools called “segregation academies,” despite opposition from Black families and civil rights leaders. Oliver Hill, an NAACP attorney key to the Virginia case against “separate but equal” education that was folded into Brown, explained their position this way: “No one in a democratic society has a right to have his private prejudices financed at public expense.”
Despite such objections, key conservative and libertarian thinkers and foundations, including economists Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek, Human Events editor Felix Morley and publisher Henry Regnery, backed the White Southern cause. They recognized that White Southerners’ push for “freedom of choice” presented an opportunity to advance their goal of privatizing government services and resources, starting with primary and secondary education. They barely, if ever, addressed racism and segregation; instead, they spoke of freedom (implicitly, White freedom).
Friedman began promoting “educational freedom” in 1955, just as Southern states prepared to resist Brown. And he praised the Virginia voucher plan in his 1962 book, “Capitalism and Freedom,” holding it up as a model for school choice everywhere. “Whether the school is integrated or not,” he wrote, should have no bearing on eligibility for the vouchers. In other words, he knew the program was designed to fund segregation academies and saw it as no barrier to receiving state financing.
Friedman was far from alone. His fellow libertarians, including those on the staff of the William Volker Fund, a leading funder on the right, saw no problem with state governments providing tax subsidies to White families who chose segregation academies, even as these states disenfranchised Black voters, blocking them from having a say in these policies.
Libertarians understood that while abolishing the social safety net and other policies constructed during the Progressive era and the New Deal was wildly unpopular, even among White Southerners, school choice could win converts.
These conservative and libertarian thinkers offered up ostensibly race-neutral arguments in favor of the tax subsidies for private schooling sought by white supremacists. In doing so, they taught defenders of segregation a crucial new tactic — abandon overtly racist rationales and instead tout liberty, competition and market choice while embracing an anti-government stance. These race-neutral rationales for private school subsidies gave segregationists a justification that could survive court review — and did, for more than a decade before the Supreme Court ruled them unconstitutional.
When challenged, Friedman and his allies denied that they were motivated by racial bigotry. Yet, they had enough in common ideologically with the segregationists for the partnership to work. Both groups placed a premium on the liberty of those who had long profited from white-supremacist policies and sought to shield their freedom of action from the courts, liberal government policies and civil rights activists.
Crucially, freedom wasn’t the ultimate goal for either group of voucher supporters. White Southerners wielded colorblind language about freedom of choice to help preserve racial segregation and to keep Black children from schools with more resources.
Friedman, too, was interested in far more than school choice. He and his libertarian allies saw vouchers as a temporary first step on the path to school privatization. He didn’t intend for governments to subsidize private education forever. Rather, once the public schools were gone, Friedman envisioned parents eventually shouldering the full cost of private schooling without support from taxpayers. Only in some “charity” cases might governments still provide funding for tuition.
Friedman first articulated this outlook in his 1955 manifesto, but he clung to it for half a century, explaining in 2004, “In my ideal world, government would not be responsible for providing education any more than it is for providing food and clothing.” Four months before his death in 2006, when he spoke to a meeting of the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), he was especially frank. Addressing how to give parents control of their children’s education, Friedman said, “The ideal way would be to abolish the public school system and eliminate all the taxes that pay for it.”
Today, the ultrawealthy backers of school choice are cagey about this long-term goal, knowing that care is required to win the support of parents who want the best for their children. Indeed, in a sad irony, decades after helping to impede Brown’s implementation, school choice advocates on the right targeted families of color for what one libertarian legal strategist called “forging nontraditional alliances.” They won over some parents of color, who came to see vouchers and charter schools as a way to escape the racial and class inequalities that stemmed from White flight out of urban centers and the Supreme Court’s willingness to allow White Americans to avoid integrating schools.
But the history behind vouchers reveals that the rhetoric of “choice” and “freedom” stands in stark contrast to the real goals sought by conservative and libertarian advocates. The system they dream of would produce staggering inequalities, far more severe than the disparities that already exist today. Wealthy and upper-middle-class families would have their pick of schools, while those with far fewer resources — disproportionately families of color — might struggle to pay to educate their children, leaving them with far fewer options or dependent on private charity. Instead of offering an improvement over underfunded schools, school choice might lead to something far worse.
As Maya Angelou wisely counseled in another context, “When people show you who they are, believe them the first time.” If we fail to recognize the right’s true end game for public education, it could soon be too late to reverse course.
Same Old Wine Appears In 2022 New Bottles
Douglas County Colorado School Board conspired and then voted to fire the district’s superintendent Friday evening 2/4 in apparent violation of open-meeting laws.
Superintendent Corey Wise supported In-School masking and Equity issues that were overturned by four “Conservative” Board Members, who campaigned against critical race theory.
The backlash sparked a massive protest that forced the district to cancel classes because so many teachers called out to attend the protest demonstration.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/02/05/colorado-conservative-school-board-fires-superintendent/
Did those conservative board members have a connection to the 1776 PAC?
also connections to the Koch agenda are easy to find across Colorado
This article should be distributed to Susan Rice, to the Center for American Progress Action Fund Board, to the Children’s Defense Fund Board (Stand for Children was endorsed at the site 6-4-2021), to the Gates senior advisor for education in the Biden administration and, to political organizations on the left like the one founded by the person who brought the first charter school to Mississippi.
Speaking of Rice, if she can’t convince her own son about the advisability of Democratic domestic policy, how can Biden expect her to convince others? Wait…she, a grad of the think tank, Stanford, only has to get the backing of Silicon Valley. The best interests of the nation aren’t in the equation.
Republicans, especially Trump supporters like Rice’s son are worse than the worst Democrat. Manchin and Sinema who work for the Republican Party fall into a category
beneath contempt.
Big voucher scandal in Oklahoma:
“Each ghost student enrolled in Epic received an annual learning fund ranging from $800 to $1,000 according to the affidavit.
In 2014, investigators interviewed parents and former and current teachers/administrators of Epic and found dozens of ghost students from home schooled families and private and sectarian schools.
Many parents of home schooled students admitted to investigators that they enrolled their children in Epic to receive the $800 learning fund without any intent to receive instruction from Epic.
Investigators say the parents received the $800 learning fund and continued to provide instruction for their children using home school curriculums refusing instruction from Epic teachers.
During an Epic board meeting in April 2013, Chaney estimated that 30 percent of Epic students were home schooled according to documents.”
This is the “learning funds” (vouchers) the ed reform echo chamber are all lobbying for, where they pass funding through charter management companies who distribute the funding to parents. The vouchers aren’t regulated at all.
This fraud went on for for 11 years, unimpeded No one was monitoring it at all.
There will be many, many more voucher scandals. Ed reformers design these voucher programs with no regulation or accountability of any kind. This is the quality of the work they do on “governance systems” for privatization. It’s junk. They are ideologically opposed to regulation of any kind and that is reflected in the systems they design.
https://okcfox.com/news/local/affidavit-epic-charter-school-used-ghost-students-to-embezzle-state-funds
1-17-2020
“This year, the Catholic Conference of Oklahoma is working diligently as a member of the Education Choice Coalition…”
3-2021
The Oklahoma Catholic Conference site had a link to an article, “Educators Voice Support for School Choice Bill”. Evidently, the Catholic Conference and the source of the article think anecdotal testimony from a few select people is independent journalism.
School choice is very popular among rank-and-file black Americans; numerous surveys have shown that large majorities favor having options to traditional public schools. Are the hundreds of thousands of black parents who have enrolled their kids in charter and private schools all racist, white supremacists? Was Diane Ravitch a racist when she enrolled her own kids in a private school?
What are rank and file Black Americans? Are they the opposite of random and meandering?
LCT- liked your clever quip pointing out the prejudice in Becky’s description.
“Black rank and file” contrasts with the self-appointed White Officers wearing Karen/Becky name tags.
One problem with so-called choice is that all choice is not equal, and most choice options offer far less choice and worse education quality than most public schools. As Diane wrote in the review, the end game of privatization is to shift the cost of education back to parents. With our wide income inequality, the poorest people would suffer the most. I taught many very intelligent poor students. We cannot afford to just “write them off.” Who knows where the next big idea comes from? A main goal of public education is to provide access and opportunity with civil rights protections so that we can produce responsible citizens and voters. Poor students deserve a decent chance to become something more, and unaccountable, low level private schools are no solution.
If the wealthy care so much about so-called choice, they should set up scholarships to elite private schools similar to the type of school Obama attended on scholarship, and leave the public schools out of it. A system that elevates private enterprise at the expense of a public service is designed to undermine the public system. That is the goal of so-called choice. With the pandemic rabid republicans are rushing to state houses to pass ill advised voucher bills designed to do maximum damage to public schools. As far as private schools are concerned, anyone that can afford it, has the right to send their child to a private school without vandalizing the public schools.
Ms. Maganz, how dare you!!! Diane Ravitch came to understand how dangerous school “choice” was for that glory of our country, our public schools, and the ill effects of the charter and voucher movements for our country generally, and especially for people of color. There are many opponents of school choice who at one time in the past sent their kids to private rather than public schools and have since learned better, and you ought to know this and doubtless do know this, so why would you make such a scurrilous attack on Dr. Ravitch? This is simply unacceptable.
I believe in school choice so long as parents pay for it themselves. It is a long tradition in American life that parents can choose a religious school or a private school, but the public does not subsidize their private choice. Public schools belong to the public, and they should be the ONLY schools that receive public funds. The vast majority of children—including African American children—are enrolled in public schools, even in states where charters and vouchers are available.
This comment is a great example of why I am pessimistic about the nation’s future, because it exposes the shallow, arrogant, and just plain wrong assumptions in the mere framing the argument and its questions. And too many people fall for this because it is easier to be intellectually lazy or not really give a damn than it is to pay attention and be engaged in correcting them. I’ll stick the to first sentence.
Exactly what evidence do provide that “[s]chool choice is very popular among rank-and-file black (sic) Americans”? What and where are these “numerous surveys [that] show large majorities favor taping options to traditional public schools”? What are their sources? Are they devised to question the “right” sample, turn anecdote into some type of data? Because every survey of this type of which I am aware that is done without a preconceived agenda, as Diana posts here regularly, is that all parents, Black parents included, want the best opportunities for their children. If you give them an either/or choice that fits where you want them to go, i.e., should you have school choice? in the absence of all other information, such as school quality, diversity, program offerings, extracurriculars, program for children with special needs, that’s an easy one. Of course they want choice who wouldn’t, especially in theory? But given a spectrum of information, there is no question that discerning citizens support public schools. It’s just not a top issue, only as a political football for the right, as this comment exposes.
If you ask people if they want choices, they say yes. If you ask people if they want to defund public schools with the intention of eventually eliminating them, they say no. If you ask people if they want freedom, they say yes. If you ask them if they want the freedom to destroy everything Ruby Bridges bravely stood for, they say no. Polls are inaccurate unless the questions are accurate.
Ed reform echo chamber finally meets their goal. No public education system of any kind- instead each family gets a low value voucher to purchase educational services:
“Sen. Del Marsh, R-Anniston, on Tuesday will file what he calls the “ultimate” school choice bill. The proposed bill would allow parents to access money that the state would have used to pay for their child’s public education – approximately $6,300 last year – and direct it to other types of schooling, including private school and homeschool options.”
This “movement” was always going to end at universal vouchers and eradicating public schools. It couldn’t end anywhere else.
https://www.al.com/news/2022/01/alabama-lawmakers-eye-creation-of-ultimate-parent-choice-education-savings-legislation.html
In 1977 Biden said that integrating schools would turn them into a “racial jungle”. https://twitter.com/JeremyWard33/status/1490653819461533697?t=rfg-9yUXioqm3JU_uGoMKg&s=19
Yes and things that Bernie Sanders said 45 years ago were wrong too. If Biden or Bernie were talking like that today, they’d be members of the racist Republican party that white folks like you have no real problem empowering. After all, you are the one who demonizes black voters in southern state democratic primaries for not voting for the candidate you want them to vote for. Why do you want to punish those voters by empowering today’s racist Republican party? It certainly has nothing to do with 45 years ago and everything to do with your own current view of them.
Next.
Fact check
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/10/27/fact-check-post-partly-false-biden-1977-racial-jungle-remark/6045749002/
So, must be a busy time for the Russian Intelligence Services, what with the upcoming Midterms in the United States and all that disinformation to get out via social media, not to mention the heavy lift of trying to convince people that Putin’s having 100,000 troops at Ukraine’s borders ready to initiate a bloodbath is somehow someone else’s fault. Busy, busy, busy.
BTW, 87% of Black voters nationwide chose Biden over Vlad’s Asset Orange. Overwhelming support. This despite the fact that The Idiot (Moscow’s Asset Governing America, or MAGA) said over and over again at his rallies, in his racist way, “The blacks, they love Trump.” But thats what one gets from Don the Con, isn’t it? If he’s speaking, he’s lying.
POC in the United States know the Bloated Bloviator and Loser Former Guy for who he is. HIS record speaks for itself:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_views_of_Donald_Trump
Oh, and Dienne, tell us again how the Ukrainians don’t think there is any possibility of their being invaded AGAIN. All that stuff that looks as though the whole country is frantically preparing to fend of the invasion must be just some sort of Ukrainian Folk Festival.
To everyone arguing with Dienne about Biden, tell us why the charter slush fund continues today, please. He is not a god. He is a politician. We must pressure him in an attempt to compete with the big money of the Gates Foundation et al. Dienne is right. Biden’s support for public education is tepid at best. And I’m about to go off on Obama and Clinton, but it’s late so I’ll refrain.
A sports analogy: The Cincinnati Bengals are in the Super Bowl this weekend. Fans in Ohio are thrilled they won a playoff game for the first time in a long time. That doesn’t mean the fans forget or forgive the owner of the team on Twitter for blackmailing the city to build a new stadium or for running the team on the cheap for decades. They support the team, but they still call on the owner to do better by the city.
leftcoastteacher,
Everyone is arguing with dienne about Biden being a RACIST who is opposed to integration.
That is the subject of dienne77’s post. Not sure why you are invoking her saying Biden is a racist as relevant to this discussion, but if it is, I hope you can explain it to “everyone arguing with Dienne about Biden”.
How is agreeing with Dienne about Biden’s extreme racism help Biden “do better” by public schools?
If you think that having a discussion about whether Biden is an extreme racist or only a medium racist as you and Dienne believe is very important helps public schools, then I wish I could understand how that works.
It would be simpler to say that school is routed in a history of segregation and racism no matter the admission criteria.
Well, it seems pretty clear that
D77 or (fill in) must be stripped
of the power to determine foreign
policy, electoral outcomes or
candidates, and all that other
“stuff”,AND return said powers,
to the people that count…
Oh everyone believes
In how they think it ought to be
Oh everyone believes
And they’re not going easily
Belief is a beautiful armor
But makes for the heaviest sword
Like punching underwater
You never can hit who you’re trying for
Some need the exhibition
And some have to know they tried
It’s the chemical weapon
For the war that’s raging on inside
Oh everyone believes
From emptiness to everything
Oh everyone believes
And no one’s going quietly
NoBrick, what is offensive is people who wouldn’t vote for Biden against Trump because too many black voters in southern states voted for Biden in the democratic primary and those white voters are angry at them for not following their orders to vote for a different candidate.
“the people that count…”?? If you are referring to white voters who are angry that black voters don’t follow their orders to vote for their favorite candidate in the democratic primary, that is incredibly offensive. I certainly hope that is not what you mean.
By all means, let us not, in a democracy, debate our positions in public forums/fora. What on Earth could possibly be the value of that?
Who are the Power Worshipers?
The answer”
Three-quarters (76%) of evangelical Protestants in the U.S. are white.
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/03/01/5-facts-about-u-s-evangelical-protestants/
And, White Christians continue to favor Trump over Biden, but support has slipped while Joe Biden, by contrast, is leading the presidential contest among every other religious group analyzed in the survey, including Black Protestants, Hispanic Catholics, Jews and the religiously unaffiliated
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/10/13/white-christians-continue-to-favor-trump-over-biden-but-support-has-slipped/
bingo
Today in World History we have gotten to the part where we learn what fascism was. Given the ink spilled over this matter, I try to spill as little as possible. It struck me today that the difference between old monarchists and Twentieth Century fascists was that the latter group saw no need in producing justice is society. Monarchists saw their class and its ruling capacity as the only possibility in a humanity that was irrevocably evil. The only way to achieve justice, to keep one person from taking advantage of another, was a strong Monarchy guided by a provident God. Fascists, on the other hand, rejected the notion of justice altogether in favor of the idea of greatness. Justice was meaningless to them. Rather the adoration of a single human leader took a pitiful man into concert with others who followed the greatness of the single individual toward a mighty goal.
The irony of fascism in Germany, certainly in Franco’s Spain, and perhaps elsewhere at that time, is that they got much of their support from churches. With the exception of Bonhoeffer, few church people lined up to challenge Hitler. Catholic Nuns helped Franco. What is it in European Christianity that seems to allow tyranny without confrontation? This is certainly not the Jewish tradition that declared the day of redemption. It is certainly not the ideas related to the teachings of Jesus. Where does it come from?
Fundamentally all religious doctrine of all types are incompatible democratic governance. In a democratic republic, there are no absolutes. Standards, expectations, and public policies hopefully change based on historical experience. Followers of any religion and political ideologues fundamentally believe they know the truths about many things and their attempts to transform those “truths” into governing laws can often be divisive. This, by definition, is not compatible with the respect for pluralism that needs to be nurtured in order to make this nation function on behalf of all of its people.
Greg: cannot a Democratic government exist where all religions choose to coexist in the ecumenical social conditions derived from the ideal of separation of church and state?
Roy, when I was doing my graduate work in American history in the early 1970s, I had an AHA moment of enlightenment when I realized that the source of American unity was the recognition that no religion dominated and that all religions agreed to mutual respect, even if grudging. That’s one of the bases of separation of church and state. The public should not fund religion. Its adherents should.
They can certainly coexist, that’s not the issue as I see it. It’s the intention or imposition of their “certainty” in the public policy arena that’s the problem. By definition, this necessarily excludes others from participation. Which, it occurs to me is exactly the goal of the right (as in political leaning, not correctness).
Is there any possible opening to consider, for example, electoral college voting?
As example about the concern – there are slightly more Jewish people than Mormons. However, Jewish people are located largely in states that consistently vote Democratic in presidential elections. (The same is true about liberal Catholics.). Utah went for Trump in 2020. Has anything changed there?
Is Hispanic Catholic voting, candidate-specific to Trump? If a member of the Bush clan ran for President, would he be preferred over the female Democratic candidate?
Black voting, similar to Jewish voting, is already at 86+%, Democratic.
Is it possible that potential increases in Black voting for Democrats rests more on turnout than religion?
Texas has 38 electoral votes. 18.59% of the pop. is Catholic. The 2nd ranked religion is evangelical (non-denominational Christian) with 6.15%.
Quite the discussion. My observation is charter schools and private schools are good ways for parents to ensure their children have the “right” friends. People are socially anxious. Racism can be a part of that, too. I do recommend Nancy MacLean’s “Democracy in Chains.” Her serendipitous discovery of the Koch files at George Mason U is proof that not everything is on the Internet.
Which I loved.
Yes!
Democracy in Chains is a wonderful book!