As a native Texan and a graduate of the Houston Independent School District, I join my fellow Texans in demanding that the state fund its public schools.
Governor Abbott received millions of dollars from out-of-state billionaires like Jeff Yass, the richest man in all Pennsylvania, to defeat anti-voucher rural Republicans, who put their constituents first. Abbott makes no pretense: he wants vouchers to subsidize the 10 percent in private schools. He doesn’t care about the students in public schools.
Ninety percent of the students in Texas attend public schools. Yet hard-hearted Governor Greg Abbott wants the legislature to pass vouchers, which will be used overwhelmingly by students already enrolled in private schools. I don’t think Governor Abbott has ever visited a public school but he has paid visits to many Christian schools.
Vouchers are welfare for the affluent. They don’t improve achievement for those who use them, nor do they improve achievement for those who don’t.
Most of the children in public schools are Black and Brown. Most of the legislators are White. Is there a clue in that asymmetry?
Would it be too much to ask the legislators to think of the state’s future? It is in the public schools.
Join the rally on Saturday April 5 at the State Capitol.
Dear Superintendents and Trustees,
Save Texas Schools, a non-partisan coalition of parents, students, teachers/school staff and community partners, has stood for funding Texas public schools as well as reforming our testing and accountability systems since 2009. In 2011, we brought 13,000 people to the Texas State Capitol when schools were threatened with a $10 billion reduction in funding. Our actions helped cause the state to significantly reduce those cuts and eventually restore funding in 2013.
Texas is currently facing an even worse crisis in public school funding. With no increase in the basic allotment to account for inflation in 2021 and 2023, public school funding has been reduced by $10 billion in real dollars, or approximately $1,300 per student. With the end of ESSER funding, which helped districts get through the past several years, the majority of school districts statewide are facing significant deficits this year and next. The current funding proposal put forward in HB2 is not nearly enough to cover current gaps and future inflation, as well as possible federal funding cuts.
We believe that the legislature has more than enough to bring funding back to 2019 levels, given the amount of unspent funds that should have gone to public schools in 2021 and 2023 that are sitting in the state’s coffers. Getting back to 2019 levels would mean adding $1,300 per student to the basic allotment. Many education groups around the state, including Raise Your Hand Texas and Fund Schools First, a school district and business coalition in North Texas, are saying the same thing.
We would like to ask two things . . .
1. Join the call for an increase to the basic allotment of $1,300 per student. Texas school funding is a complicated subject, but a simple and straightforward message can galvanize parents, teachers and community members.
2. Encourage your stakeholders to join the Save Texas Schools rally at the Texas State Capitol on Saturday, April 5th. Thousands of Texans will be there to say NO! to underfunding and private school vouchers and YES! to testing and accountability reform. We have already held one rally on a cold and rainy Saturday in February with 1,200 people coming out (click here for a rally video). We believe that, at this crucial moment, we can impact school funding during this time of crisis.
A rally flyer is attached and more information is available at www.savetxschools.org. We also have bus transportation coming from many parts of the state. Information and registration is available on the website.
Thank you for all you do for the children and families of Texas, especially in these difficult times!
Allen Weeks, Ph.D.
Executive Director
Below are photographs I took when I participated in the Save Our Schools rally in 2013. The kids were wonderful, as were the marching bands and parents. Will the legislature listen this time? These wonderful youngsters are our future. We must not let them down.
Allan Weeks and I, February 23, 2013, Austin, Texas
Laurie Roberts, columnist for The Arizona Republic, asked the question that is the title of this post. Why indeed? Charters and vouchers, we were promised, would “save poor kids from failing schools” but all too often, school choice is far worse than the neighborhood public school.
When you see the abysmal test scores for this online school, you understand why the operators of voucher schools demand exclusion from state testing. This charter school has horrible scores, but as Trump often reminds us, “parents know best.” Except when they don’t.
Roberts looks beyond the promises and follows the money. That’s always a good strategy.
Roberts writes:
Pity poor Primavera Online Charter School.
It seems dastardly “activists” are trying to shut down this fine academic institution — to deny the school the $80 million in public money it needs annually to provide students with a “D” education.
It’s “lawfare”, we are told. An attack on President Donald Trump’s agenda and a sneak attempt to shut down school choice.
“The voters of this country have spoken loud and clear … that President Trump’s agenda, which includes school choice, is highly favored by the voters,” Jesse Binnall, the school’s lawyer, declared. “Instead of getting on board with this policy, you have some people that are trying to use various versions of lawfare … in order to get in the way of school choice.”
Binnall and Primavera CEO Damian Creamer, surrounded by some of the state’s elected leaders, held a press conference outside the state Capitol on Wednesday to bemoan Primavera’s plight as the Arizona Board of Charter Schools considers shutting down the online alternative school.
No less than U.S. Rep. Andy Biggs stood with them.
Biggs, who has enjoyed more than $32,000 in campaign contributions from Creamer, according to Open Secrets.
Creamer also has donated to a who’s who of Republican state legislators, which likely explains why some of them showed up to support him on Wednesday.“We hope that everyone is going to do the right thing,” Binnall continued. “But, unfortunately, we know activists have infected this process far too much.”
Primavera gravy train could be slowing down
Earlier this month, the charter school board — a board dominated by appointees of former Republican governor and school choice champion Doug Ducey — took the first step toward revoking the school’s charter.
This, after 12News reporter Craig Harris — yeah, he’s the “activist” to whom Binnall was referring — began asking questions about why we’re paying Creamer tens of millions of dollars to fail children.
The state Board of Education has slapped Primavera with a “D” rating in each of the last three years. It is the only charter school in the state to rate three straight D grades.
The charter board, meanwhile, has given Primavera its second worst rating — Does Not Meet Standard — over the last two years and its worst rating — Falls Far Below Standard — four times since 2017.
Yet, the school continues to rake in our money. Nearly $80 million last year.
Of that, Harris reports that Primavera paid $54 million to its parent company, StrongMind, for curriculum and management.
StrongMind has just one shareholder: Creamer.
Just $12.4 million of that $80 million went to teachers, with another $6 million for advertising.
In all, Harris has reported that Creamer has pocketed at least $24 million in public money via shareholder distributions and direct payments since 2017.
We are paying $80 million for this?
Now, however, the gravy train appears to have run its course. So the push is on — with a little oomph from politicians who have enjoyed Creamer’s contributions — to make sure it doesn’t get derailed.
“We have to be confident that these people who serve … the people of Arizona are going to do the right thing for the children of Arizona,” said Binnall, who also has worked for Trump.
Creamer maintains his school, which caters to at-risk students, would have earned a grade of “C” had it been judged as an alternative school. But he’s the one who failed to apply for the designation.
Even so, the school’s record of academic achieved has dropped even as its enrollment has jumped to 8,000 students.
According to state assessment results, the percentage of students rated proficient in English has dropped from 36% in 2022 to 23% last year.
Math proficiency dipped from 13% in 2022 to 9%.
The only thing booming is Creamer’s bank account.
But, sure, it’s lawfare to question whether we should be doling out $80 million every year to this school.
“We hope that everyone is going to do the right thing,” attorney Binnall said. “But, unfortunately, we know activists have infected this process far too much.”
The Texas House of Representatives is moving to a vote on vouchers. Governor Greg Abbott has been pushing vouchers for years, but the House legislators have defeated them again and again, even though Republicans have a super-majority in both houses. The votes were provided by a combination of urban Democrats and rural Republicans. The rural Republicans decided that protecting their local public school was more important than pleasing Governor Abbott.
But then a billionaire in Pennsylvania gave Governor Abbott $6 million so he could defeat the recalcitrant Republicans who blocked vouchers.
Abbott managed to knock off several of the Republicans he targeted by lying about their records. In theory, he has the votes to pass voucher legislation.
But will he? There are still rural Republicans who know that vouchers will destroy their hometown school. How will they vote?
Worse, vouchers have failed wherever they have been tried.
Eight Things to Know: State’s Proposed Education Savings Accounts (ESAs) for Private Schools
Governor Abbott’s ongoing promotion of universal school choice through taxpayer funded Education Savings Account’s (ESA) focuses on helping low-income, low-performing, and SPED students obtain a better education. However, this material highlights eight things to know that contradict the state’s promotion of taxpayer funded ESAs for private schools.
1.) Taxpayer Cost: The fiscal note for ESAs is $4.6 billion per year in year 2030. In lieu of funding ESAs for private schools, the state could:
Further reduce property taxes, Stop funding public schools below the national average (Texas students are not “Below Average”), Provide each Texas public-school graduate with $12,100 to obtain college or technical degrees, or Fund public highways versus toll roads.
2.) ESAs Primarily Benefit Students/Families Currently Attending Private Schools: Despite the promotion of providing opportunities for low-income students in public schools, the state estimates that 88% of existing private school students, 9% of home school students, and only 1.8% of current public-school students will receive ESAs (see table below). Source: SB 2 Fiscal Note
2.) Arizona and Universal School Choice: With Arizona being the first state to provide universal school choice, Governor Abbott invited former Governor Ducey to promote the importance of universal school choice at a recent press conference. But no one mentioned that the 2024 NAEP scores of Arizona are among the lowest in the nation and significantly below the NAEP scores of Texas, especially for English Language Learners and Economically Disadvantaged students that ESAs are supposed to benefit. Source: The Nation’s Report Card.
5.) State Currently Funds School Choice With Separate System of Charters and Unproven Results: Over the last 30-years, the State has directed taxpayer funding to provide school choice in local communities through a separate system of privately managed charter schools. Currently, charters: Operate 905 schools, Enroll over 420,000 students, Annually receive taxpayer funding of $4.6 billion, Serve students with lower teacher experience, fewer certified teachers, higher student to teacher ratios, administrative costs, and attrition rates compared to locally governed public schools, and Underperform locally governed school districts (see “2024 STAAR” below). Source: Texas Education Agency and Txreasearchportal.com.
6.) Admission Policies Mitigate Low-Income, Low-Performing and SPED Student Enrollment: Private school admission requirements directly limit of the enrollment of current low-income, low-performing, and SPED public school students. Based upon various Texas private school Student/Parent Handbooks, private schools restrict admissions based upon academic performance, religious persuasion, special needs/learning differences, and/or cost. Academic Performance: Private schools often require students to be “at grade level,” thereby prohibiting the enrollment of low-performing students. Example Student/Parent Handbook – Admissions:
“The student must test at grade level (50 percentile) or above in mathematics and reading on a nationally recognized standardized test…No accommodations are provided for entrance testing.”
“Once students are placed on academic probation (for not achieving a GPA of at least 2.0), they will be given one semester to improve their academic performance to a level of 70%. If not achieved, the student may be required to withdraw from the school
Religious Persuasion: Religious educational institutions are exempt from Civil Rights legislation relating to the enrollment and acceptance of individuals with a particular religious persuasion. For example, a new non-Catholic student is the last enrollment priority at many Catholic schools. Example Student/Parent Handbook – Admissions:
Enrollment Priority – Children of: 1.) Faculty, 2.) Active parishioners with siblings in school, 3.) Active parishioners without siblings in school, 4.) Non-Active parishioners with siblings in school, 5.) Non-active parishioners without siblings in school, 6.) Catholics that are parishioners of other Catholic communities, 7.) Non-Catholics with siblings in school, and 8.) Non-Catholics.
Further enrollment limitations for non—Catholic students may also be higher tuition relative to Catholic students.
2024/25 Tuition: Catholic – $8,160 and Non-Catholic – $10,408
Special Needs/Learning Differences: While there are certainly private schools that focus on serving students with special needs/learning differences, private schools are not required to follow the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and may choose to discriminate against students with disabilities. Example Student/Parent Handbook – Admissions:
“The school does not admit students with more severe learning differences or those requiring extensive special education services… (To be admitted), the family must provide current diagnostic testing that recognizes the student’s performance on recognized aptitude testing is 90 or higher.”
“Private schools are not required to significantly alter their programs, lower, or modify their standards to accommodate a child with special needs.”
ESA Does Not Cover the Cost of Private Schools: SB 2 provides a $10,000 ESA for students to attend a private school. For low-income students, the amount is insufficient to cover the $14,750 estimated average annual private school cost, which is $11,350 for tuition and $3,400 for fees (application, testing, enrollment, computer, sports, club fees, transportation, mandatory parent service hours, and uniforms).
7.) Choice Forces Public-School Closures that Denys the “School Choice” of Public-School Families: It has become common for urban, suburban, and rural school districts to close high-performing campuses due to declining enrollment due to the state’s expansion of charters. In fact, school districts have recently closed over 125 campuses due to the expansion of state-approved charters. As such, providing school choice for certain students is disrupting and denying the school choice for over 50,000 students experiencing closure of their public school. With the state projecting 98,000 existing public-school students will utilize ESAs to attend private schools, additional public-school closures are imminent, and ESAs will further deny choice for families choosing their public school.
8.) Voters Consistently Defeat School Choice: Despite claims the majority of Texans support school choice, voters have defeated school choice initiatives placed ono the ballot in every state. In 2024, voters in Colorado and the conservative states of Kentucky and Nebraska repealed or defeated school choice initiatives for private schools.
Audrey Watters is a veteran blogger who has written about Ed-tech for many years, including a book about the history of Ed-tech, Teaching Machines: A History of Personalized Learning. Ed-tech concerns all of us so you might consider following her blog.
The Secretary of Education Linda McMahon will speak at the ASU+GSV Summit next month.
The conference makes no mention in its blurb promoting the Secretary’s appearance of what happened last week: President Trump’s executive order to dismantle her department. There’s no mention of any of the other actions that this administration has taken since January to undermine public education: defunding federal programs, firing federal employees, suing colleges, withholding funding, undermining civil rights initiatives, slashing university research, targeting trans students and athletes, arresting and deporting foreign students and professors. No mention at all of any controversy or crisis. Just this: “Guided by our North Star of unity, the ASU+GSV Summit brings together leaders shaping the future of learning and work—because when all voices are heard, innovation thrives to improve education and access for ALL.”
And that, my friends, is some bullshit.
The ASU+GSV Summit, held every year since 2010, is one of the go-to events of the year for entrepreneurs and investors, a gathering place for those seeking to reform (read: privatize) education. The only “unity” I’ve witnessed at the event – both in person and from afar – has been in the conformity of its attendees to a neoliberal vision for a technological future of individualized achievement…
Indeed, it’s quite telling that many who work in and with education technology seem awfully amped about what’s going on – the cooing about the possibility of more technology now that the Department of Education is being gutted, not to mention, of course, the non-stop narratives about the inevitability, the promise of AI in schools – impossible not read as a threat alongside DOGE’s plans to “unleash AI” across the public sphere. All this should underscore that education technology is an industry, a field that appears quite comfortable with its complicity in this autocratic move away from democracy and towards fascism.
“Not me!” perhaps you’re spluttering. “That’s not what I think.” “That’s not how I use technology.” “That’s not what my school is doing.” “That’s not the product we’re building.” But I’m not sure how long people can keep saying this when ideology, when evidence, when procurement not just points but pushes in another direction.
It’s akin to Eduardo Bonilla-Silva’s description of the enigma of “racism without racists“: funny how we have woken up in techno-fascism without anyone being techno-fascist.
See, ASU+GSV isn’t some weird outlier. It is ed-tech. And the most powerful voices in ed-tech have, for some time now, called for the end of public education, the end of teachers’ unions, the end of local school boards, the end of democracy.
This isn’t some recent or radical takeover of ed-tech either – folks, the fascist phone-call is coming from inside the building. It’s been ringing off the hook for decades now.
In the second portion of this post, Watters describes two new Ed-tech startups inspired by Elon Musk. She relates the new Ed-tech ventures and AI enthusiasm to the rebirth of eugenics and the resurgence of white supremacy and racism. Some of the Ed-tech gurus reject democracy altogether.
You should read the piece in its entirety. I found it on the web, read it for free, then subscribed.
Stephen Dyer is a former state legislator in Ohio. He is a practicing lawyer, an accomplished journalist, and a close observer of state education policy.
He wrote on his blog 10th Period:
According to state data from this year, a whopping 91% of parents with enrolled private school students are getting publicly subsidized tuition.
Ninety. One. Percent.
Back when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Cleveland’s voucher program was Constitutional in 2002, that number was 1.9%…
This has been done at the expense of Ohio’s 1.5 million public school students.
By the end of the currently proposed state budget, Public School students, who make up 84% of Ohio’s total student population, will receive 77.3% of all state K-12 funding. While the 9% of students whose parents receive taxpayer tuition subsidies will eat up 11% of all state K-12 funding¹.
Once again, the “money following the student” bullshit is laid bare by actual facts.
If money were really just “following the student”, then each of the three systems’ share of funding should match their share of population.
Yet the state’s privately run Charter Schools and private school tuition subsidies for mostly wealthy parents make up a larger share of funding than they do population.
At whose expense?
Public School students. And Public School parents, who now have to raise more property taxes to make up for this massive diversion of state funds that has meant they’re receiving 8% less state funding than their population would demand.
Footnote:
(1). And this just includes formula funding for Charter Schools and the Voucher payments. If you include all the additional funding streams for Charter School facilities (and other giveaways), and the administrative cost and auxiliary services reimbursements for private schools, along with transportation funding for both privately run systems, these percentages are even a few percentages higher for Charters and Vouchers and lower for publics. But I wanted to be conservative in my estimate and keep it to just the foundation payments to Charters and the Vouchers only for privates.
Peter Greene, veteran teacher, master writer, the voice of wisdom and experience, sets the record straight about the purpose of the U.S. Department of Education. Contrary to what wrestling-entrepreneur Linda McMahon (Trump’s Secretary of Education) says, the Department was not created to raise test scores. The Department was created to promote equal access to educational opportunity. That equalization of resources has not yet been achieved, but Trump intends to abolish the goal altogether. In his thinking, everyone should pull themselves up by their bootstraps, unlike him, who was born into wealth and privilege.
Peter Greene writes:
The official assault on the Department of Education has begun.
If it seems like there’s an awful lot more talking around this compared to, say, the gutting of the IRS or USAID, that may be because the regime doesn’t have the legal authority to do the stuff that they are saying they want to do. The executive order is itself pretty weak sauce– “the secretary is to investigate a way to form a way to do stuff provided it’s legal.” And that apparently involves sitting down in front of every camera and microphone and trying to make a case.
A major part of that involves some lies and misdirection. The Trumpian line that we spend more than anyone and get the worst results in the world is a lie. But it is also a misdirection, a misstatement about the department’s actual purpose.
Likewise, it’s a misstatement when the American Federation of Children characterizes the “failed public policy” of “the centralization of American education.” But the Department wasn’t meant–or built–to centralize US education.
The department’s job is not to make sure that American education is great. It is expressly forbidden to exert control over the what and how of education on the state and local level.
The Trump administration is certainly not the first to ignore any of that. One of the legacies of No Child Left Behind is the idea that feds can grab the levers of power to attempt control of education in the states. Common Core was the ultimate pretzel– “Don’t call it a curriculum because we know that would be illegal, but we are going to do our damnedest to standardize the curriculum across every school in every state.” For twenty-some years, various reformsters have tried to use the levers of power in DC to reconfigure US education as a centrally planned and coordinated operation (despite the fact that there is nowhere on the globe to point to that model as a successful one). And even supporters of the department are speaking as if the department is an essential hub for the mighty wheel of US education.
Trump is just working with the tools left lying around by the bipartisan supporters of modern education reform.
So if the department’s mission is not to create central organization and coordination, then what is it?
I’d argue that the roots of the department are not the Carter administration, but the civil rights movement of the sixties and the recognition that some states and communities, left to their own devices, would try to cheat some children out of the promise of public education. Derek Black’s new book Dangerous Learning traces generations of attempts to keep Black children away from education. It was (roughly) the 1960s when the country started to grapple more effectively with the need for federal power to oppose those who would stand between children and their rights.
The programs that now rest with the department came before the department itself, programs meant to level the playing field so that the poor (Title I) and the students with special needs (IDEA) would get full access. The creation of the department stepped up that effort and, importantly, added an education-specific Civil Rights office to the effort.
And it was all created to very carefully not usurp the power of the states. When Trump says he’ll return control of education to the states, he’s speaking bunk, because the control of education has always remained with the states– for better or worse.
The federal mission was to make the field more level, to provide guardrails to keep the states playing fair with all students, to make sure that students had the best possible access to the education they were promised.
Trump has promised that none of the grant programs or college loan programs would be cut (and you can take a Trump promise to the… well, somewhere) but if all the money is still going to keep flowing, then what would the loss of the department really mean?
For one thing, the pieces that aren’t there any more. The Office of Civil Rights is now gutted and repurposed to care only about violations of white christianist rights. The National Center of Education Statistics was the source of any data about how education was working out (much of it junk, some of it not). The threat of turning grants into unregulated block grants, or being withheld from schools that dare to vaccinate or recognize diversity or keep naughty books in the library.
So the money will still flow, but the purpose will no longer be to level the playing field. It will not be about making sure every child gets the education they’re entitled to– or rather, it will rest on the MAGA foundation, the assumption that some people deserve less than others.
That’s what the loss of the department means– a loss of a department that, however imperfectly, is supposed to protect the rights of students to an education, regardless of race, creed, zip code, special needs, or the disinterest and prejudice of a state or community. Has the department itself lost sight of that mission from time to time? Sure has. Have they always done a great job of pursuing that mission? Not at all. But if nobody at all is supposed to be pursuing that goal, what will that get us?
A few years bacon, the story of the “Mississippi Miracle” in reading was all the rage. The increase in scores of fourth grade students on NAEP scores was hailed as miraculous, a testament to the dramatic power of the “science of reading.” New York Times’ columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote a column praising Mississippi for raising the test scores of its fourth graders without spending any more money. Anyone could do it!
I don’t often disagree with Tom, who is a relentless researcher of scams and hoaxes perpetrated by the critics of public schools.
I oppose the misuse of high-stakes standardized tests to hold teachers, students, and schools “accountable,” because the tests are loaded with errors and inevitably reflect family income and family education, not the ability of students or teachers. I have written about the inherent flaw of standardized tests in my last three books.
What I like about NAEP is that it is a no-stakes test. It too reflects family income and family education, like all standardized tests. But no one is punished or rewarded for their test scores.
NAEP shows trends by states, cities, gender, race, ethnicity, special ed status, income, etc.
It is NAEP that reveals the lie behind the “Mississippi Miracle.” NAEP shows that fourth graders made dramatic progress and minimal sleuthing demonstrates that the lowest performing students were held back in third grade, excluded from the testing pool.
It’s NAEP that reveals that eighth graders placed 43rd of 50 states. The Miracle didn’t persist.
I think NAEP should remain and the federal mandate for testing every child every year in every school should be abandoned.
Julie Vassilatos lives in Chicago, where she has been active as a parent in the resistance to privatization. In this post, she explains why Trump insists on closing the U.S. Department of Educatuon.
She writes:
What a difference a year makes.
One minute you’re watching your city absorb tens of thousands of new residents, asylum seekers bussed up unannounced from Texas wearing shorts and flip flops in the dead of winter, watching your city do the best they can to make room, to make a home, to help integrate these new neighbors into our city of immigrants.
It’s a whole new world. But one, at least, in which deportation chief Tom Homan is really quite far behind in his local quotas because “the people in Chicago are too educated about their rights.” Apparently this makes his work difficult.
Or take another example. A year ago we lived in a country with a Department of Education.
Blink, and that Department is in rubble on the ground, drastically defunded and illegally dismantled.
We’re not quite there yet. But we’re about to be. The right has been hollering about shutting down the Department of Education almost since its modern inception. Now they get everything they have ever wanted with Elon Musk doing the chopping in the interest of cost savings.
But even if it cost nothing, the DoE would have to be extinguished under our current regime. Because it only exists for one reason. It only has ever existed for one reason. It first came into a short-lived existence for only one reason. And that reason is really, really out of style just at the moment.
The only reason for the Department of Education is equity.
The very first time the idea of a national department of education came up was in the aftermath of the Civil War, when Congressman James A. Garfield—very much understanding the leveling capabilities of education—persuaded Congress to create a department whose sole purpose was to support public education for all Americans, particularly for new immigrants and formerly enslaved people. He thought that “improving the education of citizens was the wisest expenditure a government could make” (Goodyear, 171). And, sure enough, right off the bat, Democratic opponents of such a federal authority cranked and complained about Why do we have to support millions of lazy people who already are hogging at the government trough blah blah Why should Congress have to appropriate public funds for “illegal and improper political purposes” blah blah blah blah….ad nauseam (Goodyear, 173).
(Cue the creepy Twilight Zone music as the reader slowly realizes that we may be permanently stuck in some kind of post-Civil War time loop)
In short order, Garfield’s embattled Department was whittled down to a Bureau; educational equity for all Americans went very out of vogue in the decades post-Reconstruction.
Fast forward eighty years and the nation was still, unsurprisingly, mired in educational inequity. Segregated by race, schools for Black Americans were grossly underfunded and inadequate. 1954’s Brown v Board of Education established school desegregation, but after a painful 20 years and with public schools still not serving all Americans remotely equally, the modern Department of Education was created by Congress in 1979.
This is its first stated goal: “to strengthen the Federal commitment to ensuring access to equal educational opportunity for every individual.”
It’s had a rocky life, with folks on the right wanting to kill it immediately upon birth, and ever since. But its goals have always remained the same: to advance educational equity in a nation sorely in need of it.
Anyway you can see why it has to die now, for so many obvious reasons. Take your pick.
Nothing that exists solely to promote equity must be allowed.
That is a bad goal.
Trump doesn’t like it.
We already have it.
The word “equity” makes white people feel bad and sad.
If someone is horning in on my equity it’s not fair.
Some people are more equity than others.
Now we have a newly minted Secretary of Education, Linda McMahon, who on her first day sent out a missive concerning her department’s “final mission.” She knows little about its proper work and brings with her to the role, mainly decades of a white-dominant WWE culture that is steeped in racist tropes. Freshly confirmed, McMahon is here to burn it all down, and she is happy to.
But what is this department that’s dying, anyway? What is this beast that needs to be sacrificed? Former IL congressman Adam Kinzinger shared a good, brief explainer last week, “The Grinch Who Stole Education,” about what it does and doesn’t do. It does financially support struggling schools, administer student loans, uphold federal laws supporting disabled students, and enforce civil rights laws in public education. It does not dictate curriculum or teacher standards or exercise local control, despite what Trump says.
A much deeper dive, “Cruel to Your School,” comes from Jennifer Berkshire in The Baffler, for those interested in well-narrated, riveting history. Her conclusion is the same as Kinzinger’s—that the entire point of those who want to kill the DoE is to increase the wealth of the wealthy at the expense of children and the marginalized. Cutting this department, as well as all the others, will pay for a $4.5T tax cut for the wealthiest. “Children in need are in the crosshairs,” says Kinzinger, and the wealthy elites who stand to benefit the most are Trump, Musk, and friends. Berkshire notes that “Musk and his DOGE wrecking crew seek to deepen inequality by dismantling not just the federal Department of Education, but the institution of public education itself.” After all, in the world according to Musk, “a cognitive elite with the highest IQs deserves to rule over the rest of us, all in our natural places” in a “good and natural” hierarchy. “In this fixed economy of spoils, there is little point to an institution whose goal is ‘equalizing.’ It can’t be done.”
In this rather horrifying moment, in this context of the violent bludgeoning of a basic and centuries-long effort to create an equitable public education system, I’m giving the last word to Eve Ewing. When those with power strip everything away, shred every value, crush every intention toward a society of justice and equity, it is not enough merely to be angry about what has been taken away. We must—we MUST—dream a good and right future. There is no other way.
“[I]t’s imperative to understand this nightmarish moment as actually being a reflection of someone else’s dream. Groups like Moms for Liberty and The Heritage Foundation have spent years bringing their most deeply held conjurations across the threshold into reality. Regardless of who prevails in the halls of power, who has more lawmakers and more funding on their side, in this one matter — the matter of imagination — we are equals. So how do we use our dreams as a map forward?
“It’s not enough to be afraid of the laws and rules we don’t want to see in schools. We have to clarify our visions of what, how, where and with whom see we want our beloveds to learn. What are we fighting for? Who are the young people you love most, and what do you dream for them? What are the values you hold dear that you want desperately for them to understand, to inherit? What are the histories, the legacies, the ancestors you need them to know? Where can you and the people you trust build collective power to make space for that teaching, for that learning?”
Beyond using your imagination in powerful ways, what are some things you can do?
There’s the ever-necessary Call Your Congressman.
Go to school board meetings. Go to PTA meetings or Local School Council meetings. Find your allies and band together. Throw in your lot with larger orgs and increase your power.
Use that above-mentioned equity tattle line in ways that seem appropriate to the moment.
Get acquainted with the work of the Journey 4 Justice Alliance and attend their upcoming national virtual town hall, “The Threats of Dismantling the USDOE on Black and Brown School Districts,” Thursday, March 20th, 7 pm EST.
Listen to the outstanding Jennifer Berkshire/Jack Schneider podcast about public education, “Have You Heard?” You’ll learn a lot and it’s painless, even entertaining, and sometimes actually hopeful.
ProPublica and the Texas Tribune reported the curious tale of the guy who is probably the highest-paid school superintendent in the state. His base salary of $300,000 is the tip of the iceberg. He oversees small schools in three districts with a total of about 1,000 students.
Over the last three years, the head of a small charter school network that serves fewer than 1,000 students has taken home up to $870,000 annually, a startling amount that appears to be the highest for any public school superintendent in the state and among the top in the nation.
Valere Public Schools Superintendent Salvador Cavazos’ compensation to run three campuses in Austin, Corpus Christi and Brownsville exceeds the less than $450,000 that New York City’s chancellor makes to run the largest school system in the country.
But Cavazos’ salary looks far more modest in publicly posted records that are supposed to provide transparency to taxpayers. That’s because Valere excludes most of his bonuses from its reports to the state and on its own website, instead only sharing his base pay of about $300,000.
The fact that the superintendent of a small district could pull in a big-time salary shocked experts and previewed larger transparency and accountability challenges that could follow as Texas moves to approve a voucher-like program that would allow the use of public funds for private schools.
Cavazos’ total pay is alarming, said Duncan Klussmann, an associate professor at the University of Houston Department of Educational Leadership & Policy Studies.
“I just can’t imagine that there’d be any citizen in the state of Texas that would feel like that’s OK,” Klussmann said.
Details concerning Cavazos’ compensation, and that of two other superintendents identified by ProPublica and The Texas Tribune, drew a sharp rebuke from the association that advocates for charter schools across the state.
“It’s not acceptable for any public school to prioritize someone’s personal enrichment ahead of students’ best interests,” Brian Whitley, a spokesperson for the Texas Public Charter Schools Association, said in a statement. He added that any payment decisions made at the expense of students should be reversed immediately….
At least two other Texas charter school districts have also paid their superintendents hundreds of thousands of dollars on top of what they publicly reported in recent years, our analysis found.
Dallas-based Gateway Charter Academy, which serves about 600 students, paid its superintendent Robbie Moore $426,620 in 2023, nearly double his base salary of $215,100, the latest available federal tax filings show. Pay for Mollie Purcell Mozley of Faith Family Academy, another Dallas-area charter school superintendent, hit a high of $560,000 in 2021, despite a contracted salary of $306,000. She continued to receive more than $400,000 during each of the two subsequent years, according to tax filings.
The DeVos family has poured millions into persuading the people of Michigan to endorse vouchers but they have failed. So far. In a statewide referendum in 2000 sponsored by the DeVoses, voters resoundingly rejected vouchers. Since no voucher referendum has ever passed in any state, the voucher pushers have to find another route that does not include letting voters decide.
Josh Owen thinks they may have found the strategy. He wrote the following editorial for The Detroit Free Press. His article was republished by the Network for Public Education.
Noted voucher scholar Josh Cowen wrote an op-ed for the Detroit Free Press warning Michigan that the GOP is trying yet another backdoor approach to getting vouchers into the state.
Michiganders don’t want school vouchers. But the federal government might force vouchers into Michigan, whether we want them to or not.
In the coming days, Congress will consider whether to include the “Educational Choice for Children Act” (ECCA) among many GOP priorities as part of the budget reconciliation process that will set federal spending for next year and beyond.
That bill, which GOP leaders have introduced in both the Senate and the House, is a school voucher plan mixed with a tax credit that would allow donors to divert all or part of what they owe in federal taxes to other organizations that then distribute those funds for private K-12 tuition and other private educational expenses.
Put another way, this is the federal version of the voucher plans spreading in red states across the country — except this one is nestled inside a tax shelter for mostly wealthy donors. Those donors can give either $5,000 or up to 10% of their adjusted income — whichever is greater — for $10 billion in diverted revenue in the first year alone. Then that spending cap can go up. A similar, Michigan-specific version of this scheme was unsuccessfully backed by Betsy DeVos and allies three years ago.
The new federal bill would top off voucher spending in states that have those systems already, and force vouchers into states that have don’t have or want them — states like Michigan.
Our state constitution bans state funding from going to private K-12 schools. But the new voucher tax credit could circumvent that ban by using federal dollars instead. So much for “giving education back to the states,” as the Trump Administration says it wants to do.
Diane Ravitch's blog 