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Colorado: Voters Reject Proposal to Embed School Choice in State Constitution

By dianeravitch
November 6, 2024 //
2

Colorado voters rejected a proposal that was likely to protect school vouchers.

Colorado Public Radio reported:

It’s looking like Coloradans have rejected an effort to enshrine school choice in the state Constitution. 

As of 9:45 p.m., Amendment 80 was losing, with 52 percent opposed to 48 percent in support. This measure, which would have been the first of its kind in the nation, needs 55 percent of the vote to go into the state constitution.

It would have added language stating each “K-12 child has the right to school choice” and that “parents have the right to direct the education of their children.” It explicitly named charters, private schools, home schools and “future innovations in education” as options guaranteed by the state constitution.

Opponents celebrated the amendment’s apparent defeat.

“We find it really encouraging that people understand what this ballot measure was really trying to do, which was to create a pathway for a private school voucher system,” said Kevin Vick, president of the Colorado Education Association. “And we’re also really encouraged that Colorado voters really value public schools and don’t want to see that happen.”

A legislative analysis concluded that the measure would have no immediate impact on education in Colorado but could have opened the door to future changes to laws and funding for education.

Vick said the vagueness of the measure would have created a “legal quagmire,” which he said, in a worst-case scenario could have meant millions of dollars taken out of the public education system. 

The battle over the measure drew millions of dollars from both sides and complaints against proponents alleging deceptive campaign practices. Amendment 80 was a nuanced ballot issue and difficult for many to understand.

When Denver voter Kyle Slusher first read Amendment 80, he thought giving children options would be a good thing. 

“But if it is actually just creating a lane for private schools to take from public school funding, that’s not obviously something that needs to be occurring,” he said.

After doing more research he changed his mind and voted “no.”

Advance Colorado, a conservative action committee that doesn’t disclose its donors, proposed the amendment. They argued Amendment 80 would protect families’ right to choose the school — public, private or home school — that they deem is the best fit for their child. It was also backed by Ready Colorado, the Colorado Catholic Conference and the Colorado Association of Private Schools.

The measure was opposed by a coalition that included the Colorado Education Association, the Colorado PTA, the Christian Home Educators of Colorado, Colorado Democrats, Stand for Children, the ACLU Colorado and others.

School choice is popular in Colorado, with nearly 40 percent of public school students choosing a school outside their assigned neighborhood school. The 30-year-old school choice law has bipartisan support. Critics of the measure argued that the constitutional amendment wasn’t needed because laws giving Coloradans the right to attend the school of their choice for free already exist.

But proponents worried about what they said were increasing attempts to erode choice by local school boards, the state legislature and the State Board of Education. Proponents said Amendment 80 would be a backstop to any legislative attempt to reverse decades of bipartisan work to expand choice for students.

Categories Accountability, Colorado, Education Industry, Elections, Privatization, Vouchers

Nebraska: Voters Reject Private School Vouchers

By dianeravitch
November 6, 2024 //
3

Voters in Nebraska voted against using public funds to pay for private schools.

LINCOLN — Voters on Tuesday resoundingly rejected Nebraska’s new school voucher or scholarship program, steering public dollars spent to public schools.

Supporters of using state tax dollars to offset the costs of a private K-12 education have argued that families unhappy with their public schools need more options.

But rural and urban supporters of public schools, the Nebraska State Education Association and private foundations supporting public schools won the day.

Tim Royers, president of the Nebraska State Education Association, said he was proud to see right- and left-leaning counties agree that vouchers were the wrong choice.

“It confirms what we knew, the majority of Nebraskans don’t want public dollars going to private schools,” Royers said. “What really stood out to me is the consistency.”

Royers hopes state senators move on

Royers said he is hopeful that state senators will follow the will of the voters and move onto other more pressing issues in education that teachers and parents can work on together.

Support Our Schools argued that diverting even small amounts of public money toward private K-12 schools with a scholarship program or vouchers risked long-term support for public education.

They pointed to the experiences in other states with voucher programs, including neighboring Iowa, which has seen the national rankings of its public schools slide since that program began.

They argued that school choice programs typically end up largely benefiting the people already making the choice to send their children to private schools.

And they said such programs risked creating greater concentrations of poverty in some schools by draining them of students who often act as stabilizing force

Categories Education Industry, Elections, Nebraska, Vouchers

Public Education Has Been Ignored in the Campaign, But It Is on the Ballot

By dianeravitch
November 2, 2024 //
7

It’s hard to notice something that is invisible, but it is indeed obvious that there has been no discussion of education in the Presidential campaign.

It’s not as if education is unimportant: education is a path to a better life and to a better society. It is the road to progress.

The differences between the two candidates are like night and day. Trump supports dismantling public education and giving out vouchers. Harris is committed to funding schools and universities.

Project 2025 displays Trump’s goals: to eliminate the Department of Education, to turn the programs it funds (Title 1, IDEA for students with disabilities) and turn them into unrestricted block grants to states, which allows states to siphon off their funding for other purposes. At the same time that the Trump apparat wants to kill the Ed Department, it wants (contradictorily) to impose mandates on schools to stop the teaching of so-called critical race theory, to censor books, and to impose rightwing ideology on the nation’s schools.

It’s too bad that the future of education never came up in either of the high-profile debates. The American people should know that Kamala Harris wants to strengthen America’s schools, colleges, and universities, and that Donald Trump wants to destroy them.

Randi Weingarten wrote an excellent article in Newsweek about the plans of each candidate.

If you can’t open it, try this link.

Categories Bigotry, Budget Cuts, Censorship, Charter Schools, Curriculum, Democracy, Education Industry, Education Reform, Elections, Extremism, Harris, Kamala, Trump, U.S. Department of Education, Vouchers

Florida: Voting on the Amendments on the Ballot

By dianeravitch
November 2, 2024 //
4

Scott Maxwell, a regular columnist for the Orlando Sentinel, has some suggestions about how to vote in the referenda in Florida. From reading him for the past few years, I trust his judgment.

I don’t live in Florida, but the amendment I will watch closely is #4. That’s the amendment to roll back Florida’s harsh six-week ban on abortion. Very few, if any, women know that they are pregnant at the six-week mark. A six-week ban is, in reality, a total ban. Under this ban, women will die; young girls will be forced to become mothers. People like Ron DeSantis are not pro-life.

VOTE YES TO REPEAL THE SIX-WEEK BAN.

VOTE YES TO REPEAL THE BAN.

This is how Scott Maxwell is voting on state referenda:

Florida’s Constitutional amendments can be confusing, often by design.

So I’m going to try to break down the six amendments on this year’s ballot as simply as possible. I’ll give you the arguments for and against each one, tell you some of the supporters and opponents and share how I’m voting. Do whatever you want. It’s your constitution.

Amendment 1: Make school board races partisan

This would take school board races, which are now nonpartisan affairs, and turn them into partisan contests with closed primaries. The idea was backed by Republican state legislators — and one Democrat, Sen. Linda Stewart of Orlando — who believe partisanship should play a bigger and more transparent role in school issues. Opponents, including the League of Women Voters, say injecting more partisanship into school board races is a rotten idea and note that the closed primary system will prevent many of you from casting votes.

Vote yes: If you want more partisanship and party involvement in local school races, as well as closed primaries.

Vote no: If you think candidates should appeal to voters based on their platforms and credentials rather than their party affiliation.

How I’m voting: No. I think this is the worst amendment on this year’s ballot. The last thing our schools need is more politics and partisanship.

Amendment 2: Put hunting and fishing in the Constitution

This would add language to the Florida Constitution that says hunting and fishing is a constitutionally protected right. Hunting and fishing is already legal in Florida. Existing statutes even declare them as “preserved” activities. And no state has banned hunting and fishing. But advocates say they just want to be super-duper sure. Opponents say this is like asking voters to pass a constitutional amendment protecting the right to golf or play tennis. The Florida Bar Journal also published a lengthy piece that said this proposal could have unintended consequences, such as prohibiting local beach communities from closing stretches of beach to protect turtle eggs, for instance, if someone claimed that turtle protection got in the way of their “constitutional right to fish.”

Vote yes: If you want to enshrine hunting and fishing protections in the Florida Constitution.

Vote no: If you don’t.

How I’m voting: No. This one seems unnecessary and potentially fraught with unintended legal consequences.

Amendment 3: Legalize recreational marijuana

This would basically treat marijuana like cigarettes and booze, making the substance legal but subject to strict government regulation. Advocates note that marijuana is a natural substance, already widely used and argue that legalization would make it safer. Some law enforcement chiefs say it would also stop wasting their time. Opponents, including Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Florida Chamber of Commerce, dispute the drug’s safety, say this amendment would primarily benefit a few large companies and generally argue that communities that allow marijuana are unpleasant.

Vote yes: If you want to legalize marijuana.

Vote no: If you don’t.

How I’m voting: I’ve been torn on this one. I don’t think marijuana is as harmless as some advocates claim and know companies like Trulieve hope to make billions off legalization. But I also believe adults should have the ability to make their own decisions and can’t make a good case for why alcohol and carcinogenic cigarettes should be legal and why this naturally grown plant shouldn’t be. So I ultimately decided yes, agreeing with the Sentinel editorial board’s summary: “We’re not going to pretend that legalizing recreational marijuana would be a 100% beneficial experience for Florida. But it does make sense — far more sense than the current situation, where some people use medical pot with no fear of prosecution while others still face arrest, jail steep fines or a lifelong criminal record for possessing it.”

Amendment 4: Prohibit Tallahassee-imposed restrictions on abortion

This is the abortion amendment. And it’s pretty simple. It would prohibit state lawmakers from imposing any laws that place restrictions on abortion “before viability” beyond what federal law says while preserving requirements for parental notification. Citizens placed this initiative on the ballot to combat Florida’s new restrictions, which are some of the strictest in the nation, banning abortion after 15 weeks without exceptions for rape or incest and effectively banning most abortions after six weeks. Supporters, including some doctors, say Florida’s law puts women’s lives in danger, is heartlessly cruel to victims of sexual crimes and that abortion decisions should be made by women and their doctors, not politicians. Opponents, including the governor and GOP lawmakers, generally oppose abortion and say they should have the right to decide what medical procedures pregnant women can undergo.

Vote yes: If you think Florida’s existing ban on abortions without many exceptions is too extreme.

Vote no: If you are opposed to abortion under most any circumstances and trust state politicians to make the rules.

How I’m voting: Yes. I believe thoughtful people can have different opinions on abortion. But Florida’s current laws are extreme and dangerous.

Amendment 5: Adjust homestead exemptions for inflation

State lawmakers want to offer homeowners a tiny tax break — maybe $10 a year — but force local governments to pay for it. This one’s a bit complicated. It would take half of the $50,000 homestead exemption homeowners get and tie it to inflation. So if inflation rose by 2.5% one year, your homestead exemption would be worth $50,625 the next, representing an increase of 2.5% on $25,000. Clear as mud, right? Opponents say this is political trickery, since state lawmakers aren’t offering to cut state taxes. They want to force local governments to take the hit. And the Florida League of Cities argues that tiny savings for homeowners would have a huge collective impact on local governments. The Tampa Bay Times editorial board supports this plan. The Orlando Sentinel and Sun Sentinel oppose, noting this tax break would elude many Floridians, namely renters.

Vote yes: If you want to slightly increase the tax exemption homeowners get every year and decrease what local governments collect for services like fire and police.

Vote no: If you think the exemption is fine the way it is.

How I’m voting: No. I don’t really care much about this one either way. Sure, I’d like a few extra bucks. But this seems like political theater; a way for state lawmakers to say they provided a tiny tax break without cutting any of their own spending. If state lawmakers want to cut taxes, they should cut the taxes they collect.

Amendment 6: Repeal taxpayer financed campaigns

This would end the law that allows candidates for statewide office to use public money to finance their campaigns. Forty years ago, Floridians voted to create this program, hoping it would help grassroots candidates compete with politicians who suck up gobs of special-interest money. But now, thanks to political committees that can take unlimited donations, the candidates who take the most special interest money also collect the most tax dollars. Ron DeSantis set the record in 2022, collecting the most money ever from deep-pocketed donors and the most from taxpayers (more than $7 million). Supporters of this repeal include Florida legislators. Opponents include the League of Women Voters and the Sentinel editorial board.

Vote yes: If you don’t believe taxpayers should finance political campaigns.

Vote no: If you like the idea of tax dollars paying for campaigns and believe lesser-funded candidates deserve help, even if their better-funded opponents get more of it.

How I’m voting: Yes. Unlike my newspaper’s editorial board, I believe this subsidies-for-politicians program was a noble idea that has been warped beyond sense or salvation. It could’ve been fixed by requiring subsidy recipients to limit all their other contributions. But lawmakers have consistently refused such reforms.

Want more info?

Check out the League of Women Voters’ great voter-info site at Vote411.org

smaxwell@orlandosentinel.com

Categories Charter Schools, Democracy, Education Industry, Elections, Florida

Ohio: Vote YES on Issue 1 to De-politicize Gerrymandering

By dianeravitch
November 2, 2024 //
1

Jeanne Melvin is a public education activist in Ohio. She urges Ohio voters to vote YES on issue 1. This would put a bipartisan commission in charge of redistricting instead of the Legislature. It would block the Legislature from designing their own districts to assure a supermajority. Ohio’s Republican supermajority has passed numerous bills to privatize school funding, including a universal voucher bill that enables all parents to get public funding to subsidize their private school tuition. Vouchers. Most students who use vouchers were already enrolled in private schools. Like all universal vouchers programs, Ohio’s is welfare for the wealthy.

Melvin writes:

Public Education is on the ballot across our nation.

Americans must choose between two presidential candidates whose policies, strategies, and experience relating to issues in public education are at opposite ends of the spectrum.

Voters in 10 states will decide 11 statewide education-related ballot measures– the most since 2018.

Ohio voters have the opportunity to elect state school board candidates and pro-public education candidates, along with approving or renewing tax levies or bond issues from over 100 school districts in the Buckeye State.

This November, Ohio voters will also decide if politicians should be left in charge of drawing our voting maps, or if the politicians should be removed from the process in favor of a citizens commission. 

According to Dr. Christina Collins, former State School Board member and current director of Honesty for Ohio Education, the lack of competitive districts brings “extreme” education policies like attempting to regulate curriculums to avoid what legislators call “critical race theory” from getting into schools, the anti-LGBTQ law keeping transgender students from playing sports in the teams that align with their gender identity, and active bills that would threaten funding and dictate the kind of materials allowed in school libraries.

As previously stated, Ohio’s gerrymandered GOP majority has brought forward some extreme education bills designed to benefit private schools and to defund and diminish public school districts. Public education advocates have responded with facts, logic, and common sense, but lawmakers and lobbyists have chosen not to listen. 

Why would they listen? Gerrymandering has guaranteed a GOP supermajority, and Senate President Matt Huffman said the quiet part out loud: “We can kind of do what we want.”  

Ohioans can VOTE YES on Issue 1 on or before November 5, a bipartisan effort to remove the politicians from legislative redistricting in favor of a 15-member citizens commission made up of five Republicans, five Democrats, and five independents. 

For education, this would mean that instead of Ohio lawmakers focusing on culture wars and EdChoice school voucher expansion, they could focus on more important issues, such as fair school funding to help our local public school districts.

If you don’t like legislative-district maps that have been deliberately drawn to ensure that one political party has a veto-proof supermajority, VOTE YES on Issue 1.

If you don’t like unreasonable education policies, VOTE YES on Issue 1.

If you don’t like paying for other peoples’ private school choices, VOTE YES on Issue 1. 

If you want to keep public tax dollars in public schools, VOTE YES on Issue 1.

That’s why I voted YES on Issue 1!

Categories Education Industry, Elections, Extremism, Ohio, Privatization, Republicans

Massachusetts: Vote YES On Question 2 to Remove State Test as a Graduation Requirement

By dianeravitch
November 1, 2024 //
13

Massachusetts has one of the highest performing school systems in the nation on the national test called NAEP (National Assesmrnt of Educational Progress). Some attribute this success to the state’s testing and accountability program. Others believe that the state test–MCAS–is overused and misused as a high school graduation requirement. Critics of the high-stakes exam as graduation requirement say that it was not designed to be an exit exam, that it has no value for diagnostic purposes, and that the small number of students who don’t pass it are disproportionately made up of students with disabilities and students who are not native-English speakers.

More than 90% of tenth graders pass the MCAS on their first try. Ultimately only hundreds out of more than 65,000 students don’t pass the test, and 85% of those who fail either have disabilities or don’t speak English.

Opponents of MCAS as a high-stakes graduation requirement have placed a referendum on the ballot called Question 2.

I urge voters in Massachusetts to vote YES on Question 2.

Belief in standardized testing as a remedy for low test scores has been misplaced for decades. Some believe that facing a test compels students to study harder, but we now know that the results of the standardized tests reflect family income and education more than student effort and ability. Those at the bottom of the scores inevitably are students with disabilities, students who don’t read English, students living in high poverty.

If high-stakes standardized were the solution to poor academic performance, the U.S. would have no failure at all. We have been administering those tests for more than 20 years. After the initial increases that are associated with test prep, improvement ground to a halt and score gaps between racial and economic groups stubbornly persisted.

Massachusetts teachers know that good things happen to students when schools have ample resources, small classes, and time to help the students with the greatest needs.

The YES vote is supported by the Massachusetts Teachers Association, many local school boards, and Senator Elizabeth Warren.

The NO vote is supported by Governor Maura Healey and the business community.

The campaign to keep the MCAS as a graduation requirement just received a donation of $2.5 million from former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg. Bloomberg ran the New York City schools with a firm belief that high-stakes testing, charter schools, and firing professionals would fix the schools. They didn’t, but he hasn’t learned anything from his stewardship of the schools.

The Boston Globe reported:

Former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg gave $2.5 million to the group trying to beat back a ballot question that would eliminate the MCAS test as a graduation requirement, offering a significant infusion into the heated campaign just ahead of Election Day.

Bloomberg’s seven-figure donation is the largest contribution the “Vote No on 2″ campaign has received, and accounts for more than half of the $4.8 million it has reported raising this election cycle, state data show.

It’s not the billionaire’s first time pouring money into a Massachusetts ballot campaign. Bloomberg donated $490,000 in 2016 to a failed ballot question that would have expanded charter schools in Massachusetts.

If approved by voters, Question 2 would repeal a provision of the state’s landmark 1993 education law that makes earning a high school diploma contingent on students passing MCAS exams in English, math, and science. In its place, the ballot measure would establish a new mandate: Students would need to complete coursework certified by their districts in those subjects that meet state academic standards. The state would be able to add new subjects to that list.

Maurice Cunningham, a retired professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts, writes on his blog that the entry of Bloomberg clarifies the actors. He says it is capital vs. labor, the oligarchy vs. the teachers’ union.

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Elections, Massachusetts, Standardized Testing

Kentucky Catholic School Student: Vote NO on Vouchers

By dianeravitch
October 31, 2024 //
4

This post appeared originally in the Louisville Courier-Journal. It has since been posted by The Network for Public Education, whose contents are curated by Peter Greene.

Liam Amick: Trinity won’t let me write about Amendment 2. Here’s why I’m against it.

Liam Amick is a senior at Trinity High School, a Catholic school in Kentucky, where vouchers are on the ballot next week in Amendment 2, a proposed amendment to the state constitution that would okay vouchers. Trinity has made support of the Amendment mandatory. Amick would like to disagree, and does so in the Courier Journal.

Every day when I drive into school, I’m greeted by yard signs blazing with the message “YES on 2!” To see these put up at Trinity, a school that generally requests little political discussion at school, was quite a shock.

I’m a “private school kid.” I went to St. Francis of Assisi for first through eighth grades, and I am now a senior at Trinity High School. I will always be indebted to those schools for providing me with fantastic educations and experiences in the most formative years of my life. But to say I am disappointed with Trinity’s stance on Amendment 2 — a Kentucky ballot measure that would allow public tax funding to be used for private schools — would be an understatement.

An even bigger disappointment has been Trinity’s and the Archdiocese of Louisville‘s responses to criticism of their position. When both Trinity’s Student Government and Faculty Senate asked if the “YES on 2!” signs could be taken down, they were told that the archdiocese had asked us to put them up and there was absolutely no chance of them being taken down. Also, the administration doesn’t allow our school journalism program to report on any political topics and or criticisms of Trinity and its policies, so I felt that to share my views I had to look outside of the school.

In my opinion, the desire of non-public schools to support Amendment 2 is logical, but closed-minded. What’s important to remember is that, in Kentucky, 65% of non-public schools are found in Louisville, Lexington and the general Northern Kentucky area. Out of 120 counties in Kentucky, 89 have no access to a non-public school, and well-run, accredited non-public schools aren’t going to magically appear in those counties after the passage of Amendment 2. So, the “school choice” amendment would in fact offer students in these areas no “choice” to go to a different school.

Supporters of Amendment 2 often bring up Kentucky’s 2023 $1 billion budget surplus, claiming that that money will be used to provide funding to public schools and said schools will lose no money. However, that surplus money already has a destination. According to House Appropriations and Revenue Chair Jason Petrie, the extra money has “provided the opportunity to invest more than $2.7 billion over the next two years to improve road, rail, river, air, and water infrastructure.” Although Petrie claims they are also making “targeted investments in school facilities,” the bottom line is that significantly fewer tax dollars would go to public schools, leaving no replacement funding in their wake.

Read the full op-ed here. You can view the post at this link : https://networkforpubliceducation.org/blog-content/liam-amick-trinity-wont-let-me-write-about-amendment-2-heres-why-im-against-it/

Categories Education Industry, Elections, Ethics, Religion, Separation of church and state, Students, Vouchers

Barbara Bush, Daughter of GW Bush, is Campaigning for Kamala

By dianeravitch
October 29, 2024 //
6

Barbara Bush, daughter and granddaughter of Republican presidents, endorsed Kamala Harris and is campaigning for her in Pennsylvania.

According to People magazine:

Barbara Pierce Bush, the daughter of former President George W. Bush and granddaughter of former President George H.W. Bush, spent part of her weekend in Pennsylvania campaigning for Vice President Kamala Harris with just days to go before the 2024 presidential election….

“Barbara’s Republican father served as president from 2001 to 2009. Her mother, former first lady Laura Bush, 77, broke with the party’s stance in 2010 by saying she supports same-sex marriage and abortion. At the time, Laura said abortion should “remain legal, because I think it’s important for people, for medical reasons and other reasons.”

Categories Education Industry, Elections, Gender, Harris, Kamala

Brookings Institution: What Project 2025 Means for Education

By dianeravitch
October 29, 2024 //
6

A group of scholars at the Brookings Institution analyzed Project 2025’s proposals for education and their implications.

What struck me as most bizarre about Project 2025 was not its efforts to block-grant all federal funding of schools, nor its emphasis on privatization of K-12 schools. (Block-granting means assigning federal funding to states as a lump sum, no strings attached, no federal oversight).

No, what amazed me most was the split screen between the report’s desire to hand all power over education to states and communities, and the report’s insistence on preserving enough power to punish LGBT students, especially trans students and to impose other far-right mandates, like stamping out critical race theory. You know, either you let the states decide or you don’t. The report wants it both ways.

It’s also astonishing to realize that the insidious goal of the report is eventually abandon federal funding of education. That’s a huge step backward, taking us to 1965, before Congress passed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, whose purpose was to raise spending in impoverished communities. I essence, P2025 says that decades of pursuing equitable funding “didn’t work,” so let’s abandon the goal and the spending.

Here is the Brookings analysis:

Project 2025 outlines a radical policy agenda that would dramatically reshape the federal government. The report was spearheaded by the right-wing Heritage Foundation and represents the policy aims of a large coalition of conservative activists. While former President Trump has attempted to distance himself from Project 2025, many of the report’s authors worked in the previous Trump administration and could return for a second round. Trump, himself, said in 2022, “This is a great group, and they’re going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do.”

In other words, Project 2025 warrants a close look, even if the Trump campaign would like Americans to avert their gaze.

Project 2025’s education agenda proposes a drastic overhaul of federal education policy, from early childhood through higher education. Here’s just a sample of the Project 2025 education-related recommendations:

  • Dismantle the U.S. Department of Education (ED)
  • Eliminate the Head Start program for young children in poverty
  • Discontinue the Title I program that provides federal funding to schools serving low-income children
  • Rescind federal civil rights protections for LGBTQ+ students
  • Undercut federal capacity to enforce civil rights law
  • Reduce federal funding for students with disabilities and remove guardrails designed to ensure these children are adequately served by schools
  • Promote universal private school choice
  • Privatize the federal student loan portfolio

It’s an outrageous list, and that’s just the start of it.

We’ve reviewed the Project 2025 chapter on education (Chapter 11), along with other chapters with implications for students. We’ve come away with four main observations:

1. Most of the major policy proposals in Project 2025 would require an unlikely amount of congressional cooperation

Project 2025 is presented as a to-do list for an incoming Trump administration. However, most of its big-ticket education items would require a great deal of cooperation from Congress.

Proposals to create controversial, new laws or programs would require majority support in the House and, very likely, a filibuster-proof, 60-vote majority in the Senate. Ideas like a Parents’ Bill of Rights, the Department of Education Reorganization Act, and a federal tax-credit scholarship program fall into this category. Even if Republicans outperform expectations in this fall’s Senate races, they’d have to attract several Democratic votes to get to 60. That’s not happening for these types of proposals.  

The same goes for major changes to existing legislation. This includes, for example, a proposal to convert funding associated with the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) to no-strings-attached block grants and education savings accounts (with, presumably, much less accountability for spending those funds appropriately). It also includes a proposal to end the “negotiated rulemaking” (“neg-reg”) process that ED follows when developing regulations related to programs authorized under Title IV of the Higher Education Act (HEA). The neg-reg requirement is written into HEA itself, which means that unwinding neg-reg would require Congress to amend the HEA. That’s unlikely given that HEA reauthorization is already more than a decade overdue—and that’s without the political baggage of Project 2025 weighing down the process.

The prospect of changing funding levels for existing programs is a little more complicated. Programs like Title I are permanently authorized. Eliminating Title I or changing the formulas it usesto allocate funds to local educational agencies would require new and unlikely legislation. Year-to-year funding levels can and do change, but the vast majority of ED’s budget consists of discretionary funding that’s provided through the regular, annual appropriations process and subject to a filibuster. This limits the ability of one party to make major, unilateral changes. (ED’s mandatoryfunding is more vulnerable.)

In sum, one limiting factor on what an incoming Trump administration could realistically enact from Project 2025 is that many of these proposals are too unpopular with Democrats to overcome their legislative hurdles.

2. Some Project 2025 proposals would disproportionately harm conservative, rural areas and likely encounter Republican opposition

Another limiting factor is that some of Project 2025’s most substantive proposals probably wouldn’t be all that popular with Republicans either.

Let’s take, for example, the proposed sunsetting of the Title I program. Project 2025 proposes to phase out federal spending on Title I over a 10-year period, with states left to decide whether and how to continue that funding. It justifies this with misleading suggestions that persistent test score gaps between wealthy and poor students indicate that investments like Title I funding aren’t paying off. (In fact, evidence from school finance reforms suggests real benefits from education spending, especially for students from low-income families.)

The phrase “Title I schools” might conjure up images of under-resourced schools in urban areas that predominantly serve students of color, and it’s true that these schools are major beneficiaries of Title I. However, many types of schools, across many types of communities, receive critical support through Title I. In fact, schools in Republican-leaning areas could be hit the hardest by major cuts or changes to Title I. In the map below, we show the share of total per-pupil funding coming from Title I by state. Note that many of the states that rely the most on Title I funds (darkest blue) are politically conservative.

[Open the link to see the map.]

Of course, the impact of shifting from federal to state control of Title I would depend on how states choose to handle their newfound decision-making power. Given that several red states are among the lowest spenders on education—and have skimped on programs like Summer EBT and Medicaid expansion—it’s hard to believe that low-income students in red states would benefit from a shift to state control.

What does that mean for the type of support that Project 2025 proposals might get from red-state Republicans in Congress? It’s hard to know. It’s worth keeping in mind, though, that the GOP’s push for universal private school voucher programs has encountered some of its fiercest resistance from rural Republicans across several states.

3. Project 2025 also has significant proposals that a second Trump administration could enact unilaterally

While a second Trump administration couldn’t enact everything outlined in Project 2025 even if it wanted to, several consequential proposals wouldn’t require cooperation from Congress. This includes some actions that ED took during the first Trump administration and certainly could take again.

Here are a few of the Project 2025 proposals that the Trump administration could enact with the authority of the executive branch alone:

  • Roll back civil rights protections for LGBTQ+ students
  • Roll back Title IX protections against sex-based discrimination
  • Dismantle the federal civil rights enforcement apparatus
  • Eliminate current income-driven repayment plans and require higher monthly payments for low-income borrowers
  • Remove protections from predatory colleges that leave students with excessive debt

Federal education policy has suffered from regulatory whiplash over the last decade, with presidential administrations launching counter-regulations to undo the executive actions of the prior administration. Take, for example, “gainful employment” regulations that Democratic administrations have used to limit eligibility for federal financial aid for colleges that leave students with excessive loan debt. A second Trump administration would likely seek to reverse the Biden administration’s “gainful employment” regulations like the first Trump administration did to the Obama administration’s rules. (Then again, with the Supreme Court striking down Chevron, which provided deference to agency expertise in setting regulations, the Trump administration might not even need to formally undo regulations.)

Other Project 2025 proposals, not explicitly about education, also could wreak havoc. This includes a major overhaul of the federal civil service. Specifically, Project 2025 seeks to reinstate Schedule F, an executive order that Trump signed during his final weeks in office. Schedule F would reclassify thousands of civil service positions in the federal government to policy roles—a shift that would empower the president to fire civil servants and fill their positions with political appointees. Much has been written about the consequences of decimating the civil service, and the U.S. Department of Education, along with other federal agencies that serve students, would feel its effects.

4. Project 2025 reflects a white Christian nationalist agenda as much as it reflects a traditional conservative education policy agenda

If one were to read Project 2025’s appeals to principles such as local control and parental choice, they might think this is a standard conservative agenda for education policy. Republicans, after all, have been calling for the dismantling of ED since the Reagan administration, and every administration since has supported some types of school choice reforms.

But in many ways, Project 2025’s proposals really don’t look conservative at all. For example, a large-scale, tax-credit scholarship program would substantially increase the federal government’s role in K-12 education. A Parents’ Bill of Rights would require the construction of a massive federal oversight and enforcement function that does not currently exist. And a proposal that “states should require schools to post classroom materials online to provide maximum transparency to parents” would impose an enormous compliance burden on schools, districts, and teachers.

Much of Project 2025 is more easily interpretable through the lens of white Christian nationalism than traditional political conservatism. Scholars Philip Gorski and Samuel Perry describe white Christian nationalism as being “about ethno-traditionalism and protecting the freedoms of a very narrowly defined ‘us’.” The Project 2025 chapter on education is loaded with proposals fitting this description. That includes a stunning number of proposals focused on gender identity, with transgender students as a frequent target. Project 2025 seeks to secure rights for certain people (e.g., parents who support a particular vision of parental rights) while removing protections for many others (e.g., LGBTQ+ and racially minoritized children). Case in point, its proposal for “Safeguarding civil rights” says only, “Enforcement of civil rights should be based on a proper understanding of those laws, rejecting gender ideology and critical race theory.”

These types of proposals don’t come from the traditional conservative playbook for education policy reform. They come from a white Christian nationalist playbook that has gained prominence in far-right politics in recent years.

At this point, it’s clear that the Trump campaign sees Project 2025 as a political liability that requires distance through the election season. Let’s not confuse that with what might happen during a second Trump administration.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Childhood, Pre-K, K, Civil Rights, Cruelty, Disruption, Early Childhood Education, Education Industry, Elections, Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), Equity, Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), Extremism, Funding, Privatization, Religion, Republicans, School Choice, Separation of church and state, Special Education, Vouchers

Tennessee: Governor Lee Demands Vouchers for All Students, Rich and Poor Alike

By dianeravitch
October 24, 2024 //
5

Marta W. Aldrich reported in Chalkbeat that Governor Bill Lee will make universal vouchers his top priority in education this coming year. Tennessee currently has a voucher program that is limited to three urban districts and is not fully enrolled. The Governor, who is a graduate of public schools, wants all students, rich and poor alike, to have a public subsidy to pay for private and religious schooling.

Republicans have made universal vouchers a high priority, knowing that it will drain students and funding from their local public schools.

Governor Lee’s effort to pass universal vouchers failed last year because of opposition by urban Democrats and rural Republicans. However, some of the Republican opponents were defeated with the help of out-of-state money spent to elect voucher-friendly Republicans who were willing to undercut their local public schools.

The extremist Republicans were funded by an organization called 1776 Project PAC, whose purpose is to elect school boards who will oppose “woke” policies and support privatization. Its leader is a GOP operative named Ryan James Gidursky. Here is a video where he discusses “the Marxist takeover of America’s schools.” Check out the merchandise on their website, which says more about their purposes than the other parts of the website. The 1776 Project PAC was funded by a rightwing billionaire, Richard Uihelein, who wants to destroy public schools because they are “woke.”

From what we already know about vouchers, we can predict that the great majority of them will be used by affluent families whose children are already enrolled in nonpublic schools. In his recently published book, The Privateers, Josh Cowen of Michigan State University has shown that the low-income students who transfer to nonpublic schools do not make academic gains and frequently experience “catastrophic” declines in their outcomes.

A new universal school voucher proposal will be the first bill filed for Tennessee’s upcoming legislative session, signaling that Gov. Bill Lee intends to make the plan his No. 1 education priority for a second straight year.

Senate Majority Leader Jack Johnson said this week that he’ll file his chamber’s legislation on the morning of Nov. 6, the day after Election Day. He expects House Majority Leader William Lamberth will do the same.

The big question is whether House and Senate Republican leaders will be able to agree on the details in 2025. The 114th Tennessee General Assembly convenes on Jan. 14 as Lee begins his last two years in office.

During the 2024 session, the governor’s Education Freedom Scholarship proposal stalled in finance committees over disagreements about testing and funding, despite a GOP supermajority, and even as universal voucher programs sprang up in several other states….

Similar to last year’s proposal, the new bill would provide about $7,000 in taxpayer funds to each of up to 20,000 students to attend a private school beginning next fall, with half of the slots going to students who are considered economically disadvantaged. By 2026, all of Tennessee’s K-12 students, regardless of family income, would be eligible for vouchers, though the number of recipients would depend on how much money is budgeted for the program.

“This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at ckbe.at/newsletters”.

Categories Dark Money, Disruption, Education Industry, Extremism, Privatization, Religion, Republicans, Separation of church and state, Tennessee, Vouchers
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