Stephen Dyer, a former state legislator in Ohio, keeps track of school choice in his state, which has been a costly disaster for students and taxpayers.

He writes in this post that charters and vouchers are actually more expensive than public schools.

I’ve helped document for years how Ohio’s charter schools and voucher program doesn’t lead to better educational outcomes, while it harms the educational opportunities for the 90% of Ohio students who are educated in local public school districts and leads to greater racial segregation.

However, the pro-privatization folks seemed to always have this in their quiver: At least charters and vouchers are cheaper for Ohio’ taxpayers.

Here’s how the Fordham Institute put it: 

Even after a massive overhaul of the school funding system, Ohio charter schools are still shortchanged, receiving about 75 cents on the dollar compared to their traditional public school counterparts.

So I decided to check out their claim. And it appears that the state’s charter and voucher programs cost about 5-10% more than it would to just have all those students return to their resident public school district.…

That’s right. It’s cheaper for Ohio taxpayers to keep all those charter and voucher students in local public schools. And they’ll do better academically. And we’ll have a more integrated public school system. And kids in public schools won’t have to do with fewer opportunities so privately run educational options can receive public subsidies.

Other than that…

So, let’s see. Students in charter schools and in voucher schools do worse academically than their peers in public schools. And it costs more to fund three school sectors.

Ohio spent more than $1.5 billion on charters and vouchers this year and the cost continues to rise.

So, if you’re keeping score at home, these programs do the following:

• provide inferior overall student performance
• limit public school students’ educational opportunities
• worsen school segregation 
• cost taxpayers significantly more money than the students would need to be educated their local public school districts. 

Now why is it that Ohio lawmakers keep pouring money into these programs again?

M. Yvonne Taylor taught AP English in Texas, where she was one of the few–if not the only–Black AP English teacher. In this post, she explains how Toni Morrison’s books changed her life. Morrison’s books are frequently banned in red states, but Taylor discovered that they were not only important to her but to black students, even to white students. The lesson, she implies, is that students may get excited about reading if they are allowed to read the books that are likeliest to be banned.

Read her article in full. The following is an excerpt.

She writes:

It was 2009. The country had just elected its first actual black president. (A famous quote from Morrison, often misunderstood, has her naming Bill Clinton as our first black president.) I was teaching high school AP English. The school was diverse, but as is common even in diverse schools, the AP English classes were not. And I was the sole black teacher of AP English at the high school. The sole black AP English teacher in the district. And when I attended an AP English conference at Rice University earlier in the year, I was the lone black AP English teacher out of at least 100 teachers from across the state of Texas. When I’d attended that conference, the sole Latina in the group rushed over to me, “I’ve been coming to these conferences for eight years. This is the first time I’ve seen another teacher of color,” she said, quickly exchanging information with me and inviting me to lunch.

Upcoming on the syllabus for 12th grade AP English that spring were two books, Pride and Prejudice and Wuthering Heights. Students would have a choice between them. I sighed. We’d read no books by people of color at all. I scanned the list of approved AP English texts. I spotted Morrison’s name, and though at the time The Bluest Eye wasn’t listed among them, I felt compelled to teach it. I believed the story would be accessible to high school students. I believed it was also important, as Americans were so quick to see the election of Barack Obama as the beginning of a post-racial era, to show a history that was not so far from, and still influencing, the present.

I petitioned to have the book included on our reading list, and though it was permitted, I was the only one who felt comfortable teaching it. The white teachers felt they couldn’t tackle the subject matter and because the book, which has been banned by school districts in various parts of the country at one time or another, dealt with issues of abuse, I had to allow students to opt out if they chose and get permission slips signed from parents if they wanted to dive in.

As I’d expected, black and brown students flocked to my class to read it. However, unexpectedly the controversy had an interesting consequence. White teenage boys, uninterested in what they saw as sappy 19th-century love stories, chose to read The Bluest Eye in droves. Conversations in class were fruitful, layered, nuanced, and complex. I explained colorism to them, brought in my parents’ high-school yearbooks to show them how close segregation and Jim Crow actually were to me and to them. We dissected the book as a literary work and shared empathy over the sadness of an innocent black girl whose only desire was to be seen and loved by a society that refuses to recognize her humanity.

Texas is a state where anyone can carry a gun without a permit, thanks to Governor Greg Abbott.

The right to life is precious for a fetus but not for anyone else.

In recognition of the lawlessness and easy access to guns in the state, teachers of preschoolers in Houston are now getting trained on how to respond to an active shooter. This is training that would also be useful in shopping centers, movie theaters, concert venues, grocery stores, and wherever people gather.

Everyone from lunchroom staff to administrators from 31 southwest Houston preschools gathered Monday to learn about how to prepare themselves and the children for an active shooter.

About 500 staff from the nonprofit BakerRipley gathered in a cavernous conference room at the NRG Center to learn a protocol for responding to active shooters in the wake of the Uvalde school massacre. Teachers had spent much of the day on training, including how to confront an armed attacker, before returning to their classrooms later this month.

The nonprofit has been preparing “age appropriate” language and visual aids for its charges, who range in age from 6 weeks to five years, said Cimberli Darrough, BakerRipley’s senior director of Head Start programs.

“If you hear ‘pop pop,’ hide,” said Darrough, explaining how the preschoolers will be taught active shooter protocols. “When we say it is time to hide, you need to hide. You need to stay still. We are turning the lights out, barricading the door.”

Sounding practical rather than alarmist, Alvin ISD Sgt. Jermaine Jackson, instructed the preschool workers on avoidance and defense tactics he said would help them react quickly during a school shooting.

“Run, hide, fight,” he repeated, citing the basic tenets of active shooter protocols promoted by the FBI. “You want to be a moving target instead of a stationary target.”

Arming the teachers and training the students how to hide must be a whole lot easier than banning assault weapons and limiting access to deadly firearms.