Texas Governor Greg Abbott wants vouchers. He claims that polls show parents want vouchers. But they don’t, as this article shows. He says he wants “education not indoctrination,” yet advocates public money to fund schools that explicitly indoctrinate students.
He’s annoyed that he has not yet been able to twist enough arms in the Legislature to get them. He even visited private and religious schools to spread the message that parents would get tuition help from the state. But a strong coalition of Democrats and Republicans has returned him down repeatedly.
Two Texas scholars, David DeMatthews and David S. Knight, wrote an opinion piece in The Houston Chronicle explaining that the public wants better-funded public schools, not tuition for kids in private and religious schools.
They wrote:
Governor Abbott will likely call a special session on school vouchers after House Bill 100 failed to pass during the regular legislative session. But we believe a special session should instead be called to improve school safety and teacher retention, not a voucher scheme that runs counter to what Texas families want for their children.
Texas families want safe schools with a stable teacher workforce, especially following the mass shooting in Uvalde and the fact that roughly 50,000 teachers left their positions last year. In a recent statewide poll, 73 percent of Texans identified school safety, teacher pay, curriculum content and public school financing as top priorities.
In the same poll, few Texans viewed vouchers as a priority, although stark differences in opinion emerged between Democrats and Republicans. Only eight percent of Texans prioritized vouchers.
Unfortunately, some state policymakers continue to push vouchers by attacking public schools. Abbott has overseen the state’s public education system since he took office in 2015, yet only recently has he begun to claim that schools are sites of “indoctrination.”
These attacks likely contribute to Americans’ loss of confidence in public schools. In January 2019, Gallup reported that 50 percent of Democrats and 50 percent of Republicans were satisfied with public schools. By January 2022, Republican support dropped sharply to 30 percent. Democratic support remained stable.
With that background, it’s easy to believe that Texans have grown interested in vouchers. But polls showing that, we believe, are misleading. For example, a University of Houston poll asked a sample of 1,200 Texans about their support of vouchers. The researchers concluded that 53 percent of respondents supported the policy. Yet a close examination of the data shows that the statistic leaves out approximately 12 percent of respondents — the ones who said that they “don’t know” enough to express an opinion. When the “don’t know” group is added back in, voucher supporters are in the minority.
Polls asking Texans whether they support vouchers are of little value if Texans are unfamiliar with the policy. And to make matters worse, advocacy groups have invested significant resources to mislead the public.
Texans would not support vouchers if they knew the truth. Ask yourself the following questions. What Texan would support vouchers if they knew recent studies found students using vouchers underperformed on standardized tests relative to their public school peers?
State policymakers pushing vouchers are not asking the right questions or presenting adequate evidence. They are being disingenuous. A special session should focus on school safety and teacher retention, not vouchers. As more families become aware of the harm vouchers cause students, we can’t imagine that most Texans will support them.
David DeMatthews is an associate professor in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy at the University of Texas.
David S. Knight is an associate professor of education finance and policy at the University of Washington.
Republicans in North Carolina hold a supermajority in the state’s General Assembly after a renegade Democrat announced she was switching parties. That legislator, Tricia Cotham, betrayed the people who voted for her, thinking she supported abortion rights and opposed vouchers. After switching sides, she voted to ban abortion and to support vouchers. With a supermajority, Republicans can and do override Democratic Governor Roy Cooper’s vetoes.
Democratic North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper on Friday vetoed a Republican-backed bill that seeks to enable big changes to the state’s charter school system, likely setting up another override battle with the GOP-led General Assembly.
House Bill 219, the “Charter Schools Omnibus,” would remove a cap on enrollment growth at low-performing charter schools and allow charter schools to automatically add enrollment and grade levels over time without state approval.
It would also allow the schools to give preference to students in certain preschools. The law currently requires admissions to be done by lottery, not by preference. And it would allow charters to enroll and charge tuition for out-of-state and foreign exchange students.
Currently, charter schools must secure and finance their own buildings. State and local taxes pay for the operating costs of charters, but not for their capital needs.
Counties would be authorized to raise taxes to generate the needed funds for charters but wouldn’t be required to do so.
Supporters of the bill say it would even the playing field between charters and traditional public schools, which are already fully funded by taxpayers.
But critics say there’s not enough funding available for traditional public school capital needs as it stands.
“This bill allowing more students to attend failing charter schools risks their education and their future,” Cooper said in a statement Friday.
He said the State Board of Education should maintain oversight of charter schools’ enrollment growth.
“Diverting local resources to build charter schools without clear authority on who owns them risks financial loss to county taxpayers who have no recourse,” Cooper said.
The measure passed both General Assembly chambers with full Republican support and at least one Democratic vote, so it’s a likely candidate for a veto override when lawmakers return to business in Raleigh on Aug. 7, along with five other veto overrides on their calendars.
It’s the 14th veto of the year for Cooper. Six are awaiting override votes. The previous eight have been overridden already.
Republican legislators don’t give a hoot about students or education. They keep their eyes on what matters: profit.
Just over two years ago, Universal Academy, a Texas charter school with two campuses in the Dallas area, made a surprising move.
In November 2020, a nonprofit foundation formed to support the school bought a luxury horse ranch and equestrian center from former ExxonMobil Chairman Rex Tillerson. The 12-building complex features a show barn “designed with Normandy-style cathedral ceilings,” a 120,000 square foot climate-controlled riding arena and a viewing pavilion with kitchen and bathrooms.
Last summer the Texas Education Agency granted Universal Academy permission to create a new elementary campus on the horse property’s manicured grounds. It will offer students riding lessons, according to a brochure, for $9,500.
School board President Janice Blackmon said Universal hopes to use the facility to start a 4H chapter and Western-style horsemanship training, among other programs that take advantage of its rural location. “We’re trying to broaden the students and connect them to their Texas roots,” she said.
Splashy purchases like the horse arena are receiving increasing public scrutiny as charter schools continue toexpand aggressively across Texas. Under state law, charter schools are public schools — just owned and managed privately, unlike traditional school districts.
An analysis by Hearst Newspapers found cases in which charter schools collected valuable real estate at great cost to taxpayers but with a tenuous connection to student learning. In others, administrators own the school facilities and have collected millions from charging rent to the same schools they run.
In Houston, the superintendent and founder of Diversity, Roots and Wings Academy, or DRAW, owns or controls four facilities used by the school, allowing him to bill millions to schools he oversees. DRAW’s most recent financial report shows signed lease agreements to pay Fernando Donatti, the superintendent, and his companies more than $6.5 million through 2031.
In an email, superintendent Donetti at DRAW said the property transactions were ethical, in the best interest of DRAW’s students and properly reported to state regulators. He said his school was “lucky” he was able to purchase the property because of challenges charters can face finding proper facilities. DRAW Academy, center, photographed Thursday, Jan. 19, 2023, in Houston.Jon Shapley/Staff photographer
Also in the Houston area, at ComQuest Academy Charter High School, the superintendent and her husband also own the company to which the school pays rent.
And Accelerated Learning Academy, a charter school based in Houston, is still trying to get a tax exemption on one of the two condominiums it bought just over a decade ago in upscale neighborhoods in Houston and Dallas. The school claims it has used the condos for storage, despite a nearby 9,600 square foot facility.
The battles between school districts and charter networks have become increasingly pitched, as they are locked in a zero-sum battle for public dollars.
Last year in Houston, about 45,000 students transferred from the ISD to charter schools, resulting in a loss to the district of a minimum of $276 million. That figure includes only the basic allotment received by the districts, excluding special education funding or other allotments.
In San Antonio, the two largest school districts are Northside ISD and North East ISD. More than 12,000 Northside students transferred to charter schools in the 2021-2022 school year, as did just under 8,000 from North East ISD. That means Northside lost at least $75 million, while North East lost $50 million, using the same basic allotment figures.
Each side cries foul about the other’s perceived advantages: charters are able to operate with less government and public scrutiny, while school districts benefit from zoning boards and can lean on a local tax base for financing.
Georgina Perez, who served on the State Board of Education from 2017 until this year, noted arrangements such as these would never be permitted at traditional school districts.
“If it can’t be done in (school districts), they probably had a good reason to disallow it,” she said. “So why can it be done with privately managed charter franchises?”
Lawmaker: ‘Sunshine’ is best cure
The largest charter network in Texas was a catalyst for the increased public scrutiny of charter school spending.
IDEA Public Schools faces state investigation for its spending habits, including purchases of luxury boxes at San Antonio Spurs games, lavish travel expenditures for executives, the acquisition of a boutique hotel in Cameron County for more than $1 million, plans to buy a $15 million private jet and other allegations of irresponsible or improper use of funds. The allegations date back to 2015 and led to the departure of top executives — including CEO and founder Tom Torkelson, who received a $900,000 severance payment.
Over the years lawmakers have steadily tightened rules for charter governance. A 2013 bill included provisions to strengthen nepotism rules; a 2021 law outlawed large severance payments. That bill was sponsored by Rep. Terry Canales, a South Texas Democrat whose district has some of the highest rates of charter school enrollment in the state.
“There’s a lot of work to be done for the people of Texas when it comes to charter schools,” Canales said. “Sunshine is the best cure for corruption. And the reality is it seems to be sanctioned corruption in charter schools.”
Considering the increased scrutiny, “It’s a myth that charter schools today are unregulated,” said Joe Hoffer, a San Antonio attorney who works on behalf of many charter schools. “Every session, more and more laws get passed.” If anything, he said, charter schools often have to jump through more regulatory hoops than local schools.
Steve Nelson is a retired educator. In this post, he contrasts the demands of the fake “parental rights” folk with a genuine agenda for the rights of parents and children:
As is true in many aspects of current American politics, the right wing conservatives dominate the discourse on education. As is also true in other aspects of current American politics, it seems not to matter that they are wrong – terribly wrong – and are gradually unraveling the critically important institution of public education.
The assault is on two broad fronts:
*The persistent efforts to privatize education through charter and voucher schemes, accompanied by defunding traditional public schools and diverting support to all manner of incompetent opportunists.
*An overlapping campaign to bring more Christianity into publicly-funded education and remove any and all references to race, gender, sexuality and normal functions of the human body.
In service of these goals they have successfully captured the PR realm, with groups like the attractively named Moms for Liberty. Who wouldn’t love moms or liberty?
The most damage is being done with legislation at the local and state level. Right-wingers have taken control of school boards and many gerrymandered state legislatures. Once again, these zealots have seized the PR reins by using the inarguably appealing mantra of “parental rights.” What parents want their rights taken away? So, the significant body of laws and policies that already protect the rights of parents is being absurdly enhanced with laws and policies that give parents the “right” to dictate what books children can read, what bathrooms children can use, and what public health measures can be exercised. They also claim the right to micromanage curricula, thereby ensuring that a white, Eurocentric, Christian, heteronormative experience is enjoyed by all. Ozzie and Harriet are applauding from the grave.
We liberals and progressives have done a piss poor job of responding in kind. Lots of folks (like me!) opine passionately to minuscule effect, given that our readers are in the hundreds or, rarely, thousands. There are politicians and pundits who argue against the nefarious work of this loud, conservative minority, but we are seldom, if ever, on the offensive.
We too need slogans and initiatives with catchy names that capture the imagination.
Perhaps:
*Moms for Keeping Crazy Moms Out of Our Schools and Libraries.
*Parents for the Rights of Teachers to Teach Without Nut-bag Interference
*Citizens for Keeping God Safe in Our Churches and Out of Our Politics
*Parents of Black and LGBTQ Students Who Won’t Take This Shit Anymore
Nelson then lists an educational bill of rights that the overwhelming majority of parents and teachers would likely endorse:
Then, if and when we can get the crazies under control, the parents in the majority can address the actual needs of children. What might happen if a grassroots effort gathered momentum and demanded that schools and school systems adopt this Bill of Rights?
Bill of Educational Rights
The undersigned insist that our school(s) and all teachers:
Open the link to read Steve Nelson’s Bill of Educational Rights.
Organizations that opened new charter schools in Texas over the last five years frequently overestimated the number of students they would enroll in their early years when making their pitch for state approval, according to a review of statewide data.
Of the 19 schools approved since 2017 that have opened, 18 fell short of their enrollment projections, and 14 were at least 20 percent lower than they estimated. In eight cases, enrollment was at least 60 percent less than the number projected.
In Harris County, for example, Legacy School of Sports Sciences said it planned to have about 1,850 students by this school year, while actual data shows its enrollment was 447. In Bexar County, Royal Public Schools planned for 672 students, while its enrollment was around 200.
Officials at both schools did not respond to a request for comment.
Over the last decade, the Legislature has smoothed the way for charter schools to quickly expand, giving more authority to the Texas Education Agency and taking it away from the state education board and from cities and towns.
But as charter school groups continue to push for more support from the state, the failures of new schools to hit enrollment projections undercuts the argument that there is massive demand.
Members of the state board have grumbled that charter applicants that come before them for approval are offering overly rosy visions of their future or even misleading the board entirely.
At the State Board of Education meeting last month considering the latest new charter school applicants, Member Aicha Davis, D-Dallas, asked why the board should approve a new set of schools when recent ones haven’t performed to their expectations.
“We’ve been approving charter schools every single year, even during COVID years, without really reviewing the success of the charters that we’ve approved,” Davis said in a phone interview. “Almost none of them are anywhere near capacity, so we’re consistently opening new schools even when the existing schools are having problems filling their classrooms.”
Charter school representatives said the projections are often flawed because they come before schools can secure facilities, a major challenge for charter networks that don’t receive state facility funding or local property taxes.
Charter proponents also pointed to the pandemic, during which enrollment at both public and private schools declined. Of late, many local traditional school districts have also fallen short of their enrollment projections.
Under state law, charter schools exist to augment the system of public school districts, which are required to serve every child.
But there’s a long-simmering tension between charters and districts because when a student transfers to a charter, their former district loses out on the associated funding, which averages to about $10,000 per student.
Challenges faced by charter schools
At least some charters treat the estimates more as ceilings than specific goals.
“The enrollment projections for charter applications become your legally binding ceiling,” said Ryan York, a chief executive of The Gathering Place, a technology-focused charter school that opened in San Antonio in 2020. His school’s enrollment projection fell flat by about 14 percent.
“From a process standpoint, there’s a severe penalty if you underestimate, and there’s no penalty if you overestimate,” York said. “You’re going to put a liberal estimate because you don’t want to end up where you have demand and you’re meeting the community’s needs but you aren’t able to meet those needs because you’ve boxed yourself in with the projection.”
According to the TEA, charters on their applications are required to present “realistic and/or justified demographic projections.”
After approval, the schools wait a year before opening, known as the “planning year,” where they acquire property, hire staff and start recruiting students. It’s true that the projections form a basis for a “ceiling,” but the actual enrollment cap isn’t set until this time.
Brian Whitley, spokesman for the Texas Public Charter Schools Association, said the projections included in the applications are “very preliminary.”
“Individual public charter schools don’t have a crystal ball,” he wrote in an email. “They know, when they apply, that demand exists in a community — but there are many factors and logistical hurdles that impact how much and how quickly they can grow.”
State Board of Education Member Tom Maynard, R-Florence, said the charter school applicants that come before the board are giving a sales pitch.
“They come in there and they’re probably being a little bit optimistic,” he said. “I think that moving forward that’s probably going to be something that we’re going to think about a little bit more. … The data analysis is going to have to probably get a little bit more sophisticated.”
In the last seven years, 39 of the 190 organizations that have applied to the TEA to open a new charter school have been approved, or 20 percent. In a key choke point in the process — and the only time when an elected body or official weighs in — the state board has the ability to veto those applicants. In all, 26 organizations received final approval, a rate of about 14 percent.
After schools receive approval, they don’t need to go back to the state board for permission to expand, even if it’s outside of their original locations within the state. After a new application and a review from TEA staff, the only requirement is a signoff from the TEA commissioner, who is appointed by Gov. Greg Abbott — an ardent supporter of charter schools and of using vouchers to subsidize private education.
Although only 18 new charter groups were approved between 2017 and 2021, the number of charter campuses increased during that time from 676 to 872.
‘Very different than what we’ve seen on paper’
Statewide, charter schools enroll a higher percentage of Hispanic or Latino students when compared with traditional public schools. However, based on the statewide data, most new charter schools significantly overestimated the percentages of their student bodies that would be Latino or Hispanic, suggesting many struggle to recruit those students.
Officials from several schools said there may be skepticism among some Latino communities to enroll in new charter schools, which have to work to overcome language barriers or mistrust relating to immigration status. SaJade Miller, superintendent of Rocketship Public Schools in Fort Worth, also suggested that the advocacy network within Black communities — including churches, community centers, groups like the NAACP and others — is more developed, which makes outreach to those students more straightforward.
According to the data, the new charter schools consistently enrolled slightly more Black students than they anticipated.
State board Members Maynard and Davis said their key consideration for new charter schools is whether they will offer something innovative that the existing school district does not. They said they’re concerned that schools are painting one picture when they try to win approval from the state — such as opening in one neighborhood instead of another — only to change the plan.
“When we are going through the process of an application and looking at everything, we’re coming from a perspective of what they say they can do,” Davis said. “Then once they open up, a lot of times it’s very different than what we’ve seen on paper.”
Acknowledging that tension, York, with The Gathering Place, said many schools struggle to find a campus when they first open. Enrollment is then often dependent on hyper-specific neighborhood factors, including the other schools nearby and ease of transportation.
It’s a Catch-22, he said: Schools often can’t secure a facility until they have been approved, but they also can’t get approved without a pitch that requires information about geographic details and specific goals.
Correction: A previous version misstated the number of students Legacy School of Sports Sciences projected to have enrolled by this school year. It was 1,850, not 1,450. The estimate was correct in the attached graphic.
Edward McKinley reports on Texas state government and politics from the Hearst Bureau in Austin for the Houston Chronicle and the San Antonio Express-News. He can be reached at edward.mckinley@houstonchronicle.com.
He is a 2019 graduate of the Missouri School of Journalism and a 2020 graduate of Georgetown’s Master’s in American Government program. He previously reported for The Albany Times Union and the Kansas City Star newspapers, and he originally hails from the great state of Minnesota.
Steve Berch is a member of the Idaho House of Representatives, one of only 11 Democrats in a body with 70 members. He is serving his third term. His analysis of the attack on public education in Idaho and other states is brilliantly cogent. He understands that privatization is all about the money. This article appeared in the nonprofit IdahoEdNews.org.
Berch describes the playbook of the privatization movement.
Berch writes:
Idaho will spend $2.3 billion on K-12 public education in 2024. There are powerful out-of-state forces who want to get their hands on that money. Some are driven by profit, others by political ideology, religious beliefs, or a combination of interests. They all share one common goal: shift your public schools dollars to the private sector. Here are some of the dots to connect in the “privatizing public education” playbook:
Make public schools look worse than other school choices. The legislature does this by continually underfunding public education. Schools can’t meet parental expectations, accommodate growth, or hire/retain experienced teachers when salaries are not competitive and buildings are falling apart. Idaho has a backlog of over $1 billion in K-12 school building maintenance and we’re still at or near the bottom in per-student investment, even after having a $2.1 billion surplus and a recent budget increase. This makes other school choices look more attractive by comparison.
Undermine confidence in public schools. Propaganda campaigns incite fear and anger against local schools. Parents are bombarded with false claims about porn in libraries, groomers in classrooms, and student indoctrination. Non-stop postings on social media perpetuate these inflammatory accusations. Self-proclaimed “think tanks” funded by third-parties produce official looking reports that create a false perception of legitimacy to these manufactured fears.
Hide the facts. Legislative leaders tried to kill the Office of Performance Evaluations (OPE) – which provides factual, in-depth, unbiased research and analysis to the legislature. The public wouldn’t know about the billion dollar backlog in school building maintenance if OPE didn’t exist. The OPE report that revealed this new information angered political leaders trying to tell a different story. Without facts, false narratives go unchallenged.
Legislative intimidation. New laws are making classrooms a hostile workplace. This includes bills that threaten to sue educators, imprison librarians, fine school districts, muzzle teachers, and empower the Attorney General to aggressively prosecute the targets of these punitive laws. No wonder teachers are leaving Idaho.
Promote “school choice” and “education freedom.” This is clever rhetoric, but it is meaningless since Idahoans already have a myriad of education choices – none of which are going away. It’s not about having choice, but rather having you pay for someone else’s choice. A recent in-depth investigationrevealed a vast network of powerful forces funneling money into Idaho to promote and sell their alternative education choices to the public.
Kill public education with vouchers (deceptively called Education Savings Accounts, or ESAs). An attempt was made earlier this year to convert most of the $2.3 billion public education budget into checks sent to parents to spend however they want – without accountability. This would starve Idaho public schools into oblivion.
The 2023 bill tried to hit a home run and failed. However, the lobbyists behind privatizing public education will be back, fronted by their legislative allies. Expect to see legislation next year that allows public tax dollars to pay for private and religious school tuition in limited amounts and isolated situations.
This is fool’s gold – there is no room for compromise. If the legislature allows just a small amount of public tax dollars to be spent on tuition for any private school, your tax dollars must be made available to all types of private schools and religious schools. Once one bill passes, the flood gates open up to flow your public education dollars to the bottom line profits of private sector businesses.
Your public education tax dollars belong in your public schools, not in their pockets.
William Phillis, a former deputy state commissioner of education in Ohio, has devoted his retirement to fighting against the privatization of the state’s public schools. He reports here on the GOP’s latest gambit:
HB33 strips the State Board of Education of its primary powers and duties, contrary to Article VI section 4 of the Ohio Constitution.
The transfer of the State Board of Education functions is unconstitutional. Additionally, the 135th General Assembly and Governor violated the single purpose clause (One-Subject) provision of the Ohio Constitution. Article II section 15(D) states, “No bill shall contain more than one subject, which shall be clearly stated in its title.” HB33 is a budget bill. The transfer of the primary duties of the State Board of Education to the Governor’s office is a policy matter unrelated to finance. This matter should immediately be challenged in Court.
If the “transfer” would be enacted as a separate bill (it was HB12 before being injected into HB33), it could be successfully challenged in Court. In 1953, the people of Ohio passed a constitutional amendment that transferred the Department of Education from the Governor’s office to the State Board of Education.
Peter Greene discovered that Ryan Walters, the State Superintendent of Education in Oklahoma, attempted to define “Woke” on a far-right website. WOKE is one of those new terms of opprobrium, like “critical race theory,” that Republicans despise but can’t define. Peter eagerly read Walters’ effort to defund Woke, but came away disappointed. It seems that Woke is whatever you don’t like. You may have seen the stories recently about Walters insisting that the Tulsa race massacre of 2021 had nothing to do with skin color, although as the Daily Beast reported, “white mobs killed as many as 300 Black residents and burned some 1,600 homes and businesses in what was known as Black Wall Street.”
Peter Greene writes:
Oklahoma’s head education honcho decided to pop up in The Daily Caller (hyperpartisan and wide variation in reliability onthe media bias chart) with his own take on the Big Question–what the heck does “woke” mean? (I’ll link here, because anyone who wants to should be able to check my work, but I don’t recommend clicking through).
Walters tries to lay out the premise and the problem:
Inherent to the nature of having a language is that the words within it have to mean something. If they do not, then they are just noises thrown into a conversation without any hope of leading it anywhere. And when the meaning is fuzzy, it becomes necessary to define the terms of discussion. To wit, the word “woke” has gained a lot of popularity among those of us who want to restore American education back to its foundations and reclaim it from the radical left.
I’m a retired English teacher and I generally avoid being That Guy, particularly since this blog contains roughly sixty gabillion examples of my typo issues, but if your whole premise is that you are all for precise language, maybe skip the “to wit” and remember that “restore back” is more clearly “restore.”
But he’s right. The term “woke” does often seem like mouth noises being thrown into conversations like tiny little bombs meant to scare audiences into running to the right. However, “restore American education back to its foundation” is doing a hell of empty noising as well. Which foundation is that? The foundation of Don’t Teach Black Folks How To Read? The foundation of Nobody Needs To Stay In School Past Eighth Grade? Anyone who wants to talk about a return to some Golden Age of US Education needs to get specific about A) when they think that was and B) what was so golden about it.
But since he doesn’t. Walters is also making mouth noises when he points the finger at “opponents of this movement.” If we don’t know what the movement is, we don’t know exactly what its opposition is, either. Just, you know, those wokes over there. But let’s press on:
Knowing that many such complaints are made in completely bad faith because they do not want us to succeed, it would still be beneficial to provide some clarity as to what it means and — in the process — illustrate both the current pitiful state of American education and what we as parents, educators, and citizens can do about it.
Personally, I find it beneficial to assume that people who disagree with me do so sincerely and in good faith until they convince me otherwise. And I believe that lots of folks out on the christianist nationalist right really do think they’re terribly oppressed and that they are surrounded by evil and/or stupid people Out To Get Them. It’s a stance that justifies a lot of crappy behavior (can probably make you think that it’s okay to commandeer government funds and sneakily redirect them to the Right People).
But I agree that it would be beneficial for someone in the Woke Panic crowd to explain what “woke” actually means. Will Walters be that person? Well….
In recent years, liberal elites from government officials to union bosses to big businesses have worked to co-opt concepts like justice and morality for their own agendas that are contrary to our founding principles and our way of life.
I don’t even know how one co-opts a concept like justice or morality, but maybe if he explains what agenda he’s talking about and how, exactly, they are contrary to founding principles or our way of life, whatever that is.
But he’s not going to do that. He’s going to follow that sentence with another that says the same thing with the same degree of vaguery, then point out that “naturally, this faction of individuals” is after schools to spread their “radical propaganda.” Still no definition of woke in sight. No–wait. This next start looks promising–
Put simply, “woke” education is the forced projection of inaccurately-held, anti-education values onto our students. Further, to go after wokeness in education means that we are going after the forced indoctrination of our students and our school systems as a whole.
Nope. That’s not helping, either. “Projection” is an odd choice–when I project an image onto a screen, the screen doesn’t change. There’s “projection” when I see in someone else what is really going on in me, which might have some application here (“I assume that everyone else also wants to indoctrinate students into one preferred way of seeing the world”) but that’s probably not what he has in mind. I have no idea how one “forces” projection. “Inaccurately-held” is also a puzzler. The values are accurate, but they’re being held the wrong way? What does this construction get us that a simple “inaccurate” would not? And does Walters really believe that schools are rife with people who are “anti-education,” because that makes me imagine teachers simply refusing to teach and giving nap time all day every day, except for pauses to explain to students that learning things is bad. I suspect “education” means something specific to him, and this piece (aimed at a hyperpartisan audience) does seem to assume a lot of “nudge nudge wink wink we real Americans know what this word really means” which would be fine if the whole premise was not that he was going to explain what certain words actually mean.
Stephen Dyer, former Ohio legislator, closely follows school funding in the state. After studying the latest budget, he realized that the Legislature was sending more money to private school students than to public school students. The Ohio legislature loves charters, Cybercharters, and vouchers. Apparently, the Republicans who dominate the Legislators don’t care about public schools. Nor do they care about accountability.
Dyer begins:
Look, I’m really excited that the Ohio General Assembly followed through on its promise to continue implementing the Fair School Funding Plan — the state’s second attempt at meeting its constitutional mandate to provide a thorough and efficient system of public schools for its 1.7 million students.
I mean, in nearly 2/3 of Ohio school districts, the state is already meeting or exceeding its promised funding amounts from two years ago. And while the lion’s share of the remaining shortage is felt in the state’s most needy districts (something I expressed concern about earlier this year), the fact that the state is actually starting to fulfill promises made to Ohio’s 1.7 million public school students is encouraging. Again, though, only if they finish the job, of course..
But the massive increase to private school tuition subsidies that accompanied the public school increase is a colossal turd in the punchbowl. How colossal?
Try this on for size:
Because the state increased the private school tuition subsidy to $8,407 per high school student, the state will now provide $210 more per student to parents whose kids are already in private schools than they will to public school students in Ohio’s urban core of Akron, Canton, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton, Toledo or Youngstown schools, which educate 173,000 students.
In fact, that $8,407 per pupil amount is greater than the per pupil state aid for nearly 8 in 10 Ohio students. A remarkable 1.13 million Ohio students will get less state aid than the parents of a private school student will receive next year.
Oh, and did I mention that not a penny of these tuition subsidies will be audited by a public entity? So we have no idea if the money is being spent educating kids or buying sweet rides for private school administrators. (Because that’s never happened in this state).
And the disparity is despite Ohio’s historic public school funding increase that occurred in this budget — again, a great accomplishment.
But man. This is crazy….
It would be one thing if vouchers (taxpayer provided private school tuition subsidies) provided better options for students. But study after study has demonstrated pretty clearly that even in urban districts, generally the public schools do better than the private schools — in Ohio, it’s almost in 9 of 10 instances that the public outperforms the private. Never mind that vouchers have also delayed critical investment in the educations of the 1.7 million Ohio public school students or added significantly to racial segregation.
Please open the link to read the rest of this shocking story.
Remember back in the day when vouchers were sold as a way to “save poor kids from failing schools”? Those days are over. The new Republican pitch is “universal vouchers,” vouchers for all, regardless of family income, regardless of whether the students ever attended public schools.
Florida is one of several Republican-led states that have passed universal vouchers. With the new money free-for-all, public schools are hiring marketing directors and communications staff to persuade students to enroll in public schools.
For first time, the Palm Beach County School District will actually need to start convincing parents to send their kids to public school.
That’s because Florida’s expanded school voucher program, which went into effect July 1, opens the door for parents of all incomes to use taxpayer money for tuition at private schools. That money is taken away from the student’s public school district at a cost of about $8,000 per student. In March, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed legislation that removed the previous income and enrollment limits on the program.
Superintendent Mike Burke announced an idea in the spring to market public schools to families weighing their options. The district launched a kindergarten registration campaign to get Palm Beach County’s youngest students in public school classrooms. Their thinking was that if students start in public school, they’re more likely to stay.
Among the first orders of business for the district’s new chief communications strategist will be expanding its marketing campaign to try to prove to parents considering vouchers that public schools are their best choice.
“I think we’re going to have to dedicate real resources to this beyond our website,” Burke said. “We’ve been competing with charter schools for 20 years. We’ve never competed with private schools.”
New voucher options arrive on Florida’s education scene at a time when public school districts are fighting pressure from fringe candidates, library book bans and new limitations on what teachers can talk about in the classroom.
Coupled with new obligations to pay millions for private school vouchers, some education experts say Florida is eroding its public education system altogether.
“It’s hard not to look at all of this and grieve,” said Joshua Cowen, a professor of education policy at Michigan State University. “Every school has a pitch. What’s different now, particularly in Florida, you’re going to see schools thinking very carefully about how to market themselves vis-à-vis the culture war stuff.”
Not all private schools in Palm Beach County are religious schools, and they’re also separate from charter schools, which are public schools run by private companies.
Palm Beach County is home to 161 private schools registered with the Florida Department of Education as of July 6. Of those schools, 44% are religiously affiliated.
And most accept vouchers.
While 109 private schools accept Family Empowerment Scholarships right now, Burke anticipates that number growing over the next several months.
“I think we’re going to see proliferation of small, ‘mom-and-pop’ private schools,” he said. “Private schools in a strip mall where people think they can turn a profit.”
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