William Phillis, founder of the Ohio Coalition for Equity and Adequacy, reports on the evolution of vouchers. Initially, they were sold as a way to “save poor kids from failing schools.” but now they are a subsidy for upper-income families.
Darrel Rowland, ABC6 (WSYX6) and Fox28 News tweets about vouchers
Darrel Rowland, a former Columbus Dispatch reporter, public affairs editor and senior editor, gleaning data from Howard Fleeter’s June 2023 Policy Brief on Vouchers in Ohio, in a series of Tweets, sheds light on the trend in income level of voucher users. The data show that the percentage of low-income EdChoice voucher users has dropped from 32% in 2014 to 15% in 2023. The State Budget for fiscal years 2023-2024 and 2024-2025 will ratchet-up EdChoice voucher expansion. In the future, EdChoice voucher users will be mostly in the higher income brackets. Low-income students were exploited by voucher advocates to get the voucher foot-in-the-door. Universal vouchers will result in higher private school tuition, which will eliminate voucher participation for nearly all low income students….
School-funding numbers cruncher extraordinaire Howard Fleeter looks at Ohio’s vouchers Two main findings:
1. Originally intended to help students at low-performing public schools ‘escape,’ vouchers are now benefiting a growing number of students already attending private schools
2. Percentage of low-income students assisted through these programs has significantly declined while more students in wealthy families are accessing vouchers Fleeter, consultant for public schools groups, concludes that recent GOP legislative changes “reflect a pronounced “change in the focus of Ohio’s voucher programs from one of expanding opportunity to one where the state simply pays for vouchers for students whose families have already demonstrated that they have the means to afford private school”
In FY 2014, 35% of one (Cleveland-style) voucher program’s recipients were from low-income backgrounds, but by FY 2023, this number had decreased to 7%. For another (EdChoice), the percentage of low-income students receiving vouchers dropped from 32% in FY 2014 to 15% in FY 2023
Learn about EdChoice Vouchers: An Existential Threat to Public Schools
Peter Greene was a teacher in Pennsylvania for 39 years. He is now a regular writer at Forbes and a super star blogger. This column appeared on his blog. He responded to Rick Hess’s claim that school choice is not an attack on public education but part of a long history of trying to improve them. From my perspective, it’s hard to understand how public schools improve by defunding them and replacing them with religious schools, low-quality private schools, home schooling, and cyber charters.
This is what Peter Greene wrote:
Rick Hess (American Enterprise Institute) is one of those occupants of the reformy camp that I take seriously, even when I think he’s wrong. So when he raises the question of whether or not school choice is an “attack” on public education, I think it’s a question worth talking about, because I think the answer is a little bit complicated. So let me walk through his recent piece on that very question bit by bit.
After an intro suggesting that choice expansion flows directly from the pandemic while ascribing opposition to choice to a shadowy cabal that flows from teachers unions, Hess gets to his point, which is that seeing choice as an anti-public school is “misleading and misguided.”
Hess puts choice in the context of a century’s worth of public school fixer-uppers, “a barrage of reforms.” He offers a list–“compulsory attendance, district consolidation, larger schools, smaller schools, magnet schools, standards, test-based accountability, merit pay, and more.”
Some of these ideas were good. Some weren’t. But in hindsight, it’s pretty clear that they weren’t “attacks” on public education; rather, they were attempts to improve it.
I disagree. Some of these ideas were offered with sincere hope for the best. But I’m going to single out the standards movement and test-based accountability for special recognition here.
If you weren’t teaching during the rise of No Child Left Behind, Common Core, and Race To The Top, I’m not sure if I can really capture for you the dawning sense of horror, frustration and futility among teachers at the time.
Word came down that new regulations required us to get test scores up– a little bit per year for starters, then ramping up to an impossible climb, until somehow every single student would be above average. If not, there would be penalties, maybe the complete dismantling and rebuilding of the district, perhaps as a privately-run charter school. “This is not possible,” educators said. “All will learn all,” replied the Powers That Be. “Don’t you believe that students can learn? And which child do you propose to leave behind.”
Then there were the tests themselves. Not very good, and with results coming back with so little detail–and so very late in the game–that they were less than no help at all. “Well, if we just teach the standards, the tests scores will follow,” said some optimistic educators. That didn’t happen. Schools rejiggered curriculum, pulled students away from untested material like art and recess so that they could be double-whammied with test prep.
“Maybe Obama will fix it,” we hoped. He did not. He doubled down. And 2014–the year for 100%–came closer and closer, the year when anyone dealing with educational reality knew that every district in the country would be either a) failing or B) cheating.
And through those years, one at a time or in small groups, teachers arrived at an unpleasant conclusion.
They are setting us up for failure. They want us to fail.
Why would they want that? The rhetoric had already been around on the far right, back all the way to Milton Friedman and on through his intellectual spawn– public education should be dismantled. There was a new push for vouchers and especially charter schools, and that coincided with rising noise about “failing” public schools. There was very little “let’s expand the educational ecosystem” and an awful lot of “we must help students escape failing public schools.” The constant refrain of “school choice will force public schools to improve because competition” was also an omnipresent crock, a slap in the face to educators who were already working their butts off and resented the suggestion that they were either incompetent or lazy. And that thread runs all the way up guys like Christopher Rufo arguing that to get to universals school choice, you have to get to universal distrust of public schools.
Maybe school choice wasn’t in and of itself an attack on public education, but it certainly seemed as if attacking public education was a means of promoting school choice.
I have no doubt that there are people who believe that education would work better if handled by the free market (I think their belief is magical, misguided and wrong, but I do believe it’s sincere). I believe there are technocrats who believe that standards, tests and data would improve education (ditto).
But to be a public school educator on the receiving end of all this (and more) absolutely felt like an attack. The irony is that when reformsters eventually figured out that the attack-filled rhetoric wasn’t helping and they dialed it back, the attacks themselves had become more real.
But let’s get back to Hess.
Public education can encompass a lot of approaches, and it can be organized in many different ways. Rather than blindly insist that “defending public schooling” requires clinging to outdated policies from decades (or centuries) past, we would do better to clarify principles, examine particulars, and then debate proposals.
All of this language is doing a lot of work, but as far as it goes, Hess and I probably agree more than we disagree. But the disagree part comes in the very next paragraph.
Indeed, the pandemic was a stark reminder that there are lots of ways to deliver schooling, including innovations such as learning pods, microschools, virtual tutors, and education savings accounts.
Learning pods and microschools are okay if you’re wealthy. As policy ideas in the vein of the DeVosian, “Well, your voucher may not be enough to get into a good private school, but you can always start a microschool,” they suck. I don’t think there are more than a hundred people in the country who came out of the pandemic thinking virtual education is a great idea. And education savings accounts are just vouchers with extra super-powers and porcine lip gloss. And none of these are really new ideas. They also all suffer from the same issue, which is the notion that any school choice system must be done free market style. We can do a great choice system without the free market at all (but that’s a post for another day).
Hess identifies one of the issues as the fuzziness of the word “public.” On this point, I think he gets some things wrong.
Choice opponents assert that public schools are “public” because they’re funded by public tax dollars.
No, that’s choicers. It’s been part of the charter school argument that charter schools are public schools because they are funded with public dollars. This pro-public ed writer (I’m not anti-choice, but I am anti-most-of-the-versions-of-choice-with-which-we’ve-been-presented) would say that public schools are public because they the public funds them, owns them, and operates them via representatives. Furthermore, they are public schools because they have a responsibility to the public to serve all students.
You can argue, as Hess and others do, that districts regularly hire outside firms to handle certain functions and occasionally outsource the teaching of certain students with exceptional special needs. But in all those cases, the responsibility for the management of those outside contracts rests with the public school district. A charter or private voucher-fed school carries no such responsibility. A public school district cannot, as can charters and voucher schools may, simply show parents the door and say, “Good luck. Your child is not our problem.” Do all public systems meet that responsibility as well as they ought to? Absolutely not. But at least the responsibility exists. A parent who thinks the public system is short-changing their child can (and often will) sue the district. They have no such option in a choice system, as such systems are currently conceived.
Hess is correct in calling public education “a pretty expansive category.” But it hinges on far more than whose money is being used.
In fact, I’d argue that it is the responsibility portion that is the big difference in the brand of choice being pushed by many these days. Our public system is based, however imperfectly, on the notion that we bear a collective responsibility for educating the young. Modern choice, particularly the current version sold under the culture warrior parental right brand, is about saying that getting a child an education is the responsibility of the parents, and that’s it. Yes, many choicers are also trying to privatize the ownership and provision of education, but it is the privatizing of responsibility for a child’s education that is perhaps the most profound and fundamental shift.
More importantly, simply calling something “public” doesn’t make it a good thing. While the phrase “public schooling” is suffused with happy notions of inclusivity and fairness, “public” isn’t a magic word.
Ain’t it that truth. Public education has a wide variety of issues–though some of those are the direct result of reformster attempts to “fix” things (see above re: standards and testing). But I’ve never argued that I’m against modern school choice and ed reform because public schools are perfect the way they are and everything else sucks. My most fundamental issue is that public schools have some serious issues, and modern ed reform and school choice don’t solve any of them (yes, that is also another long post). They just weaken public school’s ability to work on them while blowing through a giant pile of taxpayer money.
The point isn’t to play word games but to understand that things are less clear-cut than defenders of the status quo are prone to acknowledge. There are many ways to provide and serve the aims of public education.
After all these decades in the ed biz, I’m inclined to assert, repeatedly, that everything in education is less clear-cut that the vast majority of people acknowledge. Some folks on my side of the aisle are quick to infer nefarious and/or greedy motives when, sincere ideology is sufficient explanation (much as some folks in the choice camp assume that the only reason someone would stick up for public ed is because she’s on the union payroll). Some choicers are simply ignorant of how any of this school stuff works. Some are up against a particularly dysfunctional local version of public education. Some are anti-democrats for whom this is just one issue of many, one more way in which the government steals their money to spend it on Those People. Some want to recapture education for a particularly conservative version of christianist religion. Some want to social engineer their way to a more efficient society. Some are serious people, and some are not.
In short, the choicer and reformster camp contains a great variety of individuals.
Are some of those individuals interested promoting school choice as a way of making public education better? Is it possible to make public education better by incorporating some choice ideas? I believe that latter is true, and I swear I’m going to post about it in the not too distant future, and as for the former, well… yes, but.
But for all the variety in the choicer camp, they mostly adhere to two flawed premises– that a choice landscape should rest on a bedrock of free market mechanics and that the resulting system shouldn’t cost a cent more than the current one. As long as we start with those premises, school choice must be a zero sum game, and even if all the people who have spent the past four decades trying to tear public ed down so that choice will look better–even if all those people shut up, the zero sum game feature seems guaranteed to turn school choice into an attack on public education.
Kathryn Joyce is an outstanding journalist who has written several excellent articles about the far-right conspiracy to destroy public education. In this important article, published by both the Hechinger Report and Vanity Fair, she examines the rightwing takeover of public schools in Sarasota, Florida, by the extremist Moms for Liberty and their hero Governor DeSantis.
Joyce begins:
SARASOTA COUNTY, Fla. — On a Sunday afternoon in late May 2022, Zander Moricz, then class president of Sarasota County’s Pine View School, spent the moments before his graduation speech sitting outside the auditorium, on the phone with his lawyers. Over the previous month, the question of what he’d say when he stepped to the podium had become national news. That March, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis had signed the Parental Rights in Education Act, quickly dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” law for its ban on all mention of gender identity and sexuality in K–3 classrooms and restriction of those discussions in higher grades as well. Moricz, a student LGBTQ+ activist, had led several protests against the act that spring and joined a high-profile lawsuit against the state. In early May, he charged on Twitter that Pine View’s administration had warned that if he mentioned his activism or the lawsuit at graduation, his microphone would be cut. (In a statement released last year, the school district confirmed that students are told not to express political views in their speeches.)
In the tumultuous weeks leading up to the ceremony, Pine View — Sarasota’s “gifted” magnet institution, consistently ranked one of the top 25 public high schools in the country — was besieged with angry calls and news coverage. Moricz stayed home for three weeks, he said, thanks to the rvolume of death threats he received, and people showed up at his parents’ work. When a rumor started that Pine View’s principal would have to wear a bulletproof vest to graduation, he recalled, “the entire campus lost their minds,” thinking “everyone’s going to die” and warning relatives not to come. His parents worried he’d be killed.
But after all the controversy, graduation day was a success. Moricz, now 19, delivered a pointedly coded speech about the travails of being born with curly hair in Florida’s humid climate: how he worried about the “thousands of curly-haired kids who are going to be forced to speak like this” — like he was, in code — “for their entire lives as students.” Videos of the speech went viral. Donations poured into Moricz’s youth-led nonprofit. That summer, he left to study government at Harvard.
Half-a-year later though, when Moricz came home, Sarasota felt darker.
“I’m wearing this hat for a reason,” he said when we met for coffee in a strip mall near his alma mater in early March. “Two years ago, if I was bullied due to my queerness, the school would have rallied around me and shut it down. If it happened today, I believe everyone would act like it wasn’t happening.”
These days, he said, queer kids sit in the back of class and don’t tell teachers they’re being harassed. A student at Pine View was told, Moricz said, that he couldn’t finish his senior thesis researching other states’ copycat “Don’t Say Gay” laws. (The school did not respond to a request for comment through a district spokesperson.) When Moricz’s nonprofit found a building to house a new youth LGBTQ+ center — since schools were emphatically no longer safe spaces — they budgeted for bulletproof glass.
“The culture of fear that’s being created is doing exactly what it’s supposed to do,” he said. And much of it was thanks to the Sarasota County School Board.
Over the last two years, education culture wars have become the engine of Republican politics nationwide, with DeSantis’s Florida serving as the vanguard of the movement. But within the state, Sarasota is more central still.
Its school board chair, Bridget Ziegler, cofounded the conservative activist group Moms for Liberty and helped lay the groundwork for “Don’t Say Gay.” After a uniquely ugly school board race last summer, conservatives flipped the board and promptly forced out the district’s popular superintendent. In early January, when DeSantis appointed a series of right-wing activists to transform Florida’s progressive New College into a “Hillsdale of the South” — emulating the private Christian college in Michigan that has become a trendsetting force on the right — that was in Sarasota too. In February, DeSantis sat alongside Ziegler’s husband and Moms for Liberty’s other cofounders to announce a list of 14 school board members he intends to help oust in 2024—Sarasota’s sole remaining Democrat and LGBTQ+ board member, Tom Edwards, among them. The next month, Ziegler proposed that the board hire a newly created education consultancy group with ties to Hillsdale College for what she later called a “‘WOKE’ Audit.” (Ziegler did not respond to interview requests for this article.)
The dizzying number of attacks has led to staffing and hiring challenges, the cancelation of a class, a budding exodus of liberals from the county, and fears that destroying public education is the ultimate endgame. In January, Ziegler’s husband, Christian — who chairs the Florida Republican Party — tweeted a celebratory declaration: “SARASOTA IS GROUND ZERO FOR CONSERVATIVE EDUCATION.”
It wasn’t hyperbole, said Moricz. “We say that Sarasota is Florida’s underground lab, and we’re its non-consenting lab rats.”
For as long as Florida has been grading schools and school districts — a late 1990s innovation that helped spark the “school reform” movement — Sarasota, with its 62 schools and nearly 43,000 students, has enjoyed an “A” rating. Perched on the Gulf Coast just south of Tampa, the county’s mix of powder-soft beaches and high-culture amenities — including an opera house, ballet and museums — have made it a destination for vacationers and retirees. And that influx has made Sarasota one of the richest counties in the state.
Since many of those retirees, dating back to the 1950s, have been white Midwestern transplants, it’s also made Sarasota a Republican stronghold and top fundraising destination for would-be presidential candidates. Both the last and current chairs of the state GOP — first State Senator Joe Gruters and now Christian Ziegler — live in the county. Sarasota arguably launched Donald Trump’s first presidential campaign, thanks to Gruters’s early support. These days, though, Sarasota isn’t just conservative, but at the leading edge of Florida’s turn to the hard right.
Partly that’s thanks to the Zieglers, who have become one of Florida’s premier power couples, with close ties to both Trump world and the DeSantis administration and a trio of daughters enrolled in local private schools. As founder of the digital marketing company Microtargeted Media, Christian did hundreds of thousands of dollars of work for pro-Trump PACs in 2021, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune reported. After being elected state GOP chair this February, he announced his goal was “to crush these leftist in-state Democrats” so thoroughly that “no Democrat considers running for office.” Although Bridget stepped down from Moms for Liberty shortly after its founding, she subsequently helped draftFlorida’s Parents’ Bill of Rights, which helped pave the way for DeSantis’s 2021 ban on mask mandates and ultimately last year’s “Don’t Say Gay” law. In 2022, the right-wing Leadership Institute hired her as director of school board programs, and built a 6,000-square-foot headquarters in Sarasota to serve as a national hub for conservative education activism. This winter, DeSantis also appointed her to a new board designed to punish the Disney Company for criticizing his anti-LGBTQ laws….
Last year, when Ziegler was up for reelection and two other board members were terming out, she ran as a unified slate with former school resource officer Tim Enos and retired district employee Robyn Marinelli. The candidates drew support from both DeSantis’s administration — which unprecedentedly endorseddozens of school board candidates across the state — and local members of the far-right. A PAC partially funded by The Hollow’s owner campaigned for the “ZEM” slate (a shorthand for the candidates’ surnames) by driving a mobile billboard around the county, calling one of their opponents a “LIAR” and “BABY KILLER” because she’d once worked for Planned Parenthood. Proud Boys hoisted ZEM signs on county streets and a mailer was sent out, castigating the liberal candidates as “BLM/PSL [Party of Socialism and Liberation]/ANTIFA RIOTERS, PLANNED PARENTHOOD BABY KILLERS, [who] WANT GROOMING AND PORNOGRAPHY IN OUR SCHOOLS.” (Enos and Marinelli did not respond to requests for comment for this article.)
Open the link and read all of the article. It is a devastating article about the takeover of the school board by hateful extremists whose tools are fear and divisiveness.
Jeff Bryant writes often about education. He lives in North Carolina. In this article, he tries to solve the mystery of why Democratic state legislator Tricia Cotham switched sides and joined the Republican Party, giving them a supermajority in both houses of the General Assembly?
Cotham was a Democrat who had campaigned in promises to oppose school vouchers; to defend LGBT rights; and support abortion rights.
Once she gave the Republicans the decisive vote in the lower house, the Republicans had a veto-proof majority and were in a position to override any veto by Democratic Governor Roy Cooper.
Cotham, the new Republican, reversed her vote on everything she campaigned for or against. She supported Republicans’ efforts to reduce abortion rights; she endorsed school vouchers; and she sided with Republicans in their attack on trans youth.
In other words, she betrayed the people who voted for her and cast her lot with the hard-right Republicans who have aligned themselves with anti-progressive, anti-liberal, anti-Democrat policies.
Why? She said the Democrats were mean to her. She said they ignored her. She said she didn’t get the committee assignments she wanted. Are these good reasons to join forces with a party that has sought to destroy public education, demoralize teachers, and gerrymander the state to protect its advantages?
None of this made sense. A person doesn’t change their fundamental values because of hurt feelings.
Jeff investigated and determined that her decision was transactional. What did she get in exchange for double-crossing her constituents and her colleagues? Read his article to find out.
The Oklahoma Statewide Virtual Charter School Board voted 3-2 to approve using state funds to support a new Catholic school this week. One of the board members voting “yes” was installed to their post last Friday, according to Tulsa World.
The board’s actions began creating the first religious charter school supported by taxpayer dollars in the United States. The online school, St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School, will be managed and operated by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Oklahoma City and the Diocese of Tulsa.
Oklahoma’s previous Attorney General, John O’Connor, issued a non-binding 15-page opinion in December 2022 suggesting that Oklahoma’s restriction of taxpayer funds from being used for religious schools would most likely be found unconstitutional by the United States Supreme Court.
Education Week reported, “O’Connor had concluded that recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions authorizing the inclusion of religious schools in choice programs such as tax credits for scholarship donations, and tuition assistance meant that the high court would likely not ‘accept the argument that, because charter schools are considered public for various purposes, that a state should be allowed to discriminate against religiously affiliated private participants who wish to establish and operate charter schools.’”
St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School’s application asked for $2.5 million to serve a potential 500 students in the first year. That will be $2.5 million taken away from public schools to support private religious education.
O’Connor’s successor, Gentner Drummond, withdrew the opinion earlier this year, stating, “Religious liberty is one of our most fundamental freedoms.”
Drummond continued: “It allows us to worship according to our faith, and to be free from any duty that may conflict with our faith. The opinion as issued by my predecessor misuses the concept of religious liberty by employing it as a means to justify state-funded religion.”
While some Christian conservatives, such as Oklahoma’s State Superintendent Ryan Walters, praised the board’s decision, other politicians and faith leaders criticized its actions, characterizing them as unconstitutional and a direct violation of the Establishment Clause.
After the 3-2 vote in favor of funding St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School, Drummond reiterated his opinion that this decision was improper. “The approval of any publicly funded religious school is contrary to Oklahoma law and not in the best interest of taxpayers,” he said.
“It’s extremely disappointing that board members violated their oath in order to fund religious schools with our tax dollars,” Drummond said. “In doing so, these members have exposed themselves and the State to potential legal action that could be costly.”
Clark Frailey, executive director for Pastors for Oklahoma Kids, commented: “By authorizing a public school that is explicitly affiliated with a particular religion, Oklahoma is endorsing that religion and entangling the government in religious affairs.”
“In addition,” Frailey continued, “the proposed school is to be funded by taxpayer dollars. This clearly misuses public dollars, as it would fund religious indoctrination of children.”
Historically, Oklahoma has been notoriously guilty of using taxpayer dollars to indoctrinate children with religious doctrines. Many times, Good Faith Media has called attention to the misguided and violent actions occurring at Chilocco Indian Agricultural Boarding School.
Thousands of Indigenous children were taken from their families and provided “Christian” education using taxpayer funding. Hiding behind a compassionate mission to educate Indigenous children, the actual objective was to assimilate them into white Protestant doctrines.
While no one suggests the Oklahoma Catholic Diocese is following this model, the dangers of using taxpayer dollars are ominous. Besides taking precious funding away from public education to fund private religious charters, using taxpayer money violates the religious liberty of others not wanting to support religious teachings.
Should taxpayers be forced to support religious teachings contradictory to their belief systems? Will there be any oversight of the use of taxpayer money used at religious schools?
Like public schools, do religious schools have to accept all students or can they discriminate? Will religious schools need curriculum to be approved? If so, who decides? Can any religious sect apply for funding?
Americans United for Separation of Church and State responded, “It’s hard to think of a clearer violation of the religious freedom of Oklahoma taxpayers and public-school families than the state establishing the nation’s first religious public charter school.”
AU went on to point out the unconstitutionality of the action: “State and federal law are clear: Charter schools are public schools that must be secular and open to all students. No public-school family should fear that their child will be required by charter schools to take theology classes or be expelled for failing to conform to religious doctrines. And the government should never force anyone to fund religious education.”
“Funding private religious schools with public dollars violates core legal principles protecting religious freedom for all,” said Amanda Tyler, executive director of BJC (Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty).
Paul Brandeis Raushenbush, CEO of Interfaith Alliance, told The Independent that this would “open the floodgates for taxpayer-funded discrimination.” He added: “Taxpayer money should never be used to fund religious instruction, and it is now up to the state to at least ensure St. Isidore abides by the federal nondiscrimination protections guaranteed in public schools.”
The decision by the Oklahoma Statewide Virtual Charter School Board is clearly a disregard for the democratic principles established by the nation’s founders.
Thomas Jefferson’s words in his letter to the Baptists of Danbury, Connecticut, are as crucial today as they were in 1802: “I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between Church & State.”
Before the Oklahoma Statewide Virtual Charter School Board, I recently testified that authorizing a religious private school as a public charter school would be an egregious violation of our state constitution, the First Amendment, and religious liberty.
Plainly stated: Church and state should be separate.
While I believe the virtual charter board has the right intentions at heart ― to expand educational choices to Oklahoma students ― the consequences of their recent decision will be far-reaching and harmful.
The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution states, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” This means that the government cannot endorse or promote any particular religion, nor can it interfere with the free exercise of religion.The Oklahoma Constitution further states, “Provisions shall be made for the establishment and maintenance of a system of public schools, which shall be open to all the children of the state and free from sectarian control.”
The state is endorsing a particular religion by funding a sectarian public charter school with taxpayer dollars. Title 70 (§70-3-136) of Oklahoma’s Charter School Act could not be more precise in stating this is not allowed: “A charter school shall be nonsectarian in its programs, admission policies, employment practices, and all other operations. A sponsor may not authorize a charter school or program that is affiliated with a nonpublic sectarian school or religious institution.”
Why board members Brian Bobek, Nellie Sanders and Scott Strawn chose to violate historic precedent and plainly written laws is not clear. What is clear is that these board members voted to break charter school law as activists radically opposed to our current understanding of public education, which welcomes all students, regardless of religious preference.
We have heard much about the supposed “indoctrination” in public schools, which makes it incredibly ironic that an organization that makes its indoctrination aims clear is being authorized by a state agency with Gov. Kevin Stitt’s and state schools Superintendent Ryan Walters’ blessing.The separation of church and state is one of the most essential principles of our nation. The church should not resort to the civil power to carry on its work. Separation protects religious liberty and ensures that the government cannot interfere with our religious beliefs.We must protect the separation of church and state by opposing any attempt to use public funds to support religious schools.
The Rev. Clark Frailey is pastor of Coffee Creek Church, Edmond, and the executive director of Pastors for Oklahoma Kids, a nondenominational coalition of pastors from across Oklahoma that advocates for excellent public schools for all kids
The Network for Public Education released a new report today that should concern everyone who cares about public schools and the use of public resources. The report shows that a growing segment of the charter industry is controlled by Christian nationalists, who indoctrinate their students, using taxpayer dollars.
NEW REPORT DOCUMENTS HOW FAR-RIGHT CHARTER SCHOOLS ARE FUELING THE CULTURE WARS
Right-wing Republicans involved in the creation and governance of charter schools
American taxpayers across the country are funding the recent explosion of growth in far-right, Christian nationalist charter schools, including those affiliated with Hillsdale College, according to a new report, A Sharp Right Turn: A New Breed of Charter Schools Delivers the Conservative Agenda, released by the Network for Public Education (NPE) today.
NPE identified hundreds of charter schools, predominantly in red states, that use the classical brand or other conservative clues in marketing to attract white Christian families. From featured religious music videos to statements that claim they offer a faith-friendly environment, these charter schools are opening at an accelerated rate, with at least 66 schools in the pipeline to open by 2024. While some of these schools, such as the Roger Bacon Academies, are long-standing, nearly half of the schools we identified opened after the inauguration of Donald Trump–representing a 90% increase.
The report exposes how right-wing Republican politicians, including Congressman Byron Donalds of Florida and failed Colorado gubernatorial candidate Heidi Ganahl, have embroiled themselves in creating and governing these schools, with some benefiting financially. In fact, NPE found that right-wing charters are nearly twice as likely to be run by for-profit management companies than the entire charter sector.
According to NPE Executive Director Carol Burris, who co-authored the report with journalist Karen Francisco, “Sectarian extremists and the radical right are capitalizing on tragically loose controls and oversight in the charter school sector to create schools that seek to turn back the clock on civil rights and education progress. These schools teach their own brand of CRT–Christian Right Theory–capitalizing on and fueling the culture wars. As a taxpayer, I am appalled that my tax dollars are seeding such schools.”
Since 2006, the U.S. Department of Education’s Charter School Programs (CSP) has funneled more than one hundred million dollars to begin or expand right-wing charter schools.
NPE President and education historian Diane Ravitch commented, “Few doubt that the religious right has decided to stake its claim on the next generation of hearts and minds with its unrelenting push for vouchers and book and curricular bans. This report exposes the lesser-known third part of the strategy—the proliferation of right-wing charter schools. It should be a wake-up call to those with progressive ideals who have embraced charter schools. A movement you support is now taking a sharp turn right to destroy the values you cherish.”
To learn more about the rapid growth of right-wing charter schools and their connections with right-wing politicians and the religious right, you can read the full report here.
The Network for Public Education is a national advocacy group whose mission is to preserve, promote, improve, and strengthen public schools for current and future generations of students.
An obscure board appointed by Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt voted 3-2 to approve funding a virtual charter school operated by the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City abd the Diocese of Tulsa. This violates the state constitution, as well as the First Amendment to the Constitution. Randi Weingarten, who is a lawyer, decried this action. The state will end up spending many more millions in legal fees, as it battles for its decision in the courts. If the decision is upheld, Oklahoma and other states can expect to fund yeshivas, madrassas, fundamentalist schools, even Satanic schools. We don’t need schools that indoctrinate; we need public schools that educate children to think for themselves and to respect others.
AFT’s Weingarten on Oklahoma Religious Charter School Approval
WASHINGTON—American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten issued the following statement after Oklahoma approved a taxpayer-funded religious charter school:
“This decision not only threatens to siphon millions of dollars in public money into private hands, it strikes at the heart of our nation’s very foundations. The framers never intended to require public funding of religious institutions or religious schools.
“The combination of the Constitution’s free exercise clause and the concept of separation of church and state is what ensures religious freedom in the United States. This decision turns that idea on its head.
“It also turns on its head the concept that charter schools were supposed to be public schools run in a different way. And it vitiates the distinction between public and nonpublic religious schools in the eyes of Oklahoma.
“It is telling that a bipartisan coalition was opposed to the approval, and that only an obscure, hand-picked board of the governor’s own choosing was able to force it through.
“This ruling will no doubt end up at the Supreme Court. It is a clear and present danger, not only to ensuring public schools are open and accessible to all, but to religious liberty and freedom in our democracy writ large.”
Seven Oaks Classical School in Ellettsville received a 5-year extension to its operating charter recently. Well, not that recently. It happened in December 2022. Ellettsville and Monroe County residents may have missed it, though, because the extension was approved nearly 200 miles away.
It was approved by the three-member board of Grace Charters LLC, a nonprofit formed by Grace College and Theological Seminary to authorize charter schools, which are publicly funded and privately operated. The board met on the Grace College campus in Winona Lake, Indiana.
To meet legal requirements for public meetings, a notice was published in the local newspaper: the Warsaw Times-Union, which probably no one in Monroe County reads. One member of the public attended, according to minutes of the meeting: Seven Oaks headmaster Stephen Shipp.
The situation highlights the tension between public and private in Indiana charter schools. The Seven Oaks website says charter schools are “tuition-free, open-enrollment public schools.” But the school’s authorizer, which sets the terms of its operation and is supposed to hold it accountable, is a private, Christian college with no connection to the community where the school operates.
Seven Oaks is part of a network of charter schools aligned with Hillsdale College, a conservative and politically active private college in Michigan. The Hillsdale charter initiative once cast itself as part of a “war” to reclaim America from “100 years of progressivism” in education. Its president, Larry Arnn, led Donald Trump’s 1776 Commission and its promotion of “patriotic history.”
Grace College has also granted a charter to Valor Classical Academy, a Hillsdale-affiliated school that has stalled in its attempts to open in Hamilton or Marion County.
Along with the Hillsdale affiliation, there are other factors that distinguish Seven Oaks from public schools: for example, its demographic profile. Out of more than 500 students, one is Black and nine are Hispanic, according to state data. Fewer than 20% of students would qualify for free or reduced-price meals if they were provided. (The school doesn’t provide transportation or school lunches).
This chart shows the percentage of students who are Black, Hispanic and eligible for free or reduced-price meals in Monroe County public school districts (Monroe County and Richland-Bean Blossom community school corporations) and charter schools (Bloomington Project School and Seven Oaks Classical School).
The 24-page Seven Oaks charter extension reads like a standard agreement, with boilerplate language from state law and recommended practices for authorizing. It spells out the duties of each party, the expectations for the school, and the legal remedies if something goes wrong. An attached accountability plan includes out-of-date references to state assessments and, I’m told, is being revised.
The agreement says Grace College gets to keep 2.5% of the school’s state funding as an authorizer fee. That’s less than the 3% maximum that Indiana allows. In 2023-24, the college will net about $93,000.
Grace initially approved a charter for Seven Oaks in 2016 in one of Indiana’s first examples of what’s called authorizer shopping. The school’s founders applied to the Indiana Charter School Board, but it rejected their application. They reapplied but withdrew after a negative recommendation from the board’s staff. Then they took their plan to Grace College, which said yes to a 7-year charter.
At that time, private colleges could authorize charter schools in closed-door meetings with no public notice. Since 2017, they’ve had to use nonprofit authorizing agencies, such as Grace College’s Grace Charters LLC, that are subject to open-meetings and public-records laws. Even so, it can be hard to keep up. I started asking by email about the Seven Oaks charter extension in March; it took until late May to get copies of the December 2022 board minutes and the school’s extended charter agreement.
Transparency is one issue of having distant authorizers for charter schools, but there are others. The National Association Charter School Authorizers cautions against throwing the door wide open for higher education institutions, or HEIs, to authorize schools, as Indiana has done since 2011.
The respected Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) designated “Moms for Liberty” as an extremist group, along with a number of other astroturf anti-government organizations that popped up during the pandemic to protest masks and vaccines.
In its annual report on hate groups, SPLC named Moms for Liberty and 11 other “parent”groups as extremists who feed on racism, misogyny, homophobia, and bigotry:
Moms for Liberty joins the ranks of groups including the Oath Keepers, the Three Percenters and the United Constitutional Patriots, a self-styled militia that “patrols” the U.S.-Mexico border.
Other astroturf “parent” groups were identified as extremist by SPLC:
The 12 “parent’s rights” groups labeled by the SPLC as extremist groups: Moms for Liberty; Moms for America; Army of Parents; Courage is a Habit; Education First Alliance; Education Veritas; No Left Turn in Education; Parents Against CRT (PACT); Parents Defending Education; Parents Rights in Education; Purple for Parents Indiana and Parents Involved in Education.
Will Carless wrote in USA Today that Moms for Liberty “pitched itself as a potent grassroots movement of outraged parents, many of whom weren’t active in school politics until COVID-19 restrictions forced them to pay attention. It has sprouted local chapters in at least 40 states, claims more than 100,000 members and has the ear of the Republican establishment: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has championed their efforts to restrict teaching about race in schools and universities. Critics in Florida slam the group for turning schools into a political battlefield.”
Both DeSantis and Trump will address the annual conference of this two-year-old organization of hate-mongers.
Moms for Liberty and the other organizations are being designated as “anti-government extremist groups,” based on longstanding criteria, explained SPLC Intelligence Project Director Susan Corke. Corke said the grassroots conservative groups are part of a new front in the battle against inclusivity in schools, though they are drawing from ideas rooted in age-old white supremacy.
“[The movement] is primarily aimed at not wanting to include our hard history, topics of racism, and a very strong push against teaching anything having to do with LGBTQ topics in schools,” Corke said. ”We saw this as a very deliberate strategy to go to the local level…”
Despite the national profile, these organizations spread conspiracy theories and operate on the myth that educators are engaged in “Marxist indoctrination” of the nation’s children by imbuing them with dangerous ideas about equality and sexuality, the SPLC said.
While the movement may be reasonably new, it is founded on the same traditional racist, misogynist and homophobic views that brought people out to protest the desegregation of schools in the 1950s and ’60s, the SPLC argues.
Moms for Liberty does not report the names of its funders.
