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Missouri: The Foundation that Wants to Replace Public Schools with “Christ-Centered K-12 Education”

By dianeravitch
December 22, 2023 //
9

This is a remarkable investigative article in the Missouri Independent by Annelise Hanshaw about the Herzog Foundation, which is spending its fortune on eliminating public schools and spreading “Christ-centered” schools.

Every state should have a journal like the Missouri Independent to sponsor independent investigative journalism.

The article contains some remarkable graphics about the linkages among rightwing groups, the foundation and the Republican Party. I won’t reproduce them, so please open the link and read the article and see the graphics. And read the story in full.

Hanshaw writes:

The headquarters of the Herzog Foundation sits on the edge of Smithville, in an 18,000-square-foot stone and glass building on a corner lot across the street from a cornfield on a gravel-lined highway.

Few Missourians have likely heard of the Stanley M. Herzog Charitable Foundation, or the organization’s namesake. But the unassuming locale masks what has been described as the “epicenter of the school-choice movement.”

Stan Herzog’s political largesse bankrolled a generation of conservative candidates and causes in Missouri, pouring through a constellation of political action committees and nonprofits. When he died in 2019, he set aside $300 million to start a foundation dedicated to expanding the reach of Christian education.

That mission kicked into overdrive in 2021, when Missouri lawmakers created a tax credit to support scholarships to help low-income students and those with disabilities attend private schools. Since then, a subsidiary of the Herzog Foundation has distributed almost half of the scholarships in the state.

And while the foundation thrives in Missouri, it also spreads its message nationwide.

It champions rallies across the country, holds workshops and bankrolls Christian-school-building packages. Former U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos spoke at the Herzog Foundation’s launch, and former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo gave a presentation at the foundation’s headquarters this February.

The foundation is barred from direct electoral activity because it is a charity, but businesses and political entities connected to Herzog continue pouring money into campaigns — spending more than $3.6 million on campaigns for state office since Herzog’s 2019 death , according to Missouri Ethics Commission filings.

It’s a recipe that gives the Herzog Foundation considerable stature in Missouri politics, as the push to expand Herzog’s education agenda continues to pick up steam.

“As far as education goes in Republican Party politics, they’re one of the major influencers in the state,” said Jean Evans, American Federation for Children’s Missouri state lead [Betsy DeVos’s organization].

“The Herzog family has been prolific donors to the Republican Party for a long time,” Evans added. “Stan Herzog passed away, but they’ve continued to support candidates and political causes. And now the Herzog Foundation is involved.”

But the foundation is not without its critics, who claim its real goal is the destruction of public education in Missouri and across the country.

“Herzog and other groups like Herzog have made it their goal to funnel money from taxpayers to private institutions,” said Rep. Maggie Nurrenbern, a Clay County Democrat who is running for a seat in the Missouri Senate.

“We’re going to continue to see more legislation pushed by groups like Herzog to dismantle public schools as we know them,” she said…

Herzog laid the groundwork for the Herzog Foundation in 2016, but it didn’t launch until after his death, when he set aside nearly $325 million for his mission, giving entrusted parties 20 years to spend his endowment.

Leading the foundation is Todd Graves, a former U.S. attorney and chairman of the Missouri Republican Party whose brother is U.S. Rep. Sam Graves.

Kristen Blanchard Ansley is the secretary and treasurer. She is a former executive director of the Missouri Republican Party, and over the years has been involved in numerous PACs and nonprofits that poured Herzog’s money into state and local campaigns.

In December 2021, the leaders of the Stanley M. Herzog Charitable Foundation established another nonprofit called the Herzog Tomorrow Foundation. It was created specifically to distribute tax dollars set aside by Missourians under the new scholarship program created by lawmakers.

The program works by allowing Missourians — both individuals and businesses — to donate to educational assistance organizations in return for a tax credit equal to the donation, as long as it’s 50% or less of their tax burden.

When the General Assembly passed legislation in 2021 to create the program, the fiscal note indicated that the tax credits would take up to $75 million from the state’s general revenue annually.

Herzog Tomorrow Foundation’s application to participate in the program says its goal is to “catalyze and accelerate the development of quality Christ-centered K-12 education.”

It is allowed to take a percentage of the scholarship funds to cover administrative costs: 10% of the first $250,000, 8% of the next $500,000 and 3% of funds raised thereafter.

But the administrative fees don’t appear to be the motivating factor for becoming an educational assistance organization. According to Chris Vas, scholarship director at Herzog Tomorrow Foundation, the organization donated $800,000 back to the program “to ensure that every eligible student who applied for a scholarship received one….”

Of the 1,313 students with scholarships in the first year, Herzog Tomorrow Foundation handled 598 of them, according to the treasurer’s office.

Vas testified in a House committee hearing in March that the foundation raised $3.1 million from 165 donors.

He said 20% of scholarship recipients had an individualized education plan, an accommodation plan and set of goals for students with disabilities. An additional 60% qualified for free or reduced lunch, and the rest were from families with incomes below 200% the free or reduced lunch threshold.

The foundation partnered with 80 schools statewide, of which 65 had a religious affiliation.

Influence

In the Stanley M. Herzog Charitable Foundation’s 2020 tax filing, the organization’s attorney stated that the foundation did not “attempt to influence any national, state or local legislation” and did not “participate or intervene in any political campaign.”

Vas said in an email that the foundation also “does not play any role in the legislative process.”

But while the foundation is prohibited from interfering in politics, Herzog’s money has long helped bankroll a web of politically active nonprofits and political action committees — most of which are tied to the foundation’s current leadership team.

Graves, in addition to being partner of a law firm that represented former Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens, Tea Party Patriots and witnesses in the federal January 6 probe, serves on three committees led by Leonard Leo, a Federalist Society co-chair that former president Donald Trump enlisted to help choose conservative judges.

Many of the political nonprofits and PACs funded with Herzog’s money list Graves’ law firm as their address.

[Open the link and see the graphic here identifying the connections.]

Ansley is a board member of Cornerstone 1791, which also goes by “Liberty Alliance USA.” Vas serves as Cornerstone 1791’s executive director.

Cornerstone 1791 has spent a majority of its expenditures paying Robidoux Services LLC. In 2020, it spent nearly $250,000 for “management, operations and consulting services.”

Robidoux Services has no online presence. Graves is its registered agent, and its office is the Graves Garrett LLC office, according to the business’s paperwork. Vas did not respond to a question asking what Robidoux Services is.

Other expenditures include a $1,105 contribution to “Don’t Tread on MO PAC,” a political action committee with Vas as treasurer, and $1,075 to “Excelsior PAC,” which Vas became treasurer of two years later.

In October 2022, Excelsior PAC spent $15,000 on mailers opposing state Rep. Ashley Aune. Axiom Strategies created the mailing, designing an image of Aune riding a bicycle with U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

“Radical liberal Ashley Aune wants to bring AOC-style politics to Jefferson City,” the postcard says.

Aune told The Independent her Platte County seat was eyed by Republicans as a district that could turn red.

“I was really surprised because it was just so far-fetched and kind of funny,” she said, recalling when she saw the postcard. “It’s not lost on me that A.O.C. and I are two Hispanic-identifying women, and we were being demonized.”

Ansley, Vas and Elliot also sit on the board of the Missouri Alliance for Freedom, a political nonprofit that has spent $770,000 since 2017, and American Democracy Alliance, a nonprofit that mostly donates to other nonprofits connected to Herzog.

Last year, a political action committee called “Let’s Go Brandon” poured money into the county executive race in Jefferson County to defeat former state Sen. Paul Wieland.

Wieland had drawn the ire of Graves when he vocally opposed his nomination for the University of Missouri Board of Curators a year earlier. And the money Let’s Go Brandon spent attacking Wieland came from an attorney who has long been close to Graves named Michael Ketchmark and Herzog Contracting Corporation.

Vas served as treasurer of Let’s Go Brandon while also working as the Herzog Foundation’s content director. He did not answer The Independent’s question asking why his PAC campaigned against Wieland.

He is also treasurer of Don’t Tread on Missouri PAC and Excelsior PAC.

Herzog companies have contributed $2.16 million to Missouri committees since 2017, when the state established campaign contribution limits….

[Open the link and see the graphic here to see Herzog’s contributions.]

At the end of 2021, the Herzog Foundation had nearly $364 million in assets, up $7.4 million from the previous year.

Although Stan Herzog gave 20 years to spend his endowment, investment income should sustain the foundation beyond that timeline.

With a resume of training events, awards, podcasts and speaker series — the foundation is likely expanding its programs.

The Herzog Tomorrow Foundation, the nonprofit that distributes Missourians’ tax dollars as an educational assistance organization, filed a business name with the secretary of state: “American Christian Education Alliance.”

In January, the nonprofit applied for two trademarks. The trademark registration is intended to cover “charitable fundraising” and “financial administration of education grant programs developed for students seeking a Christian education.”

Vas said ACE Alliance is a “project of the Herzog Tomorrow Foundation.”

“Its focus is to build a nationwide coalition of Christian education supporters,” he said.

Even before Missouri’s tax credit program was implemented, lawmakers were considering expanding it. While those efforts stalled, proponents are expected to try again when the legislature reconvenes in January.

“The MOScholars program has allowed low-income students and students with (individualized education plans) to attend the school of their dreams. We are extremely proud to participate in the program and help the next generation achieve the education that they deserve,” Vas said. “Our only hope is that we can help more kids in the future.”

Categories Disruption, Education Industry, Extremism, Missouri, Privatization, Propaganda, Religion, Separation of church and state, Vouchers

Josh Cowen: 2023 Was a Banner Year for Vouchers, Censorship, and Attacks on LGBT Kids

By dianeravitch
December 18, 2023 //
7

Writing in the Washington Spectator, veteran voucher researcher Josh Cowen reports that 2023 was a good year for some very bad ideas, many supported by prominent rightwingers and Dark Money, whose sources are hidden.

He finds it unsurprising that the voucher movement works closely with book banners and efforts to humiliate LGBT youth.

Cowen is a professor of education policy at Michigan State University who has studied vouchers since 2005.

He writes:

Over the past 12 months, the decades-long push to divert tax dollars toward religious education has reached new heights. As proclaimed by EdChoice—the advocacy group devoted to school vouchers—2023 has been the year these schemes reached “escape velocity.” In strictly legislative terms, seven states passed new voucher systems, and ten more expanded existing versions. Eleven states now run universal vouchers, which have no meaningful income or other restrictions.

But these numbers change quickly. As late as the last week of November, the Republican governor of Tennessee announced plans to create just such a universal voucher system.

To wit: successful new voucher and related legislation has come almost exclusively in states won by Donald Trump in 2020. And even that Right-ward bent required substantial investment—notably by heiress and former U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and the Koch network—in state legislative campaigns to oust voucher opponents. Instructively, many of those opponents were often GOP legislators representing rural districts with few private schools to benefit.

As a scholar who has studied voucher systems—including through research funded by conservative organizations—I have been watching these developments with growing concern. It can all be difficult to make sense of, so let’s walk through it.

Vouchers Hurt Kids, Defund Public Schools and Prop-Up Church Budgets

First, why are these new voucher schemes such bad public policy? To understand the answer, it’s important to know that the typical voucher-accepting school is a far cry from the kind of elite private academy you might find in a coastal city or wealthy suburban outpost. Instead, they’re usually sub-prime providers, akin to predatory lenders in the mortgage sector. These schools are either pop-ups opening to cash in on the new taxpayer subsidy, or financially distressed existing schools desperate for a bailout to stay open. Both types of financially insecure schools often close anyway, creating turnover for children who were once enrolled.

And the voucher results reflect that educational vulnerability: in terms of academic impacts, vouchers have some of the worst results in the history of education research—on par or worse than what COVID-19 did to test scores.

Those results are bad enough, but the real issue today is that they come at a cost of funding traditional public schools. As voucher systems expand, they cannibalize states’ ability to pay for their public education commitments. Arizona, which passed universal vouchers in 2022, is nearing a genuine budget crisis as a result of voucher over-spending. Six of the last seven states to pass vouchers have had to slow spending on public schools relative to investments made by non-voucher states.

That’s because most new voucher users were never in the public schools—they are new financial obligations for states. The vast majority of new voucher beneficiaries have been students who were already in private school beforehand. And for many rural students who live far from the nearest private school, vouchers are unrealistic in the first place, meaning that when states cut spending on public education, they weaken the only educational lifeline available to poorer and more remote communities in some places. That’s why even many GOP legislators representing rural districts—conservative in every other way—continue to fight against vouchers.

Vouchers do, however, benefit churches and church schools. Right-wing advocacy groups have been busy mobilizing Catholic school and other religious school parents to save their schools with new voucher funding. In new voucher states, conservatives are openly advocating for churches to startup taxpayer-funded schools. That’s why vouchers eventually become a key source of revenue for those churches, often replacing the need to rely on private donations. It’s also why many existing religious schools raise tuition almost immediately after vouchers pass.

The Right-Wing War on Public Schools

Victories for these voucher bills is nothing short of an ascendent Right-wing war on public education. And the link to religious nationalism energizes much of that attack.

Voucher bills have dovetailed almost perfectly with new victories for other priorities of the Religious Right. Alongside vouchers, anti-LGBTQ+ legislation has also increased: 508 new bills in 2023 alone, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. As has a jump in legislation restricting book access in schools and libraries, with more than half of those bans targeting books on topics related to race and racism, or containing at least one LGBTQ+ character.

It is also important to note the longstanding antipathy that Betsy DeVos, the Koch Network, and other long-term voucher backers have toward organized labor—including and especially in this case, teachers’ unions. And that in two states that passed vouchers this year—Iowa and Arkansas—the governors also signed new rollbacks to child labor protections at almost the exact same time as well.

To close the 2022 judicial session, the Supreme Court issued its latest expansion of voucher jurisprudence in Carson v. Makin, holding that states with private school voucher programs may not exclude religious providers from applying tax dollars specifically to religious education. That ruling came just 72 hours before the Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson removed reproductive rights from federal constitutional protections.

To hear backers of vouchers, book bans, and policies targeting transgender students in school bathrooms tell it, such efforts represent a new movement toward so-called “parents’ rights” or “education freedom,” as Betsy DeVos describes in her 2022 memoir. But in truth this latest push was a long time coming. DeVos is only one part of the vast network of Right-wing donors, activists, and organizations devoted to conservative political activism.

That network, called the Council for National Policy, includes representatives from the Heritage Foundation, the influential Right-wing policy outfit; multiple organizations funded by Charles Koch; the Leadership Institute, which trains young conservative activists; and a number of state policy advocacy groups funded by a conservative philanthropy called the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation.

It was the Bradley Foundation that seeded much of the legal work in the 1990s defending early voucher programs in state and federal courts. Bradley helped to fund the Institute for Justice, a legal group co-founded by a former Clarence Thomas staffer named Clint Bolick after a personal donation from Charles Koch. The lead trial attorney for that work was none other than Kenneth Starr, who was at the time also in the middle of his infamous pursuit of President Bill Clinton.

In late 2023, the Institute for Justice and the voucher-group EdChoice announced a new formal venture, but that partnership is just a spin on an older collaboration, with the Bradley Foundation as the tie that binds. EdChoice itself, when it was called the Milton and Rose D. Friedman Foundation, helped fund the data analysis cited by Institute lawyers at no less than the Supreme Court ahead of its first decision approving vouchers in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris (2002).

From these vantage points, 2023 was a long time coming indeed.

And heading into 2024, the voucher push and its companion “parents’ rights” bills on schoolbooks and school bathrooms show no sign of weakening.

Prior to his political career, the new Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Mike Johnson, was an attorney with the Alliance Defending Freedom. That group, which itself has deep ties to Betsy DeVos’s family, has led the legal charge to rollback LBGTQ+ equality initiatives. It was also involved “from the beginning,” as its website crows, in the anti-abortion effort that culminated with Dobbs.

The Heritage Foundation has created a platform called Project 2025, which serves as something of a clearinghouse for what would be the legal framework and policy agenda for a second Trump Administration. Among the advisors and funders of Project 2025 are several organizations linked to Charles Koch, Betsy DeVos, and others with ties to the Council for National Policy. The Project’s education agenda includes dismantling the U.S. Department of Education—especially its oversight authority on anti-discrimination issues—and jumpstarting federal support for voucher programs.

A dark money group called The Concord Fund has launched an entity called Free to Learn, ostensibly organized around opposition to the teaching of critical race theory in public schools. In reality, these are active players in Republican campaign attacks around a variety of education-related culture war issues. The Concord Fund is closely tied to Leonard Leo, the Federalist Society chief, Council of National Policy member, and architect of the Roe takedown. Through the Leo connection, the Concord Fund was also instrumental in confirming Donald Trump’s judicial nominations from Brett Kavanaugh on downward.

And so while the 2023 “parents’ rights” success has been largely a feature of red state legislatures, the 2022 Carson ruling and the nexus between Leonard Leo, the Alliance Defending Freedom, and the Institute for Justice itself underscore the importance of the federal judiciary to Right-wing education activism.

Long-term, the goal insofar as school privatization is concerned appears to be nothing short of a Supreme Court ruling that tax-subsidized school vouchers and homeschool options are mandatory in every state that uses public funding (as all do) to support education. The logic would be, as Betsy DeVos herself previewed before leaving office, that public spending on public schools without a religious option is a violation of Free Exercise protections.

Such a ruling, in other words, would complete the destruction of a wall between church and state when it comes to voucher jurisprudence. Earlier Court decisions have found that states may spend tax dollars on school vouchers but, as the Right’s ultimate goal, the Supreme Court would determine that states must.

Closer on the horizon, we can expect to see each of these Right-wing groups acting with new energy as the 2024 campaign season heats up. The president of the Heritage Foundation—himself yet another member of the Council for National Policy—has recently taken over the think tank’s political arm, called Heritage Action. At the start of the year, investigative reporting linked Heritage Action to earlier voter suppression initiatives, signaling potential tactics ahead.

And the money is going to flow—they have all said as much. After Heritage’s merger of its policy and political arms, Betsy DeVos’s American Federation for Children followed suit by creating the AFC Victory Fund—a new group to spearhead its own campaign activity.

Their plan includes a $10 million base commitment to ramp up heading into 2024. “Coming off our best election cycle ever,” AFC’s announcement declared, “the tectonic plates have shifted decisively in favor of educational freedom, and we’re just getting started.” And, they warned:

“If you’re a candidate or lawmaker who opposes school choice and freedom in education – you’re a target.”

In that threat lies the reality of the latest voucher push, and of this moment of so-called parents’ rights. None of this is a grassroots uprising. “Education freedom” is a top-down, big-money operation, tied to every other political priority of religious nationalism today.

But coming at the end of this past year’s legislative successes, AFC’s warnings are also a very clear statement of what is yet to come. The push to privatize American education is only just getting started.

Vouchers have turned into a campaign to subsidize the tuition of affluent parents while cutting the funding of public schools. This does not augur well for the health and future of our nation.

Categories Bigotry, Billionaires, Catholic Schools, Censorship, Corporate Reform, Curriculum, Dark Money, Democracy, Education Industry, Extremism, Fraud, Freedom, Freedom of Speech, Freedom to Read, Funding, Gender, Home Schooling, Ignorance, Librarians, Libraries, Literacy, Literature, Privatization, Propaganda, Racism, Religion, Separation of church and state, Vouchers

Leonard Leo Is Pushing for Public Funding of Religious Schools

By dianeravitch
December 10, 2023 //
11

Leonard Leo is one of the most powerful people in the nation. Get to know him. He led the conservative lawyer’s group The Federalist Society. He personally prepared the list of judges for Trump’s selection to the Supreme Court. He can take credit for the appointment of dozens of federal judges in district courts and appellate courts. In tribute to his effectiveness, a Chicago businessman gifted him with $1.6 billion to use as he wished to advance conservatism.

Politico reports that Leonard Leo’s latest cause is promoting religious charter schools, which would be fully funded by the public. The target, which he hopes to demolish, is separation of church and state.

At issue is the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Oklahoma’s push to create the St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School, which would be the nation’s first religious school entirely funded by taxpayers. The school received preliminary approval from the state’s charter school board in June. If it survives legal challenges, it would open the door for state legislatures across the country to direct taxpayer funding to the creation of Christian or other sectarian schools.

Brett Farley, executive director of the Catholic Conference of Oklahoma, acknowledges that public funding of St. Isidore is at odds with over 150 years of Supreme Court decisions. He said the justices have misunderstood Thomas Jefferson’s intent when he said there should be a wall separating church and state, but that the current conservative-dominated court seems prepared to change course.

“Jefferson didn’t mean that the government shouldn’t be giving public benefits to religious communities toward a common goal,” he said. “The court rightly over the last decade or so has been saying, ‘No, look, we’ve got this wrong and we’re gonna right the ship here.’ ”

Behind the effort to change the law are Christian conservative groups and legal teams who, over the past decade, have been beneficiaries of the billion-dollar network of nonprofits largely built by Leo, the Federalist Society co-chairman.

Leo’s network organized multi-million-dollar campaigns to support the confirmation of most of the court’s six conservative justices. Leo himself served as adviser to President Donald Trump on judicial nominations, including those of Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett…

“The Christian conservative legal movement, which has its fingerprints all over what’s going on in Oklahoma, is a pretty small, tight knit group of individuals,” said Paul Collins, a legal studies and politics professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. “They recognize the opportunity to get a state to fund a religious institution is a watershed moment,” said Collins, author of Friends of the Supreme Court: Interest Groups and Judicial Decision Making, adding that“They have a very, very sympathetic audience at the Supreme Court. When you have that on the Supreme Court you’re going to put a lot of resources into bringing these cases quickly.”

In Oklahoma, the legal team representing the state’s virtual charter school board, the Alliance Defending Freedom, helped develop arguments that led to the end of Roe v. Wade. It is significantly funded by donor-advised funds that allow their patrons to keep their identities secret but which receive large amounts of money from Leo-aligned groups.

They include Donors Trust, often called the “dark money ATM” of the conservative movement. In recent years, Donors Trust has been the largest single beneficiary of Leo’s primary dark money group, the Judicial Education Project. Donors Trust, in turn, gave $4 million to Leo’s Federalist Society in 2022, according to the IRS filings.

Since 2020, when Leo received a $1.6 billion windfall from Chicago electronics magnate Barre Seid, among the largest contributions to a political advocacy group in history, other groups funded by Leo’s network have become substantial contributors to ADF. For instance, Schwab Charitable Fund, which has given at least $4 million to ADF, received $153 million in 2021 from a new Leo-aligned nonprofit that received the Seid funding.

ADF Senior Counsel Phil Sechler said in an emailed statement that his group is defending the board “in order to ensure people of faith are not treated like second-class citizens.” Sechler, who said he “cannot predict” whether the case will land at the Supreme Court, did not comment on the group’s funding.

St. Isidore is represented by the Notre Dame Religious Liberty Initiative, a legal clinic created by the law school at the University of Notre Dame. At Notre Dame, law professor Nicole Stelle Garnett has worked with St. Isidore from the start of its application process.

In the same timeframe, Garnett joined the board of the Federalist Society, where Leo is co-chairman. She also joined the advisory council of a Catholic University law school initiative funded by a $4.25 million anonymous gift directed by Leo, according to a March 2021 press release. Justice Samuel Alito is its honorary chairman.

The Notre Dame clinic’s director is another alumni of Leo’s network, Stephanie Barclay, an attorney who spent multiple years at another legal nonprofit named after a Catholic martyr where Leo sits on the board: the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty.

The clinic itself was announced a few monthsbefore the confirmation of Barrett, who was a Notre Dame law professor for 15 years. The June, 2020, announcement of the clinic’s creation stated that Barclay would take a leave of absence to clerk for Gorsuch during the same time period — 2021 and 2022 — that the group was working with the Oklahoma archdiocese on its St. Isidore application. In June of 2022, the court also overturned Roe; a month later, the clinic funded a trip for Justice Alito to be feted at a gala in Rome.

Clinic spokeswoman Kate Monaghan Connolly declined to say if Barclay has done any work on behalf of St. Isidore, including before, during or after her clerkship. The clinic declined comment on its funders.

The clinic “has defended the freedom of religion or belief for all people across a wide variety of projects,” including Jews, Muslims, Sikhs and an Apache tribe, said Monaghan.

As St. Isidore and its allies readied for legal battle, Farley said, Notre Dame brought in a corporate team at the law firm Dechert LLP, including Michael McGinley, who worked on selecting judicial nominees at the Trump White House at the time Leo was advising the president. McGinley clerked for Gorsuch when he was a 10th Circuit appeals judge and for Alito at the Supreme Court. He accompanied Gorsuch to his confirmation hearings. He is not employed by Notre Dame, said Connolly. He is working “pro bono” for St. Isidore, Farley said….

Those backing the St. Isidore application face a formidable array of critics and opponents. Charter schools are required by Oklahoma statute to be non-sectarian, and in its application, the archdiocese says the school would be part of the “evangelizing mission of the Church.”

Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond, a Republican, says the proposed school violates both the U.S. and the state Constitution, and he is suing to stop it. Separately, a group of 10 plaintiffs including public school parents and faith leaders represented by groups including Americans for Separation of Church and State filed a lawsuit warning that the creation of the school will erode a pillar of American democracy: the wall of separation between church and state.

The plaintiffs in that case are calling on the Oklahoma judge presiding over it, C. Brent Dishman, to recuse himself. Dishman sits on the board of the College of the Ozarks, an evangelical college that was represented by ADF in a suit against the Biden administrationover transgender bathroom policy.

The school’s detractors say the national implications of the dispute are not getting enough attention. They include Melissa Abdo, a practicing Catholic and school board member in Jenks, Oklahoma, and Robert Franklin, a Republican-appointed member of a state virtual charter school board who last summer voted against the school’s application.

If the law were to allow public funding of religious schools, legislatures in conservative states would come under immediate pressure to help bail out troubled religious school systems: Catholic and Protestant churches are shuttering due to significant declines in church attendance and financial support as Americans become increasingly secular.

The 1.8 million-student Catholic education system received a lifeline through the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in the case of Carson v. Makin, which required states with voucher systems to help students afford private schools to allow the money to be spent on religious academies. The influx of public money was already helping the Catholic Church to stave off parish closings, according to a 2017 National Bureau of Economic Research studythat called vouchers “a dominant source of funding for many churches.”

“It’s not about the 500 kids. The game is to get this to the Supreme Court,” said Franklin. “If the court approves this, it changes everything” about public education in America, he said.

“It’s been extremely unsettling,” said Franklin, noting that the state already has six virtual schools to serve children of all faiths and that some of the school’s biggest backers, including Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, had previously bashed virtual learning as ineffective.

Please open the link to read the full article.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Elections, Funding, Oklahoma, Privatization, Religion, Republicans, Separation of church and state, Trump, Vouchers

National Education Policy Center: Are ESAs as Bad as Vouchers—Or Worse?

By dianeravitch
November 30, 2023 //
3

The National Education Policy Center published this valuable analysis of the difference between “education savings accounts” and vouchers.

Termed “education savings accounts” (ESAs) these vouchers on steroids were the subject of 79 percent of the 111 voucher-related bills introduced in state legislatures in 2023. Five states enacted new ESAs (AR, IA, MT, SC, and UT). In addition, four states expanded existing ESA programs (FL,IN, NH,TN).

In most ways, ESAs are similar to traditional vouchers that parents have used for decades to pay for private schools at public expense. It’s just that they go a step farther, permitting parents to use the funds not just for private school tuition but for other education-related expenses such as school uniforms, homeschool curricula, and gym memberships.

In a recent article in the Brown Center Chalkboard, a publication of The Brookings Institution, a Washington, DC-based think tank, NEPC fellow Joshua Cowen of Michigan State University writes that he already sees signs that ESAs are following in the footsteps of traditional vouchers, which studies suggest lead to a flood of new providers, many of which quickly close, as well as tuition hikes at existing voucher schools.

“Unfortunately, the voucher research literature suggests that even with new schools opening, there simply are not enough effective private schools to go around,” he writes. “This might explain the dismal academic results over the last decade—and suggests a very real risk in today’s ESA initiatives if they produce large increases in private school enrollment.”

Drawing upon past research on traditional vouchers, Cowen predicts that ESAs will lead to lower student achievement. Evidence on traditional vouchers’ impact on rates of high school graduation and college enrollment is more mixed—but when positive effects were found, they were associated with students spending all four years of high school in a private school. However, private high schools that accept vouchers often experience high rates of churn. In Milwaukee, which Cowen has studied, 20 percent of voucher students left private schools annually. Academic improvements occurred once students returned to public schools.

Voucher advocates disappointed with academic results have blamed over-regulation for the poor outcomes.

Yet Cowen writes that “the only empirical evidence of the effects of accountability on a voucher program found that once voucher schools were required to use the same testing and reporting requirements as their public counterparts, voucher performance improved substantially.”

He added: “The lack of accountability is already raising problems in newer programs. In Arizona, for example, families had a number of questionable expenses approved, and in North Carolina, some private schools are claiming more vouchers than students actually enrolled.”

Unlike earlier traditional voucher programs, today’s vouchers are more likely to be universally available rather than to be offered to certain populations-such as students from low-income families.

“How these new, expanded programs will function is perhaps the key open question for research moving forward,” Cowen writes.

Data from traditional voucher programs has indicated that the larger the program, the worse the results tend to be. In the best case, that’s because there are too few effective private schools to serve expanded voucher programs; in the worst case, there are inherent limits to the choices parents can make when vouchers allow private schools to choose their students as well.

For example, private schools that accept vouchers may implement admissions criteria that screen out students with disabilities, students with low test scores, or emerging bilinguals.

Voucher-accepting schools are also permitted to refuse to accept LGBTQ+ students or families, and to fire or refuse to hire LGBTQ+ staff.

“[I]t remains to be seen how the new expansion of private school choice programs will ultimately affect educational opportunity,” Cowen writes. “But research on traditional vouchers suggests extreme caution when expecting new, favorable results simply because parents of children outside of public school can now spend public dollars on costs beyond tuition.”

Categories Bigotry, Disruption, Education Industry, Research, Separation of church and state, Vouchers

Arkansas Recruits Students to Enroll in Fundamentalist Christian School

By dianeravitch
November 22, 2023 //
9

Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders has wasted no time in pushing her evangelical, fundamentalist Christian views and diverting public money to religious schools that teach her views. Sanders, who was Trump’s press secretary, is the daughter of fundamentalist pastor Mike Huckabee, who also was governor of Arkansas.

Sanders pushed through a voucher law, and now the state will pay tuition for students at private and religious schools. As in other states, the overwhelming majority of vouchers were claimed by students already enrolled in nonpublic schools.

The state education department went a step beyond making vouchers available. It’s now using taxpayer money to advertise on behalf of a fundamentalist school that does not admit LGBT students, and is certainly not likely to enroll students who are Jewish, Muslim, Catholic, or modern Protestants.

David Ramsay of the Arkansas Times wrote:

Last week, we noted that the Arkansas Department of Education had released a video promoting Cornerstone Christian Academy, a K-12 private school in the southeast Arkansas town of Tillar.

It’s not unusual for a state agency to promote a new law or policy initiative, which this video does by highlighting the voucher program available under Arkansas LEARNS, the state’s new education overhaul. But what is unusual is for the state’s education department to use public resources to create such an explicit advertisement for a private school. As Josh Cowen, a professor at Michigan State University and a nationally prominent expert on education policy, told us: “[U]sually they pretend it’s about parental choice more broadly. What’s less common — what I’ve yet to see, in fact — is a state agency leaning this heavily into promotion of private education. And Christian education at that.”

The publicly funded promo for a private school is made even more awkward given the religious affiliation: Cornerstone uses a Bob Jones University curriculum known for teaching “young-Earth creationism,” the belief that the planet and universe are only a few thousand years old. It requires students to take a Christian studies class and attend chapel. The application asks parents about church affiliation and about their child’s “personal experience and faith in Jesus Christ.”

The application also asks about whether a student has ever been involved with “sexual immorality” and requires that parents agree to “maintain the basic principles of biblical morality in my home.”

I left a message with the school’s administrator to find out whether its admissions policies explicitly discriminated against LGBT students. I never heard back, but after a little further digging on their website, I found a student handbook that directly states LGBT students are not allowed to attend the school:

The significance the Bible places on the severity of sexual immorality, and our commitment to a “Christ-centered” environment demands certain standards for admittance to CCA. Therefore, students will NOT be permitted to attend CCA who professes any sort of sexually immoral lifestyle or an openly sinful lifestyle including but not limited to: promiscuity, homosexuality, transgenderism, etc.

This sort of policy is not uncommon at some Christian private schools, but it raises some thorny questions about the state’s voucher program. LEARNS vouchers are  funneling somewhere in the neighborhood of $419,000 in public funds to Cornerstone this school year, part of $32.5 million projected to be spent on private school vouchers across the state. It remains unclear whether the Cornerstone promo video was made directly or funded by the education department, which has not responded to questions.

The video sells vouchers as a vehicle of parental choice, but ultimately it’s the schools themselves that decide who can — or cannot — attend. The only obligation these schools face in terms of admission is that they cannot discriminate based on race, color or national origin, which would violate federal law. But unlike traditional public schools, they are under no obligation to take all comers. 

They are free to discriminate against LGBT students. They are free to impose religious requirements. They do not have to admit students who struggle academically or have behavior problems. They do not have to offer necessary services for disabled students. We have no way of knowing how many students might be rejected from applying to a school, or what the reasons were. There is no transparency and there are almost no rules. To receive a publicly funded voucher under Arkansas LEARNS, a student must gain admission to a private school — but the entire admission process is an unregulated Wild West. 

Kicking a student out of a private school likewise leaves wide latitude to the schools. To expel a voucher student, a private school must follow clear, pre-established disciplinary procedures. But so long as they don’t discriminate based on race, color or national origin, schools are free to follow their own policies.

Among the 94 private schools participating in the voucher program, many are Christian. It’s likely that a significant number, like Cornerstone, close their doors to LGBT students. That has been found to be the the case in voucher programs in Wisconsin and Indiana. The vouchers are publicly funded, but not all schools are open to the public: The vaunted principle of school choice is, in fact, the school’schoice, and some families may find themselves shut out.

Categories Arkansas, Bigotry, Curriculum, Education Industry, Extremism, Freedom to Read, Funding, Gender, Ignorance, Religion, Separation of church and state, Vouchers

Vouchers Are Propping Up Religious Schools

By dianeravitch
November 7, 2023 //
11

The Network for Public Education posted this article.

Anne Lutz Fernandez: School Choice is Becoming Involuntary Tithing

Anne Lutz Fernandez took a look at the growing number of voucher programs, and their close ties to religious institutions.

It may surprise some to learn that 75% of American private school students attend religious schools, with over a third at Catholic schools. A 2017 report by the National Bureau of Economic Research highlighted that “[r]eligious schools not only dominate private education, but also appear to dominate the market for voucher-accepting schools.” As a result, one of the biggest beneficiaries of this redirection of tax dollars is the Catholic Church.

In their study of Milwaukee’s voucher program, NBER found that churches running schools accepting vouchers were funded in good part by those vouchers and that the program had staved off parish closings. With both Catholic and Protestant churches in decline in the US — and some dioceses still in financial trouble as a result of abuse settlements — these programs put taxpayers in the position of helping prop them up.

Now news comes from Iowa that highlights what religious institutions gain from the rapid expansion of private-school choice programs. Within months of the passage of a new ESA program, Catholic schools in the state are hiking up tuition to get more public funding, as the Iowa Capital-Dispatch reported:

Several Iowa private schools announced their plans to raise tuition after the program was signed into law. Holy Family Catholic School in Dubuque raised tuition to be able to receive more of the available government money, with no increased cost to the families using ESA funds. Tuition for Wahlert Catholic High School students is $6,590 for the current school year — in 2023-2024, high school tuition will grow to $7,400. Students who aren’t Catholic will have a tuition of $8,600, and Catholic students whose parishes do not support Holy Family will pay $7,825 in tuition annually — both cases where an ESA would not cover the full cost of attendance.

The separation of church and state in schools is under attack within traditional public schools as well. Texas just passed a bill to allow public schools to hire chaplains as uncertified staff alongside school counselors, an act that would have been unthinkable before we had a Supreme Court determined to redefine religious freedom as the freedom of religious groups to preach on the taxpayers’ dime. Fighting for the separation of church and state in public institutions is hard work enough — there, citizens can vote out state and local officials who want to blur those lines and they have a voice as parents and residents via public boards of education.

Read her full post here. 

You can view the post at this link : https://networkforpubliceducation.org/blog-content/anne-lutz-fernandez-school-choice-is-becoming-involuntary-tithing/

Categories Education Industry, Religion, Separation of church and state, Vouchers

Jan Resseger: Reflecting on the 10th NPE Conference

By dianeravitch
November 2, 2023 //
0

In case you missed the Network for Public Education’s 10th annual conference, Jan Resseger gives you here a brief overview.

It was a well-planned conference with great speakers and panels. Every year, we say, “This was the best ever.” We said it again this time. How will we top this next year? The presentations of the keynote speakers were recorded and I will post them.

Jan Resseger writes:

It was while I was traveling home from last weekend’s Network for Public Education Conference that I realized I had not once heard Miguel Cardona’s name mentioned—even though the meeting was in Washington, D.C. Miguel Cardona is, of course, the U.S. Secretary of Education.

This year’s conference felt different than earlier conferences, when worries about federal policy brought by previous Secretaries of Education became a unifying focus. Rod Paige brought us “the Texas Miracle,” the test-and-punish model policy that spawned No Child Left Behind. Arne Duncan bribed the states with huge federal grants if they agreed to adopt his favorite Race to the Top priorities. And Betsy DeVos talked on and on about her favorite subject, school privatization.

Federal policy can be helpful or harmful for public schools. But with Miguel Cardona’s quiet management style and in the context of a badly divided Congress, any chance of our framing a collective narrative response to a nationwide policy has faded. It is, of course, true that a lot of awful remnants of the No Child Left Behind and the Race to the Top era, like the federal Charter Schools Program that continues to support privately operated charter schools, remain in federal law. The remains of Race to the Top also still clutter the laws from state to state. But except for the Network for Public Education’s dogged effort to end funding for the federal Charter Schools Program, the focus on federal advocacy at this year’s conference seemed to have become limited. Keynoters were clear, however, that the attack on absolutely essential Title I funding from House Republicans is being vigorously countered by the Biden administration and in the U.S. Senate.

At last weekend’s conference it was clear that today the most damaging education policy is emerging in the 50 state legislatures, a situation which creates a challenge for collective advocacy. While states like Wisconsin, Indiana, and Ohio are all facing school funding shortages and concurrent growth in the diversion of state dollars to school vouchers, state laws and state politics make it extremely challenging for advocates even in these three similar states to pull together a coherent and moving universal narrative that also accounts for each state’s wonky legislative differences. At last week’s conference, workshops on the implications of state policy informed participants about work to reform Pennsylvania’s charter schools; to defend public schools from Ron DeSantis’s attack on teaching inclusive history in Florida; to push back against state takeovers in Houston, Lorain, Ohio, and Nashville; to inform the public about school funding lost to tax abatements in Kansas, South Carolina, Louisiana, and Missouri; to press for the end of portfolio school reform in Denver; and to help parent and teachers union advocates work together to build support for investment in equitable public schools as they did during teachers’ strikes in Los Angeles and Oakland.

Opposing the Growth of School Privatization via Vouchers

In this year of explosive growth of private school tuition vouchers across the states, several workshops explored the evidence that vouchers don’t fulfill the promises of their proponents. Experts presented research findings demonstrating that parents sign away their children’s constitutional protections when they accept a voucher to send a child to a private school. One researcher described the result as “the outsourcing of discrimination.” Another presented peer-reviewed research showing that students’ test scores in both math and reading dropped significantly after they took a voucher to attend a private school, and that many return suddenly to the public school district when their voucher school forces them out for one reason or another or she school suddenly closes. Public schools are prohibited by law from routinely expelling students; private schools accepting vouchers often push out children with special needs or those who do not fit their school’s profile.

Several workshops examined the fiscal damage when states divert massive tax dollars to uncapped voucher and Education Savings Account programs, which are often unregulated and poorly managed. Public Funds Public Schools, a collaboration of the Education Law Center and the Southern Poverty Law Center, shared its website that tracks voucher schemes across the states and provides up to date resources for advocacy. Two workshops presented full-service Community Schools, which are likely to become any family’s best school choice as medical, family, and community services are located right inside the neighborhood public school.

Refusing to Be Distracted by the Far-Right Culture Wars

Another factor creating today’s difficult public education policy climate is the massive investment in racist and homophobic “culture war” disruption by billionaire philanthropists and dark money groups. In A Citizen’s Guide to School Privatization, a new resource just published on the Network for Public Education’s website, Massachusetts political science professor Maurice Cunningham traces the dangerous groups working together to rile up and divide parents and distract us all from more constructive efforts to strengthen public schooling and make our schools more inclusive. The result? “Chaos is the product. It’s a lot easier to break something than to build something or to improve upon it.”

In a workshop last weekend, Cunningham described some of the research he has published in his new, and well documented Citizen’s Guide, for example, the following about the national organization that basically funds and operates Moms for Liberty: “The Council for National Policy… brings together wealthy conservatives, many from the oil and gas realm; Christian evangelists with vast communications networks; and groups that can turn out groups like the National Rifle Association. The Council for National Policy is a central directorate passing down plans to ‘obedient franchises’ like Moms for Liberty. The key Council for National Policy members that oversee Moms for Liberty are the Leadership Institute and Heritage Foundation. They run the annual summits, provide the training and literature, and even sue the Biden administration on Moms for Liberty’s behalf.”

What About the Separation of Church and State?

One workshop last weekend brought researchers from Documented to explore the Christian Right organization, the Alliance for Defending Freedom, which has worked to develop a legal strategy to confront public schools around the idea that “public schools are indoctrinating children with a secular worldview that amounted to a godless religion.”

While private schools accepting vouchers have been quietly teaching religion for years and at the same time failing to protect the rights of their students, in a workshop last weekend three legal experts set out to clarify the issues posed by an explicitly religious charter school, St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School, which the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Oklahoma City has proposed to open. The presenters explored the question legally: whether, as publicly funded private contractors, charter schools are “state actors.” The issue is so complex in terms of legal precedents that even among the presenters there was subtle disagreement.

Participants in this and another workshop I attended seemed concerned about the broader constitutional question of the separation of government and religion. Many seemed clearly to grasp the importance of the first Amendment’s Establishment Clause’s protection of church-state separation, and many were concerned and confused about the current U.S. Supreme Court’s reliance on the Free Exercise Clause instead. It seemed a good thing that staff from Americans United for Separation of Church and State were workshop presenters in this year’s Network for Public Education conference to help clarify the issues around the current U.S. Supreme Court’s interpretation of religious liberty.

Working for Racial Justice

Many of the leaders and powerful speakers at last week’s conference identified racism and its lingering role as the greatest factor undermining children’s experience in public school along with the unequal school funding from state to state that regularly disadvantages Black and Brown children. It is clear that today’s attacks on the honest teaching of American history, on critical race theory, and on “diversity, equity and inclusion” are a blatant attempt to marginalize Black, immigrant, and gay, lesbian, and transgender children and adolescents.

Last weekend we heard about and talked about what happens when Ron DeSantis and others attack “diversity, equity, and inclusion” efforts as “woke.” Their goal is to ensure that schools can remain segregated by race and economics so that parents can protect their children from exposure to diversity; that state school funding schemes remain inequitable by favoring wealthy suburbs; and that public schools can exclude the history and culture and identity of some children from the curriculum and ban books about these children. Promoting homophobia and “fear of the other” is central to this agenda. Speakers throughout the event traced the advent of school vouchers back to the segregation academies that were a response to Brown v. Board of Education.

Gloria Ladson-Billings, the retired Kellner Family Distinguished Professor of Urban Education at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, seemed the perfect person to launch the conference’s opening plenary in this year filled with attacks on efforts by schools to protect diversity, multicultural education and authentic welcome for all students. Ladson-Billings’ own website introduces her as “known for her work in the fields of culturally relevant pedagogy and critical race theory, and the pernicious effects of systemic racism and economic inequality on educational opportunities.” Keynoter, Dr. Marvin Dunn, Professor Emeritus in the Department of Psychology at Florida International University, described his project to lead students on tours of the site of the 1923 Rosewood Massacre of an African American community in Florida. Governor Ron DeSantis has attempted to suppress teaching about such events. A workshop highlighted the work of the Schott Foundation’s Opportunity to Learn Network along with the role of full-service Community Schools to house social, medical and community services to serve families and make them feel welcome and supported. Finally Jitu Brown and staff from the Journey for Justice Alliance introduced the Journey for Justice Alliance’s national Equity or Else Campaign for racial justice.

Remembering the Urgent Importance of Public Schooling for These Tough Times

Many of the event’s speakers called the growing attack on public education combined with rapid expansion of private school tuition vouchers and states’ investment in privately operated charter schools an existential threat to the primary institutions that anchor every small town, city neighborhood and suburb: the public schools that continue to educate the vast majority of our children and adolescents. As we strategize about how to push back against the threats to our public schools, however, the National Education Association’s Susan Nogan ended her workshop presentation with a reminder: “We must lead with our shared values.” Ladson-Billings opened the conference with a keynote entitled, “Regaining a ‘Public’ for Public Education.” Keynoter Julian Vasquez Heilig, Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs at Western Michigan University declared, “Equity, inclusivity and democracy are what our public schools represent.” The American Federation of Teachers’ Randi Weingarten reminded a luncheon plenary: “Public school is the place where we do pluralism.”

I was reassured that despite a lot of worrying about threats to public education, speakers shared their confidence in the foundational principles underneath our American system of public schools. Public schools are publicly funded, universally available and accessible, and guaranteed by law to meet each child’s needs and protect all children’s rights. Public schooling represents not only individualist concern for one’s own children, but also a sense of obligation to all of the community’s children.

School privatization cannot move our society closer to these principles. Last week’s 10th Anniversary Network for Public Education Conference represented a commitment to work together to ensure greater equality of opportunity and to improve our public schools, but at the same time to affirm public education as the optimal educational institution for the investment of our efforts and tax dollars.

Categories Education Reform, Network for Public Education, Networkfor Public Education Action Fund, Privatization, Racism, Separation of church and state

Texas: Moms Against Greg Abbott Are the Real Deal

By dianeravitch
October 19, 2023 //
4

There are many wonderful groups fighting the extremists who control the state Republican Party, who regularly bow to Trump and try to surpass him in bigotry and hatred.

One of the groups I frequently donate to is called Mons Against Greg Abbott. You notice that their initials are M-A-G-A. I think of them as the “good MAGA.”

Here is their latest report:

Last week was a whirlwind of activity in the Republican-controlled Texas Senate — sadly, that’s not a positive.

Texas Senate Republicans proved once again how little they care for Texas families and demonstrated how willing they are to sacrifice their principles in support of an extremist MAGA agenda.

Here’s a quick roundup of some of the biggest votes that happened during the Texas Senate’s special session on education:

1. Their School Voucher Bill

As expected, last Thursday (Oct. 12) the Texas Senate passed a substantial voucher program (SB 1), creating an $8,000 / year Education Savings Account (ESA) for eligible students.

If adopted by the Texas House, the voucher program would allow families to access up to $8,000 of taxpayer money / student to pay for private school or homeschooling costs. $500 million of taxpayer money would be allocated initially to help fund the program.

SB 1 also included a provision that would require private schools to tell parents that they are not subject to federal and state laws regarding services to children with disabilities.

So… the takeaway here is that private schools, set to profit from our taxpayer monies will, in fact, NOT be subjected to either federal or state laws that help govern special needs education.

We’ll be closely monitoring the debate over school vouchers in the Texas House this week. So stay tuned, and keep fighting for our public schools!

2. Public School Funding

In addition to SB 1, the Texas Senate did pass a (smaller than desired) school funding bill (SB 2).

Under SB 2, $5.2 billion would be appropriated to public school funding — via an additional teacher retention bonus, increased funds for teacher salaries, an increase by $75 in the basic allotment, and adjustments to the basic allotment calculations.

To be blunt, no one is fooled by a $75 increase and SB 1 falls far short of what our public schools and our public teachers deserve.

In yet another example of poor leadership from the Texas Senate, on Friday, the Republican-controlled Texas Senate passed a sweeping ban on COVID-19 vaccine mandates (SB 7) for employees of private Texas businesses.

If passed, SB 7 would subject private Texas employers to state fines and other actions if they fire or punish employees or contractors who refuse vaccination.

3. Ban on COVID-19 Vaccines

The bill offers no exceptions for doctors’ offices, clinics or other health facilities.

What happened in the Texas Senate this special session is simply a failure of leadership. It is unacceptable that so many of our lawmakers voted against Texas families.

What happens now, in the Texas House, couldn’t be more important. Our legislative action team will be mobilized and doing everything we can to resist the type of draconian and destructive MAGA bills that came out of the Texas Senate last week.

And we are certain that more representatives will stand up and do the right thing. But making sure that happens will take all of us.

If you can support our movement with a contribution today, please know how much your support helps Mothers Against Greg Abbott continue the fight for Texas families.

Categories Elections, Extremism, Funding, Injustice, Lies, Republicans, Resistance, Separation of church and state, Shame, Supporting public schools, Texas

Passau: The Bishop’s Palace

By dianeravitch
October 4, 2023 //
5

In Germany, one’s religion was very important. The Bishop in every district decided which religion every parishioner must practice. Religion was at the core of conflicts, even wars. Your religion was your identity. This photograph portrays the facade of the Prince-Bishop’s palace in Passau.

Passau has a complex relationship with religion. Written into its constitution is a strong commitment to separation of church and state. But, based on an agreement dated 1924, the state is required to pay the salaries of bishops today; children can attend religious schools, so long as they abide by national standards of teaching and learning. Home schooling is not permitted

Categories Education Reform, Home Schooling, Religion, Separation of church and state

Pastors for Texas Children Call on Governor Abbott to Respect Separation of Church and State

By dianeravitch
September 21, 2023 //
3

Governor Greg Abbott convened a tele-town hall of Christian faith leaders that he would convene a special session of the legislature in October to push for vouchers. If the don’t pass, he will call another special session. He will reconvene the legislature again and again until they pass a voucher that will give about $8,000 to every eligible student. The Texas Senate supports vouchers; the Texas House does not.

The Legislative Budget Board estimated that legislation would cost Texas $4.9 billion through 2028. It failed to get out of the House Public Education Committee.

“I’m never going to be in support of sending our precious taxpayer dollars to unaccountable private schools that don’t have to meet any of the requirements that our public schools have to meet. This is going to destroy public education in the state of Texas,” State Rep. James Talarico, D-Round Rock, told Nexstar Tuesday.

The Pastors for Texas Children have steadfastly defended public schools and opposed vouchers for religious schools. Under the leadership of Pastor Charles Foster Johnson, PTC has inspired similar organizations in other states where public schools are besieged by religious groups and politicians who want the taxpayers to fund religious schools. PTC makes clear that church and state should remain separate as a matter of principle. The Founding Fathers understood that, which is why the First Amendment to the Constitution prohibits Congress from passing any law regarding the establishment of religion and protects the free exercise of religion.

Pastors for Texas Children issued the following statement in response to Governor Greg Abbott’s aggressive lobbying for voucher legislation.

PTC Responds to Governor’s Town Hall

In an unprecedented violation of God’s law of religious liberty and the American doctrine of the separation of church and state, Governor Greg Abbott this afternoon called on ministers and pastors to use God’s pulpit to push his private school voucher program.

Specifically, October 15 has been designated as pro-voucher Sunday.

“The people of Texas know an eternal truth that seems to escape Gov. Abbott, that all genuine faith is voluntary and cannot properly be endorsed or supported by the authority of the state,” said Rev. Charles Foster Johnson, executive director of Pastors For Texas Children.

“The use of public tax dollars to subsidize religious instruction is a sin against God.”

The governor’s initiative today is in direct response to Pastors For Texas Children’s decade long-opposition to the diversion of public funds for private and religious schools.

PTC is very intentional in its messaging to keep politics out of our pulpits. Our engagements are conducted by individual clergy outside formal times of religious gatherings.

Furthermore, the threats made by the governor this afternoon against pro-public education State Representatives is an inappropriate and desperate attempt to intimidate dedicated public servants representing the interests of their people.

This crass bullying is particularly odious.

The truth of the matter is that the House of Representatives of the State of Texas opposes private school vouchers, as they have for over two decades.

That will not change no matter how many special legislative sessions the governor calls.

Pastors For Texas Children stands strong for the universal education of all God’s children, provided and protected by the public trust, and opposes all attempts to privatize it for sectarian religious and political reasons.

Categories Religion, Separation of church and state, Texas
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