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U.S. Supreme Court Will Decide Case of Oklahoma Religious Charter School: CODE RED!

By dianeravitch
January 25, 2025 //
40

The U.S. Supreme Court announced yesterday that it will rule on whether Oklahoma taxpayers should pay for a religious charter school. The Court has been inching closer to shattering the wall of separation beteeen church and state. Its 6-3 rightwing majority seems to be eager to find a case where they can rule that states that refuse to pay tuition at religious schools are denying freedom of religion.

Is this the case?

If the Court does decide that Oklahoma must pay tuition for students at religious schools, the majority will have to stop claiming that they are Originalists, bound by the original intent of those who wrote the Constitution. It has never been the policy of any state to pay tuition at any religious school. The Supreme Court has issued a long line of decisions that rule against taxpayer responsibility for religious school tuition.

The effects of such a ruling would be to reduce funding for public schools, which enroll 85-90 percent of all students, to promote racial and religious segregation, and to endorse discrimination since religious and private schools are exempt from federal laws requiring the admission of students without regard to race, religion, gender, or disability.

Troy Closson of The New York Times reported:

The Supreme Court agreed on Friday to consider a high-profile case that could open the door to allowing public dollars to directly fund religious schools.

The widely watched case out of Oklahoma could transform the line between church and state in education, and it will come before a court whose conservative majority has broadly embraced the role of religion in public life.

The case centers on a proposal for the nation’s first religious charter school, St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School. The school would be online, and its curriculum would embed religious teachings throughout lessons, including in math and reading classes.

As a charter school, it would be run independently from traditional public schools. But public taxpayer dollars would pay for the school, and it would be free for students to attend.

The question of whether the government can fully finance a religious school has proved especially divisive within the school choice movement and across Oklahoma. Some conservative Christian leaders, including Gov. Kevin Stitt and Ryan Walters, the firebrand state superintendent who has sought to require teaching from the Bible in public schools, have backed St. Isidore’s creation.

They urged the Supreme Court to take up the case, believing the conservative-leaning court would decide in the school’s favor.

A coalition of religious leaders, advocates of public schools and some other state Republicans say the proposal is unconstitutional. Oklahoma’s Republican attorney general, Gentner Drummond, argued it would “open the floodgates and force taxpayers to fund all manner of religious indoctrination, including radical Islam or even the Church of Satan.”

After St. Isidore was approved by a state board in June 2023 in a narrow 3-to-2 vote, the Oklahoma Supreme Court blocked its creation. The justices wrote in a majority opinion that the school would “create a slippery slope” that could lead to “the destruction of Oklahomans’ freedom to practice religion without fear of governmental intervention.”

Still, as more Republican state legislatures move to support school vouchers and other options for parents to use public money to educate their children in private schools, including religious schools, some legal experts believe that charter schools would become another major arena in the debate.

Justin Driver, a professor at Yale Law School, said that a Supreme Court decision that allows religious charter schools “would represent nothing less than a sea change in constitutional law.”

“It is difficult to overstate the significance of this opinion for our constitutional order and the larger American society,” Mr. Driver said.

The case will present new education questions for the U.S. Supreme Court’s 6-to-3 conservative majority, which has shown an openness to religion in the public sphere. Justice Amy Coney Barrett, a member of the conservative bloc, recused herself from the case but did not explain why.

In a 2022 ruling, the court ruled that a high school football coach had the right to pray on the field after his team’s games.

Other recent cases have barred Maine and Montana from excluding religious schools from state tuition programs or scholarships to students in private schools. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote in both cases that states are not required to support religious education, but that those that opt to subsidize private schools cannot discriminate against religious ones.

Supporters of St. Isidore argue that blocking a religious charter school from receiving funding violates the First Amendment’s protection of religious freedom. Jim Campbell, the chief legal counsel for Alliance Defending Freedom, a legal group representing the Oklahoma state charter board, praised the court’s decision to hear the case.

“Oklahoma parents and children are better off with more educational choices, not fewer,” Mr. Campbell said in a statement. “There’s great irony in state officials who claim to be in favor of religious liberty discriminating against St. Isidore because of its Catholic beliefs.”

The school was initially set to open in August and would be managed by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Oklahoma City and the Diocese of Tulsa. Leaders of the school say it would accept students of all faiths.

But opponents say that it would run into conflict with the constitutional prohibition on government establishment of religion, infringing on religious freedom. “Converting public schools into Sunday schools would be a dangerous sea change for our democracy,” several organizations, including Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said in a joint statement on Friday.

For decades, the hybrid nature of charter schools — sharing features of both public schools and private institutions — has made it difficult for courts to determine how different education issues should apply to them, according to Preston Green, a professor at the University of Connecticut who studies educational law.

Still, Mr. Green said he believes St. Isidore’s argument “could be very attractive” to the conservative justices — and that if the court ultimately sides with the charter school, “the implications are potentially huge.”

In the movement to remove barriers to funding religious education, “charter schools are really the next frontier,” Mr. Green said. “And it doesn’t end here.”

Categories Disruption, Extremism, Religion, Segregation, Separation of church and state

Texas Adopts Bible-Based Lessons for K-5 Classes

By dianeravitch
January 23, 2025 //
9

Texas is offering a curriculum for K-5 classrooms that is infused with Biblical stories. It is called the Bluebonnet Learning Materials. Its proponents contend that this cultural knowledge will prepare students to understand art, literature, and history, but the children are way too young to absorb the religious lessons as part of their lifelong knowledge. Critics also complain that one religion is favored above all.

The Houston Chronicle reported:

Controversy has surrounded new state-approved lessons referencing the Bible that are being offered as part of the Texas Education Agency’s elementary reading curriculum, with some confusion on financial incentives to adopt the materials. Months after the State Board of Education approved the materials created through House Bill 1605, some districts still don’t know exactly how the funding will be used and what the limitations are….

The TEA’s Bluebonnet Learning materials are free educational resources owned by the state of Texas. The resources Texas has commissioned include textbooks for grades K-5 in reading and math materials through algebra.

The bill bans materials associated with “Balanced Literacy.”

All materials approved had to meet certain requirements, such as being free of three-cueing content in kindergarten through third grade, the practice of using context clues to find the meaning of unknown words before sounding them out. The law also mandated that materials not be obscene or include harmful content, as delineated in the Texas Penal Code, and that they have parent portal compliance. ..

The resources were built off materials from Amplify, a New York-based publisher, that were purchased during the COVID-19 pandemic. But Amplify declined to supply further revisions, according to a story from The 74, after they were allegedly asked to create lessons around certain stories from the Bible but not other world religions. TEA officials said this claim was “completely false” and the material “includes representation from multiple faiths…”

If districts choose a resource from the State Board of Education’s approved list for high-quality instructional materials, they receive an extra $40 per enrolled student on top of the instructional materials and technology allotment, or IMTA, of $171.84 per student. If the district chooses to adopt Bluebonnet, they would also receive an extra $20 for printing the materials, totaling $60 per student…

Both Republicans and Democrats have condemned the Bluebonnet resources for their inclusion of certain Bible-specific lessons and stories. Other religions are referenced in the resources, but according to a study commissioned by the Texas Freedom Network,the religious source material addressed is overwhelmingly Christian. Hinduism is briefly mentioned, despite the significant population of Hindus in Texas. Buddhism and Sikhism are also briefly mentioned. The first version of the Bluebonnet Learning did not include references to Hinduism, Buddhism or Sikhism, and some deities were characterized as “mythical,” while the truthfulness of the Christian God was not qualified. 

In one kindergarten lesson, students are asked to use sequencing skills to order the creation events as portrayed in Genesis. 

Critics also had concerns that the textbooks whitewashed historical events by using gentler language to describe colonization, such as “share” or “introduce.” In some units, the lessons teach students that abolitionists used their beliefs in Christianity to argue against slavery, without noting that Christianity was also used as a justification for slavery in U.S. history. 

“I really struggled with the Bluebonnet materials, especially on the (English Language Arts) side of things, because, while there was representation from other religions, other faith-based communities, it was overwhelmingly written with Christian bias,” Perez-Diaz said. 

Texas law does require districts to include “religious literature, including the Hebrew Scriptures (Old Testament) and New Testament, and its impact on history and literature” in curricula, but critics felt that the reliance on Christianity at an early age for students goes beyond what the law requires. Conservative critics had said that the interpretation of certain Bible passages was not in-line with all Christian belief systems and that only parents should have the right to teach their children about their religion. 

Categories Bias, Curriculum, Ethics, Extremism, Religion, Republicans, Separation of church and state, Texas

Will New Hampshire Undermine Its Public Schools by Expanding Vouchers?

By dianeravitch
January 22, 2025 //
5

Gary Rayno, veteran journalist in New Hampshire, reports on the Legislature’s pending decision on expanding vouchers. It is astonishing that any state is still considering universal vouchers, in light of what we have learned from the experience of every state that has done so.

We know now that the overwhelming majority of vouchers are used by students already enrolled in private and religious schools. In other words, they are for the most part a subsidy for families already able to pay tuition.

We know now that universal vouchers bust the state budget by offering to pay private school tuition.

We know now (see Josh Cowen’s recent book The Privateers) that when poor kids leave public schools for voucher schools, their academic performance declines, often dramatically.

We know now, based on state referenda, that the public opposes vouchers.

Gary Rayno writes about what’s happening in New Hampshire:

The advocates for opening the state’s school voucher program, Education Freedom Accounts, to all students in the state regardless of their parents’ income did a massive public relations and organization effort before the public hearing last week on House 115, which would remove the salary cap from the four-year old program.

While many parents with their children turned out for the public hearing that needed three rooms in the Legislative Office Building to hold the attendees, the people responding electronically —many posting testimony — on the bill were opposed by a more than four-to-one margin, 3,414-791.

Groups like the Koch Foundation funded by Americans for Prosperity sent out at least three email “urgent” messages to its followers encouraging supporters to attend the public hearing.

Department of Education Commissioner Frank Edelblut sent out a press release the day before the public hearing with the headline “New Hampshire’s cost per pupil continues upward trend,” indicating the state’s average per-pupil cost increased from $20,323 last school year to $21,545 this school year and noting the enrollment has been trending down.

In his press release he also noted the average national cost per pupil at $15,591, while noting that New Hampshire’s largest school districts were the cheapest with Manchester at $17,734, Nashua at $18,270, Bedford at $18,498 and Concord at $23,159, while rural Pittsburg, at the very top of the state, has the highest cost at $44,484.

“The taxpayers of New Hampshire have worked hard to support students, families and our public schools, increasing funding by more than $400 million since 2021, resulting in a record high cost per pupil,” Edelblut said. “New Hampshire remains dedicated to continuing efforts to expand educational opportunities and pathways to help every child succeed in a fiscally responsible approach. The persistent trend of declining student enrollment combined with rising costs creates substantial financial strain on school districts, taxpayers and communities, necessitating new and creative approaches to educating our children in a system that can be sustained over the long term.”

In other words these skyrocketing public education costs cannot be sustained, and efforts like the EFA program is the wave of the future for taxpayers and students, although the program offers no guarantees the state money flowing into the program is being used for what it was intended or wisely by parents.

He does not mention that New Hampshire is either 49th or 50th in financial support for K to 12th grade public education, while cities and towns are picking up over 70 percent of the costs of public education and yet their residents are the ones approving the budgets that increased per-pupil spending.

Edelblut also doesn’t mention that the state downshifted the obligation of hundreds of millions of dollars over the last 15 years to school districts, municipalities and counties when it stopped paying 35 percent of the retirement costs for employees, or that he has failed over the last five years to request additional money for the special education catastrophic aid program although costs have been rising substantially further downshifting millions more in costs to local school districts.

And the public hearing on the bill was held on one of the earliest days in the session, which says the Republican leadership wants to separate this bill from the state budget as much as possible.

A trend of declining revenues, the drying up of the federal pandemic aid and past surpluses, along with the elimination of the interest and dividends tax, which is a huge benefit to the state’s wealthiest residents, and business tax rate cuts will make difficult work for lawmakers and new Gov. Kelly Ayotte, who gives her first budget address next month.

The GOP leadership doesn’t want to discuss the $100 million in new expenses in HB 115 when budget discussions hit snags over what to fund.

During the public hearing, a number of parents brought their children with them to talk about the wonderful things they have been able to accomplish by using the state taxpayer money for alternative education settings.

Many also trashed public schools saying they failed their children although the public schools continue to serve about 90 percent of the state’s students.

Some of the parents noted public schools don’t align with their beliefs or political philosophies, which really says they do not want their children to be exposed to different beliefs or cultures.

David Trumble of Weare noted that some of the private and religious schools don’t take LGBTQ+, special education or English-as-a-second language students.

“There is nothing universal about universal vouchers. The only universal option is the public schools because they accept every single child and give every one of them a good education. That is why you have a constitutional duty to fund them. You have no obligation to fund the private schools,” Trumble told the House Education Funding Committee.

“Our first obligation is to fund the public schools.”

Under the EFA program, 75 percent of the students did not attend public schools when they joined the program, meaning that neither the school districts nor the state was paying for their education, their parents were.

In other states where universal vouchers have been approved almost all of the new money goes to families currently sending their children to private or religious schools or being homeschooled, which is a new expense to those states just as it would be in New Hampshire, where the potential for additional costs is over $100 million annually.

The money for New Hampshire EFA program comes from the Education Trust Fund which also provides almost all of the state education aid to public schools including charter schools.

The trust fund once had over a $200 million surplus, but ended the last fiscal year June 30, 2024 at $159 million, and is projected to drop to $125 million at the end of this fiscal year.

If the bill passes, it won’t be long before money is drained and the squeeze is on public education because of the new education system set up by the legislature that many told the committee last week lacks accountability and transparency.

Many of the people in opposition to the bill said the state first needs to meet its constitutional obligation to pay for an adequate education for the state’s children before setting up any new program costing hundreds of millions of dollars.

But universal vouchers are not only a priority for New Hampshire Republicans, it is a priority at the national level as well.

It continues a movement begun in the late 1950s and 1960s advised by James Buchanan, an economist from the University of Chicago, who was influenced by Frank Knight as was Milton Friedman.

The plan was to both develop more conservative Republicans through the education system and through state legislatures.

One of the targets was public education and reforming it into a private system where if you have the money you can receive a good education, but if you don’t, well too bad.

While the EFA program was touted as helping lower income parents find an alternative education setting for their children who did not fare well in a public education environment, it has essentially been a subsidy program for parents whose children were already in private and religious schools or homeschooled.

Many of the parents speaking in favor of expanding the EFA program said they wanted every child to experience what they experienced.

Rep. Ross Berry, R-Weare, told the committee why should the EFA program be means tested, when public schools don’t require wealthy parents to pay for their children to attend.

That was one of the catch phrases uttered several times during the hearing along with “support for the student not the system.”

Someone had distributed the talking points.

But several opponents noted the program would not help eliminate educational inequity, it would exacerbate it, because a lower-income parent would not be able to afford to send their child to one of the private schools where the average tuition is over $20,000 with a $5,200 voucher, while those already able to send their child to a private school will be able to cut their costs by the same amount.

Once again New Hampshire is a great place to live if you have money, if you don’t, not so much.

The EFA program is part of the push for individual rights over the common good. You see it in education where parents want to remove their child from those who do not have the same beliefs or philosophies, you also see in health care with the establishment of specialty and boutique practices where if you have the money you receive the best care, and in the judicial system where if you have enough money you never have to be accountable for your crimes.

If HB 115 passes, and it probably will, the legislature will have created a situation where the public schools including charter schools will face operating with less state aid, not more as the courts said the state needs, and that will impact many sectors including businesses who will not know if the state has a sufficiently educated workforce or not.

The state should not want businesses asking that question.

Garry Rayno may be reached at garry.rayno@yahoo.com.

Distant Dome by veteran journalist Garry Rayno explores a broader perspective on the State House and state happenings for InDepthNH.org. Over his three-decade career, Rayno covered the NH State House for the New Hampshire Union Leader and Foster’s Daily Democrat. During his career, his coverage spanned the news spectrum, from local planning, school and select boards, to national issues such as electric industry deregulation and Presidential primaries. Rayno lives with his wife Carolyn in New London.

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Extremism, Failure, Fraud, Funding, Koch Brothers, Lies, New Hampshire, Privatization, Propaganda, Religion, Separation of church and state, Vouchers

The Nation: Linda McMahon’s Very Important Rightwing Think Tank

By dianeravitch
January 15, 2025 //
2

Trump selected Linda McMahon to be the next Secretary of Education. She is well known for making it rich in the world of wrestling entertainment, in partnership with her husband. Less well known is her role as Chair of the board of the America First Policy Institute (AFPI). Trump is close to AFPI, which promotes school choice and the “parental rights” movement, which promotes censorship of books and curriculum about racism and LGBT topics. They oppose any teaching that might make students “uncomfortable,” like learning about the history of racism, or that might teach students that LGBT exist.

The Nation published an article by Christopher Lewis and Jacob Plaza. The article tells the story of the think tank McMahon leads. It was launched after Trump’s loss in 2020 and its policy agenda defines Trump’s plans. To understand what Trump intends to do, learn more about AFPI.

Lewis and Plaza write:

Amid the incoming Trump administration’s flurry of unqualified, corrupt, and/or vengeance-driven cabinet nominees, it’s been easy to overlook Linda McMahon, Trump’s pick to head the US Department of Education. McMahon is best known for her role in running World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) with her husband the longtime Trump crony Vince McMahon. Linda McMahon’s background in education is exceedingly thin; she served on the Connecticut Board of Education more than a decade ago, thanks to an appointment from another politically connected friend, then–Connecticut Governor Jodi Rell. McMahon has a teaching certificate but has never actually taught. Indeed, she was forced to resign her spot on the Connecticut board when the Hartford Courant reported that she’d lied on her résumé about having an education degree. Add in the alleged role of the WWE and its parent company in a sexual-abuse scandal involving “ring boys” for the wrestling league, and McMahon’s nomination, in any sanely administered political order, would be dead in the water. (McMahon and her husband both deny the abuse allegations in the pending WWE suit.)

Yet McMahon possesses one key credential for the next Trump administration—in addition, that is, to a proven track record to personal fealty to the president-elect, and a long string of Fox News appearances: She’s the former head of the America First Policy Institute (AFPI), the policy nerve center for MAGA governance. For all the attention focused on the Heritage Foundation and its Project 2025 policy agenda, AFPI has been Trumpworld’s principal policy network, serving as a haven for former Trump appointees during the Biden years. AFPI hands assembled a detailed blueprint for Trump’s return to power, including plans to make the Trump tax cuts permanent and purge the federal workforce of civil service workers deemed insufficiently MAGA. In addition to McMahon, Trump has tapped several senior AFPI figures for cabinet posts, including EPA nominee Lee Zeldin, Agriculture nominee Brooke Rollins (the think tank’s president and CEO), and its Georgia chapter chair, Doug Collins, Trump’s pick to head the Department of Veteran’s Affair

As education secretary, McMahon would be charged with administering a uniquely destructive suite of policies, even by the usual standards of Trump governance. That’s because the Department of Education has been a bête noire of the American right ever since Jimmy Carter founded the agency in 1979. By creating a layer of federal oversight over locally run schools, the DOE has, in the overheated imaginings of right-wing policy mavens, arrogated deep-state sovereignty over the rights of parents to preside over the best educational options and life chances for their children. And as the Education Department has sought to clarify and standardize anti-discrimination policy for LGBTQ+ students, it’s become a pet target for anti-trans culture warriors on the right.

McMahon probably won’t heed the growing chorus of conservative calls to abolish the DOE outright, but she can be counted on to aggressively pursue other key MAGA objectives in education policy. In line with her work at AFPI, McMahon will likely continue to promote the use of privately backed charter schools to defund public education—the most fundamental plank of right-wing education policy. In addition, she’ll probably resume her predecessor Betty DeVos’s campaign to deny basic Title IX protections to LGBTQ+ students. And it’s a safe bet that she’ll also re-up plans to promote Trump’s 1776 commission—MAGA’s agitprop answer to the 1619 Project, promoting a “patriotic” national curriculum to downplay and discourage honest discussion of America’s racial history in the schools.

Following the lead of billionaire right-wing donors, AFPI enthusiastically champions the charter-schools movement, while seeking to undermine the government’s role in providing quality public education. McMahon’s think tank has erected a whole policy infrastructure to promote charter schools, including direct public subsidies to them, the creation of education saving accounts (ESAs) for parents to enroll kids in charters, and proposals to weaken teachers’ unions in conjunction with the rise of open-shop charters. This agenda does more than harness the long-standing animus to government-backed education on the right—it advances the creation of a parallel education system for right-wing partisans. In this regard, as well as in its aggressive model of privatized education funding, the AFPI plan recalls the original role that neoliberal economics played in supporting the new ad hoc network of “segregation academies” launched in the American South after the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling to desegregate the nation’s schools. The same basic dictum holds for today’s American right as it did then: If you can’t segregate with law, segregate with economics.

AFPI claims that charter school students have higher scores on standardized tests. In reality, the findings here follow what holds for better-funded public schools: namely, that well-funded charter schools tend to produce better test scores, while less well-off charters fare a bit worse, with some regional variations. Students in the competitive DC charter school system’s Opportunity Scholarships program, often cited as the gold standard by charter school advocates, actually performed worse on reading tests than those who did not attend the program.

School choice and voucher programs are a drain on the public’s coffers. For hard-right ideologues like the advisers at AFPI, that’s the whole point. Privatized education is part of the broader right-wing campaign to block the public sector’s ability to finance anything, especially if it would further racial equality. The National Education Association notes that voucher programs redirect scarce public funds toward unaccountable private school programs, and found zero evidence that these programs—which increase school segregation—improve students’ performance. In some cases, there are negative impacts.

What’s more, private management naturally leads to a focus on profit, financial self-sustainability, and expansion—mandates that typically lead to steep budget cuts in the schools, even if students suffer. According to the Network for Public Education, for-profit management companies run nearly one in seven charter schools.

AFPI has also endorsed federal legislation to create national education savings accounts. Like charter schools, ESAs seek to redirect public resources to market-driven gimmicks under the broad rubric of consumer choice. When parents open an ESA, they withdraw their children from the school district and receive a deposit of public funds in a savings account authorized by the government. Parents are then allowed to spend from that account on a range of educational expenses, including tutoring, therapy, or school supplies.

ESA plans create an obvious bind by forcing parents to navigate the education industry all on their own. The ESA scheme affords no safeguards for students whose parents made poor spending choices with the funds in their account. A report in Forbes recounted the story of a family using up its entire account before paying for a single English or math class. And like the broader charter model it upholds, the savings-account system reinforces, rather than weakens, the core inequalities of the US education system; it ensures that wealthier parents will be able to afford to send their children to the best schools.

For a bracing illustration of how charter and for-profit education schemes pillage publicly funded schools, consider Chicago’s experience. In 2013, the city closed 48 public schools to cover widening budget shortfalls. And Chicago’s public schools were going broke in no small part due to the rapid expansion of a parallel charter systemcaptained by ardent school privatizers. Since the insurgent charter schools operated outside traditional governance and accountability, they accumulated millions in debt while draining desperately needed funding away from public schools. Ultimately, 17,000 students were displaced, and Chicago was left with a more unequal and racially segmented school system than it had at the outset of the city’s charter-school fiasco.

To finish reading the article, open the link.

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Censorship, Corporate Reform, Education Industry, Ethics, Extremism, Gender, History, Privatization, School Choice, Segregation, Separation of church and state, Trump, U.S. Department of Education, Vouchers

Jan Resseger: Voucher Leader in Ohio Legislature Says Public Schools Cost Too Much

By dianeravitch
January 14, 2025 //
9

Jan Resseger writes today about Matt Huffman, Speaker of the House in Ohio and his determination to undermine the funding of the state’s public schools. If you read the previous post about the voucher movement in Ohio, you will recall that Huffman led the battle to enact vouchers for all families, including affluent families.

He is Catholic, he graduated from Catholic schools, and he has long been determined to get public funds to subsidize religious school tuition.

After the state was ordered to enact a plan to fund its schools fairly, relying less on property taxes, the legislature enacted the Cupp-Patterson Fair School Funding Plan in 2021, which was supposed to be phased in over six years. Huffman recently declared that the plan was “unsustainable.”

Ohio has 1.75 million students in public schools. There are 173,156 students in the state’s non-public schools.

Using public dollars to pay the tuition of rich students who were already enrolled in private and religious schools is “sustainable” for the religious zealots in the legislature.

Ohio’s commitment to fair funding for public schools has been undermined by two Republican priorities:

  1. The universal voucher program now costs $1 billion a year.
  2. Republicans are determined to cut taxes and to reduce funding for public schools.

Those are Matt Huffman’s priorities, not adequate and fair funding for public schools.

Categories Accountability, Catholic Schools, Education Industry, Elections, Extremism, Funding, Ohio, Religion, Separation of church and state, Vouchers

ProPublica: Secret Papers Reveal How Ohio Politicians Worked with Religious Allies to Get Vouchers for All

By dianeravitch
January 14, 2025 //
10

Alec MacGillis wrote a story for ProPublica titled “On a Mission from God: Inside the Movement to Redirect Billions of Taxpayer Dollars to Private Religious Schools.”

ProPublica gained access to a large trove of communications among the Governor of Ohio, George Voinovich, and prominent religious figures, planning how to pass legislation to send public money to religious schools. This, despite explicit language in the Ohio state constitution prohibiting state payments to religious schools.

Here is ProPublica’s overview of the article:

Reporting Highlights

  • The Ohio Model: Rarely seen letters show how the voucher movement started in the 1990s as a concealed effort to finance urban parochial schools and expanded to a much broader push.
  • Helping the Affluent: An initiative promoted as a civil rights cause — helping poor kids — is increasingly funneling money to families who already easily afford private school tuition.
  • The Voucher Deficit: Expanding programs threaten funding for public schools and put pressure on state budgets, as many religious-based schools enjoy new largesse.

The article begins thus:

On a Thursday morning last May, about a hundred people gathered in the atrium of the Ohio Capitol building to join in Christian worship. The “Prayer at the Statehouse” was organized by an advocacy group called the Center for Christian Virtue, whose growing influence was symbolized by its new headquarters, directly across from the capitol. It was also manifest in the officials who came to take part in the event: three state legislators and the ambitious lieutenant governor, Jon Husted.

After some prayer and singing, the center’s Christian Engagement Ambassador introduced Husted, asking him to “share with us about faith and intersecting faith with government.” Husted, a youthful 57-year-old, spoke intently about the prayer meetings that he leads in the governor’s office each month. “We bring appointed officials and elected officials together to talk about our faith in our work, in our service, and how it can strengthen us and make us better,” he said. The power of prayer, Husted suggested, could even supply political victories: “When we do that, great things happen — like advancing school choice so that every child in Ohio has a chance to go to the school of their choice.” The audience started applauding before he finished his sentence.

The center had played a key role in bringing about one of the most dramatic expansions of private school vouchers in the country, making it possible for all Ohio families — even the richest among them — to receive public money to pay for their children’s tuition. In the mid-1990s, Ohio became the second state to offer vouchers, but in those days they were available only in Cleveland and were billed as a way for disadvantaged children to escape struggling schools. Now the benefits extend to more than 150,000 students across the state, costing taxpayers nearly $1 billion, the vast majority of which goes to the Catholic and evangelical institutions that dominate the private school landscape there.

What happened in Ohio was a stark illustration of a development that has often gone unnoticed, perhaps because it is largely taking place away from blue state media hubs. In the past few years, school vouchers have become universal in a dozen states, including Florida, Arizona and North Carolina. Proponents are pushing to add Texas, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and others — and, with Donald Trump returning to the White House, they will likely have federal support.

The risks of universal vouchers are quickly coming to light. An initiative that was promoted for years as a civil ­rights cause — helping poor kids in troubled schools — is threatening to become a nationwide money grab. Many private schools are raising tuition rates to take advantage of the new funding, and new schools are being founded to capitalize on it. With private schools urging all their students’ families to apply, the money is flowing mostly to parents who are already able to afford tuition and to kids who are already enrolled in private schools. When vouchers do draw students away from public districts, they threaten to exacerbate declining enrollment, forcing underpopulated schools to close. More immediately, the cost of the programs is soaring, putting pressure on public school finances even as private schools prosper. In Arizona, voucher expenditures are hundreds of millions of dollars more than predicted, leaving an enormous shortfall in the state budget. States that provide funds to families for homeschooling or education-related expenses are contending with reports that the money is being used to cover such unusual purchases as kayaks, video game consoles and horseback-­riding lessons.

The voucher movement has been aided by a handful of billionaire advocates; it was also enabled, during the pandemic, by the backlash to extended school closures. (Private schools often reopened considerably faster than public schools.) Yet much of the public, even in conservative states, remains ambivalent about vouchers: Voters in Nebraska and Kentucky just rejected them in ballot referendums.

How, then, has the movement managed to triumph? The campaign in Ohio provides an object lesson — a model that voucher advocates have deployed elsewhere. Its details are recorded in a trove of private correspondence, much of it previously unpublished, that the movement’s leaders in Ohio sent to one another. The letters reveal a strategy to start with targeted programs that placed needy kids in parochial schools, then fight to expand the benefits to far richer families — a decadeslong effort by a network of politicians, church officials and activists, all united by a conviction that the separation of church and state is illegitimate. As one of the movement’s progenitors put it, “Government does a lousy job of substituting for religion.”

Please open the link to read this important article.

Thanks to ProPublica for its excellent reporting about the effort to privatize and defund American schools.

Categories Catholic Schools, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Democracy, Disruption, Education Reform, Ethics, Extremism, Funding, Ohio, Religion, Separation of church and state, Vouchers

Just Published: My Review of the Trump Education Agenda

By dianeravitch
January 11, 2025 //
5

This article just appeared on the website of The New York Review of Books.

https://www.nybooks.com/online/2025/01/11/their-kind-of-indoctrination/

It is my review of Trump’s plans for K-12 education.

NYRB is the most distinguished literary-political journal in the nation. It has a huge readership. It reaches a different audience than education journals.

If you subscribe to NYRB, you can open it in full. If you don’t, it costs $10 for 10 issues. Or, if you wait, I will post it in full in a few weeks.

Categories Accountability, Arizona, Budget Cuts, Censorship, Charter Schools, Civil Rights, Cruelty, Curriculum, Democracy, Deregulation, Disruption, Education Industry, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, For-Profit, Freedom to Read, Funding, Gender, History, Ignorance, Inequality, Lies, Privatization, Racism, Religion, Segregation, Separation of church and state, Trump, U.S. Department of Education

One of America’s Founding Principles at Risk: Freedom of Religion AND Freedom from Religion

By dianeravitch
January 11, 2025 //
12

We now have a U.S. Supreme Court that is hypocritical. On one hand, it claims to interpret cases in alignment with the original language of the Constitution and the original intent of the authors of that document. But it ignores that principle when it conflicts with their personal beliefs. This is certainly true with the Court’s treatment of relations between Church and State. For more than 200 years, the Court respected the separation of Church and State, with only minor exceptions. The present Court, however, has taken a sledgehammer to the “wall of separation,” especially in relation to funding religious schools.

Our reader who uses the name of “Quikwrit” wrote the following:

Freedom FROM Religion

The constitutional principle of a “wall of separation” between government and religion in America goes back even far further than our 1797 Constitution: Already back in 1635, Roger Williams, founder of the Rhode Island Colony, declared that a “wall of separation” must forever separate American government from any religion. In Thomas Jefferson’s famous 1802 letter to the Connecticut Baptist Convention, Jefferson quoted Williams’ “wall of separation” phrase to explain the meaning of The First Amendment’s Establishment Clause.

Jefferson, author of our Declaration of Independence, also compiled his own version of the Bible, known as The Jefferson Bible, that basically treated Jesus as an admirable philosopher, but not divine. Jefferson’s non-Christian edition of the Bible became widely popular in the new United States, and for decades every new member of Congress was given a copy of The Jefferson Bible when sworn in to Congress.

Our Founding Fathers’ insistence on separating government from any and all religion came about because England had imposed mandatory Anglican church membership in the colonies for anyone who wanted to participate in government; so, although many of our Founding Fathers were Deists, not Christians, they were compelled to join the official British government’s Christian Anglican religion in order to be able to vote or take any part in government.

James Madison, whom we honor with the title “Father of our Constitution” because so many of our Constitution’s key principles are derived from his ideas, wrote that “the purpose of the separation of church and state is to keep forever from our shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe in blood for centuries”.

That bloody “ceaseless strife” of religious war in Europe was well known to Madison and to our nation’s other Founding Fathers because they had recent ancestors who had suffered and been killed because of the endless warfare between Christian religions throughout Europe during the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries. Those centuries of bloodshed and misery followed the Protestant Reformation which led to the establishment of dozens of warring Protestant religions, none of which agreed with each other in their dogma, and all of which disagreed with the Catholic church.

Thousands and countless thousands of people died as each Christian religion tried to force their version of religious beliefs on the others.

George Washington, whom we honor with the title “Father of our Nation”, was in complete agreement with the Establishment Clause and wrote that “the United States government is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion.” He was compelled to attend Anglican church services but never took Communion because he refused to be hypocritical.

Today, some who argue against the separation of church and state claim that when the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause says that government shall make no law “respecting the establishment of religion” it means only that the government shall not establish a religion and that government is free to provide all manner of support for existing religions. However, in the grammatical syntax of the time in which the First Amendment was written, the phrase “the establishment of religion” refers to “established religions”, not to establishing a government religion. Written in the grammatical syntax of our current times, the First Amendment would state that the government shall make no law “respecting established religions”.

Correctly read, and knowing the intent of Our Founding Fathers which they clearly expressed, the First Amendment provides Americans with freedom FROM religion.

And yet, today, self-righteous religious zealots — some of whom are even on the U.S. Supreme Court — are driving our nation toward a time of bloody religious warfare in America; warfare that will divide and weaken our nation and allow our enemies abroad to destroy us. That destructive division is already on the stage with the demands that The Ten Commandments be posted in schools and public places and that public schools must teach the Bible: The coming conflict looms with the question of whose version of the Ten Commandments will be displayed and whose version of the Bible will be taught.

Protestants and Catholics each have their own version of the Ten Commandments and their own version of the Bible. Whose version of the Commandments and whose version of the Bible would be posted and taught in public schools?

In the Protestant version of the Commandments, the Second Commandment says that it is sinful to make “graven images”, such as statues — the Catholic version of the Commandments says nothing about graven images, so Catholic churches are filled with statues of Mary and the saints. Will Catholic children in public schools be shamed by their classmates as sinful because Catholic churches contain statues of Mary and the saints?

If America doesn’t remain true to the constitutional rule established by Our Founding Fathers that our government must be separated from all religion by a solid wall, bloody conflict will ultimately follow…and a weakened America will then be conquered by its international enemies.

Categories Democracy, Elections, Extremism, Hypocrisy, Religion, Separation of church and state, Trump

Peter Greene: Arizona Squanders Taxpayer $$ By Funding Failure

By dianeravitch
January 7, 2025 //
8

The preceding post was reported by ProPublica, an absolutely essential journalistic enterprise that serves the public interest.

Please read Peter Greene’s take on the same story. He adds additional research and his professional experience as a veteran teacher.

Greene writes:

Call it a zombie school, one more piece of predictable detritus washed up on the wave of voucher laws. Here’s an instructive tale.

ARCHES Academy was a charter school operating in Apache Junction, Arizona. But in March of 2024, the state board that oversees Arizona charters voted unanimously to shut the place down. Mind you, the board in Arizona is pretty charter friendly, but ARCHES had so many problems. Under 50 students were left at a K-8 school dinged for soooo many problems.

Chartered in 2020, promising a “holistic” approach that grouped students by ability rather than age, then put on an Assessment Consent Agreement in 2023. Financial mismanagement. Poor record-keeping. IRS violations. Violations of state and federal law. Academic results in the basement. State rating of D. Founder and principal Michelle Edwards told the board “Mistakes were made and compounded over time.” So, general incompetence rather than active fraudster work.

So ARCHES the charter school was shut down, because charters still have to answer to the state for their performance and competence.

But you know who doesn’t have any oversight at all in Arizona?

Private schools that accept taxpayer-funded vouchers.

So Edwards simply re-launched her school as the Title of Liberty (a name taken from a verse in the Book of Mormon). Some of her pitch was visible in a piece in The Arizona Beehive, a Mormon-flavored newsmagazine, in the summer of 2024.

As changes happen in the public education system, many families who belong to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have become more concerned about the potential influence of conflicting ideologies expressed in their children’s classrooms.

In the article, Edwards addresses her own concerns.

Principal Michelle Edwards, an early childhood specialist, has been in the education system for many years. The academy is a culmination of a dream of hers. “I recently had one student who was really struggling,” says Michelle, “and I couldn’t tell her about her divine abilities, that she’s a child of God, or who her father in heaven is.”

The article promises a Personal Learning Plan and notes that if tuition is an issue, the school will help parents apply for the Arizona ESA voucher to cover costs.

What the article doesn’t mention is that Edwards just had the school, under another name and as a charter, shut down by the state. But then, nobody, not even the state itself, told anyone.

Edwards’s new school went heavily with the religious pitch, with the website announcing “Christ-centered, constitutionally-based, education for all….”

Why doesn’t Arizona have anything in place to help apparently well-meaning folks like Edwards get into the education biz? Why doesn’t it exert even the slightest bit of oversight of the vendors cashing in on taxpayer-funded vouchers? I suspect it hints at what programs like Arizona’s voucher extravaganza are really about– and it’s not about a robust, choice-filled education environment. It’s about defunding and dismantling public education (and the tax burdens that go with it). But you can’t just tell folks, “We’re going to end public education.” So instead, hand them a pittance of a voucher and announce that you’re giving them freedom! And after that, you’ve washed your hands of them. The wealthy can still afford a top-notch education for their kids, and if Those People end up wasting their kids time in sub-prime, fraudulent, or incompetent pop up schools, well, that’s their problem.

If folks like the Arizona voucher crowd were serious about choice, they would provide transparency and oversight, rather than letting any shmoe rent a storefront and call it a school. But Arizona isn’t serious about choice. It’s serious about dismantling public education. It’s serious about getting public tax dollars into private hands and funding religious groups. And people like the families at Title of Liberty and even Edwards herself will just keep paying the price.

Categories Accountability, Arizona, Charter Schools, Deregulation, Disruption, Education Industry, Ethics, Failure, Funding, Privatization, Religion, Separation of church and state, Vouchers

NPE Announces Winners of “Coal in the Stocking Award” for 2024!!

By dianeravitch
December 23, 2024 //
5

The Network for Public Education announces the winners of the non-prestigious “Coal in the Stocking” Award for 2024.

This is an award given to those who have done the most damage to our public schools.

They should feel ashamed and humiliated for gaining this recognition of their odious and undemocratic behavior.

They hurt children and communities. They hurt the future of our great nation.

Open the link to see the names of the winners.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Billionaires, Censorship, Charter Schools, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Separation of church and state, Vouchers, Wall of Shame
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