Archives for category: Separation of church and state
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Mother Jones: A Former Christian Nationalist Recants

By dianeravitch
October 3, 2024 //
12

Mother Jones published an excellent article by Reverend Rob Schenck about how he became a leader of the Christian nationalist movement and why he decided to leave it. He recalls when real estate developer and playboy Donald Trump was first introduced to the world of evangelicals. And he describes his own role in connecting rich donors to Republican Supreme Court justices.

Reverend Schenck begins:

In 2014, at an elegant gala inside the Supreme Court’s gilded Great Hall, a tuxedoed Justice Clarence Thomas turned to me and voiced his approval for my work. I glanced over to where Chief Justice John Roberts and his wife, Jane, were entertaining two of my associates, trustees of the Supreme Court Historical Society, a private, nongovernmental entity for which Roberts served as honorary chair. At that moment, I knew the secretive operation I had run, aimed at emboldening Thomas and his conservative colleagues to render the strongest possible decisions in favor of our right-wing Christian agenda, had succeeded.

My organization, Faith and Action in the Nation’s Capital, had created an initiative we called “Operation Higher Court” that trained wealthy couples as “stealth missionaries,” befriending Thomas and his wife, Ginni; Samuel and Martha-Ann Alito; and Antonin and Maureen Scalia—­lavishing­ them with meals at high-end restaurants and invitations to luxurious vacation properties. Alongside these amenities, our ministry offered prayers, gift Bibles, and the assurance that millions of believers thanked God for the decisions this trio of justices rendered on abortion, health care, marriage, and gun ownership….

But Reverend Schenck began to understand that his activities and beliefs were toxic to democracy. What triggered his change? Perhaps it was his late-in-life doctoral studies, when he read about the German Christian movement in the 1930s, which supported the Nazi party. He wrote: One of the most respected Bible scholars of that period, Paul Althaus, declared Hitler’s ascent to the chancellorship to be a “gift and miracle from God.”

He was shaken by his research. He began to change his views. He wondered whether Christian evangelicals in the U.S. were on the same dangerous path.

Following the insurrection of January 6, when Christian banners, Bibles, and prayers in Jesus’ name appeared in the assault on the Capitol, I felt even greater urgency in warning my fellow evangelicals of the grave danger Trump and his MAGA cult posed to Christianity and US democracy.

My change of course so late in life has been painful, disorienting, and costly. Besides losing decades-long friendships and enduring menacing threats, my wife and I have faced a significantly reduced income. I’ve even driven Uber to cover household expenses. One night, I picked up an organizer of the National Prayer Breakfast, an event in which I had once played a significant role. I was wearing a mask and said little, but then, with trepidation, I realized I would be dropping him at the home of a congressman I had worked with closely for more than 20 years. When my passenger got out, I was relieved to have gone unrecognized. Still, I’ve never questioned the decisions that brought me to that moment.

In my third conversion, I realized that when religion is placed at the service of a political party, it corrupts both. To claim that one political figure uniquely represents God’s will for the body politic is a form of anti-Christian idolatry. To elevate one set of spiritual beliefs above another and do it by force of law removes a nonnegotiable tenet of evangelical faith—free will. We are born again when we choose to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, not when we’re forced to do so.

Because it is immoral, I believe Christian nationalism is inevitably doomed. But in the meantime, the pain, suffering, and injury it will inflict will be enormous—just consider women facing difficult pregnancies, trans children seeking care, librarians attacked for certain books. “We want to fill our culture again with the Christian spirit. We want to burn out all the recent immoral developments in literature, in the theater, and in the press—in short, we want to burn out the poison of immorality, which has entered into our whole life and culture as a result of liberal excess.” This may sound familiar—maybe some overheated Republican talking points. In fact, it’s what Adolf Hitler promised the German people in 1933.

Categories Courage, Ethics, Extremism, Gender, Religion, Separation of church and state

Ohio Is Funding the Construction and Renovation of Religious Schools

By dianeravitch
September 19, 2024 //
4

In an unprecedented move that shatters the historic wall of separation between church and state, Ohio has passed legislation to fund the construction and renovation of religious schools. It also directly violates the explicit language of the Ohio state constitution.

ProPublica reports on the latest move to defund public schools and divert money to religious schools.

The state of Ohio is giving taxpayer money to private, religious schools to help them build new buildings and expand their campuses, which is nearly unprecedented in modern U.S. history.

While many states have recently enacted sweeping school voucher programs that give parents taxpayer money to spend on private school tuition for their kids, Ohio has cut out the middleman. Under a bill passed by its Legislature this summer, the state is now providing millions of dollars in grants directly to religious schools, most of them Catholic, to renovate buildings, build classrooms, improve playgrounds and more.

The goal in providing the grants, according to the measure’s chief architect, Matt Huffman, is to increase the capacity of private schools in part so that they can sooner absorb more voucher students.

“The capacity issue is the next big issue on the horizon” for voucher efforts, Huffman, the Ohio Senate president and a Republican, told the Columbus Dispatch.

Huffman did not respond to ProPublica’s requests for comment.

Following Hurricane Katrina and the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, some federal taxpayer dollars went toward repairing and improving private K-12 schools in multiple states. Churches that operate schools often receive government funding for the social services that they offer; some orthodox Jewish schools in New York have relied on significant financial support from the city, The New York Times has found.

But national experts on education funding emphasized that what Ohio is doing is categorically different.

“This is new, dangerous ground, funding new voucher schools,” said Josh Cowen, a senior fellow at the Education Law Center and the author of a new book on the history of billionaire-led voucher efforts. For decades, churches have relied on conservative philanthropy to be able to build their schools, Cowen said, or they’ve held fundraising drives or asked their diocese for help.

They’ve never, until now, been able to build schools expressly on the public dime.

“This breaks through the myth,” said David Pepper, a political writer and the former chairman of the Ohio Democratic Party. Pepper said that courts have long given voucher programs a pass, ruling that they don’t violate the constitutionally mandated separation of church and state because a publicly funded voucher technically passes through the conduit of a parent on the way to a religious school.

With this latest move, though, Ohio is funding the construction of a separate, religious system of education, Pepper said, adding that if no one takes notice, “This will happen in other states — they all learn from each other like laboratories.”

The Ohio Constitution says that the General Assembly “will secure a thorough and efficient system of common schools throughout the state; but no religious or other sect, or sects, shall ever have any exclusive right to, or control of, any part of the school funds of this state.”

Yet Troy McIntosh, executive director of the Ohio Christian Education Network — several of whose schools received the new grants — recently told the Lima News that part of the reason for spending these public dollars on the expansion of private schools is that “we want to make sure that from our perspective, Christian school options are available to any kid who chooses that in the state.”

Ohio started funding vouchers in Cleveland only. They were supposed to “help poor kids escape failing public schools.” Initially, vouchers were only for kids already enrolled in public schools and only for kids from low-income families.

When they were implemented in the 1990s, vouchers in Ohio, like in many places, were limited in scope; they were available only to parents whose children were attending (often underfunded) public schools in Cleveland. The idea was to give those families money that they could then spend on tuition at a hopefully better private school, thus empowering them with what was called school choice.

Over the decades, the state incrementally expanded voucher programs to a wider and wider range of applicants. And last year, legislators and Gov. Mike DeWine extended the most prominent of those programs, called EdChoice, to all Ohio families.

Now, vouchers subsidize the children of families who never attended public schools, including affluent families. They have become a welfare program for families who previously paid their full tuition. As in every other voucher state, most students who take vouchers were already enrolled in private and religious schools.

Encouraged by Americans for Prosperity, a Koch brothers political advocacy group, the Ohio legislature added the religious school funding bill to the state budget.

Led by Huffman, Republicans slipped at least $4 million in grants to private schools into a larger budget bill. There was little debate, in part because budget bills across the country have become too large to deliberate over every detail and, also, Republicans have supermajorities in both chambers in Ohio.

According to an Ohio Legislative Service Commission report, the grants, some of them over a million dollars, then went out to various Catholic schools around the state. ProPublica contacted administrators at each of these schools to ask what they will be using their new taxpayer money on, but they either didn’t answer or said that they didn’t immediately know. (One of the many differences between public and private schools is that the latter do not have to answer questions from the public about their budgets, even if they’re now publicly funded.)

The total grant amount of roughly $4 million this year may seem small, said William L. Phillis, executive director of the Ohio Coalition for Equity & Adequacy of School Funding. But, he noted, Ohio’s voucher program itself started out very small three decades ago, and today it’s a billion-dollar system.

“They get their foot in the door with a few million dollars in infrastructure funding,” Phillis said. “It sets a precedent, and eventually hundreds of millions will be going to private school construction.”

The total grant amount of roughly $4 million this year may seem small, said William L. Phillis, executive director of the Ohio Coalition for Equity & Adequacy of School Funding. But, he noted, Ohio’s voucher program itself started out very small three decades ago, and today it’s a billion-dollar system.

“They get their foot in the door with a few million dollars in infrastructure funding,” Phillis said. “It sets a precedent, and eventually hundreds of millions will be going to private school construction.”

The only statewide evaluation of Ohio’s EdChoice voucher program was published in 2016. The evaluation was funded by the choice advocacy group, The Thomas B. Fordham Foundation. TBF has a special relationship to Ohio Republicans in the legislature because it originated in Ohio and maintains an office in Ohio. It also authorizes charter schools in Ohio.

The evaluation concluded that students who left to use vouchers in a private school performed worse than their peers who remained in public schools.

So, the Republican supermajority has known for at least eight years that vouchers don’t “save” poor kids; in fact, those kids are likely to fall farther behind. Now that the Republicans have adopted universal choice, they know that they are helping kids who are already enrolled in private and religious schools. So now, it’s a logical step to throw in millions more for construction and renovation of voucher schools.

Categories Budget Cuts, Education Industry, Ohio, Privatization, Religion, Separation of church and state, Vouchers

NCPE: Voucher Costs Are Rising Dramatically Above Budget Projections

By dianeravitch
September 18, 2024 //
5

The National Coalition for Public Education published valuable information contrasting the actual cost of vouchers to overly optimistic projections by their advocates. In every state that has adopted vouchers, most vouchers are used by students already enrolled in private schools. In states such as Florida and Arizona, vouchers are “universal,” meaning there are no income limitations or other restrictions on their accessibility. In essence, vouchers provide public dollars to subsidize the tuition of students in private and religious schools. They are a welfare program for the affluent.

The NCPE concluded:

When lawmakers consider expanding or creating private school voucher programs, their projections often drastically underestimate the actual costs. They sell a false promise that vouchers will save money, do not budget adequate funds, and then wind up with million dollar shortfalls, necessitating cuts from public education and even tax increases. 

Some voucher advocates incorrectly claim that if the amount of the voucher is less than the average expenditure spent to educate a student in public school, the state will save money. Existing voucher programs prove this false.  

First, it costs less than the average expenditure to educate some students, and much more to educate others who need additional support and services–like those with disabilities, English language learners, and low-income students. The students who are most expensive to educate, however, tend to remain in public schools  because they cannot find a private voucher school willing to accept them. Yet, because of the voucher program, the public schools are left with fewer resources. Furthermore, in a voucher program, the state now pays tuition for private school students who never attended public schools, which is an altogether new cost for taxpayers.

This all adds up to more, not less, spending.

Here are several examples of the skyrocketing costs of voucher programs:

ARIZONA’S VOUCHER IS COSTING 1,346% MORE THAN PROJECTED, CONTRIBUTING TO A $400 MILLION BUDGET DEFICIT.

  • The fiscal note attached to Arizona’s universal voucher program projected the program would cost the state about $65 million in 2024 and $125 million in 2025. But once students’ applications started to come in, state leaders realized these estimates were woefully inadequate. The Arizona Governor’s Office now estimates that the price tag is more than 1,346% higher at a cost of $940 million per year. This is one of the main causes of a $400 million budget shortfall in the state’s general fund, which funds the state’s public schools, transportation, fire, police, and prisons.

THE FLORIDA VOUCHER IS ALREADY MORE THAN $2 BILLION OVER BUDGET IN YEAR ONE.

  • The Florida Senate projected that its voucher expansion would cost $646 million. But independent researchers estimated that the program would actually cost almost $4 billion, and actual costs are already approaching that amount—$3.35 billion in the first year. In just one county, Duval, school officials report a $17 million budget shortage due to funds lost to the vouchers.

WEST VIRGINIA’S VOUCHER DRAINS MORE THAN $20 MILLION FROM PUBLIC SCHOOLS PER YEAR.

  • During the 2024 – 2025 school year, the West Virginia voucher program is expected to funnel $21.6 million away from the state’s public schools–enough to pay the salaries for 301 professional teachers and 63 school service workers. As a result of the voucher and other declines in enrollment, multiple school districts are already warning residents that they need to impose property tax increases in order to continue to pay current teachers’ salaries.

Categories Accountability, Arizona, Budget Cuts, Disruption, Education Industry, Florida, Funding, Religion, Separation of church and state, Vouchers

Webinar: Public Funding for Religious Schools?

By dianeravitch
September 17, 2024 //
14

The National Education Policy Center is hosting a webinar on the implications of federal funding of religious schools. Actually, two webinars, on September 26. Sign up here.

NEPC writes:

Should religious schools be publicly funded? And what are the implications when they are?

These questions have become increasingly relevant in the United States in the wake of Espinoza v. Montana (2020) and Carson v. Makin (2022), two U.S. Supreme Court cases that forced states, under certain circumstances, to provide public funding to private religious schools. But questions raised by such public funding are not unique to our nation. In fact, many of the issues currently confronting the United States have already been wrestled with in other countries around the world.

On September 26th, two back-to-back webinars will explore these trends and issues, with an eye to helping parents, teachers, administrators, scholars, advocates, journalists, and other education stakeholders better understand the history and impact of state-funded religious education in the U.S. and abroad.

The webinars, which are free to register for and attend, feature the authors of articles in a new special issue of the Peabody Journal of Education, a peer-refereed publication. This special issue on publicly funded religious schools considers research findings around equity, segregation, and discrimination as they relate to state-funded religious education. Studies presented in the special issue were conducted in Canada, Spain, and the U.S., and they examine how state-funded religious education has shifted over time as a result of factors such as legal rulings, politics, demographic changes, global migration, and education privatization.

The webinars are sponsored by NEPC, which invites the public to attend either or both.

Law and Public Discourse is the title of the first webinar in the series, which runs from noon to 1 pm Eastern Time.

Kathleen Sellers of Duke University will moderate. Panelists are Sue Winton of York University in Canada and NEPC Fellows Bruce Baker of the University of Miami, Suzanne Eckes of the University of Wisconsin, Preston Green of the University of Connecticut, and Kevin Welner of the University of Colorado.

The second webinar, Catholic Culture and Market Concerns, will be held right after the first one, from 1 to 2 pm Eastern on September 26th.

Joel Malin of Miami University will moderate. Panelists will be James Coviello, Stephen Kotok, and Catherine DiMartino, all of St. John’s University, Clara Fontdevila of the University of Glasgow in Scotland, Adrián Zancajo and Antoni Verger of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain, and Ee-Seul Yoon of the University of Manitoba, Canada.

Click here now to register for one or both of these two webinars.

For those interested in reading the underlying articles in the Peabody journal, they’re available (although some are behind a paywall) as follows:

Fontdevila, C., Zancajo, A., & Verger, A. (2024). Catholic Schools in the Marketplace: Changing and Enduring Religious Identities

Green, P., Baker, B., & Eckes, S. (2024). The Potential for Race Discrimination in Voucher Programs in a Post-Carson World

Kotok, S., DiMartino, C.C., & Coviello, J. (2024). New York City Catholic Schools Operating in the Public Space in a Post-Makin World

Welner, K. (2024). Charting the Path to the Outsourcing of Discrimination Through School Choice

Winton, S. (2024). Same Arguments, Different Outcomes: Struggles Over Private School Funding in Alberta and Ontario, Canada

Yoon, E.S. (2024). Unequal City and Inequitable Choice: The Neoliberal State’s Development of School Choice and Marketization in the Publicly Funded Catholic School Board in Toronto, Canada

Yoon, E.S., Malin, J.R., Sellers, K.M., & Welner, K.G. (2024). Should Religious Schools Be Publicly Funded? Issues of Religion, Discrimination, and Equity

Categories Catholic Schools, Funding, Religion, Separation of church and state

North Carolina: Republicans Pass “Massive” Voucher Expansion

By dianeravitch
September 14, 2024 //
12

Public Schools First NC posted the following statement about the passage of additional funding for the state’s voucher program. The General Assembly has a veto-proof majority in both houses, thanks to the defection of one Tricia Cotham, who ran as a Democrat who opposed abortion and vouchers, then changed parties. The bill raises voucher spending to over $600 million this year and to nearly $1 billion annually in a decade.

Here is the statement:

This week the House and Senate majority passed House Bill 10 “Require ICE Cooperation & Budget Adjustments” in a process that allowed no adjustments to any part of the bill. The new bill added a number of budget items to the previous bill, including massive increases in North Carolina’s voucher programs. 

The bill added millions in OS vouchers and ESA+ vouchers, bringing the total for 2024-25 to $616.1 million. The new appropriations were made to ensure that all voucher applicants this year received a voucher regardless of their income. As described in our September 7 newsletter, the majority of OS applicants on the waitlist have incomes too high to have been eligible for vouchers before the income cap was removed this year. 

In 2024-25, the OS vouchers pay up to $7,468 toward the private school tuition for each student. The voucher amount is tied to state per-pupil funding and increases each year. 

The wealthiest applicants—those making more than $260,000/year for a family of four—will receive $3,360 per child from the state. 

The bill does not increase teacher pay, so veteran teachers in their 15th through 24th years of teaching will receive a raise of only $820 in 2024-25.

The bill also sets out additional increases for both voucher programs through 2032-33 and establishes spending “for each fiscal year thereafter.” The result, as shown in the chart, is a whopping $937.6 million scheduled to be spent in 2033-34 alone. This is stunning and a total disregard for our underfunded public schools.

North Carolina will have spent a total of nearly $9 billion on private school vouchers by 2033-34. Those dollars would have fully funded the Comprehensive Remedial Plan (Leandro) to provide a sound basic education for all public school students—and much more. In November 2022, the North Carolina Supreme Court ordered the legislature to appropriate funds according to the Leandro plan, but legislative leaders are still fighting the ruling. 

Taxpayers may wonder whether the billions spent on private schools are helping students learn. We do know, based on national data, that private schools do not outperform public schools. Taxpayers won’t get answers—at least not yet – about NC students since private schools are not required to publicly report information on student achievement, unlike traditional public schools and charter schools.

Last year’s budget bill required private schools to administer the ACT to 11th grade students whose tuition was at least partially funded by vouchers starting this school year (public school 11th graders already take the ACT). It also required the Superintendent of Public Instruction to recommend a test to be administered in 3rd and 8th grade to both public school students and private school voucher students. There has been no word yet on what test Superintendent Truitt recommended and whether it will be administered this spring. 

Governor Cooper has signaled that he will veto House Bill 10 this week due to the massive voucher increases and other provisions in the bill that he has previously come out against such as the ICE requirement. 

It’s NOT TOO LATE to take action to STOP HB 10!

Legislators will be back in session on October 9. Governor Cooper is expected to veto the bill this week. Legislators will then be asked to vote to override his veto. What can you do to make sure the veto holds?

  • Contact legislators to urge them to reject this voucher expansion.
  • Contact all other elected officials and local business leaders to let them know how harmful the voucher expansion is to communities. They should contact legislators too. 
  • Encourage your local school board to submit a resolution rejecting vouchers (see examples here).
  • Support your local PTA as they advocate for public schools.
  • Sign our petition urging legislators to reject HB 10 and support the VETO.

PSFNC’s Statement on Voucher Expansion

Legislators, when sworn in, pledge to uphold the NC state constitution to provide a free public education. They should not be sending nearly a billion dollars of our tax money to private school vouchers while starving our public schools as they ignore the NC Supreme Court’s ruling to fully fund Leandro. By adding school voucher funding to clear the voucher waitlist of mostly wealthy families, this bill gives our hard earned tax dollars to wealthy families who can afford to pay their own tuition bills. In contrast, salary increases for teachers with 5 or more years of experience were less than $950, which amounts to pay cuts given cost of living increases. 

This bill prioritizes private schools over public schools, urban families over rural families, and wealthy families over our teachers and the nearly 1.4 million children who attend our public schools. Now, with no income limits to determine eligibility and no prior public school attendance required, it has become a handout to wealthy families to underwrite their private school tuition. This is the wrong path for our state. It undermines the social and economic fabric of our state–a state that used to be known nationwide for putting our public schools first- we need to do it again.

Categories Education Industry, Extremism, North Carolina, Privatization, School Choice, Segregation, Separation of church and state, Vouchers

South Carolina: State Supreme Court Overturns Vouchers

By dianeravitch
September 12, 2024 //
8

Republican-controlled states have been on a crusade to enact vouchers, with the alone stimulus of billionaire lobbying dollars. We know from Michigan State University scholar Josh Cowen that most students who use vouchers were already enrolled in private schools. Thus, vouchers are a subsidy for people who can afford private schools, not for low-income students. Cowen also has demonstrated that the academic outcomes of vouchers are disastrous for kids who transfer from public schools (the evidence is contained in Cowen’s excellent new book: The Privateers).

The South Carolina State Supreme Court just overturned the state’s voucher program. Three judges recognized that the program violated the state constitution. Courts in other Republican-controlled states have decoded that the state constitution does not mean what it says.

Peter Greene writes in Forbes:

In many states, the challenge of creating a school voucher program is a constitutional requirement that public tax dollar are designated only for public schools. South Carolina’s legislature thought they had found a workaround; today the State Supreme Court said no.

The 3-2 decision came as a surprise. But the basis for the “relief granted in part” was straightforward.

The petitioners in the case make the claim that the voucher program violates Article XI, Section 4 of the South Carolina Constitution:

“No money shall be paid from public funds nor shall the credit of the State or any of its political subdivisions be used for the direct benefit of any religious or other private educational institution.”

The language is exceptionally direct and clear, but legislators thought they had created a workaround in the form of the Education Scholarship Trust Fund. The premise, seen in many taxpayer funded voucher programs in other states, is that once the money passes into the hands of a third party, it somehow sheds its public nature.

As the ruling puts it:

Respondents’ primary argument is that the funds start out as public funds but lose their public character once the Treasurer places the funds in the ESTF.

The court is unconvinced that the ESTF is a true trust. And the court points out that even if it is a trust, the nature of a trust is that the trustee holds legal title to the estate, and in this case, the trustee is the state. The court notes that “this is not the first time we have encountered an attempt to deploy a trust to avoid constitutional limits on the use of public funds” and cites O’Brien v. S. C. ORBIT.

The other argument by the state is that ESTF funds benefit the families, and do not provide “direct benefit” to the private schools. “[T]hey read our Constitution as allowing public funds to be directly paid to private schools as tuition as long as the funds are nudged along their path by the student.”

The state argues that this is not like the last time vouchers were struck down (Adams v. McMaster) because this time the vouchers can be used for private or public schools. Therefor the program does not provide direct benefits for private schools. However, responds the court, “just because the benefit is diffuse does not mean it is not direct.”

State Superintendent of Education Ellen Weaver responded to the ruling.

“Families cried tears of joy when the scholarship funds became available for their children, and today’s Supreme Court ruling brings those same families tears of devastation. The late timing of the initial filing and subsequent ruling on this case midway through the first quarter of the new school year wreaks havoc on the participating students and their families.”

The ruling is certainly inconveniently timed for those students who have already used the vouchers to start their new school year. It’s not clear what will happen to them.

Previously, Kentucky’s Supreme Court also struck down their state’s voucher program, arguing that the twists and turns built into the program did not conceal it’s fundamental nature—the use of public taxpayer dollars to fund private and religious schools in violation of the state constitution. In Kentucky, that has led to an attempt to rewrite the constitution. We’ll see what the South Carolina legislature tries next.

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Religion, Republicans, School Choice, Segregation, Separation of church and state, South Carolina

North Carolina Alert! GOP Plans to Slip in $248 Million for Vouchers on Monday

By dianeravitch
September 7, 2024 //
6

Public Schools First, North Carolina’s premier parent-advocacy group, warns that the GOP-controlled legislature plans to expand the state’s voucher program on Monday. It asks parents and concerned citizens to sign a petition and get active to stop the ongoing campaign to defund public schools.

Public Schools First NC writes:

In a familiar move, voucher supporters in the legislature are adding a $248M voucher expansion to an existing bill instead of proposing a stand-alone bill that can be debated and voted on separately. 

House Bill 10 “Require Sheriffs to Cooperate with ICE” has been newly branded “Require ICE Cooperation & Budget Adjustments.” This is where they have included an additional $248 million for private school vouchers in 2024-25.

With the school year underway, parents have already had to make schooling decisions for their children. This means that the $248 million is primarily for private school tuition for students who are already enrolled in a private school this year. In other words, families that can already afford private school will simply receive a tax-funded tuition rebate. 

Left out of the ICE/Budget Adjustments bill are any additional funds for teacher pay, which leaves the average pay increase at 3% for teachers this year. Due to inflation increases, the 3% raise is effectively a pay cut unless local communities add salary supplements large enough to make up the difference. Even worse, teachers with more than 4 years of experience received increases of less than 2% this year.  

Why aren’t legislators spending the $248 million boosting teacher salaries so they’re not getting a pay cut?

Put into specific dollar amounts, the proposed voucher expansion would give $4,480 to families (of 4) making up to $259,740 per year and $3,360 to millionaires, while teachers with 10 years of experience make just $49,350 per year and are stuck with a skimpy $920 salary increase. Is this fair? Is this how we strengthen and support our public schools?

Also missing are dollars to support early childhood education or fund North Carolina Pre-K. Currently just 53% of eligible children are enrolled in NC Pre-K, leaving nearly 24,000 low-income children without an adequate pre-k option. 

Instead of clearing the private school voucher waitlist to fund wealthy families, perhaps the legislature should spend the $248 million to clear the NC Pre-K waitlist and support low-income families.

There are many, many more important issues the legislature should be addressing during their time in Raleigh than adding dollars to a program that harms public schools and sends dollars to private schools that are completely unaccountable to the public.

It is critical that you act now! The NC Senate will open their session at noon. Join us if you can.

Please sign our petition to let legislators know you want them to OPPOSE THIS THREAT TO OUR PUBLIC SCHOOLS – TELL THEM VOTE NO TO ANY PRIVATE SCHOOL VOUCHER EXPANSION!Sign the Petition

Need help explaining this to your neighbors and friends? Public Schools First NC just released a short video explaining vouchers in NC. Please share it widely!

video

Categories Accountability, Democracy, Education Industry, Extremism, North Carolina, Religion, Separation of church and state, Vouchers

Oklahoma: Tips on Teaching the Bible in Your Public School Classroom

By dianeravitch
August 7, 2024 //
29

State Superintendent of Schools Ryan Walters is eager to inject religion into the public schools. He has mandated the introduction of the Bible into every classroom. Some teachers in Oklahoma have begun assembling a collection of helpful lessons. Of course, as they show, you can integrate local places into your lessons. If you have some ideas, please pass them along.

For you teachers in Oklahoma, beginning this fall:  This was posted on Facebook. Walters has become the butt of jokes nationwide. 

Hallelujah! Thank you to my creative friends for all these great Biblical math problems. They’ll really help the Oklahoma school superintendent’s goal of inserting biblical content into math and science! I’ve collected a multitude of the problems into one post for ease of reading:

1) Solomon had 700 wives and 300 concubines (1 Kings 11:3). If he lay with one wife or concubine every night at the Mayo Hotel or The Skirvin but took off one day per week for rest, how many days would it take him to lay with all of his wives and concubines? 

2) David captured the foreskins of 200 Philistines (1 Samuel 18:27). If David split those foreskins into baskets of 40 foreskins each, how many baskets would he need? That is the math. The science problem to solve: Since he ‘captured’ them, how did the foreskins run from David?

3) The prophet Elisha summoned two she-bears to kill 42 children after they mocked him for being bald (2 Kings 2:24) One she-bear mauled twice as many children as the other she-bear. How many kids did each she-bear maul? (Use fractions) (Courtesy of Margo Evans)

4) Jael killed General Sisera by driving a tent peg into his skull. (Judges 4:21) If Jael could hammer 1.5 inch per blow and the peg was 9 inches long, how many blows would she need to drive the peg all the way in? (Courtesy of Julie Brady Murdoch)

5) Moses parted the Red Sea (Exodus 14:21). If he moved the water in the Red Sea at 1,000 cubic liters per second, how long would it take him to part the Hudson River / Deep Fork River? (Courtesy of Lynn Nesmith) 

6) There are 8.7 million animal species on Earth. If Noah took two of each of them onto the ark (substitute the Blue Whale in Catoosa) how many square cubits of space were required to accommodate all 17.4 million passengers? (Courtesy of Todd Kreisman) 

7) Elijah killed 450 prophets of Baal (1 Kings 18:40). If it took him one minute to lethally inject / kill each pagan prophet, how long would it take him expressed in hours (Courtesy of James Frese)

8) Adam and Eve had two sons. One killed the other. So where did all the people come from? 
Rephrase question as: So where did all the people in McCurtain County come from?  (Courtesy of Hilary Dumitrescu)

9) Jezebel was thrown from a window off the Devon Tower or atop the Golden Driller) and died (2 Kings 9:33). If the window was 30 feet high, and she fell at a rate of 16 feet per second squared due to gravity, how many seconds did it take for her to reach the ground? (Use the formula \ (s = \frac {1}{2}gt^2 \), where \( s \) is the distance, \( g \) is the acceleration due to gravity, and \( t \) is the time in seconds). (Courtesy of Dana Kienzle) 

ALSO, I have started to craft an introduction to the Biblical Math book. Something like: The Bible and mathematics make a perfect match. Just consider the name of the Bible’s fourth book: Numbers. So, students of Oklahoma go forth and multiply (and add, and subtract, and divide). Once again, thank you all for your help in this project for the students of Oklahoma!

Categories Oklahoma, Religion, Separation of church and state

Oklahoma: Is the State Superintendent too Radical for the Public?

By dianeravitch
August 7, 2024 //
13

John Thompson, retired teacher and historian in Oklahoma, sees a ray of hope in the pushback against State Superintendent Ryan Walters’ efforts to impose some version of the Christian religion on the public schools.

Thompson writes:

As Oklahoma State School Superintendent Ryan Walters’s ramps up his attacks on public schools, it must be asked why is he becoming even more extremist when it seems so obvious that he’ll lose these battles? I won’t try to get into his mind, but I believe that four types of responses make it unlikely that Walters can implement his agenda.  He’s losing due to resistance from educators, the courts, legislators, and the press, which is revealing his agenda in a professional manner.  

As the Oklahoma Voice explained, Ryan Walters recently mandated “grade-level specific guidelines” for 5th through 12th grade classes. “They require students to analyze literary elements of biblical stories and to identify how those have impacted Western culture.” Moreover, “Every classroom must also have a physical copy of the Bible, the United States Constitution, the Declaration of Independence and the Ten Commandments.”

As the Oklahoman reports, eight mostly large suburban school districts say they “would not be altering their curriculum.” One district superintendent, Rick Cobb, said, “The Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled this summer that selection of instructional materials is a matter of local control. … I hope that remains the law and continues to be our practice.”

I must add that these school systems’ leaders, like Cobb and Bixby’s Rob Miller, had previously been disproportionately courageous in defending their students from corporate school reform. (Miller is currently protesting the loss of teaching talent due to Walters, and how schools haven’t received their Title I allocations, which were due on July I.) 

In what the Oklahoman characterized as a “veiled threat,” State Superintendent Walters doubled down on his orders, “Some Oklahoma educators have indicated they won’t follow the law and Oklahoma standards, so let me be clear: they will comply, and I will use every means to make sure of it.” And as the Frontier reports, Walters says that “teachers who don’t comply could lose their teaching licenses.” 

But, Walters hasn’t been successful defending his mandates in court. As the Frontier’s Fact-Checkerreported, Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond’s office has said that Walters has no legal authority to require certain content be taught by sending a memo to school districts.  And KFOR reports that Drummond has already informed Walters that he can’t continue to ban legislators serving on Education Committee from his executive committee meetings. 

As the Oklahoma Voice reported, the Education Department ordered the Edmond schools to remove “The Kite Runner” and “The Glass Castle” from its high school library shelves, and “threatened a potential downgrade to Edmond’s accreditation status if it didn’t comply.” However, the “Oklahoma Supreme Court unanimously agreed with Edmond Public Schools that the state Department of Education overstepped its bounds.”

And the Oklahoman reports, the “Walters-led state Board of Education created an administrative rule prohibiting school districts and local schools from ‘altering sex or gender designations in past student records’ without the board’s authorization.” They did so after Walters insisted, “We’re not going to tolerate the woke Olympics in our schools, left-wing ideologues trying to push in this radical gender theory. It is the most radical concept we’ve ever come across in K-12 education, that you can be gender fluid (or) change your gender constantly.”

The Oklahoma Equality Law Center and the Oklahoma Appleseed Center for Law and Justice filed a lawsuit to protect the identity of a student who challenged Walters’ mandate. As Walters was imposing his demands on curriculum, a Cleveland County judge “granted a protective order sought by a Moore Public Schools student against state schools Superintendent Ryan Walters and members of the State Board of Education.”

During the same week the Republican Representative Mark McBride discovered discrepancies between the information he received from the State Department of Education about state funding for Walters’ and his Chief Policy Advisor Matt Langston’s political trips, and the data presented to KFOR news by the Oklahoma Office of Management and Enterprise Services (OMES). McBride “says it’s time for Attorney General Drummond’s office to step in and investigate whether OSDE violated the Open Records Act in this case.” The Lost Ogle added that one of the expenses that taxpayers paid for was Walters riding a hot air balloon; and he didn’t tip his Uber driver.

And below is Rep. Mickey Dollens‘ (D) latest critique of Walters and Stitt, listing “recent proposals introduced in the Oklahoma rooted in Christian Nationalism.”

– Bible mandate in public schools.

– Designating the Bible as the Official State Book. 

– Establishing the nation’s first taxpayer-funded religious charter school. 

– Displaying the Ten Commandments at the state capitol. 

– Mandating the Ten Commandments be displayed in every public school classroom. 

– Using Bible verses to justify spanking children with disabilities in school. 

– Religious school tax credits. 

– Banning the teaching of evolution in public schools. 

– The governor claiming the state of Oklahoma for Christ in his inaugural speech.

Fourthly, we should take note of the number of excellent articles this piece cites. The Tulsa World’s Ginnie Graham is just one example of reporters presenting the evidence that districts are obeying the law when they reject Walters’ orders. Although the press is seriously underfunded, these local for-profit and nonprofit news organizations have done a fantastic job of documenting how Walters, and other local and national campaigns (like the Project 2025) are threatening both, public education and our other democratic institutions.  

Finally, it was so exciting to be a part of the overflow crowd (not including the thousands who listened on Zoom) in Oklahoma City’s Mayflower Church when Rachel Laser, president and CEO of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, spoke on Walters and the Project 2025. So I will end with her concluding words in The Hill about Walters:

The goal of all of these strategies is to assert Christian favor and privilege in America and to fight democracy’s steady march towards equality for all. It’s very much a backlash to all the progress that our society has made in recent times towards LGBTQ equality, towards women’s equality, towards racial equality and Black and brown equality.

Until recently, I doubt many Oklahomans believed that so many people would oppose his agenda. 

Categories Administrators, superintendents, Curriculum, Extremism, Oklahoma, Religion, Separation of church and state

New Hampshire: Voucher Program Aims to Destroy Public Schools

By dianeravitch
August 5, 2024 //
12

Veteran journalist Garry Rayno wrote a passionate editorial about the destructive voucher program in New Hampshire, promoted by out-of-state billionaires. Ninety percent of the students in the state attend public schools, but Republicans have diverted taxpayer dollars to private and religious schools. Their goal is a universal voucher program, where every student in the state is eligible for a voucher, with no income limits.

Rayno wrote at InDepthNH.org:

America’s traditional institutions, the foundation for the greatest political experiment in history, are under attack from the social safety net to food regulations, and from the court system to environmental protection.

The drive to create doubt and even rejection of these long-standing pillars of our society is to eventually destroy the underpinnings of government to create a new order where the rich will flourish even more with all the advantages, while everyone else will fight over the crumbs of the plutocrats.

The current large target in this fight to turn democracy into an oligarchy is the public school system.

The first blow to the public school system in New Hampshire was the push for charter schools, which are still public schools but without the regulations and requirements traditional public schools must meet.

Charter schools have had to ask the state for more and more per pupil money to stay afloat, about double the per pupil adequacy grant amount for traditional schools.

The charter schools that found a niche have been successful, but many have fallen by the wayside over the years even with federal grant money approved during the Trump administration for start-ups and expansions.

And until recently, they have not strayed into the Christian Nationalist area that has been widely promoted by Hinsdale College in Michigan and adopted by some states.

Then came the voucher push sold as a way of helping low-income families find a more suitable education environment for students who do not do well in the public-school setting.

After several unsuccessful attempts, proponents, who include Education Commissioner Frank Edelblut and State School Board Chairman Drew Cline, lawmakers successfully approved the Education Freedom Account program as a rider to the 2022-2023 biennial operating budget after it failed to pass the House and was retained.

Since then attempts to expand the eligibility of parents by raising the income cap passed two sessions ago, but failed in the recently completed session.

Instead of helping the low-income families with educational options the program has largely been a subsidy program for parents with children who were already in religious or private schools and homeschooling. 

Only about 10 to 15 percent of the increasingly expensive draw on the Education Trust Fund have left public schools for alternative education programs.

What proponents ultimately seek is a “universal program” which would be open to any New Hampshire student regardless of his or her parents’ income, although a similar program has nearly bankrupted Arizona and put public education at risk in Ohio, where it is being litigated.

New Hampshire is not alone in the push to do away with public education as we know it.

A letter from many national figures seeking to privatize education like Betsy DeVos and Edward Bennett; the CEOs of organizations pushing for privatization; former federal and state governors; sitting governors from almost all southern states; two state education commissioners including Edelblut, and state elected officials most from Republican controlled states was sent to Republican Congressional leaders saying, “The task before the next Congress is clear and unambiguous: bring education freedom to millions of students across America who desperately need it!”

The letter also touts the GOP’s platform approved at its recent national convention “to cultivate great K-12 schools, ensure safe learning environments free from political meddling, and restore Parental Rights. We commit to an Education System that empowers students, supports families, and promotes American Values… Republicans believe families should be empowered to choose the best Education for their children. We support Universal School Choice in every State in America.”

The political meddling the platform contends is that “Lessons about American values have been displaced by political or cultural trends of the day,” without noting several states have recently required the Bible be taught in public schools. 

Children whose faith is Muslim or Buddhism or are Native Americans may believe those state’s Biblical requirement is political meddling.

What the proponents of universal vouchers seek is to have Congress do what some state legislators, including Texas, have failed to do and that is approve universal private or religious education on the public’s dime.

This push to do away with public education has attempted to tarnish what has always been the great equalizer, by saying schools are failing, teachers are indoctrinating students and withholding information from parents. 

You would think public schools are a far-reaching conspiracy to destroy family values, while ignoring the fact that 90 percent of students are in public schools and many are very successful.

New Hampshire public schools ranked sixth in the nation this year, down from the number two spots five years ago.

The number ranking was before the push to privatize education became successful with the help of Gov. Chris Sununu who put both Edelblut and Cline where they are, in charge of the public education system in the state, although both seek to diminish its reach.

Edelblut focuses on the learning disparity between well to do school districts and the poorly performing ones that lack the property values to support schools in the same way property wealthy communities do as the reason to seek alternatives.

Yet when the state education funding system is raised as a possible culprit for the disparity, Edelblut is quick to dismiss that as a different issue when it isn’t.

One of the major concerns about the Education Freedom Program, the Business Tax Scholarship Program and charter schools, is the lack of accountability.

How do taxpayers know their money is being used wisely if there is no way to determine those students are receiving “an adequate education,” as the state Supreme Court ruled?
Attempts to bring more accountability have failed in the Republican controlled legislature.

At the same time, Cline this week in his column “The Broadside” touts the state as doing pretty well for educational entrepreneurs according to a recent ranking.

“There’s more that can be done to make New Hampshire a freer state for education entrepreneurs looking to start small, decentralized, and unconventional educational environments, but so far the state is doing better than most,” according to Cline.

He cites the Education Entrepreneur Freedom Index released by the yes.every kid.foundation for the ranking.

It shouldn’t be surprising that according to Wikipedia,  “Yes. every kid. (YEK) is a 501(c)(4) advocacy group that is a part of the Koch Network. Launched by the Charles Koch-funded Stand Together in June of 2019, YEK supports the privatization of education. The organization is a proponent of the school choice movement, advocating for subsidized private school vouchers and charter schools.”
The Koch Foundation has long advocated for ending public education and installing a private education system where you pay for what you get. Not exactly the great equalizer.

Cline argues New Hampshire should be looking to encourage more private education.

“States with more relaxed homeschool and nonpublic school laws/regulations score higher, as entrepreneurs have an easier time getting started in these states,” he notes.

Cline and the Koch organization suggest relaxing state requirements for non-public schools and also zoning regulations to make it easier to locate educational facilities including child care businesses by allowing education in all zoning districts in a municipality.

“Though New Hampshire lost a point for rules requiring state approval for non-public schools, the state could become much more friendly to education entrepreneurs, the study’s authors conclude, primarily by relaxing some child-care rules and local regulations,” Cline writes.

Supporters of Education Freedom Accounts are fond of saying the best accountability is if parents are satisfied with the education their children receive, which you would hope is the case or why would you leave your child in an unsatisfactory educational environment?

But that is not what the state Supreme Court said in its Claremont I decision. It said the state has a responsibility to provide an adequate education to every student in the state and to pay for it. Parents have choices but the state defines an adequate education.

The state legislature has yet to live up to its responsibility and allowing a bypass through religious and private schools and homeschooling is not constitutionally fair to those children.

If you believe public education is failing in this state, you should begin looking at the top: the governor, the commissioner and to the state board of education chair.

Their priority is not public education.

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

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Catholic Schools, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Funding, Inequity, New Hampshire, Privatization, Religion, School Choice, Separation of church and state
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »