Steffen E. Polko is a retired professor of education at TCU in Texas. He wrote the following commentary for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Vouchers, he says, will doom community rituals, like Friday night football. Dividing students up by religion and other grounds will divide our communities and our country even more than at present.

He writes:

There appears to be some confusion regarding rural Texans’ opposition to school choice and vouchers. I think I may know why.

Gov. Greg Abbott’s espoused principal reason for promoting vouchers is to protect Texas children from the “woke” propaganda being disseminated by public school teachers. Let me assure the governor that teachers in upstanding, God-fearing communities such as Mineral Wells and Hico are not subjecting their students to “woke” ideology. In these communities, “woke” still means not asleep. This is not something that’s broken in small-town Texas, so it doesn’t need fixing.

Now, onto the most important reason. Vouchers pose a threat to high school football and could turn out Friday Night Lights. An education savings account program will reduce funding levels for public schools as students leave. The first thing to be hit will be athletic budgets.

Proponents note that there are few private school options in rural Texas. So, where will these students go? There are no options yet, but this will change with vouchers. Many churches face declining attendance and financial difficulty. If $8,000 per year vouchers are available a minister with 20 or more school-age children in the congregation will find it rational and financially prudent to start a school.

Let’s say I have 40 such children. If the state sends me $320,000 per year and I can keep expenses at $160,000, I will net $160,000 for my church. How do I keep my expenses so low? The key is technology. High-quality learning systems produced by nationally recognized educational providers such as Pearson are readily available over the Internet. The cost of learning management systems currently averages around $5 per student per month.

The state will require me to have two “teachers” for 40 students. No problem; this can be anyone in my congregation with a college degree and some time on their hands. Getting alternative certification from the state is relatively easy. My teachers need not be education experts because the learning management system does the heavy lifting. It provides instruction and creates and grades the homework and tests. The latest systems even use artificial intelligence to answer student questions.

The only job for the “teachers” would be to manage classroom behavior and help students use the software. A student leaving the public schools will probably get a fairly good Christian education. The public school will lose funding for athletic programs and perhaps a potential star quarterback. Ouch! For-profit schools will emerge employing a similar model. Using a hybrid instructional model and current costs, I calculate that a 200-student high school would bring cashflow of about $800,000 a year. Start 10 of

those and you have a nice chain of businesses. Could this be the real driving force behind vouchers? To recruit students, such schools could promise to teach artificial intelligence and the Python programming language to prepare students for a promising future in technology — or use some other clever hook. Texas has about 8,000 schools. The Texas Education Agency employs 1,000 people and spends around $2 billion per year to monitor the schools and hold them accountable.

I predict that vouchers will increase the number of schools in Texas four-fold. Will the Legislature increase funding by a factor of four to monitor this many schools? I think not. It will be a long time before state officials figure out if for-profit schools are delivering on their promise, and the owners will be very rich before they do. Good luck getting them and their money back from Barbados. Not only would church and for-profit schools poach rural athletes, but specialized voucher- and donor-funded sports academies could emerge. Let’s say someone starts a Dallas Football Academy. It could use an entrance exam similar to the NFL combine to assure it got the best athletes. The best coaches, fitness trainers, and other staff would be recruited.

These schools would have a direct connection to universities to give their athletes the best shot at a top-level scholarship. Such schools would dominate small-town teams and end the reign of, for example, the Aledo Bearcats. The state championship game would probably feature the Dallas and Houston football academies.

Rural Texas is our best bet to keep the state from making a huge mistake that is little more than a political stunt to get votes. Small communities have nothing to gain from vouchers and a lot to potentially lose, as does the rest of the state.

Steffen E. Palko is a retired associate professor of education at TCU. He lives in Fort Worth.

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