Arizona lawmakers are seeking to reach deep into classroom operations with proposals to require the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance, to designate which students can use which bathrooms and, once again, to limit how race and ethnicity are taught.
Those are in addition to proposals that would require gun safety training at schools and mandate that instructional materials and teacher lesson plans get posted online. Another bill would have the state Department of Education create a list of books banned from classroom use.
To some, these bills, among others, are a replay of recent legislative sessions, where the public school system became the turf for battles over hot-button cultural issues.
That ignores the changed political reality at the Capitol, with the arrival of a Democratic governor after more than a decade of unified GOP control, said Marisol Garcia, president of the Arizona Education Association.
If the GOP actually cares about these issues, why don’t they put the same requirements on voucher schools? It appears that if you want to escape the GOP mandates, the way to do it to open a private school, where you are free to teach about race and gender, free of testing, free of any accountability.
Josh Cowen is a Professor of Educational Policy at Michigan State University. He has spent many years as a voucher researcher and recently concluded that vouchers are a failed experiment, based on a multitude of research studies.
As soon as anyone becomes a critic of charter schools or vouchers, the choice lobby attacks them and claims they are paid by the teachers’ unions. I know this from personal experience. A few years ago, a choice lobbyist accused me of taking union money to buy the house I lived in; I assured her that I paid for my home all by myself.
Funny that the shrill well-paid lobbyists act as though unions are criminal enterprises, when in reality they have historically enabled poor and working class people to gain a foothold in the middle class, to have job security, health benefits, and a pension. They also give public schools a voice at the table when governors propose larger classes, lower standards for new teachers, or decreased funding for schools. I believe we need unions now, more than ever. Whenever I hear of a charter school unionizing or of workers in Starbucks or some other big chain forming a union, it makes my day.
Josh Cowen has undoubtedly been subject to the same baseless criticism from the same union-haters whose salaries are paid by plutocrats. He shares his thoughts here about teachers’ unions.
Here in Michigan, the Democratic legislature just re-affirmed our state’s longstanding commitment to working families by removing anti-labor provisions from state law. The move doesn’t apply to teachers and other public employees, because the conservative U.S. Supreme Court sided a few years back with Right-wing activists in their efforts to hinder contributions to public sector unions, but it’s still good news for the labor movement overall.
And I wanted to use their effort—alongside Republican efforts in other states to threaten teachers for what they say in classrooms—to make a simple point.
We need teachers unions. Other folks more prominent than me, like AFT’s Randi Weingarten, have made this point recently too. But I wanted to add my own voice as someone who has not been a union member, and someone who—although I’ve appeared with Randi on her podcast and count many union members as friends—has never been an employee or even a consultant.
If you want to talk dollars, The Walton Family Foundation once supported my research on charter schools to the tune of more than $300,000. Arnold Ventures supported my fundraising for a research center at Michigan State–$1.9 million from them. And the US Department of Education awarded my team more than $2 million to study school choice—while Betsy DeVos was secretary.
Think about that when I say school vouchers are horrific. And understand, I’m getting no support from teachers’ unions.
Instead it is I who supports them.
I’ve been studying teacher labor markets almost as long as school vouchers. Mostly my research has looked at teacher recruitment and retention. But I’ve also written about teachers’unions specifically. There’s a debate among scholars on what unions do and whether their emphasis on spending translates into test score differences. In the “rent seeking” framework economists use, the concern is that dollars spent on salaries don’t have direct academic payoffs.
There is no question that spending more money on public schools has sustained and generational impacts on kids. Research has “essentially settled” that debate, according to today’s leading expert on the topic.
But I want to branch out from dollars and cents and test scores to talk about teacher voice.
And I want to do that by raising a few questions that I’ve asked myself over the last couple years:
Why should the voice of a billionaire heiress from Michigan with no experience in public schools count for more than the voices of 100,000 teachers in my state’s classrooms every day?
Why should the simple fact that they work with children made by other people mean that teachers surrender their own autonomy and judgment not just as professionals but as human beings?
Why should educators have to work under what amounts to gag orders, afraid to broach certain topics or issues in the classroom? Some states are setting up hotlines to report on teachers as if they’re parolees, and a bill in New Hampshire would essentially give the fringe-Right Secretary of Education subpoena power to haul teachers in front of a special tribunal for teaching “divisive concepts.” This, after a Moms for Liberty chapter put out a bounty on New Hampshire teachers who were likewise divisive on an issue. Read: an issue of race or gender.
It’s not just threats to teacher employment. We know this. There are threats to teachers’ lives. How many teachers have died alongside their students—other people’s children—over the years in school shootings?
Why does the Right claim to trust teachers enough to arm them with guns in response to those shootings, but not enough to let them talk about race, gender, or any other “divisive concept?” Even some conservative commentators have worried publicly that we’re asking teachers to do too much. Why are we asking them to be an armed security force too?
‘In her recent history of “The Teacher Wars”, The New York Times’ Dana Goldstein noted that teachers formed unions, and fought for teacher tenure, to protect themselves not just professionally but personally. For free speech. To prevent harassment from supervisors—then as now, teachers were mostly professional women—and to keep from being fired for pregnancy or marital status.
So really, attacks on teachers are nothing new. Instead, teachers seem to be one of the few professions that it’s still acceptable in political conversation—even a mark of supposed intellectual sophistication in some circles—to ponder the shortcomings of the educators who work with our kids every day.
There’s nothing sophisticated about attacking hardworking, thoughtful, and dedicated people. And the only result of doing so will be the further erosion of our public, community schools. And that’s really the point. Just a few days ago, we learned that the big data that I and many others have gotten used to working with finally caught up to the on-the-frontlines warnings of educators everywhere: teachers are exiting the profession at unprecedented rates.
I’ve taken no money from teachers’ unions for any of the work I do. I’ve never been a member of a union—teachers’ or otherwise. Until now. Because after writing this today, I made a donation to my state’s primary teachers’ union and became a general member: a person “interested in advancing the cause of education…not eligible for other categories of membership.”
There’s a word for that in the labor movement. You hear it a lot here in Michigan, where I grew up and now teach future teachers in a college of education. That word is Solidarity.
A reader named JCGrim posted an important fact about vouchers: Voucher schools are not required to comply with the federal law that protects the rights of students with disabilities.
Vouchers are a backdoor scheme to make kids with disabilities disappear. Move them off the books & into unaccountable, unstable, non-transparent places.
The Council for Exceptional Children (CEC) oppose vouchers on the grounds that voucher & voucher-like programs fail to comply with IDEA’s provision of a free, appropriate, public education (FAPE).
Position on Use of Public Education Dollars to Fund School Vouchers and Other Voucher-Type Programs Approved July 2020 pubpol@exceptionalchildren.org CEC opposes school vouchers and voucher-type programs for all children and youth including those with disabilities. Such programs are contrary to the best interests of all children and youth and their families, the public-school system, local communities, and taxpayers.
The Arkansas Legislature, controlled by Republicans, passed Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders “education” bill, dubbed LEARNS, which authorizes vouchers. The first two hearings were held during school hours. The bill sailed through the legislature. The third hearing, where students were able to attend, was limited to a six-page amendment.
Students found clever ways to work around her brusque treatment but their objections were ignored.
“I’m sorry, you just don’t get to talk on the bill,” English told the students. “If you want to talk on this amendment, specifically things that are in this amendment, you’re free to do that, but you cannot speak on the bill….”
“I’d like to speak on the amendments, and how they do not go far enough to tear down and decimate this bill,” said student Ethan Walker, over repeated interruptions by English. “These petty little wording rearrangements don’t do anything to address how bad this bill actually is….”
Another student, sophomore Rhone Kuta, worked around English’s objections by referencing a specific line on a specific page, as the Republican chair repeatedly interrupted him.
“Where it deletes ‘and’ and substitutes ‘or,’ the reasons I believe this amendment is bad is, this should actually say we are deleting the voucher program on section 63 because the voucher program absolutely reallocates resources from the working class Americans and Arkansans and reallocates it to the upper class,” Kuta said.
The students showed themselves to be far more intelligent than their elected officials. They were treated shamefully. The bill was a fair accompli.
If you do only one thing today at my request, please watch the video in the Alternet post, where you will see an adult bullying high school students.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick have been pushing voucher legislation hard this year. Texas is one of the few red states that has not adopted voucher legislation for religious and private school tuition. The big stumbling block in the past has been a sturdy coalition of urban Democrats and rural Republicans.
Keith Bryant, Superintendent of Schools in Lubbock-Cooper ISD, illustrates the effect of a voucher program in rural public schools best:
“They are unifiers, gathering places, and information providers. Many times they are the largest employers in their communities, and, often, school events are the largest draw of visitors to their towns. Disruptions to funding for rural schools are disruptions to the fabric of life in rural communities.”
In a state where the money follows the child, students dropping out of public schools would inevitably affect – an already scarce – budget. Those who oppose a “school choice” program argue that the Legislature should focus on increasing public school education funding, instead of diverting those dollars into a system that holds no accountability.
School funding isn’t that complex, Bryant told RA News, who explains school funding as a pie that everyone in public schools in Texas is sharing.
“Every public school in Texas is sharing this pie. If someone takes a slice out of the pie to fund vouchers for private schools or homeschooling, there is less pie remaining for Texas public schools.”
Open up the link at the Network for Public Education blog, where you will see the article as well as a link to the original.
Consider subscribing to the Network for Public Education blog, which is able to cover many more stories about education across the nation than I do. The blog is curated by the wonderful Peter Greene, who has an eye for great stories.
Steve teaches in Polk County, Florida. He left a comment about where to find a wealth of choices: in public school. Choice advocates claim that public schools are one-size-fits-all. Nothing could be further from the truth. Charter schools and voucher schools are one-size-fits-all. They may exclude students they don’t want, for any reason. They may have a religious core that appeals to one-size. Home-schooling? You can’t get any more one-size-fits-all than learning at home. If you want indoctrination, go to a religious school; if you want education, go to a public school.
Do you want choices? Go to a public school!
Steve writes:
You want choice? Here, in the seventh largest school district in the state, you can choose AP, college-dual enrollment, Cambridge, ACCEL or International Baccalaureate for academics.
You can enter a career academy for aeronautics, health fields, architecture, criminal justice, education, culinary, graphics, CAD/CAM, engineering, legal studies, design, veterinary science, finance, biotechnology, construction. and others.
There are outstanding fine arts programs, with graduates going on to Broadway, television, and the tourism entertainment industry.
Play sports? The state lets you transfer to any school you want. You could join the state champion football team or state champion girls basketball team.
Want something hands on, such as, diesel mechanic, HVAC, auto repair, IT, or welding? Two public vo-tech high schools offer those programs.
All this choice is available in the public system.
So, the issue isn’t choice at all. This is about what vouchers have always been about since the days of massive resistance in Virginia.
Steve Dyer is a veteran analyst of Ohio education issues, as a former legislator and think tank budget expert. He writes here about the latest expansion of Ohio’s failed voucher program. When an independent evaluation of the Ohio voucher program was previously carried out, it concluded that kids who leave public school to use a voucher lose ground academically. The evaluation was sponsored by the Fordham Institute. Do not be fooled by the misleading summary written by Fordham staff.
Now that the Ohio Legislative Service Commission has officially costed out the so-called “Backpack Bill”, we know for certain that this bill has nothing to do with “rescuing” kids from “failed” public schools. It’s all about publicly subsidizing the adults who can already afford to send their kids to private school.
The LSC analysis proves definitively that the bill would instantly provide public funding to about 90,000 Ohio students who do not currently receive it. It would be through vouchers, education savings accounts, homeschoolers (including those being taught Nazi ideology) and other various devices all adding up to an additional $1.13 billion. All while the legislature is talking about massive tax cuts and continues to short-change the needs of the 90% of students in Ohio’s public schools.
These are not students who are leaving public schools. These are students who are already in private schools, whose parents can already afford private schools and who attend schools that are not audited by the state to ensure they are actually educating a single student we’re paying them to educate.
Sounds like a great idea to me! I mean, Ohio’s never had an issue with privately run schools billing the state for millions of dollars to educate kids they never actually had, right? Oh yeah, except for the ECOT scandal that was about 40% bigger than the biggest public bribery case ever brought in the state.
It would be one thing if Ohio’s private schools were doing an awesome job. However, we know that about 90% of the time, kids in Ohio’s public schools test better than students attending private schools in the same cities. We also know that the students taking vouchers are significantly more white than the communities they are from.
At this point on the post, Dyer adds the data from different counties.
This Universal Voucher bill would put an additional $1.13 billion into a program that would provide taxpayer subsidies to adults who send their kids to unaccountable schools that perform markedly worse than Ohio’s public schools all while further segregating our kids and communities by race.
Open the link to finish the post and see the data.
A report considers the chief concerns associated with Ohio’s voucher program: the harm to public school student outcomes through competition, the affect on district financial resources, and increased racial segregation. Finding that Ohio vouchers have had few such harmful impacts, the report concludes that it has effectively dismissed the primary concerns of voucher critics. Yet, while the report is broadly methodologically sound for the narrow questions it poses, the questions it asks are out-of-date with respect to current issues raised by voucher critics, which focus on substantially decreased student achievement among students using vouchers. Thus, the report does little to assuage the primary concerns of those dedicated to serving children through community-based public education.
The overview:
BOULDER, CO (February 21, 2023)—A recent report from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute considers the impacts of vouchers as related to competition in Ohio public schools, increased racial segregation, and local district financial resources. It presents these three issues as the chief concerns of voucher critics and finds few harmful impacts.
In Michigan State University professor Joshua Cowen’s review of The Ohio EdChoice Program’s Impact on School District Enrollments, Finances, and Academics, he finds that the questions it asks are far too limited. While the report is methodologically sound for the narrow questions it poses, Professor Cowen contends that they are outdated with respect to current concerns raised by voucher critics, which focus on substantially decreased student achievement among students using vouchers.
The report also relies on more permissive standards for statistical inference than peer-reviewed articles would typically allow. Moreover, the Foreword, written by Fordham staff, gives the clear impression that the report is merely an effort to provide new data for privatization advocates, rather than to respond to legitimate concerns raised by voucher critics. The Foreword dismisses criticisms as “Chicken Little” and “sky-is-falling” histrionics, and in doing so undermines the work of the authors it hired to write the study.
Ultimately, Professor Cowen concludes, those who are ideologically predisposed to embrace voucher policies will doubtless find much to appreciate in this report. It does little, however, to assuage the primary concerns of those dedicated to serving children through community-based public education, and thus has little value in the debate over the use of vouchers as a public policy tool to improve education.
Sara Stevenson retired after many years as a teacher in a religious school and librarian in a public Austin middle school. She wrote the following article for the Fort Worth Telegram.
Every two years, some Texas legislators file bills to push for private-school vouchers, rebranded recently as educational savings accounts, or ESAs. Their purpose is to funnel taxpayer dollars from public schools to private and religious schools. Thanks to a coalition of urban Democrats and rural Republicans, who cherish their community public schools, these initiatives fail each legislative session. But with Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Governor Dan Patrick prioritizing the issue, will this time be different?
ESAs are indeed repurposed vouchers. The only difference is that with ESAs, taxpayer dollars will go directly to parents to use toward a private school, individual tutoring or other education services. Voucher advocates usually begin by focusing on special education students or low-income students.
Adherents argue that these kids are unfairly “trapped” in low-performing schools and need to be rescued. Most voucher bills, including Senate Bill 176 filed this year, state that children who qualify for special education services must waive their rights to accommodations and supplemental services, rights which are guaranteed under federal law. How does this benefit special education students?
The Council for Exceptional Children, which advocates for both disabled and gifted children, opposes voucher-type programs for all youth. It argues that if children with disabilities are “off the books,” they will return to the shadows and not receive the deserved support they need to succeed.
On the other hand, advocates of ESAs argue that parents of poor children deserve the same freedom to choose a private school or other educational options that wealthy parents enjoy. They appeal to the siren song of equality and fairness as well as parent empowerment.
The unanswered questions are: which children, which parents, who is choosing, and at what cost?
While advocates stress the idea of parental choice, it is the private schools that do the choosing. The proposed $10,000 account would go directly to the parent and could be used toward many forms of education with little or no accountability. But private schools can still accept or reject any student for any reason. A local private school admissions director once told me, for instance, that the school did not accept children with discipline records.
In contrast, public schools are required to serve every child who comes through the door. Furthermore, most highly-rated private schools charge far more than $10,000 per year at the secondary level. Who will make up the difference?
And then there’s the state budget. If ESAs go to families whose students already attend private schools, they essentially become a tax break for private-school parents. It’s estimated that ESAs will cost at least $3 billion in the first year to reimburse the parents of current private school children in Texas.
Not only do ESAs create a new middle-class entitlement, but they drain public schools of needed funds.
Perhaps if public schools in Texas had enough money to meet the needs of all their students and to provide competitive salaries for teachers, the ESA position could be more persuasive. But as it stands, according to U.S. News, the state allotment for per-pupil spending in 2022 is less than all but seven other states. Only eight states pay teachers less than the average salary in Texas, according to the Comparable Wage Index, which accounts for cost of living variations across the country.
Most importantly, if we’re going to radically change the way we fund education in Texas when our state constitution obliges us to adequately fund our public schools, what do the data say? Do children receiving private-school vouchers or ESAs perform better on standardized testing, an objective measure? According to the Brookings Institution, a center-left think tank in Washington: “Four recent rigorous studies — in the District of Columbia, Louisiana, Indiana, and Ohio — used different research designs and reached the same result: On average, students that use vouchers to attend private schools do less well on tests than similar students that do not attend private schools.”
While using an ESA to put a child in a private school may please individual parents, it won’t translate into an objective improvement in learning outcomes for Texas children. So, it does not justify such a large transfer of taxpayer funds from public schools to parents’ pockets.
Sara Stevenson taught for 10 years in a Catholic high school and worked for 15 years as a public school librarian. She lives in Austin.
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