MI: Tudor Dixon is a bad choice

Let's get one thing straight--no matter what she says to the contrary, Tudor Dixon is not in favor of school choice. 

Dixon is the gubernatorial candidate heavily backed by the DeVos family, and they aren't really in favor of school choice, either.

School choice implies a world in which students can select from a wide variety of educational options. But that is not where privatizers of the DeVos strip have been steering us. As I've argued before, the public school system isn't even the major obstacle for a true choice system.

But like our Puritan forefathers, these far-right folks are not interested in a nation in which everyone is free to learn as they wish. They would like to see an end to public education because they see it as not aligned with their values (and it takes their money to educate Those Peoples' Children). What they want is a system in which their own values are ascendant. 

Consider this one example-- Tudor Dixon complaining that her child was accidentally exposed to a book about divorced people. 

Dixon complained that her daughter had checked out a book "about having two different homes" and how the very idea of divorce "caused an unnecessary anxiety."

"Why was this something she was just able to pick up off the shelf?" Dixon inquired.

Dixon is unclear about who, exactly, experienced the anxiety. It's almost as if her own adult concerns are being placed ahead of her daughter's right to read a book.

This is the tell. Over and over again, we see that some choicers actually believe that certain choices should not be available to anyone, including other peoples' children. In New Hampshire, Libertarians attacked a robust school choice program because they just didn't want to spend that much money insuring that other peoples' children had all those choices (let 'em get microschooled on the computer). In Alabama, a school choice politician ran a campaign attacking a charter school set up to serve LGBTQ students. And every single attaempt to ban books is about trying to limit the choices of other peoples' children. 

So Dixon is right in line with that crowd when she calls for parental choice--but not for the parents who want to choose things that Dixon doesn't approve of. 

Meanwhile, incumbent Gretchen Whitmer asked the right question in their final debate last week:

Do you really think books are more dangerous than guns?

I should get to carry a gun. You should not read books about nasty divorced people.

Dixon's education proposals are cut and pasted from privatizers across the nation. She supports a Don't Say Gay law that limits students' and families' right to hear about the varied forms human life takes (and which fails to understand what it actually says). Anti-trans athlete laws, a solution in search of a problem that, of course, removes choices from Those Parents. A nationalistic and inaccurate history program that makes sure students only learn the "right" history. And vouchers, so that parents can give up the right to a free, quality education in exchange for a small voucher, the better to create a system in which people are free and entitled to get as much education as they can afford--and no more. 

Dixon is a bad choice for folks who care about education in Michigan. If you're in Michigan, get out and vote for Gretchen Whitmer for governor (and for state board of education candidates like Mitch Robinson) who will help maintain actual public education for students and families in the state.