Vouchers And Federally-Supported Discrimination

School voucher programs are becoming one of the major fronts in a federal battle to safeguard discrimination by religious organizations.

Some flaps created by private religious schools seem minor, like the pastor at a Catholic school who banned Harry Potter books because he believes the books contain “actual curses and spells.” But earlier this year, the Catholic Archdiocese of Indianapolis touched off a flurry of excitement by requiring Catholics schools in the archdiocese to fire all gay teachers. Brebeuf Jesuit Preparatory School refused, and was stripped of its Catholic identity. To avoid a similar fate, Cathedral High School terminated a teacher in a decision it called “agonizing.” The teacher settled with the school, but has since sued the archdiocese. 

This might be a matter of Catholic internal business, except that in Indianapolis, as in many areas around the country, the Catholic school system is now funded in part by school vouchers, a system of using public tax dollars for tuition to private schools. Indiana has been aggressive in pursuing school choice policies, particularly under then-Governor Mike Pence, who in his 2013 inaugural addresssaid, “There’s nothing that ails our schools that can’t be fixed by giving parents more choices.” Indiana’s voucher program directs taxpayer dollars primarily to religious schools, and the majority of those are Catholic schools. Cathedral High School participates in both Indiana’s voucher and tax credit scholarship programs. 

There was a time when private religious schools might have resisted taking government dollars, even indirectly, for fear of having the government push its rules on the institutions. But now we are seeing that the lever can be pushed in the other direction, and it’s the government that may have to bend to the will of private religious institutions.

Just a few weeks ago, the Justice Department filed a statement in the matter of the teacher’s lawsuit against the Archdiocese of Indiana, and the federal government came down on the side of the church. 

“The First Amendment to the United States Constitution protects the right of religious institutions and people to decide what their beliefs are, to teach their faith, and to associate with others who share their faith,” said Assistant Attorney General Eric Dreiband for the Civil Rights Division. “The First Amendment rightly protects the free exercise of religion.” 

This fits in the administration's larger policy profile. In hearings held in May of 2017, Betsy DeVos was pressed to give examples of instances when the federal government might step in because federal money was being used by a school discriminating on the basis of race, religion, sexual preference, or gender orientation. Her performance caused Rep. Katherine Clark to declare, “I am shocked that you cannot come up with one example of discrimination that you would stand up for students.” In that same hearing, DeVos also dodged a question about holding schools accountable for IDEA compliance. And since this story first surfaced, we've seen the Attorney General of the United Damn States declaring that schools are ground zero for an assault on Christian values.

Another version of the same issue is headed to Supreme Court with the case of Espinoza v. Montana, a case that is poised to knock down the wall between church and state when it comes to vouchers. It will come on the heels of 2017’s Trinity Lutheran v. Comer. That simple case over paving a church parking lot was important because, as Bloomberg noted at the time:

It’s the first time the court has used the free exercise clause of the Constitution to require a direct transfer of taxpayers’ money to a church. In other words, the free exercise clause has trumped the establishment clause, which was created precisely to stop government money going to religious purposes.

What we’re seeing across the board is the government working to firmly put the free exercise clause over the establishment clause, including the freedom of taxpayer-funded schools to discriminate in whatever way they see fit, regardless of any government rules and regulations. 

It will be both interesting and frightening to see how far the government is willing to push this issue. Will it similarly stand up for schools that don’t want to hire Black teachers or accept Black students because of religious beliefs? Will it extend this same zealous religious protection to Islamic schools, or schools founded by the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster? If a school is caught in a conflict between two different religious practices, will the federal government intervene to pick a “winner”? Will taxpayers be required to help fund schools that would not let their own children in the front door? Watch to see just how far the lever will be pushed.

Originally posted at Forbes.com

ICYMI: Why I Write Day Edition (10/20)

I have an easier time understanding why some people write than I do understanding why so many people don't. Doesn't everybody need to? But then-- there are many things I don't fully understand, like why some people hate candy corn. While I'm pondering, here are some pieces of writing from the week for you to read and share.

Murdoch-Funded Anti-Gerrymandering Group Raises Questions  

Not about education, but this Intercept piece is another fine example of how the rich play the astro-turf game to push their policies to protect their interests.

Former Redlined Neighborhoods Have Changed 

Andre Perry and David Harshbarger at Brookings provide a more current picture of what has happened in some historically redlined areas.  

Student Tracking, Secret Scores 

Apparently, at some colleges, Big Brother is looking at your admissions file. Is cyberstalking social media now part of the college application process. Washington Post.

More Loan Mess

Oh look-- the USED didn't just fumble the student loan forgiveness program, but actively thwarted it. The details from NPR.

North Carolina's Abandoned Charter Business

They set up a charter school business chain, and then they decided to move on to other things. What happens to charters when the visionary leaders vote with their feet?

Mapping America’s Teacher Evaluation Plans Under ESSA

Audrey Amrein-Beardsley and colleagues have done some useful research about the current shape of teacher evaluation-- and some of the news is good.

Maybe DeVos was a good thing

Thomas Ultican looks at some documentary evidence  of how bad a Clinton ed department might have been.

How Billionaire Charter School Funders Corrupted the School Leadership Pipeline  

Jeff Bryant continues his look at how rich guys like Eli Broad have taken over the business of producing school administrators.

About Schema

EdWeek offers a great explanation of some powerful learning ideas.

The K-12 Takeover  

Andrea Gabor has the must-read of the week over at Harpers, writing about how modern fauxlanthropists have commandeered public education with New Orleans as Exhibit A.

Why Are We Expecting Teens To Have It All Figured Out  

From Grown and Flown, a parent perspective on the kinds of decisions we expect teens to make, and how life is not always a clear straight line.

$1.3 Million Wasn't Enough  

How much did the Waltons spend to buy Louisiana education elections? Merceds Schneider knows.

Hidden Messages Your School Sends To Students

Nancy Flanagan with some thoughts about the subtext of a school.

  

Shame

The most shocking and disturbing thing that I saw on line this week had nothing to do with politics. It was a post by a teacher explaining her school's disciplinary system. As with many systems, students have a color-coded behavior level monitored and adjusted throughout the day. Unlike any school I'd ever heard of before, students at this school receive a colored card for their behavior level that they must wear on a lanyard around their neck all day.

When it comes to accounts of disciplinary systems in school, I try to tread lightly, because the context and human touch of implementation matter. But this is patently dumb.

What is it about human beings that makes so many of us believe in the magical power of shame. Shame inflictors tend to share a common narrative-- if we shame this person, that will motivate them to do better. Shame will push them to rise above their shameful failings, somehow.

This is bunk. It is not how human beings work. It is especially not how tiny humans work.

You do not get people to stand up by knocking them down. You do not get people to be bigger by making them feel small. That is not how this work. That is not how any of this works.

People do better because they feel strong enough to do better. When you shame someone, you tell them that they are weak, that they can't stand up, that they have fallen and failed because who they are is just not good enough. Adult humans with a strong sense of self have the power to beat that back, to say, "No, I know who I am, and it's not the person you're describing." But children-- young humans who don't yet have a clear sense of who they are? That's a different matter. That is part of what they come to school to find out-- what their best self is, and how that self can best be in the world. Telling them that some large part of them sucks is just wrong.

I know the impulse. Somebody has done something stupid or wrong or bad, and you are really really pissed about it, and what makes you even more pissed is that they don't seem to feel bad, not at all, not nearly as bad as you think they should feel. And so you launch on in there with shame missiles locked and loaded, determined that this person should feel as bad about what they've done as you think they should. For that moment, you set out to deliberately make another human being feel bad.

And it's not that shame doesn't have any place in human growth. God knows that I have done things in my life that I've felt ashamed of, felt the sting and weight of well-earned much-deserved shame, the kind of shame that all those homilies about shedding your "unearned guilt" can't touch. Figuring how to grow past that, how to embrace and heal the parts of you that did the thing-- it's one of those piece of personal education that isn't really worth the tuition (particularly the tuition that others pay).

But there's a big difference between feeling shame and inflicting shame. Feeling shame, when you've earned it, is a normal part of becoming more fully human. Inflicting shame is just emotional assault (and in the worst of human history, physical assault as well).

We've discussed lunch shaming at length, shaming students for being poor or, sometimes, for being thoughtless or disorganized or just not having their tiny human act together. It didn't help anybody.

We've just been through over a decade of education reformsterism that was built on the foundation of a magical belief in shame. We'll collect all these scores, and we'll publish them far and wide, and that will shame the bad teachers and the bad schools and the bad administrators and then they'll all want to shape up and do better. It didn't help anyone.

And, truth be told, with the exception of some small group of teacher saints, those of us who have stood in a classroom have at least once given in to the impulse to shame a student. And then we felt bad (shame, even) because it didn't help a bit. All it did was maybe convince the student to buckle a little more, and trust us a little less.

So if we give up shaming others, does that mean we let everyone run amuck? Of course not. Let me tell you a story about something that turned out to be a formative experience for me. In sixth grade, during music class, I sat in the back of the room, mocking Miss Gause the music teacher's directing style. I got called on it, and because it was the late 60s, I got paddled. Hard. What stayed with me was not the paddling; what stayed with me was that there was no belittling lecture about how awful I was, no complaining about how my character flaws, and, once the paddling was over, the incident never came up again, ever. I had screwed up, I had experienced a consequence, end of story. But how often do we make the mistake in a classroom-- we don't just want the student to experience consequences, but we want them to fell bad-- and visibly bad at that-- about what they've done.

I could also talk about Dr. Zolbrod, one of my college professors in the English department. The man had many gifts, but the one I always hoped I could somehow emulate was his ability to have me come in his office to talk about a mediocre paper I had written and send me out of there feeling like I could conquer the world (or at least write about conquering the world), despite my lousy grade.

You don't help people be better by shaming them. Yes, there are people who ought to feel shame who don't-- do you think you're going to force them into it? And there are other people who are feeling the full weight of shame, but are trying to keep things together so they can function in the world-- do they need an extra beat-down?

Shaming someone doesn't build character. It may reveal strength of character when someone stands up to shaming, but it's a lousy system for revealing strength, like tying peoples' legs together and tossing them into the deep end of a swimming pool.

And there's one other question to ask ourselves before we attempt to shame someone, to force them to  show us they feel bad, that they have the right attitude-- why do we think this person owes us a display of their personal emotions?

Shaming is a lousy basis for education policy-- at the federal level, the state level, the building level, and the classroom level. It's the tool of a bad manager.

What Ever Happened To Rebecca Friedrichs?

You remember Rebecca Friedrichs. She was the face of the union-busting lawsuit of 2014. Supreme Court Justice Alito signaled that he was ready and willing to hear a case that would revisit the issue of union free-riders, and the Center for Individual Rights (an activist-by-way-of-lawsuits group funded by, among others, various Koch groups and the DeVos family) delivered with Friedrichs plus nine other teachers and the Christian Educators Association International. Friedrichs was a ready choice-- she had already been writing op-eds "revealing" the union's naughtiness.

The apple pie was cropped out

I can't fault CIR for client-shopping, which seems to be how virtually every Supreme Court case gets started these days by all sides. But this was particularly aggressive, with CIR encouraging every lower court to rule against them so that they could appeal their way up the ladder. They got to the top, the Supremes looked poised to give them a win-- and then Justice Scalia died, leaving Friedrichs a default 4-4 loss.

Along the way, Rebecca Friedrich was the public face of the lawsuit. She did plenty of press, particularly with friendly outlets, serving as the perky face of the attack on fair share. With almost thirty years in an elementary classroom, she made a good spokesperson. But after her lawsuit tanked, what next. The court eventually heard an identical case, and "fair share" was defeated--but under the name Janus, not Friedrichs.

What ever happened to Rebecca Friedrichs?

Well, the answer is "plenty."

Whether intentionally or not, Friedrichs had launched a second career as an arch-pseudo-conservative foe of the teachers unions. How pseudo-conservative? Her most recent piece for Fox News is "Teachers, your unions might support Trump's impeachment but they've abandoned you."

Unions have worked feverishly to overthrow our president since the day he was elected without concern for the resulting national trauma or division caused by subverting an elected leader. 

Her work as an occasional Fox contributor is just a part of her current batch of gigs. She has recorded some reformy videos for Prager U. She's also, somehow, part of the ALEC world. And she has a book-- Standing Up To Goliath.

But the centerpiece of her personal platform is an organization called For Kids and Country. It is similar in focus to a handful of other post-Janus groups like PA's Free To Teach; let's get teachers to drop out of their union and set up their own local. They even have a handy guide for how to personally get a teacher to drop out (the six Es-- embrace, educate, enlighten, empathize, encourage, empower).

While Friedrichs was fairly modulated during the days of her court case, her rhetoric has taken on a bit of an edge. Back then, she characterized her work environment as "negative" (because of the union) and noted that if you wanted your union to support political causes, that was fine, but if you didn't, you should be able to opt out. Her case featured the same argument as Janus-- that it's not just about political contributions (which are separate from union dues) because even negotiating a contract is a political activity. It's a weird little Catch-22 in the anti-union view-- the union shouldn't be involved in anything political, because it's a public sector union, but everything the union does is, by definition, political because it's a public sector union. It's almost as if some of these folks like the Kochs don't want people who join unions to have any political power at all.

But back to Friedrichs. Her beef with the union has only intensified. The For Kids and Country website has an entire tab about the evils of "SeXXX education" that is being pushed by the unions. There's another tab labeled "Kids First" which turns out to be all about the awesomeness of school choice. But I'll let Friedrichs speak for herself.

Children as young as kindergarten were indoctrinated to believe our president is a racist for desiring to protect our borders.

Labor unions should stick to their mission and butt out of our classrooms! Our schools are not for brainwashing children to march under the banner of one political agenda. Teachers aim to unleash children’s ability to think critically and live responsibly. But unions refuse to butt out because unfettered access to America’s kids is what they desire, and the tax-free billions teachers pay in annual dues provide lucrative funding for the unions’ leftist politicians and causes.

State and national unions control teachers in a culture of fear — using intimidation, isolation, and ignorance to keep us captive, so most teachers have no idea how the unions actually spend our dues.

Rebecca Friedrichs a twenty-eight-year public school teacher, was forced to fund state and national teachers’ unions whose politics and divisive tactics degraded her profession, our schools, and our national character...Determined to stop state and national unions from destroying our schools and American values, Rebecca refused to give up.

In Breitbart: Educator and author Rebecca Friedrichs described the #RedForEd movement — pushed by teachers’ unions and their political allies — as a “deception” that uses teachers as pawns to advance the unions’ far-left political agenda to “fundamentally change [American] culture.”

Friedrichs said, “What the teachers’ unions really are — and I’m talking about state and national teachers’ unions — they’re really the political action committee of the far left. They take teachers’ dues money to fight for what they call social justice — their definition of social justice — which is all this far-left March for Our Lives, and all these things that they believe in.”

Friedrichs continued, “Teachers have absolutely no idea that they’re funding this stuff. I’m not surprised teachers bought into the deception, and I know that a lot of teachers did not, but those teachers are silenced by all the bullying, which is why I’m out here speaking on their behalf. No surprise. No surprise with the six percent raise, either, because, this isn’t really about teachers. This is about unions controlling our schools and changing our country.”

At the Heritage Foundation Summit just last week: “When you hear that teachers are behind comprehensive sexuality education or that teachers agree with the sexualization of children, that’s a huge deception,” said Rebecca Friedrichs.

On the contrary, “America’s real teachers are deeply disturbed [sic] by the sexualization of our children,” said Friedrichs.

“America’s real teachers have been silenced and bullied by the very organization that is pushing the sexualization of children: That is, labor unions,” she declared. 

She is shocked and upset that the NEA put up a resolution calling for the end of child detention and ICE raids. She agrees that #RedforEd is a trojan horse to use the issue of teacher pay to get Certain Politicians elected. She also calls unions "the real existential threat" and states that only parents are the real experts about kids, and gets some shots at Planned Parenthood. You get the picture. Unions are evil, and somehow have duped and intimidated teachers into covering up their evil Leftist plan; she is right in there with Attorney General Barr. No explanation of things like the West Virginia wildcat strike, nor how a handful of union leaders manage to bully tens of thousands of teachers into walking out in other states. The implication here is that schools are filled with not-real teachers who are either evil or stupid or both. I don't know what she makes of things like the current Chicago teacher leftist demand for social workers to help homeless students.

The For Kids and Country website offers plenty of "inspirational" tales about teachers who were beaten on by the union, like the woman whose colleagues weren't thrilled about her vocal support for Governor Walkers Act 10-- the one that gutted unions and tanked teacher pay. Or the guy who got thrown out of the union for scabbing during the Chicago teacher strike--and he's doing it again right now. Or the teacher who was upset that buying her own liability insurance cost more than belonging to the state and national union. I'm still trying to figure that one out.

If this seems like it would make work awkward for Friedrichs when she goes to work, fear not. She has taken a leave of absence to be a full time anti-union activist. How she manages that is not entirely clear. The For Kids and County Inc 990 form shows just two officers, both unpaid-- Friedrichs as Founder and as CEO, her husband Charles, who is the Director, School of Music and Dance, and Associate Professor of Music Education at San Diego State University. The organization's address is a residential home in San Diego. Its 2018 form shows contributions of $75,060 and assets of just over $44K. So not exactly living high off the Kochian hog there.

Look, I'm the last guy to declare unwavering loyalty to the union. Sometimes they do dumb things, and sometimes they are slow to respond to members, and sometimes they act like other entrenched institutions (i.e. slow, dumb, and defensive). But I don't doubt for a moment that they are necessary, Because the alternatives proposed by folks like Friedrichs are even dumber. Here's her answer to "what instead" when asked post-Janus by Education Next:

Teachers can sit together and intelligently discuss what needs to happen to improve student outcomes in our schools. What is it that we really need to do a better job? There were many years when, more than a raise, I really wanted help in the classroom. Students would come to me four grade levels behind in reading, and I was expected to bring them up, and I was one teacher with 34 students. I wanted a teacher’s aide. I always wanted a science lab. I always wanted a music program. We never had any of that. Local teachers can get together and decide what’s best for the students in their community—working with parents, too, because parents have been voiceless. Teachers can stand together and leave the bullying state and national unions—decertify the entire web of union control—and then they can create “local only” associations and have a collective voice. 

This is the kind of thing that makes me doubt she has been in the classroom two years, let alone twenty-eight. Yes, teachers can get together and figure out what they need and make a list of things they want and go to the administration and ask politely, "Please sir, may I have some more." I mean, at least she stops short of the uber-stupid argument that each teacher can negotiate a super contract on her own. But the notion that a few teachers can just reasonably request the stuff they need and the administration will say, "Oh, sure, yes, right away!" is just childishly silly. Even in the best of districts, unions are useful, and there are plenty of good reasons for teachers to join, not the least of which is not being the kind of deadbeat who takes a free ride with wages and benefits secured by that actual paying members of the union.

My position remains unchanged. If you don't want to pay any dues to any part of any union, then give up all your union benefits. Get your own liability insurance, negotiate your own contract (including working conditions and requirements), and make sure that contract is "at will" so that you can be fired at any time for any reason. Also, cover your own butt when an unforeseeable problem arises. Otherwise, join the union and make a huge nuisance of yourself when it behaves in ways you disagree with.

Of course, none of that applies if you think the real problem is that they are out to overthrow American values and destroy our society and not coincidentally strengthen political opposition to Our Glorious Leader and other pseudo-conservative causes. If you think it's morally bad and politically inconvenient for the help to organize instead of being good girls and obeying their Betters, then your goal is simply to eradicate unions because they are a Bad Thing and the details you come up with to justify that don't really matter.

So this is what happened to Rebecca Friedrichs-- she became a professional union opponent. I can't wait to see what happens to Mark Janus.

Scorched Earth Education Policy (Charters, Watch Your Flank)

This is proof you should ignore the old admonition to not read the comments.

I converse with plenty of folks that I disagree with, both in the ed policy world and outside of it, and those conversations are largely civil, which sometimes distracts me from the fact that there are people out there who hate, hate, hate public education ("government schools") and the teachers who work there  ("union thugs").

I meet them, some days, on Twitter. On Facebook, there are groups that sprung up in the days of "Let's all get together and fight Common Core" that are now dominated by folks who rail daily against teachers and unions and public schools and how we should just burn it all down until there's nothing left but homeschooling and church schools (Christian ones, of course).

Of course, these days, you don't have to dig so deep to find these virulently anti-public-ed folks. Here's the Attorney General of the Freakin' United States of America, declaring that our country is under assault in an "organized destruction" of the foundational values of our society (by which he means the Judeo-Christian ones). And "ground zero" of the assault is US public schools. Attorney General Barr, the head law enforcement official of the United States of America has called out public schools as everything just short of "enemies of the people."

Meanwhile, the author of a new book about the Koch political empire tells us that what the Kochs want from public education is simple-- they want it to go away. Talking to Jennifer Berkshire and Jack Schneider at the Have You Heard podcast, Christopher Leonard summed it up like this:

Here’s the actual political philosophy. Government is bad. Public education must be destroyed for the good of all American citizens in this view.

So the ultimate goal is to dismantle the public education system entirely and replace it with a privately run education system, which the operatives in this group believe in a sincere way is better for everybody. Now, whether you agree with that or not as the big question, but we cannot have any doubt, there’s going to be a lot of glossy marketing materials about opportunity, innovation, efficiency. At its core though the network seeks to dismantle the public education system because they see it as destructive. So that is what’s the actual aim of this group. And don’t let them tell you anything different.

Barr's opinion is not exactly unique in the current administration where the State Department front page featured a speech from Secretary Pompeo about Christian leadership. And it's no secret that Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos is long focused on "kingdom gains." The government-run school system needs to be broken up, and a privatized system, built mostly of church-run schools, should be put in its place.

These are not fringe positions. There are plenty of people out there who agree with the Kochs or the theocrats or both, cognitive dissonance be damned.

With that in mind, I wonder if some reformsters aren't making the same mistake that Common Core supporters made.

Common Core fans like Jeb Bush thought they just had to worry about those damned liberals and lefties. They were shocked and surprised by the uproar on the right (an uproar so huge that progressive core opponents occasionally had to jump up and down and holler "Us too!") that they never quite recovered; they couldn't quite shift to their right flank fast enough.

Charter proponents have likewise focused on their left flank. They carefully cultivated alliances with card-carrying Democrats, ginned up DFER, and even now, keep trying to sell the idea that Real Democrats like charters. They are insistent that charters be called "public" charters because, doggonit, they are, too, public schools.

I'm wondering if they might not live to regret that. I wonder if they're not concentrating on the wrong flank.

The scorched earth crowd is not interested in tweaking public education. Folks like DeVos see charters as a nice stepping stone to the true goal, but no more. This, incidentally, is not really news. Charter fans stepped up to oppose DeVos's nomination, and charter fans are about the only group that DeVos attempted to make nice with when she took the office. But that truce seems unlikely to last.

The scorched earth crowd represents an alliance much like that which birthed the Tea Party-- religious conservatives and libertarian-ish money righties. While that's a hard alliance to hold together, on the matter of public schools, they're in agreement (even if it doesn't entirely make sense)-- public schools need to go. People are attached to them, so it's not possible to attack them head on. Some patience and rhetorical flourish is necessary. DeVos's "Education Freedom" proposal is a fine example-- it's about vouchers, not charters, and she's been quite clear that it's money that can be spent many ways, not just in a "school."

I don't find it at all difficult to imagine a future in which the scorched earth folks work to take down charter schools right along with the public system (the one that charters insist they're part of). If I were a scorched earth person, my plan would be first to split the funding stream into several streams (public this way, vouchers over there) and then just slowly pinch off the public stream. The techniques that we've already seen work just fine-- starve the schools, create a measure to show that they're failing, use their failure as justification for starving them further.

Charters, meanwhile, have been flipping through a stack of index cards looking for a justification that will work. They don't get superior academic results. They don't close the achievement gap. They don't create competition that makes everyone improve. These days they've settled on the argument that choice is the right thing to do in and of itself, but that argument serves vouchers far better than charters, which scorched earth folks can paint as just an appendage of those same damned gummint schools (hell, some of those charter teachers have even unionized).

And Espinoza v. Montana is on the Supreme Court docket, a case that would shatter the wall between church and state in education. Why send a kid to a charter when you can go straight to a church school. That would become one more charter problem-- why would voucher fans stick with voucher lite when they can get the real thing?

Ultimately, scorched earth ed policy would involve choking the revenue stream for everybody, because one of the things they hate about public education is those damned taxes. In one version of the scorched earth education future, there are just tax credits-- wealthy patrons support their educational vendor of choice instead of paying taxes, and everyone else just scrapes by. As traditional tax revenue is choked off, charters get caught in the same vice as public school, with too little money to serve underserved communities. That's okay with the DeVos's and Kochs and other folks who, at heart, disagree with the notion of elevating the Lessers. Society works better when everyone accepts their proper place (that either God or economics have called them to) and all these socialist attempts to help people rise above their station are both expensive and against natural law. If some people end up getting little or no real education in this system, well, that's just too bad-- they shouldn't have chosen to be poor and powerless.

I've called charters the daylight savings time of ed reform, like trying to reposition on too-small blanket on a too-large bed, arguing about who gets covered instead of shopping for a bigger blanket. But the scorched earth folks approach is "I'll buy a blanket for my kids and you buy one for yours. We'll just use our personal resources and you use yours and we'll just keep that thieving, interfering gummint out of it. Good luck, and enjoy your freedom!"

Charter schools would end up on the wrong side of all of this if they fail to watch their right flanks. And all of the US suffers if the scorched earth education crowd manages any level of what they call success. But do not underestimate them; they are out there, and they are pissed.

Are State Takeovers A Useful Tool

Earlier this month, the 74 published an unusual article from  Ashley Jochim and Paul Hill, both of the Center on Reinventing Public Education. Their argument is that state takeovers of school districts "remain a powerful tool."

What's exceptional about the piece is that it is loaded with evidence to the contrary. I mean, ordinarily I would have had to go hunt this stuff down myself, but it's right here in the piece. Tennessee, having pioneered the Achievement School District model for state school takeover and having proven thavte model doesn't actually work, is finally backing away from the whole idea. Ohio's state takeover law has created some real disasters, and the legislatures is wrestling with getting rid of it, but in the meantime, it has hit pause on takeovers. Louisiana, New Jersey, Georgia-- the list of states getting out of the takeover biz is growing.

There's the culprit

The authors acknowledge all of that. They acknowledge some of the criticisms, including those from conservative and even reform-friendly writers like Jay Greene, saying that takeovers are just overreach by distant bureaucrats and have a lousy track record. Plus, folks object to how state takeovers often seem to be part of dismantling public education, which is apparently a lefty position (some say we need to figure out how rejecting a foundational institution in society became a "conservative" idea).

Also, they note that state takeovers "can carry steep political costs," as in the way that takeovers of mostly black districts invariably result in the stifling of black voices. And takeovers can suppress union vices as well, which I'm pretty sure some folks see as a feature and not a bug.

Despite all this, the authors argue that states should keep takeovers in their bag of tricks anyway.

Their evidence? Well, none, really. Their argument is that there were no takeovers in the 1990s and schools were "unable to shake persistent low performance." Well, no. First, we'd need to clear up what exactly their basis for writing off the nineties is, and second, correlation does not equal causation. Even if 90s schools were low-performing, I can think of a few gazillion other variables that might explain it. The Bush administration. Home Alone came out. Game Boy. MTV stopped showing videos. Grunge. Cheers ended. Sonic the Hedgehog.

So why are takeovers worth keeping in use? Well, um. The report from which this article is spun is really a compendium of interviews with ten state education chiefs, which may well reveal msome details of takeover stories, but are unlikely to find a state official who  will say, "This particular power should be taken away from me and my successors." It offers some thoughts about how to do it properly, calling takeovers an "important but limited tool.

The report emphasizes that there has to be a local political base and an implementation oplan that involves lots of stakeholders. That is true-- the mess in Ohio is a fine example of how things go when takeovers are simply imposed by the state. But the Ohio examples illustrate an issue that the writers don't directly address-- your takeover law can't be dumb to begin with. The Ohio law (HB 70) puts one takeover czar in charge of every single aspect of running the school; he becomes the entire central office staff and the school board, and if he can also leap tall buildings in a single bound while taming unicorns, that would be good, too. Ohio's law is guaranteed to fail because A) it is imposed against the will of the local folks and B) it hinges on a person of superhuman expertise in every single aspect of running a school system. It could never be implemented well because you cannot implement a lousy law well.

The thing is, takeover laws tend to be lousy laws. The writers say "states cannot stand idly by while local districts struggle to meet the needs of students or taxpayers," but who is there in the state capital who knows more about how to run the East Egg school district that the people who live in East Egg and the professionals who work in those schools. I get it-- in some East Eggs the people don't appear to know enough. But who in the state capital knows more?

And is our premise in a takeover that the state does know how to run an awesome school district? And if so, why don't we just have them run all the school districts? Or are we saying that their expertise is only what's needed to turn a failing district into one that's good enough to get by- in which case, doesn't that indicate they aren't really up to the job? Because fixing a district in trouble is mostly a lot harder than running a district that's not in trouble. So why do we think the state has any of the expertise necessary to pull this off?

The writers also reveal one other aspect of takeovers by saying that it's good for the state to have that authority, even if they don't use it. In other words, state takeovers can serve as a motivational threat.

But states that abandon the tool "risk irrelevance." In other words, the writers (or their interviewees) don't envision the state's role as providing support or resources or otherwise partnering with local districts. Instead, it's more "Pay attention to me and treat me like I'm important or I will hit you with this stick." I'd suggest that if you have to resort to threats or otherwise force yourself into the relationship, you really are irrelevant.

Is there a role for the state? Sure. Enforce the law. For instance, stomp on districts that insist on segregating students and the providing non-white students with substandard resources. Provide districts with resources-- you could even ask them what they need, first. Be a partner. But this takeover nonsense hasn't worked, isn't working, and shows no signs of working in the future. Get some different tools.

Betsy DeVos, Polly Williams, Vouchers, And Selective Facts

Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos kicked off her back to school tour at the Saint Marcus Lutheran School in Milwaukee a few weeks ago. This piece ran back then at Forbes, and I don't repost everything from there, but we've developed such goldfish memories under this administration, I'm going to trot this one out again here. Because we need to remember what the threat to public education is. 

The choice of location itself sent a message about what DeVos means by “freedom.” The school’s mission is “to disciple children for Christ, now and for all eternity, and to train them in excellence for their roles in their family, church, community, workplace and country,” and it is a longtime beneficiary of Wisconsin’s voucher program. Its core values are “Christ First, Biblical Discipleship, Sacrificial Love, and Radical Expectations.” It is not particularly unusual to find that a voucher-supported school is using public tax dollars in a private religious setting; in most voucher programs, the vast majority of taxpayers’ money is directed to religious schools. 

It’s not surprising that DeVos would support this. Years ago, she and her husband were clear that their hope for education was for “kingdom gain” and a return to the days when the church, and not the public school, was the center of the community.

Her speech on Monday is supportive of that vision, even as it elides some inconvenient facts.

Portions of the speech are simply allegations. She says that “too many students can’t read,” and she blames that on “the education cabal.” She discusses the average amount of money spent on students, but talking about averages in education finance is not very useful. As mathematician Ian Stewart observed, the average person has one breast and one testicle. The difference between per student spending in the richest and poorest districts in this country amounts to tens of thousands of dollars, and that gap is behind many of the educational issues in the U.S. Developing education policy based on average spending is as ineffective as permanently turning on the air conditioning in your home because the average annual temperature is 72.

DeVos says that administrative costs are eating up the money that should be spent on students, but school choice has not provided much of a solution to that problem. Research suggests that A) charters spend more on administrative costs than public schools and B) it may not matter.

DeVos invokes 8th grade NAEP scores as proof that public education “is not working,” yet there is ample reason to doubt that NAEP scores predict actual college readiness. She brings up the old issue of the mediocre US ranking on PISA scores, ignoring the fact that the US has always had mediocre PISA scores, seemingly without any dire national consequences.

DeVos also chose to invoke Annette “Polly” Williams, the mother of school choice in Wisconsin. The Democratic politician and activist wrote the first school choice legislation in the country (adopted in 1989) and became a popular speaker on the issue, particularly to conservative audiences.

But Williams became disenchanted with the school choice movement. Her original legislation did not include religious schools, but was expanded to do so five years later. Williams took to calling the voucher program a “Catholic movement.” She expressed displeasure with some of the folks, like Lamar Alexander and Bill Bennett, who swooped in to speak. She accused leaders of exploiting black and poor families, and of leaving poor families behind with the program expansion. 75% of voucher recipients were not escaping the public system, because they had never been in it. She was critical of education measures taken by Governor Scott Walker, whose supporters have included the DeVos family.

Williams told an interviewer, “Our intent was never to destroy the public schools.” When accused of drifting away from the movement, she would reply, “I haven’t changed. The people around me have changed.”

It’s an odd choice for DeVos to invoke Williams, who seems to have viewed folks like DeVos as having hijacked the charter movement. But DeVos seems determined to launch, or at least lay a foundation for, a national voucher program, and she’s going to paint a favorable picture with whatever brush she has handy.

Originally posted at Forbes.com