Vouchers Are About Abandoning Public Education, Not Freeing Parents

 As the GOP mounts a multi-state initiative to implement vouchers or super-voucher education savings accounts in many states across the country, it's becoming increasingly clear that we've been looking at the voucher movement through the wrong lens (which is to say, the lens that voucheristas have promoted). 

Vouchers are not about freeing or empowering parents. They are about empowering private interests to chomp away at the giant mountain of education money in this country. They are about dismantling any sort of oversight and accountability; it's striking how many of these voucher bills/laws very specifically forbid the state to interfere with the vendors in any way, shape or form. 

Think of voucher programs this way.

The state announces, "We are dismantling the public education system. You are on your own. You will have to shop for your child's education, piece by piece, in a marketplace bound by very little oversight and very few guardrails. In this new education ecosystem, you will have to pay your own way. To take some of the sting out of this, we'll give you a small pocketful of money to help defray expenses. Good luck."

It's not a voucher system. It's a pay your own way system. It's a you're on your own system. The voucher is not the point of the system; it's simply a small payment to keep you from noticing that you've just been cut loose.

Freedom and empowerment will come, as always, in direct proportion to the amount of money you have to spend. 

The voucher amount will dwindle. That amount is based on what the public school system spends to educate a child, and taxpayers will shrink that amount going forward as the schools themselves shrink to holding facilities for students who can't find a private vendor to accept them, or whose parents can't afford what the voucher won't cover. And remember, we've seen this movie before-- after Brown v. Board of Education, white families in some states moved their children into private segregation academies, and then they cut public school taxes (because why keep paying taxes on the system that your child no longer uses). 

Vouchers are the tail, not the dog. They are the public-facing image of privatization-- and not just privatization of the "delivery" of education. Voucherization is also about privatizing the responsibility for educating children, about telling parents that education is their problem, not the community's. 

We need another term for discussing this family of policies; "voucher" doesn't begin to capture what's truly at stake. I can imagine a world in which charter schools are a viable, even useful part of a robust public education system; it's not at all the world we currently live in, but I can imagine it. But the system that voucher proponents want is absolutely incompatible with a functioning public education system. And it has nothing to do with freedom.

Charters Circumventing Democracy

In some states, charter schools have faced a particularly intractable obstacle--local elected school boards.

That's because in some states, a charter cannot open without the authorization of the local elected school board. This means the local board is deciding if they would like to have the taxpayers foot the bill for opening a new school in the district, which is generally a tough sell. 

Charter advocates have found a few ways around this. One is to throw weight and money behind candidates in local school board elections with the idea that once elected, these individuals will say, "Never mind the taxpayers or the public schools--I want to see more charters open here." The downside for this approach is that there's always another election coming.

More popular, or at least more effective for charter proponents, is to get the law changed. Right now, Florida, Iowa, and Texas are all looking at ways to get that whole pesky democracy thing out f the way of charter school entrepreneurism.

In Florida, the legislature would like to expand the power of universities, so that they can authorize charter schools on their own, with or without the agreement of the local school district. Texas has taken another route by making the State Commissioner of Education the super-powered uber-authorizer of charter schools; only a super-majority of the State Board of Education could overrule him. In Iowa, where the GOP is working hard to make more of that sweet sweet education money available to charter profiteers, the authority to okay charters may end up with the State Board of Education.

If you're wondering what the theories behind these bills might be, what principles lead one state to empower the State Board while another state aims to cut them out of the equation, I believe the principle involved here is "Let's empower whoever is most likely to let charter operators do as they wish."

The modern school choice movement continues to have a problem with local control and democratic processes. I'm not going to argue that such things are infallible; unimpeded local control has given us no end of ugly treatment of the non-white and non-wealthy citizens.

But circumventing democratic processes in order to ease the launching of private businesses fed with public tax dollars is deeply undemocratic. It is literally taxation without representation, presenting local taxpayers with the bill for a school over which they have no direct or indirect control, no say, no list of people they can call to complain. 

Choice has had to circumvent democracy to survive. Vouchers virtually never pass as ballot measures, so now legislatures will ty to install them anyway. Charters continue to get their businesses launched by coming up with ways to circumvent democracy. Beyond the immediate problems of that anti-democratic approach, one also has to wonder--if charter culture is built on the idea that local, democratic voices are to be ignored and overcome, rather than respected and partnered with, what does that tell us about how they will deal with staff and students? If the North Star of the movement continues to be the heroic visionary CEO who isn't held back by any dumb rues and who doesn't have to listen to anyone, what message does that send to the taxpayers, teachers, and students who are among the people who don't have to be listened to? 

Watch for these laws in your own state (they may already be there) and ask-- why should charters be given access to taxpayer dollars when they won't actually deal with the actual taxpayers?

RI: Another Dumb Bill For Protecting White Folks

Three Rhode Island representatives have proposed a bill to protect students in the state from what the legislators imagine, I suppose, what critical race theory or any of those other nasty anti-racist programs might be.

The three legislators are:

Rep. Patricia Morgan, who has also proposed that mail-in balloting be "tightened up," that the house condemn major tech companies "for their attack on the free speech rights of the American public," and that the house commemorate the life and career of Rush Limbaugh.

Rep. George Nardone, who has also proposed that charter schools be allowed to "engage in non-traditional approaches to learning," that ESAs be established in Rhode Island, and, well, he's on that Rush Limbaugh bus, too.

Rep. Sherry Roberts, who has also proposed the mail-in ballot thing, the Rush Limbaugh thing, and an act providing for the authorized taking of mushrooms from public lands.

Their bill is HB 6070, prohibiting the teaching of "divisive concepts." 

The divisive concepts in question do not, it turns out, include issues such as whether or not the earth is flat, whether Han shot first, or whether Mary Ann is hotter than Ginger. Instead, the legislators are concerned that some naughty teacher might choose to teach--

1) One race or sex is inherently superior

2) Rhode Island and/or the US is "fundamentally racist or sexist"

3) An individual is inherently racist, sexist or oppressive by virtue of their race or sex (can I just point out that their use of "their" here is incorrect by traditional standards, but very much in line with the modern non-binary gender usage).

4) An individual should be discriminated against or be treated badly because of the race or sex

5) Members of one race or sex should not treat members of other races or sexes without respect

6) An individual's moral character is determined by their race or sex (they did it again)

7) An individual, by virtue of race or sex, bears responsibility for actions committed in the past by other members of the same group

8) An individual should feel "discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other psychological distress on account of their race or sex"

9) Meritocracy or traits such as hard work ethic are racist, or were created by one race to oppress another

10) Race or sex stereotyping or scapegoating. Complete with detailed description thereof. 

Also,

All state and municipal contracts, grants and training programs entered into after the effective date of this section shall include provisions banning the teaching of divisive concepts and shall prohibit making any individual feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of their race or sex.

It would serve these folks right if the first case to come up under such a law was a Black family going after their child's racist school, but in general I'd bet that it's pretty hard to legislate "this institution should not make anyone feel bad." 

Of course, the real target here is critical race theory, or at least what these folks imagine critical race theory is like. Rhode Island is of course not the only place to try this-- Iowa has one of these, Tom Cotton wants one for the military, and the last White House occupant decreed something similar. All use the word "divisive," furthering the weird contrarian view that when a nation is trying to deal with a history of racism, segregation and inequity, somehow it is not the people who conduct and support those policies who are being divisive, but the people who point them out. It's an old piece of gaslighting, like when an abuse victim is told that if they report the abuse, they'll be tearing the family apart. 

I am told that this bill is unlikely to pass. That's good. Not only are its goals bad ones, but it's a ridiculously unenforceable piece of legislation. 

PA: Charters Argue To Keep Money They're Not Owed

Governor Tom Wolf is once again trying to address Pennsylvania's lousy charter funding rules, but right-sizing charter funding would cut into charter profiteering, and so, the pushback is under way. 

A full package of the current talking points turned up in The Daily Signal, a right-wing website. This piece of commentary comes from Amber Northern, a senior vp for research at the reformy Fordham Institute and Lenny McCallister, who, after a career as a media commentary guy, now holds down dual jobs as CEO of the Pennsylvania Coalition of Public Charter Schools and as a senior fellow at the Commonwealth Foundation, a free market thinky tank with ties to ALEC. 

The big hook they want to hang their argument on is a recent piece of research conducted for Fordham by Mark "Jersey Jazzman" Weber. For whatever reason, they choose not to link to that research, but you can find it here. Read that, and then read further insights about the research itself here, from Weber himself. The key finding that they would like you to notice is that when students leave a public school for charters, the per-pupil spending in the public school mostly goes up. This, they note, is "contrary to charter critics' preferred narrative" (thereby suggesting that this is a concern that charter critics made up, rather than a sincere concern). 

However, what this charter critic has always said is that you can't run multiple school districts for the money that was barely enough to run one district, and the Weber research absolutely underlines that. I'm going to grossly oversimplify here, but the bottom line is that fixed costs are real. For instance, a special ed teacher is a fixed cost. If she used to serve ten students, but three leave, the district still has to keep her, but the expense of paying her is now stretched over seven students, resulting in higher per-pupil expenditures. 

Northern and McCallister would like to offer another explanation, which is that charter schools in PA receive less money per pupil than district schools. That's true--mostly (we'll get to the mostly in a second). But public schools have expenses that charter schools do not (for instance, PA cyber charters do not have transportation costs). And public schools have fixed costs. And public schools are owned by the taxpayers, and therefor the taxpayers are responsible for maintenance of those buildings. 

But the most important point to grasp about this argument is that it is an irrelevant smokescreen. 

Charter fans are concerned because "according to news sources, the new funding formula would take about $280 million currently due to charters and transfer it to school districts." 

Except that it's not being "transferred" to districts, because it represents money that charters were never "due" in the first place.

Pennsylvania charters take advantage of two huge loopholes in the law.

One is in regards to special ed students. PA students with special needs are sorted into tiers, with Tier 1 for students who need minimal intervention (eg an hour a week of speech therapy) and Tier 3 higher intervention (eg a full-time nurse or outplacement at a special school at district expense). Public schools are reimbursed by the state according to the cost levels of those tiers. Charters are reimbursed as if all their students with special needs are Tier 3 students. This means that students with low-cost special needs are like gold for the charters, who are reimbursed at levels far beyond the actual cost of the students. 

The other loophole is in the cyber charter biz, where the schools are reimbursed at the full per-pupil level of a bricks and mortar school. In effect, the cyber charter industry says, "We can do this job for far less, but we'd like you to just pay us a bunch of extra money, anyway."

Governor Wolf wants to close those two loopholes. That's where the $280 million comes from--cutting charters off from money they never had a legitimate claim to in the first place. 

Wolf is not calling for charters to shut down. He's not demanding that Pennsylvania students have fewer choices. The proposed changes would not have the slightest effect on families' freedom to choose educational options. Wolf is calling for a more responsible use of taxpayer money (plus actual regular audits for cybers, some of which have been audited in never). 

Charter proponents arguing against Wolf are not standing up for students or choice or freedom; they're standing up for the charter industry's right to rake in unearned windfall profits year after year at taxpayer expense. There's no reason for the gravy train to keep running. 

AZ: What Teacher Layoffs Look Like In An Anti-Teacher State

Carie Caruso conferenced with her supervisor and was told she was a highly effective teacher. The next day, in an online meeting, she was told that she was out of a job. 47 other teachers were part of that meeting.

Angela Philpot had 23 years of experience, but this week she was one of the 150 teachers laid off by Gilbert Public Schools in a surprise meeting with a principal who read a scripted statement from the district. No comments or questions were allowed. Philpot is an Arizona Education Association officer.

Arizona public schools have seen a big drop in enrollment this year. The Arizona School Boards Association says that 40,000 children became "ghost students"-- they just didn't show up,. and nobody knows where they were. About half of the drop in enrollment are kindergarten and first grade students. Charter schools have seen a slight growth (about 18,000), but not enough to account for all the public school losses.

And so, in an attempt to "right-size" budgets, school districts are chopping staff.

A decade or so ago, Arizona's legislature decreed that these sorts of layoffs could not consider seniority or tenure. So how are these decisions made? With evaluation rubrics like this one:

Some of the items here make a bit of sense, like unprofessional or inappropriate communications, though there's no rubric offered on how one determines if a communication falls into those categories. Some are an Arizona-specific dirty trick; because Arizona is such a teacher desert, they hire huge numbers of teachers who are not really certified for what they're teaching, so rating them low because they don't have the right certificate is a low blow. And there's the usual noble teacher baloney-- note that a highly effective teacher donates time before and after school. At least they stop short of "effective teacher avoids having children of her own so she has more time and attention for her students."

And then there's "promoting the campus culture," where a teacher can be low-rated for posting on social media about bad things done by district leadership, or simply "discusses district school decisions/concerns publicly." 

Gilbert district principals and the Office of Talent Management (seriously, who proposes these titles with a straight face) both claim that they had no idea that when they rated teachers that they would actually be ending teacher employment by the district. 

Was any of this even necessary? The ghost students are likely to reappear, particular those little who are most likely at home because Covid. And many folks have pointed out that the state actually has a billion dollar rainy day fund (and if the pandemic isn't a rainy day, what the heck is) as well as a big stack of federal stimulus money.

But Arizona's legislature and governor have been busy telling Arizona public school teachers to just go away, so assistance from those quarters seems unlikely. In the meantime, teachers who want to keep their jobs can check their local district's layoff rubric and make sure to say only happy things about their bosses, because in a state without seniority or tenure, teachers who want to keep their jobs must give up their other rights. 

GA: To Get A Voucher, Give Up Rights

Georgia is on the voucher expansion bus that so many GOP-run states are vacationing on this year, but their vouchers (like those in some other states) have a special wrinkle--a requirement for students with special needs to give up their rights if they want a voucher.

Senate Bill 47 has a variety of the usual features, including a huge expansion of voucher eligibility (because, as many states are poised to re-demonstrate, the voucher playbook is to get a foot in the door by starting the program for the neediest students, and then expand expand expand). But it includes this fun paragraph: 

With respect to local school systems, the acceptance Acceptance of a scholarship shall have the same effect as a parental refusal to consent to services pursuant to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, 20 U.S.C.A. Section 1400, et seq., and a parental waiver of rights to educational accommodations under Section 504 of the federal Rehabilitation Act of 1973, 29 U.S.C.A. Section 701, et seq.

There's a bit of a one-two punch here, because SB47 also adds some language about funding-- whereas the old language said that the student should be followed by "an amount equivalent to the costs of the educational program that would have been provided for the student in the resident school system," the added language specifies that if the child had an Individualized Education Program (IEP), then the amount that follows them should factor in the cost of following that IEP. 

So, if I'm reading this correctly, the private school doesn't have to provide the IEP services, but it gets paid as if it were doing so. I should note that the voucher program being amended is Georgia's Special Needs Scholarship, a program already aimed at students with special needs.

There are plenty of explanations out there for why Georgia is asking parents to give up rights if they want to send their child to a private school, not the least of which is the fact that IDEA remains a huge federal unfunded mandate that requires schools to provide services, but has never come close to fulfilling the original federal promise to actually fund that mandate. And Georgia, like many states, is having a hard time attracting and retaining actual special education teachers, filling many, many, many special ed spots with teachers who lack the specialized training. And Georgia has a history using its network of special ed schools to warehouse students who are poor and Black. The Georgia Network for Educational and Therapeutic Support (GNETS) has drawn national attention over the years for its many failures.

When you can't meet a demand, figure out how to reduce the demand, I guess? There is certainly a weird irony in a program that says both "you are eligible if you have a 504 plan" and "you must give up your 504 plan if you want to use this program." It's a true Catch-22 to say that you can get your child a voucher specially set up for students to have their special needs met by agreeing not to require the school to meet your child's special needs.

Can a parent waive the rights of their child? Can the right to a free and appropriate education in the least restrictive environment even be waived at all? 

The answer in Georgia is yes. And it has been for a while. While SB47 cements the concept and insures that private schools don't have to meet IEP requirements, even when taxpayers are paying for the private education, the notion that choosing a private school means waiving IEP rights has long been clear in Georgia. 

Parents have always had that personal choice. As with many choice laws, the idea is not to provide choice, but for taxpayers to foot the bill for choices that already exist. What makes this extra special is the legislature deciding that the taxpayers--and the students--should get less for their money.

In the meantime, Georgia is also a state that brings up another question--why is it that in so many states, attempts to stifle voting rights are coming out of legislatures at the same time as attempts to defund and privatize education? 

ICYMI: Palm Sunday Edition (3/28)

Yeah, that snuck up fast. Let me remind you that you can get a daily dose of education commentary on the Network for Public Education Blog of Blogs. Meanwhile, let's see what we've got on taphere.

Ayanna Presley wants girls of color to stop being punished disproportionately

Rep. Presley is trying again with legislation to disrupt the over-punishment and detention of Black girls. Let's see how far it gets this time.

Let Me Teach Like a Normal @$$ Human

At Affective Living, from active shooter training to pandemesses, Chase Mielke would like to be less superhuman in the classroom.

More than $1 billion for 56 black charter graduates?

Julian Vasquez Heilig with a piece of information that is pretty stark and clear-- Texas spent $1.21 billion over two years on nine charter chains, and those chains graduated 56 Black students. 

What They've Lost

Have You Heard talks to students from Boston, and it turns out they aren't so concerned about that Learning Loss that education thought leaders are all worked up about right now.

Setting Ourselves, and Others, Free

Teacher Tom, the littles, and shame.

Our Kids Are Not Broken

Not sure how I missed this Atlantic piece last week, but it's worth a look. Not sure I agree with all of it, but I appreciate a positive look at the students right now

What we learned about Clearview AI and its secret "Co-founder."

Not directly related, but this New York Times piece digs a bit more into the surveillance giant watching us all.

Why Common Core failed

You will learn nothing new from this Tom Loveless piece for Brookings, but you will have the satisfaction of nodding and saying "I told them so," at your computer screed. However, I do have to issue a trigger warning because Emily Hanford pops up here.

Grit backlash (again)

As a bunch of academics get ready to kick grit around, Hechinger Report talks to Angela Duckworth and gives her a chance to reflect and respond.

Biden is Reigniting the Movement to Oppose Standardized Testing

At The Progressive, Jake Jacobs looks at how the administration's hard line on testing is riling up the troops again.

Who's Zooming Who?

Who's running ed policy in Tennessee? Not the people who are actually supposed to be, TC Weber discovers. Lots of dots to connect here.

Why I'm Opting My Son Out of Standardized Tests (And You Can, Too)

Jose Vilson on why his son will not be taking New York's BS Test this year. "Our students deserve more for their resilience than this country has offered them..."

Federal government pandemic schooling data--three key takeaways

Yeah, the feds finally tried to collect some information. Matt Barnum at Chalkbeat breaks it down.

It's tempting to replace teachers with tech, but it would be a mistake

Victoria Cain and Adam Laats are at the Washington Post to deliver a lesson from history.

What did Florida get for the $1 billion/year it sends to private schools

A blistering column from Patricia Drago in the Daytona Beach News-Journal. "Let’s stop the pretense and the hypocrisy. Either accountability matters, or it doesn’t. Either curriculum matters or it does not. Either teacher certification and school safety matter or they do not. A billion dollars a year says these things don’t matter in Florida."

Stickin' to the Union

Union bashing has been popular of late. Here's Nancy Flanagan with a reply to all that bashery.

The Country Moves Forward, Education Falls Back

Gayle Greene (no relation) is at Counterpunch calling out standardized testing and the folks who are keeping us at it.