AZ: An Even Worse Parental Rights Bill

As more and more of these rear their heads across the country, the language gets sloppier and -- well, just bad. Recently approved by the Senate and previously okayed by the House, Arizona's HB 2161 throws a new verb into the mix-- usurp.

As in, no political subdivision of the state or any other government entity or any official etc (because in this phrase, the bill's writer was exactingly detailed and thorough) "shall not interfere with or usurp the fundamental right of parents to direct the upbringing, education, health care and mental health of their children." 

And if that seems hugely broad and vague--well, it gets worse. Because the very next sentence says that a parent may bring suit against the "government entity or official" based on any violation of the statutes or action that "interferes with or usurps the fundamental right of parents to direct the upbringing, education, health care and mental health of their children."

There are other special parts of the bill, but the "usurp" clause is the worst. Between "interfere," "usurp," and "upbringing," this would appear to forbid teachers (and plenty of other school and government workers) from ever contradicting a child's parents ever. There is a clause that allows the state to violate this if it has "compelling interest" in doing so (say, presumably, keeping a child from having the hell beat out of them at home for coming out as LGBTQ)--but the burden of proof is on the state actor. But mostly the bill gives parents spectacular micro-management powers.

It's not just that teachers can be taken to court for, say, suggesting that a same-gender couple is ordinary. Use a Mickey Mouse sticker on papers and get nailed by a parent who wants to bring their child up without Disney. Say something positive about a salad and be taken to court by a parent who is bring up their child to be anti-vegan. I would like my children's upbringing to be free of all Paw Patrol references; you had better not make an approving comment about the kids in my child's classroom who have Paw Patrol backpacks. 

This proposal is broad and nut and, like all broad, nuts proposals, is destined to be trolled. I am bringing up my child in a religion-free home, so their teacher better not say a single word about Christmas. I am bringing my child up to appreciate all diverse backgrounds, races, faiths, and gender orientations, so if you don't include all those elements in my child's classroom, you are clearly "interfering" with my right to control my child's upbringing.

In fact, I feel confident that this law would absolutely guarantee that every single teacher in every single district would be vulnerable to being dragged to court. Now, this being Arizona, that may well be a feature rather than a bug (just close down the public schools and give every kid a voucher for a school in which their parents are never, ever contradicted). 

There are other bad provisions, like making teachers submit assignments to parents for approval a week ahead of time, but they are just the rancid icing on a poop cake.

Congratulations Arizona legislators--this is absolutely the worst parental rights bill that anyone has concocted so far. I would give you a prize, but I'm afraid some of your parents might have raised you to not believe in those kinds of prizes, and I don't want to end up in court.

VA: The Attack On Frederick County Schools

Here's a story about another form that attacks on public education can take, and why local elections matter. It's not just state legislatures that can try to micromanage schools. 

When Glenn Youngkin won the race for Virginia governor, he swept along plenty of GOP conservatives into office with him. That included relatively small scale races like the race for Frederick County Board of Supervisors, which saw a raft of GOP candidates carried into office. 

Frederick County is the northernmost county in Virginia (named for Frederick Louis, Prince of Wales). The 2020 census shows a population of a little over 90,000; there has been steady growth for years (the 2000 census counted 59,209 residents, and back in 1960, it was 21,941). As the population has grown, the whiteness of that population has diminished; in 2000, the county was 94.99% white, and in 2020, that percentage was down to 78.47%. Much of that shift seems due to Hispanic/Latino residents.

The county is largely conservative, and the campaign was reportedly largely positive. But the new supervisors joined a group of conservatives already on the board to aim toward a new confrontation with the Frederick County School District board. The first shot fired came on February 9, when the Board of Supervisors voted 6-1 to have the county's attorney work up a plan for funding alternatives to public education. Supervisors noted they had heard from community members who want school choice, and by a remarkable coincidence, many of those parents were at the meeting (including some of the 44 families who, the week before, sued the district for continuing a mask mandate). Said one supervisor, "It is past time that our citizens had the opportunity to direct their students to get an education that best meets the thoughts, ideals and values of that family." Said one member of the public, "I ask that you consider cutting their funding in any way you see fit..."

At their meeting two weeks later, the Board of Supervisors indicated they wanted to teach the school board a lesson, demanding a line-item breakdown for the district's proposed FY2023 budget. "I think they need to deal with the consequences...unless they want to justify their operating fund by showing us the numbers. We need to see what they're spending the money on beforehand," said the board's vice-chair, Doug McCarthy. 

The district has asserted that a complete breakdown of every dollar spent is on the website; the supervisors say that's beside the point--they want to know what the district plans to spend each dollar on.

So first, the supervisors removed four items from the Capital Improvement Plan (including the building of a new high school). And then, earlier this month, they decided to slash the county's contribution to the school district budget by $22 million, from $97.5 million to $75.5 million. Supervisor Shawn Graber argued that the cut was not deep enough. And when the county treasurer pointed out that this would create problems for the district with things like trying to hire new teachers, Graber replied "To your point, Mr. Treasurer, I don't care." 

The superintendent issued a statement that such a cut would require either across the board salary cuts or the firing of 293 teachers. Didn't matter. Some supervisors were still just pissed that there was not enough transparency or detail in the district's budget. And if you're wondering what kind of detail they're worried about--well, prepare to be not surprised.

Graber said he has not received a line-item budget from the school division that shows “where every dollar is going.” He has numerous times expressed concerns about the school division potentially using taxpayer dollars on critical race theory or other similar programs. On Wednesday he reiterated his support for cutting $60 million from the schools.

Despite the "disdain" and "mistrust" that some supervisors have for the school board, at least one member from each group was able to meet and discuss. But there continued to be problems with misinformation, like the supervisor who insisted that the district's pre-K classes cost $6 million-- the correct figure was $613,152 (listed right there in the budget). Meanwhile, surrounding school districts are proposing salary increases for their teachers far greater than what Frederick County has budgeted. Good luck recruiting and retaining teachers.

Not a new issue for Frederick County, where some of these same supervisors just two years ago were complaining that the school system was just too darned expensive and should be cut. And back then Graber was already concerned about things like Deep Equity, a company brought in to help develop culturally responsive teaching practices. On that group, Graber said,

I don’t know if any of my fellow board members are aware of what’s in there, but it is a deeply racist, very Communistic, Marxist-type of program from what has been shared with me by teachers who have been told that they have to participate in the program.

That was in February of 2020, before Christopher Rufo had taught guys like Graber they could call this Communistic evil stuff "critical race theory." 

As news of the cuts spread, so did anger and conflict. A change.org petition to reinstate the budget cut drew support. Letters to the editor were written, and commented upon. " I would hazard a guess that the Grabers and the BOS are what they accuse schools of doing.....indoctrinated." "Sovine and the school board refuse to do their jobs...All that has happened is we have enough BOS members to end this charade." 

The supervisors met on April 13 to consider possible budget scenarios. Around 375 members of the public showed up, well past overflow capacity for the room. Citizen comments took two and a half hours, with calls for full funding and for budget transparency. 

"My daughter is a junior at Sherando, and four of her six teachers are not coming back next year." 

"You will proceed to talk about how much you appreciate teachers and all they do while at the same time presenting ideas that are clearly not supportive of the work teachers are doing. Please do not patronize public educators in this community. They see right through it. I want you to know that your actions hurt people." That from a district middle school principal.

The student who started the online petition said he has "never been so disappointed in an elected group" and blamed the cuts on an "unreasonable political agenda." And this zinger-- "You as a white board want so badly to feel marginalized."

Supervisor Graber did not show up for the meeting. McCarthy and two other supervisors said they had had productive conversations with school board members, but that productivity doesn't speak well for the supervisors:

“And they discussed a proposal that would contain clear language forbidding the teaching of CRT in our school system,” McCarthy said. “And I’ll be clear, they both stated that they don’t believe it’s being taught. So they had no fear of saying they would forbid CRT, and I commend them for at least having that conversation.”

The good news is that nobody at the meeting supported the $22 million cut. Board members split between a proposal giving the school district what it asked for and a proposal giving the district about $2 mill less than it requested. So the bad news is that the budget hit a stalemate. And people--specifically teachers who were thinking of coming to work at the district--have noticed there's a mess. You do not recruit and retain top quality teachers by demonstrating how little you value their work and how willing you are to upend the school system and promote instability to score political points.

Virginia is not the only state that allows this kind of micro-mis-management by county officials who are not even elected to run a school system; North Carolina saw a similar scenario unfold when county officials in Johnston County decided they wanted to weed out any of that indoctrinatin' stuff from the school system and were willing to grab the purse strings and hold the education of local students hostage unless they got their way. But it's a bad idea wherever it crops up, and a reminder that local officials suffering from CRT panic can be just a dangerous as state and federal culture crusaders. Pay attention, and vote. 

PA: What would charter reform save your local taxpayers?

School funding in Pennsylvania has a variety of problems, and the system of funding charter schools in the state exacerbates all of them. But there are some quick, simple reforms, long backed by Governor Tom Wolf (and opposed by a GOP controlled legislature) that would make a serious improvement for local taxpayers across the state. And now there's a handy resource for telling Pennsylvania taxpayers exactly what the difference would be (and who to lean on to get it done).

The two problems being addressed are pretty simple to grasp.

1) Pennsylvania cyber-schools are paid a per-pupil fee based on the cost-per-pupil of the sending school district. So the amount used to educate a student in a building with a full staff of teachers and heat and all the physical resources--that same amount is handed over to a cyber school that gives the students a computer, a printer, and 1/500th of a teacher. It is no wonder that cybers are swimming in so much money they can make their owners rich and still spend millions on marketing. Or, as one of my former superintendents told me on his way out the door, "Quit your job and go start a cyber school--it's like printing money."

2) Charter funding for students with special needs is nuts. PA special ed spending in public schools is organized in tiers, with costs and funding correlated to severity of student needs. Charters, however, are just given the funding for the average cost of special needs students, which means that even if the student has low-cost requirements (e.g. an hour of speech therapy a week), the charter still collects the funding for a student with higher level needs.

The solutions aren't terribly difficult. Set the cyber school tuition costs to a reasonable approximation of what cyber schooling a student actually costs. Set special ed tuition levels to reflect what the student's needs actually cost. 

Would it make a difference in your local fuinding? You can see the results of these two simple reforms right here. Education Voters of Pennsylvania has created a data base linked to a two-page form. Find your school district. Click on it. Download a two page form that show how much your district would recoup of the money it should have kept anyway, plus a quick explanation of what's behind these costs, and a list of which legislators need some attention. Download the two page form, print it off, hand it out to school board members, local officials, fellow taxpayers. It's quick and simple. Here's a sample of what it looks like:

ICYMI: Easter Edition (4/17)

Finally. We await Easter in my neck of the woods if for no other reason than spring isn't here until we have at least one snow after Easter. In the meantime, here's some reading from the week.

Florida rejects math textbooks over ‘prohibited’ topics

Yes, Florida threw out a bunch of math books because CRT and other Forbidden Things--things so forbidden that apparently the state isn't even going to reveal what they were. This is Valerie Strauss's coverage at the Washington Post, but if the paywall is in your way, I have no doubt this story can be found many other places. Because Florida.

Why retaining middle school teachers is critical to student achievement

Interesting little study covered by the Deseret News, giving yet another reason that maybe school districts should attempt to hold onto teachers.

A College Fights ‘Leftist Academics’ by Expanding Into Charter Schools

The New York Times takes a look at the increasingly-infamous Hillsdale College and their to push schools back to the 1950's with an extra helping of Jesus.

National Parents Union and what Billionaire Backed Ed Reformers Do

The indispensable Mercedes Schneider has some receipts for the definitely-not-grassroots National Parents Union

Biden takes aim at wasteful spending on charter schools

The Biden administration has decided to tighten up regulations for its charter school grant program. Jeff Bryant at The Progressive explains why this is long overdue.

Free Speech for Me but not for Thee

David French, not exactly a left-leaning guy, takes to The Atlantic to argue that the MAGAfied right has lost its damned mind when it comes to free speech. When I posted this on Twitter, people from all sides descended to lambaste it. So, a fun read.

The Far-Right Is Doxxing School Officials They Think Are ‘Groomers’

How bad is it getting? On the fringes, pretty bad. Vice news with the story.

An author was set to read his unicorn book to students. The school forbade it.

Sigh. All it takes is one cranky parent and one gutless administrator and you get this one dumb outcome. Story from Ohio in the Washington Post.

TFA podcast showcasing 'failing' schools

Gary Rubinstein is tops at keeping an eye on Teach For America, and he has some questions about their new podcast highlighting super awesome schools.

The Heir and the Hillbilly

Nancy Flanagan takes a look at the sad story of J D Vance.

The Costs of Canceling Darwin

In Education Next (yes, that thing) is this intriguing study of how science standards that include (or don't) evolution correlates with outcomes like number of scientists in the state.

Save democracy and support public education

Maurice Cunningham is an expert in tracing dark money in ed reform circles, and in this piece, he tracks some money in Idaho tied to defunding public education.

Inside the vast national experiment in test-optional college admissions

Erin Einhorn at NBC news looks at a study that shows--gasp--that making the SAT and ACT optional leads to a more diverse student body of students who do just as well as those who took the test. Go figure.

Teacher Job Satisfaction Hits Bottom

 That's the headline we're seeing all over, based on the results from an Education Week/Merrimack College teacher survey

The survey was conducted between January 9 and February 23 of this year, with a sample of 1,324 teachers. And the chart that everyone keeps zooming in on is this one--

--which admittedly is pretty ugly, though it needs to be said that the Merrimack survey is in its first year, and all the other chart data comes from the old MetLife Survey of the American Teacher. I'll admit my misgivings--can a 1,324 sample really capture the full range of what's out there in the teaching profession with all the different districts, states, ages, disciplines involved? But these folks do this kind of thing professionally, so I'm going to (cautiously) take their word for it. 

While the satisfaction chart is the one that will be discussed at length, there are others that jump out at me. For instance, look at this chart dealing with teachers' perceptions of their own control and influence:

Not a single area had over 50% strong agreement. Barely 50% showed any agreement that they have control and influence over what they teach. And a teeny tiny 5% strongly agree they have control and influence over policies in their workplace. Which is nuts. This chart describes a profession in which folks largely have little or no control over the most critical aspects of their work, a profession in which their professional judgment counts for diddly squat. 

The survey covers many of the usual suspects (51% strongly disagree that they are fairly paid), but if you want to see the roots of teacher dissatisfaction, look at that control and influence chart.

Respect data is broken down by within school, by students' parents, and by general public. Males generally feel more respected than females, and far fewer feel respected and seen as a professional by the general public than by parents--not a huge surprise.

There are some intriguing breakdowns of data in the survey. One segment looks at topics that deserve more media attention, broken down by political party and urban/suburban/rural jobs. On the item of "inequities in our schools due to issues of race or poverty," suburban and rural teacher are split. Democrats in those areas are seventy-some percent in agreement that more coverage of the topic is needed, but in Republican teachers are around 27% in agreement. However, in urban districts, while Dem numbers stay the same, 60% of GOP teachers agree more coverage is warranted. The topic that most needs more media attention, according to all subgroups-- teachers' working conditions and school climate.

There is also data about how teachers spend their time, and what they wish they could spend more time on. 31% would like to spend less time on general administrative work; 29% would like to spend more time on individual planning and preparation. According to the survey, teachers report spending over fifty hours per week in total; the surprise result here is that teachers at schools with over 75% free/reduced lunch students report 52 work hours, and teachers at schools with under 25% free/reduced lunch students reported 57 hours.

55% said they were "not very" or "not at all" likely to tell their younger self to pursue teaching as a career. 

There's more to chew on here (and if you want to see it yourself, you have to register for a copy) and maybe after Easter I'll sit down to chomp away-- but these are the highlights. Watch for lots of repackaging of these results in the days ahead.

MAGA And Social Isolation

It is easy to think of MAGA in terms of everything it hates, the many things it strikes out against. It's even easy to slip into the habit of making fun of it. Sure, MAGA, go ahead and call for a boycott of Disney, because I'm sure that will totally bring that gazillion-dollar multinational conglomerate to its knees. 

But I'd suggest we view the MAGA anti-ness through a different frame, another way of seeing what's going on and why even a call for boycotting Disney is a bad sign for the country.

The MAGA enemies list is also a Do Not Trust list, a list of people and things that good MAGAs should not talk to, listen to, engage with.

Do not trust Disney.

Do not trust Democrats.

Do not trust public schools or public school teachers.

Do not trust the news media.

Do not trust maskers and vaccination advocates.

Do not trust non-Christians.

Do not trust books. 

Do not trust any non-MAGA entertainment media.

Do not trust any sort of democratic process.

Do not trust anyone who is not a True American.

And if we have any other individuals we need to add to the list, we'll just tag them as "communist" or "pedophile." 

Taken all together, this is not simply the behavior of a movement that wants to reshape society. It also bears a striking resemblance to the behavior of a controlling, abusive partner, whose tactics begin with cutting the target off from all their other family and friends, repeatedly driving home the message, "You must only trust me, only talk to me, only get your directions from me." 

Much of this can be created by amplifying legitimate concerns that people already have. Parents have always been, and will always be, apprehensive at the prospect of handing their beloved children over to someone else's care. Elections always seem like a crapshoot, a foregone conclusion beyond the control of individual voters. And our country has always fostered a strong thread of anti-egghead distrust of folks with too much book learnin' (who in turn do themselves no favors by hiding behind layers of opaque argle bargle). 

But it takes an extra effort to ramp this up, to deliberately attack people's trust in the institutions and relationships that help society function.

The implications of such a concerted effort to bar people from all these parts of society are many. One is that the people raising, amplifying, and even manufacturing the problems (CRT! Commies! Fake news!) are not looking for solutions. Anything that sows more chaos and distrust serves their purpose, but they have zero interest in solving the problems in any kind of positive or healing fashion. Trying to engage in discussion is hopeless, because the discussion isn't really about whatever topic is being discussed, but about the subtext which is "These People can't be trusted!!" 

MAGA is not conservatism. It pretends to be, mostly by holding up an imaginary vision of society from 60 years ago as its ideal, but most principles of conservatism are nowhere to be found. Individual responsibility? No, individual power. Small government? No--huge government, but only in our hands. 

Trump didn't create MAGA--he just named it and harnessed it. But these movements carry their own cancer wired into their dna. In an authoritarian movement, power doesn't come from principle, but from an individual who ascends to a cult of personality, and they only way to advance in such a system is by pulling down whoever stands in the way of your own elevation. Watch the GOP primaries where candidates try to out-MAGA each other, attacking each other far more viciously than any Democrat has the guts to do. When Trump finally dies, the unholy hell that will be unleashed in the scramble to take his place will be incredible to behold.

In the meantime, schools have to somehow function in a world in which many of the students and parents they serve have been taught not to trust them, not to listen to them, and to always assume the worst of them. This is not a fun world to work in. The hope is that trust is best built person to person. People don't personally know their tv anchor, the authors of books in their library--but they know their child's teacher. 

It's tempting to approach MAGAs as dangerous, antagonistic buffoons, but it may be more accurate to approach them as folks who have been kept locked in the basement and told that everyone outside of their household is dangerous (though mixed in with them, the same people who kept them locked in that basement). Maybe "forgive them, for they know not what they do" may be a bridge too far, but it's worth a thought.

MAGA keeps a lot of people scared, convinces a lot of people that there's a big, dangerous crowd that they dare not buck. MAGA's ranks have been swelled by non-believers who aren't ready to stand up yet, and things like the Disney boycott call are in part for their benefit. Listen only to MAGA, and pay no attention to those Other Voices suggesting that this (whatever it is this week) is wrong, scary, bad and even nuts. If you can't make them loyal, at least keep them isolated, because if I keep you locked in the basement, I don't really have to convince you to agree with me. 

Choice vs. Culture Battles

Some school choice fans are pretty steadfast in their belief in free market dynamics and in the need to let all parents choose as they see fit. But as the culture debates heat up, a whole group of choicers are turning out to be less committed to choice than to other things. Note these three stories.

In New Hampshire (in a story that we've looked at before), the Croydon community had actually installed a pretty robust choice system that allowed parents to choose any public or private school in the area. But it was expensive, and the Free State Libertarians who run much of the town's boards decided to cut the funding for the district in half. This means that most of the choice that parents in the district previously enjoyed are now are available only if the parents can afford to chip in a pile of money themselves. This will be a particular challenge as the town does not have its own high school. But it turns out that choice for parents is not as big a deal as cutting taxes and getting government out of the education biz. As I've often argued, school choice--particularly the voucher brand--is too often not about empowering parents, but about saying to them, "We cut you a check. Educating your children is now your problem, not ours. Good luck."

In Alabama, Tim James is a candidate for governor, and part of his platform is that public schools are failing and "school choice must be available for the parent and guardian of every student." Further, he says, "we need options tailored to each child's needs." 

Well, not each child. Turns out that Alabama is home to a unique charter school, the Magic City Acceptance Academy, a school that accepts all students but puts a special emphasis on LGBTQ-affirming atmosphere and programs. James has targeted this school in a campaign ad; the principal of the school says James is "scaring the hell out of our kids." James is using the school as a target, saying that as governor he would "have opposed the formation of this school and would have vetoed any budget that funded it." He charges the school with "exploitation" of children and "not education." 

So school choice is not as important as clamping down on that LGBTQ stuff. Or, as the James campaign calls it, "perversion." Meanwhile, the school has hired some extra security.

In Georgia, two bills tried to make their way through the legislature this year, and they tell us something about the collision of culture warriors and choice.

One was a version of the education savings account bills that have been cropping up across the country. As with most of these bills, it included a non-interference clause saying that just because a school was getting taxpayer dollars via voucher, that didn't mean that the state had any authority telling them what to do.

The other was a version of the standard anti-CRT and Don't Say Gay language with one striking difference--SB 613 sought to extend prohibitions against discussion of gender roles and sexual identity to any "private or non-public" school receiving voucher money. This clearly does not go well with an injunction against state interference in how voucher-accepting schools can be run, but apparently in Georgia the thinking is that the state should leave private schools alone when they want to discriminate against LGBTQ students, but it should interfere if the private school wants to demonstrate acceptance of those students. 

As the culture battles continue, I expect we'll see more of this-- choice is great, but only if it includes the acceptable choices. Parents should have the right to choose--but not those choices that accept LBTQ students are human beings or that teach all that Black Stuff. In the end, for some folks, school choice is really just another mechanism for imposing their preferred culture on everyone else, an Orwellian option in which "choice" actually means "no choice at all."