TX: In God We Trust--No! Not Like That!

The problem with dumb rules is that they are hard to enforce and an invitation for people to mess with you.

Every teacher who has spent more than a year in the classroom knows that if you tell a class "I don't want to hear one more peep out of you," the next thing you will hear is "peep." And the next thing that will happen after that is you will find yourself wasting time in an argument about whether saying "meep" or "fleep" or "booger" violates the dumb rule that you just pulled out of your butt. Before you formulate a rule, make sure you've thought it through.

If there is one thing that has been consistent about people who want to get religion back into the classroom, it's that they never, ever think things through. And so we have the current time-wasting silliness in Texas.

Senator Bryan Hughes is an East Texas Republican who came up with Texas's anti-abortion bill with the clever workaround of having the public rather than law enforcement enforce it. Hughes cleverly worked that into his bill attempting to get God back in the classroom, which declared that if somebody donated an "In God We Trust" poster to a school, the school must display it in a conspicuous place. It became law, and Hughes, who had definitely not thought things through, expressed his happiness on the Twitter.

The national motto, In God We Trust, asserts our collective trust in a sovereign God. I’m encouraged to see groups like the Northwest [Austin] Republican Women and many individuals coming forward to donate these framed prints to remind future generations of the national motto.

The Christian cell phone company and election financier Patriot Mobile also chipped in some signs, saying "We are honored to be part of bringing God back into our public schools." The Yellow Rose of Texas Republican Women chipped in, and of course Moms for Liberty did, too. But then things took a turn...

Activist and artist Chaz Stevens sent along some posters with "In God We Trust"--written in Arabic. He set up a GoFundMe (you can still contribute) on which he says of the SB-797, "The law seemingly presumes these signs are written in English. Oopsie."

Others donated "In God We Trust" posters with rainbow colors. Some districts rejected the signs, immediately finding themselves in stupid meep arguments. For example, Carroll ISD rejected the not-what-we-wanted-here posters and argued that "the statute does not contemplate requiring the district to display more than one copy at a time." In this case "does not contemplate" means "does not actually say anything one way or another." Ditto for their argument that the law "does not contemplate" any language other than English.

The Carroll ISD donor, Sravan Krishna, replied, "It doesn’t say you have to stop at one, so that is your decision to stop at one. Why is more God not good? And are you saying you don’t have, like, one square feet of space in our buildings?”

The law does say that the poster must include an American flag and a state flag, and no other images or words. 

The argument that the school only has to display one poster rests on the use of "a" as in the school must display "a durable poster or framed copy." I'm not saying that Carroll ISD School Board President Cam Bryan is grasping at straws, but his argument includes calling "a" the "singular tense." Oddly enough, none of the run-up to all this donating activity included anyone saying, "Remember, we just need one poster per school."

Meanwhile, because it's Texas, someone else is threatening lawsuits against districts that put up the naughty signs, arguing "the legislature passed this law to set a good example for schoolchildren, so we are taking action to ensure schools do just that, and conspicuously display compliant posters that everyone is sure to love, equally.” So Arabic and pride flaggish posters are out because somebody will hate them? 

Even if Texas wins its dumb argument about the singular determiner, that simply opens up another dumb argument about who decides which single poster goes up, and how they decide. Is it first come, first served? Does the spot open up anew every school year? Or will school districts form a committee to select which "In God We Trust" poster is the acceptable one, and what criteria will they use, and will this then put the school in the position of deciding which God is the one allowed to be perched on their walls and does anybody on any side of this dumb argument really want that?

Conservative christianists agitating for "religious freedom" and "putting God back in the schools" always seem to forget that there is more than one faith. You can try to open up schools to access by those faiths, but access will always, by the very nature of schools, be limited, and therefor somebody will have to decide, somehow, which faiths get to have that access. The wall between church and state is meant to protect the church; break it down and you are a few short steps away from a government agency deciding which religion gets to enjoy certain privileges (and which do not). That is not good for anyone. 

We could try to have an honest conversation about that, or folks could pass dumb laws instead. Texas has made its choice. Unfortunately for them, the principle holds--make dumb rules, end up in dumb arguments. 

OK: Ryan Walters Is Bad News For Public Education

Ryan Walters may be interested in something, but it sure doesn't seem to be public education. And yet, he is poised to be Oklahoma's top education honcho. His latest egregious harassment of an educator in order to score political points should be a disqualifier all by itself, but it's only the latest rung on his ladder.

Getting started

Ryan Walters graduated from Harding University ("Faith, Learning, Living"), a private Christian university in Arkansas that didn't accept Black students until 1963. Walters graduated in 2010 with a degree in history. 

He returned to his home town of McAlester in 2011 to teach high school history, where he did well enough to be named McAlester Public Schools Teacher of the Year in 2015 and draw a finalist spot for Oklahoma's TOY award in 2016.That put him in touch with folks at the state level. In 2018 he was appointed to the Oklahoma Community Service Commission, and the next year, newly elected Governor Kevin Stitt to the Commission for Educational Quality and Accountability.

In 2019 he gave up his teaching gig to serve as the executive director of Oklahoma Achieves, the state Chamber of Commerce initiative that pulled big bucks from, among others, the Walton Family Foundation. Oklahoma Achieves would soon transform itself into Every Kid Counts Oklahoma, a "new education reform organization" that wants to give everyone "access to quality education." EKCO has been especially reluctant to provide their required IRS disclosure forms, but The Oklahoman did pry some info loose; donors include the Waltons, Yes Every Kid (a Charles Koch operation).

Walters was offered the top job for EKCO in March of 2020. In May of 2020 he went to work. March of 2020 was also the month in which President Trump signed the CARES Act, which included the Governor's Emergency Education Relief Fund (GEER). Oklahoma started pulling its money out in July of 2020, feeding a chunk of that money into a voucher program that would be handled by newly created Bridge the Gap, a program funded by GEER money but operated by Every Kid Counts Oklahoma, who in turn would hire ClassWallet, the Florida-based ed voucher management company. Turns out they didn't even have to bid. 

But Walters thought he had a winner. In fact, he made an appearance at Jeb Bush's Edu-palooza in a presentation about how to launch a voucher program in just four weeks; the spot was sponsored by ClassWallet. It was such a hit that ClassWallet had him do it again for their Youtube channel in February of 2021.

Relief Fund Follies

That turned out to be a bit of a fiasco. Of the $18 million that Oklahoma collected, $10 mill went straight to vouchers and the rest went... somewhere. Oklahoma Watch ("Impact journalism in the public interest") and The Frontier did some digging and found that GEER funds were used to buy things like Christmas trees, gaming consoles, electric fireplaces, and outdoor grills. About $191,000 in federal relief funds were used to buy 548 TVs. In all, about a half a million was spent on non-school related goods.

Walters had been plenty enthusiastic about privatizing the operation of the voucher program:

“We didn’t have the government agency personnel with the background experience to do this and, quite frankly, we felt like there could be a more efficient way to do this outside our government agencies,” Walters said.

But ClassWallet has been clear that they have no intention of seeing the undercarriage of this particular bus.

 
“As a software contractor, ClassWallet had neither responsibility for, nor authority to exercise programmatic decision making with respect to the program or its associated federal funds and did not have responsibility for grant compliance,” company spokesman Henry Feintuch said in a statement.

As the Norman Transcript Editorial Board reports:

While $8 million of the money was meant to fund education resources for individual students, Walters did not set any limits or guidelines on how families could use the money — when ClassWallet asked for his thoughts on limitations, Walters gave “blanket approval” to any item a family wanted to purchase through approved vendors.

And while Governor Stitt wouldn't agree to an interview with Oklahoma Watch, his spokeswoman Carly Atchison did offer this in a written statement:

During the COVID pandemic, Governor Stitt had a duty to get federal relief funds to students and families in Oklahoma as quickly as possible and he accomplished just that.

Well, yes. He could also have dumped the money in piles in various school parking lots. That would have been quick, too.

And he wasn't all that successful. The program shut down a day early "after federal investigators and attorneys for the state discovered the company was operating on an expired contract with almost no government supervision" and Oklahoma returned $2.9 million unspent relief dollars to the feds. A federal audit gave the program lowest marks all across the board.

Failing upward for many employers

While some called for Walters to resign, he had other goals in mind. In September of 2020, Governor Stitt had announced that Walters had been appointed to fill the spot of Secretary of Education, while also declaring that the post would be an individual cabinet position. In his mid-thirties, Walters is the youngest to ever serve in the post. Now he wants to be the state superintendent of public instruction.

Through it all, there remains some question about who Walters actually works for. He's still listed as the executive director of EKCO-- a group that's devoted to agitating for privatizing education, so this is like hiring the head of a private bus company to head your public transportation system. Especially if the private company is paying him triple what the public system is paying. According to The Oklahoman (Clifton Adcock, Reese Gorman, and Jennifer Palmer of Oklahoma Watch and The Frontier have been all over this story), Walters was hired for a $100,000 salary, with a requirement that he had to be paid at least 20% higher than the second-highest paid employee. His original contract called for an option of a minimum $20K raise after the first year. Governor Stitt vetoed a bill that would have required cabinet members to disclose finances.

His salary of secretary of education from the state of Oklahoma is $40,000. The state superintendent makes $125,000, so at least the state would be on even footing with Walters' other employer. 

Strutting his right wing bona fides

It's hard to tell whether Walters is a died-in-the-right-wing-wool conservative or just an opportunist riding the prevailing political hot air (though things like this AP teaching video where he observes that Joseph McCarthy "exaggerated" offers a hint). Either way, he's been putting on quite a show. 

On his Twitter page, he likes to post videos of himself in his car objecting to liberal naughtiness. He cranks out op-eds, like this one arguing that "if our kids are taught to hate this country we will no longer be the country that God has so richly blessed." He contributed a piece to Fox News: "Listen up, teachers: stop going woke." He warned textbook publishers not to put any of that nasty CRT stuff in their books (and took flak for it). He "urged" a school district to prohibit students who were born "biological males" from using female bathrooms, claiming they had misinterpreted Title IX. As reported in the Stillwater News Press: "The US Department of Education’s rules, that your school board claims ordered this travesty, simply allowed school districts to choose their own path – and Stillwater has chosen poorly,” Walters wrote. “You have chosen radicals over your students, ideology over biology, and ‘wokeness’ over safety.” He has accused Tulsa schools of "pushing pornography."

His primary opponent April Grace tried to call him out on his own teaching, saying that his lesson about the psychology of racial bias actually violated Oklahoma's Anti-CRT law. It didn't stick. Walters joined Governor Stitt in backing a massive neo-voucher bill that ultimately failed; Grace took position that the bill had too few safeguards for the use of taxpayer funds (a position that, once upon a time, conservatives would have held). Walters beat her. 

His latest target

His victory apparently has encouraged him to go negative hard right. Witness his latest activity.

Summer Boismier was a teacher at Norman High School who drew flak for covering some books in her classroom with the message "Books the state doesn't want you to read." Apparently even worse, she posted the QR code for the Brooklyn Public Libraries new eCard for teens program, which allows teens from all over the country to check out books, no matter how repressive or restrictive state or local rules they may live under.

She was suspended by the district, which said that this was about her "personal political statements" and a "political display" in the classroom. Boismier told The Gothamist 

I saw this as an opportunity for my kids who were seeing their stories hidden to skirt that directive. Nowhere in my directives did it say we can't put a QR code on a wall.

But Oklahoma school districts are on edge since the state Board of Education downgraded two districts' accreditations for allegedly violating the law. 

The district's suspension was brief, but rather than report back to work, Boismier resigned. As the Washington Post reported

She recognized the school district was in a tight spot and said she placed most of the blame on Oklahoma Republicans for fomenting what she described as a growing culture of fear, confusion and uncertainty in schools.

Amid that climate, Boismier said, she doesn’t feel like she has a place in an Oklahoma classroom.

None of that was enough for Walters. The events surrounding Boismier attracted plenty of attention, and so, Candidate Walters popped up to put his two cents in via a letter that he posted on Twitter. 

In the letter, he called for Summer Boismier (he called her out by name) to have her teaching license revoked. "Ms. Boismier's providing access to banned and pornographic material is unacceptable." Let's not get into the question of what qualifies as pornography, but let's do look at some of the books now restricted in Oklahoma. It's quite a list, but it includes I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Raisin in the Sun, Lord of the Flies, Brave New World, and The Outsiders. (Make special note of that last one. S. E. Hinton was born and lives in Oklahoma, and wrote that acclaimed novel in her teens, which means if she were a teen today, she would not be allowed to read the novel that she wrote herself). But I digress.

The letter also includes this line:

There is no place for a teacher with a liberal political agenda in the classroom.

Walters, who once wrote "I will continue to teach my students the United States is the greatest nation in the world," is at least honest in saying that it's the liberal view that must be prohibited. 

Meanwhile, after Walters tweeted out her name and his non-reality-based accusations, Boismier has endured a flood of vulgarity and death threats. 

“These teachers need to be taken out and shot,” “teachers like this should not only be fired but also should be swinging from a tree,” “If Summer tried this in Afghanistan, they’d cut out her tongue for starters,” are just a minuscule fraction of the threats pouring into Summer Boismier’s inbox.

Great game here. Draw a target on someone's back and just let your followers try to make her life hell. 

Bottom line

On top of all this, Walters wants to cut all federal money going to Oklahoma schools and replace that money (about $921 million) with--well, nothing. Just be be more efficient because "I want to move us away from federal funding and move us off of federal dollars." Because, after all, "the feds have no place in our education system." So much for support for school lunches and special ed. 

But it fits with the organizations that support him, like Americans for Prosperity, Oklahoma Conservative Political Action Committee, and the Oklahoma 2nd Amendment Association.

An Oklahoman who cares about public education should not vote for this guy. The state school superintendent has some hefty powers in Oklahoma, including control over staffing the department, along with oversight of teacher certification, curriculum standards, school accreditation, and regulatory compliance. The office has its hands on the $2.5 billion purse strings for school funding. The superintendent chairs the state board of education. And he needs to be able to work with many constituencies. Also, it would be nice if he weren't drawing a huge salary from a private organization focused on supplanting public schools.

We'll see what happens. Rural Oklahoma has already sent a message regarding how it feels about the idea of cutting funding to local schools so that folks operating private schools can make a buck--they are not in favor. Here's hoping they will also not be in favor of the guy who really likes the idea. Here's hoping that Ryan Walters can go back to doing his real job--and only his real job--soon.

P.S. Here's that QR code for the Brooklyn Banned Books program

 

ID: Open Season On Libraries

From Idaho, we get the story of a library under siege. Two libraries found themselves in the crosshairs of a handful of local far right activists over books that it might acquire in the hypothetical future.

Idaho has had more than its share of this baloney (well, actually, the proper share anyone should have is zero) including House Bill 666 which made it possible to hold libraries liable for "the distribution of harmful materials to children." 

In Coeur d'Alene, the new librarian found herself attacked over some selections.

On a Friday afternoon in June 2022, outside my office stood a mother emphatically and disruptively conveying her concern to me, waving around Melissa by Alex Gino (formerly titled George), winner of the 2016 Stonewall Book Award. She was in my face and hollering at me, “No, actually, I think this is the time and place for this conversation,” and all I could do was stand there and recite my usual script as calmly and politely as I could manage under the circumstances: “Libraries don’t censor materials. Libraries are for everyone. As the children’s librarian, it’s my job to ensure that every child and every family in this community feels seen, heard, and represented. She was having none of it. She snatched our director’s business cards out of my shaking fingers, grabbed her children, and stormed out of the children’s library. I called my director immediately. It was the first time I’d cried to him on the phone. It was also the first time I’d wondered if I was cut out for this.

For Delaney Daly, the breaking point when she attended a Pride in the Park event. 31 armed Patriot Front members were arrested that day, apparently headed for the Pride event. Daly wondered how long it would be before guns showed up at her library. Fearing for her safety, she resigned, just ten months after she started at the job.

Kimber Glidden didn't have to wonder. The board at the Boundary County Library, where Glidden was librarian, adopted a sort of pre-emptive policy, including "Selection of materials will not be affected by any such potential disapproval, and the Boundary County Library will not place materials on 'closed shelves' or label items to protect the public from their content."

Things escalated quickly. There was a move to recall four of the five board members ("to protect children from explicit materials and grooming"). Glidden received the bulk of the harassing attention (also a new employee of the library, she had dared to join the American Library Association). She has been warned of her coming damnation, peppered with time-wasting Freedom of Information Act requests. Folks have signed up to be library volunteers, only show up armed. And Glidden's neighbor let her know that a group of armed individuals showed up at her house, looking, she believed, for Glidden. The list of crap inflicted on Glidden and the library is long.

And while the activists have repeatedly waved a list of books around that they find objectionable, Glidden and others have repeatedly pointed out a simple fact--

Not one of those books is actually in the library.

Glidden resigned from the job, effective September 10, along with this post:

“My experience and skill set made me a good fit to help the district move toward a more current and relevant business model and to implement updated policy and best practices,” she wrote in a post on social media. “However, nothing in my background could have prepared me for the political atmosphere of extremism, militant Christian fundamentalism, intimidation tactics, and threatening behavior currently being employed in the community.”

The library is facing a loss of its insurance, which may put its future in jeopardy. That certainly seems perfectly okay with some folks, for whom the whole concept of a public library that provides service for the whole public and not just the Right People--well, clearly some folks in Idaho aren't getting that at all. 

It's one more small reminder that Christian Nationalists do not believe in democracy, but instead believe that a government's legitimacy comes from its alignment with proper Biblical principles and not from the consent of the governed. That set of beliefs is always (and has always) clashed with actual American values. Right now it appears that libraries will bear part of the brunt of that clash. Wait till these people hear about the internet.

ICYMI: Labor Day 2022 Edition (9/4)

 Maybe it was that everyone else at the institute went back to school this week and I had more time to scroll, or maybe it was just a busy week. But here's a reading list for you.

Everyone

Anya Kamenetz produced this article adapted from her forthcoming book for the New York Times series "What is school for." It does a great job putting many many things in context, from the rise of public schools to the rise of the privatization movement. 

Figuring Out When to Panic About “Teacher Shortages”

Yes, it's in Education Next, but this Paul Bruno piece basically about how journalists could better cover the teacher exodus is worth a read.

How to make more teachers

Nancy Flanagan takes her own look at the teacher exodus and considers how to get more qualified folks in classrooms. 

What if Americans sour on public education

Yeah, this is not an encouraging piece. Jon Valant at Brookings does a good job of running down all the various stressors for public education right now, and what a worst case scenario could be. 

Dear Teachers

Some positive support from Dan Rather. You may want to bookmark this one to reread now and then.

Mom rips book burners at board meeting

A pretty uplifting pushback on book banning. Includes the line "The speakers speaking about what great Christians they are? Great. Go tell your pastor. Our schools are not your church."

Conservatives think education is a threat. They're right.

Paul Waldman makes the case for (a certain sort of) liberalism in schools, while reminding us what sorts of things the far right has come out against. From the Washington Post.

Unraveling the NAEP freakout

John Warner with some rational talk about the big bad NAEP scores that came out this week.

How progressives can win the war on public education

Jeff Bryant reports for The Progressive on the education panels at Netroots Nation. Some good ideas from some smart people.

LGBTQ teachers open up as their schools -- and identities -- become next front in the culture war

ABC News talks to LGBTQ teachers, including one who was driven out of the profession. 

Safe Stickers banned in Florida schools

More evidence of the chilling effect of Don't Say Gay in Emperor DeSantis's domain.

Tiptoing in Michigan

From The Bridge, a story about how Michigan teachers are trying to navigate the gag laws that haven't even passed yet, and the angry mobs pushing them.

Few families opt out of Florida school library books

Some good news, from Kelly Jensen at Bookriot. Florida families have the power to limit their kids' access to books at school, but almost nobody is actually using it.

Virginia won't ban obscene books for now

Sort of a good news-bad news story, covered by Dan Kois for Slate. A Virginia lawsuit against a couple of books has failed, but the legislator who filed it has dreams of taking it all the way to SCOTUS.

Critical race theory can help us serve others

Well, here's a new one. Johnathan Tran at Christian Century explains why Christians should embrace critical race theory as a means to help with their mission to serve. Really.

The right has long tried to impose its vision on American education

Historian and friend of the Institute Adam Laats provides some historical perspective at the Washington post. This time he takes us back to Kanahwa County, WV, in the 1970s, when conservatives thought sure they had a winning case against books with bad ideas. They did not.

The Most Powerful Moms in America Are the New Face of the Republican Party

Kiera Butler went to the Moms for Liberty convention and wrote a great profile of the group for Mother Jones. 

School district asks parents to let teachers move in as rents soar

What happens when, in places like Silicon Valley, rents get so high that teachers can't afford to live there? They leave, and school districts try desperate measures. From the Washington Post.

‘He's Got No Experience': Spotsylvania Parents Raise Questions on Superintendent Candidate

What happens when crazy pants people take over your school board? Sometimes, they throw out the superintendent and try to replace them with a buddy who has zero education experience. From Spotsylvania County.

Seven new studies on the impact of a four-day school week

From the Hechinger Report, a quick look at what we may know about the four day week for schools.

25 Quotes To Use in Your Classroom if Your District Is Banning Everything

From We Are Teachers. Not a bad little list.

Teacher Asks Students To Split Into 2 Groups To Simulate Ideal Class Size

It's The Onion.

Elsewhere, at Forbes I'm making another attempt to convince Pennsylvania people that voting for Doug Mastriano for governor is a terrible idea, especially if you care about education. 

FL: DeSantis Grabbing Power Over School Boards

The first shoe almost--almost--made sense when it dropped.

First  the Marjory Stoneman Douglass School Safety Commission determined that Broward County school leaders had done a lousy job of following effective security policies. Because, of course, they certainly weren't going to find any issues with the easy access for guns and ammo for the shooter. Thump.

I care this much.

That was 2019. But other shoes were going to drop, and the next one was the unusually-convened Twentieth Statewide Grand Jury, which later recommended that board members be suspended due to "incompetence, neglect of duty, and misuse of authority." Thump. 

So last week, Governor Ron DeSantis decided to "suspend" four Broward board members from office. That (thump) gave DeSantis the appointment of five members of a nine member board in a Democratic-leaning county. But it turns out that he was suspending them over a broader scope of actions:

The governor said "students continue to be educated in unsafe, aging, decrepit moldy buildings that were supposed to have been renovated years ago. These are inexcusable actions by school board members who have shown a pattern of emboldening unacceptable behavior, including fraud and mismanagement across the district."

This is a three-fer for DeSantis. He gets to look like he's all about Protecting The Children, while tossing out some elected Democrats (effectively silencing the voters who elected them), and furthering the whole "public schools can't be trusted" narrative. Plus, he avoids doing anything like sending resources or money to help alleviate any of these issues. He just sends in some more of his crew to take over. (For an extraordinarily thorough look at the Broward issues, read this piece from Kathryn Joyce)

And there are still more shoes. Although the latest shoe dropped on Monday, it seems to only just now be making it into the press. And by now, I mean Friday afternoon when nobody is paying to much attention to plummeting footwear. 

That grand jury report painted a target on four other school districts, giving the state department of education a reason to send letters to those districts asking for in-person meetings due to the "gravity of the issues." The districts are Duval, Orange, Miami-Dade, and Palm Beach (Broward got a letter, too). 

“We have reason to believe that some of the policies and actions the grand jury found are ongoing and require immediate action,” all five letters dated Monday say.

Gee. What immediate action could they mean? Rushing assistance and resources to the district? Or maybe having the governor personally take replace the democratically elected boards with his own people? Thump.

It would be the next logical step in Florida, where virtually every state-level education position has been filled with an anti-public ed privatization fan and he's filled the advocacy space with more of the same, plus the Moms for Liberty campaign operation. There isn't much left to do except take over the local boards (which, writer Billy Townsend correctly notes have been stripped of much of their power already). So why not go after five of the six largest districts in the state? Why not go after school districts like Duval and Miami-Dade and Orange that have dared to defy him before? 

DeSantis has also been trying to do it the old-fashioned way--by getting his hand picked, governor-backed candidates elected. That was successful in many places, including Miami-Dade. But it didn't work everywhere. And really--isn't it easier and quicker to just throw out the board members you don't like and replace them with people from your own team, democracy be damned?

It has long been fashion on the far right to accuse Democrats of using school shootings as a tool to grab political power, so there's a certain ironic genius is DeSantis flipping the script and using the Parkland killings as an excuse to go after school boards. And even if (and it's a big, size 15 if) DeSantis 's concern is real and the districts are dangerously lax in "security," whatever that might mean, is having the government replace a duly-elected board the best way to fix that problem? Better than, say, help and resources from the state? Is this the situation that meets the threshhold of, "Yeah, we'll just have to override democracy now"?

Give DeSantis credit for his multi-tasking skills; both dismantling and taking over public education at the same time. If I were a parent in Florida, or just a person interested in living in an educated society, I'd be plenty worried about what will happen to the tattered remains of public education in Florida if DeSantis manages to consolidate his control over every level of it. Thump. Thump. Thump. 

Project Veritas, Naughty Educators, and Choice

You've probably heard of Project Veritas, a right wing activist group that specializes in gotcha, often marked by deceptive and misleading editing aimed at making Democrats and liberals look bad. Apparently they've decided to get take aim at education for a bit, because they've released two pieces this week aimed at making some administrators look bad.

First we get an assistant principal in Connecticut revealing his anti-conservative, anti-Catholic hiring bias. And while Project Veritas is known for deceptive editing, it's hard to imagine a context in which any of the following is not problematic:

Boland dubbed Catholics “brainwashed.” When asked what Boland does when he finds out that a candidate is Catholic, he said, “You don’t hire them.”

Or, on the subject of slipping politics into the message

“Believe it or not, the open-minded, more progressive teachers are actually more savvy about delivering a Democratic message without really ever having to mention their politics,” Boland said. “They’ll never say, ‘Oh, this is a liberal or Democratic way of doing this.’ They just make that the norm.”

As I said, while this may have been twisted, I can't imagine a context in which either anti-Catholic hiring practices or selling your personal political beliefs as the norm are okay. Jeremy Boland is now on administrative leave while the district figures out what the heck to do with this. 

This, you may say, is why folks need school choice--so they can get away from this kind of public school misbehavior. But hold on just a minute-- because our second Project Veritas video comes from an administrator at Trinity School.

Trinity School is an uber-excellent private school in Manhattan. Niche rates it the #1 private high school in New York as well as the #1 Christian high school in New York. It has an impressive list of successful alumni (John McEnroe, Rudy Giulliani's daughter, Larry Hagman, the Ziff Davis heirs and, awesomely, a co-founder founder of Troma Studios). 

And they have a sneaky naughty administrator. She's on video saying she would never book a Republican guest speaker and complaining about white male students.

“Unfortunately, it’s the white boys who feel very entitled to express their opposite opinions and just push back,” Norris said. “There’s a huge contingent of them that are just horrible. And you’re like, ‘Are you always going to be horrible, or are you just going to be horrible right now?’ Don’t know.”

When asked if there was any saving Republican white guys, Norris responded: “I don’t know. I think they need to go. I think they’re really awful people. That’s kind of what I’m afraid of with my white students that are rich. I’m like — do you ever have to deal with this? They’re so protected by capitalism. It makes me sad.”

I can, in fact, imagine a context in which this would be less awful, but it's still not a good look. IOW, they may have made this look worse, but I can't imagine a world in which it doesn't look bad.

But beyond the cringe factor, this wrinkles up the whole school choice narrative. Because with school choice, everyone is supposed to enjoy the privilege of the rich, who can pick whatever school is the "best fit" for their kid. Except here is this elite, expensive school, and we're hearing (and not for the first time) that, beyond an extreme example like this one, such places can be plain old woke, biased, in the grip of political correctness, not right wing friendly, and not about to change to suit any kind of market forces, either. 

So what's a choice fan to do? Is the message here, "If you want a good education, you just have to suck it up about the other stuff?" Is it that private schools need to be regulated like public schools so that this kind of bias can be regulated into oblivion? Is that all that baloney about how public schools are a place of constant ideological battle that only school choice solve--that's actually not true?

There's only one kind of school that's allowed to chuck objectivity and balance out the window and advocate for whatever ideology it prefers, and it's not the public kind. 

I do not want to see an education system that discriminates on the basis or religious beliefs or political orientation, and we do not get there with unregulated, unaccountable school choice. 

IN: More Taxpayer-Funded Discrimination

Indiana's private school voucher program is going great guns, last year shoveling $241.4 million to private schools, and nearly all of the 330 schools grabbing those taxpayer dollars are religious schools. 

In the 21st century conception of religious liberty in the US, we've been learning two things:

1) You can't practice your religion unless you are fully subsidized by tax dollars.

2) You can't practice your religion unless you are able to fully discriminate against the people you want to discriminate against.

3) "Your religion" actually means "your particular brand of christianism"

Okay, three things. 

We know that the private schools being funded by public dollars discriminate. We know that SCOTUS has now reaffirmed that "right" multiple times (try here or here)

We know all that. And here we go again. 

This week, the Indiana Supreme Court ruled that the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Indianapolis cannot be sued by a teacher who was fired, per the archdiocese command, from a teaching job at a Catholic high school. His firing was because he was in a same-sex marriage. The case has spent some time bouncing around before hitting the state supreme court. 

Joshua Payne-Elliot married his husband in 2017. The archdiocese in 2019 forced all Catholic schools in its control must fire any such employees (Payne-Elliot's husband was also canned under the edict after his school put up a fight to retain him); the school had actually renewed Payne-Elliot's contract three times after becoming aware of his relationship. Payne-Elliot had taught world languages and social studies at Cathedral High School for 13 years.

The decision rests on the church autonomy defense (and so never gets to talking about freedom of expression or the ministerial exceptions) and quotes several precedents. Justice Slaughter's opinion opens with one such quote:

Religious freedom protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution encompasses the right of religious institutions “to decide for themselves, free from state interference, matters of church government as well as those of faith and doctrine.” 

Also

“No power save that of the church can rightfully declare who is a Catholic. The question is purely one of church government and discipline, and must be determined by the proper ecclesiastical authorities.”

Which would seem to underline the idea that a Catholic school is more about being Catholic than about being a school. Which--well, they've said that before. Back in 2012, when the archdiocese was quite excited about the new voucher program, there was this in a Catholic Review article:

“Vouchers will not change the mission or purpose of our Catholic schools,” said Ron Costello, superintendent of Catholics schools in the Archdiocese of Indianapolis. “Parents who enroll students in our schools need to understand that we are Catholic first and schools second.”

Nevertheless, a story in the archdiocesan newspaper of Indianapolis reported that most of the Catholic schools in the archdiocese were "committed to participating in the state's voucher program."

It's all about the separation of church and state, you see:

“This is really important example of properly having separation of church and state properly understood, because when you have an archdiocese or some other church body, giving instruction and guidance to a religious school, that’s one of its ministries,” Luke Goodrich, vice president and senior counsel at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “It’s very important for it that the government doesn’t insert itself into that dialogue and relationship between the church and its ministry and the way it’s working out its faith and living its faith in its religious schools.”

Government is, however, cheerfully invited to insert its money into the relationship between the church and its ministry. 

This is where we are on voucher policy. Give us your money, and leave us alone so we can treat people as well or poorly as we wish. 

Indiana's program had stalled, but like many others, experienced a pandemic expansion. The expansion has also been fueled by Indiana's steady relaxing of its rules. Originally started as a program to rescue poor children from failing public schools, the program will now offer vouchers to a family of five making $172,000. Students no longer have to have ever set foot in a public school. And the fact that voucher schools are no better (and possibly worse) than public schools isn't bothering policy makers, either. And now we go from little regulation and oversight to actually forbidding any regulation or oversight. 

Should Catholic schools be able to run as the church wishes them to be run? Sure. Should the taxpayers foot the bill for that private enterprise? Nope. I can hope that this case will keep wandering upward through the courts, but there's virtually no reason to hope that SCOTUS would decide against the archdiocese or insist there be limits to the church's freedom to openly discriminate on the taxpayer's dime.