The Libertarian Argument Against Religious Charters

The Catholic Church's proposal for a religious cyber charter school in Oklahoma has been denied, though the church has been given a month to revise their application and take another run at it, so the game's not over yet. 

I could argue--again--all the many reasons that religious charters are a terrible idea, but today let's change it up and let somebody from the school choice camp make the case. Here's Neal McCluskey from the Very Libertarian CATO Institute:

The danger of entangling religion and government when government decides which schools can exist is real. Most directly, an authorizer might reject a charter application because it is religious, or of a disfavored religion. But even if that were not the motive, it could easily be suspected, with religious applicants wondering if their religious status led to their rejection, and possibly to open accusations of religious animus. On the flip side, a non‐​religious applicant that was rejected might point to a religious one that succeeded and suspect religious favoritism by the authorizer.

Now, this argument is based on some erroneous assumptions, including the notion that charters are public schools, but his central point is solid--there is no way to have religious charter schools without also having a real de facto, or implied Government Department of Deciding Which Religions Are Legit. People from many places on the political spectrum can agree that's a bad idea.

McCluskey also argues that religious charters would "end up enrolling students who otherwise would have attended private schools."

Religious chartering would carry a strong incentive for private schools to give up much of their autonomy in exchange for the financial security of being “free” public schools. But that could well be a net loss of choice: Yes, it could make more schools available to families, but also constrain what those schools could do or teach, making each one a less meaningful option.

So, if you give parents these particular choices, they won't make the correct choice. 

If the goal is more freedom in education, choice supporters should put their resources into advancing private choice, such as the universal programs that have ballooned over the last few months. It avoids government entanglement concerns while fostering much more true choice. Indeed, as Shaka Mitchell of the American Federation for Children just argued, charters should be looking to become private schools, not vice versa.

So, if the goal is not to serve the needs or desires of students and families, but to defund public education to the greatest possible extent, then charters must yield to vouchers. 

The tension between charter and voucher advocates has been around for years, and was a notable subtext of Betsy DeVos's rise to Ed Secretary. 

I think McCluskey is wrong to imagine that similar entanglements between government and religion will not happen in a system of private school subsidy vouchers; ultimately the government is going to be forced to decide whether or not each religious group has been properly subsidized to a non-discriminatory amount. 

But he's absolutely correct that religious charters will result in government involvement in religion. One more reason that a secular, religion-free public system is the better choice. 

Moms For Liberty Plays Victim Card

A press release just hit my inbox from the PR firm employed by Moms For Liberty, declaring that a vast conspiracy is out there trying to make the Moms look bad:

Moms for Liberty Co-Founders Tiffany Justice and Tina Descovich released the following statement today warning of a targeted effort by some who oppose the parental empowerment movement in America. The allegations against their members accuse them of spreading “bigotry,” “hate” and “violence.”

There are no actual sources for those quotes, but M4L would like you to remember the last time they were being repressed:

The recent misinformation and false stories appear to be aimed at reviving the U.S. Department of Justice effort to target Moms for Liberty members as “threats” and “domestic terrorists” because they spoke out against Covid lockdowns, mask mandates and vaccine requirements for children.

That's an "effort" that never actually happened, and it especially didn't happen in a way that "targeted" Moms for Liberty. School Boards freaked out a bit over previously quiet meetings now erupting in threats of violence against board members and other parents, and they asked if the DOJ couldn't step in. AG Garland told the department to look into threats of violence against board members while still specifically respecting "spirited debate." But M4L is sure the feds are out to get them.

M4L would also like us to know that this is a vast conspiracy.

Justice and Descovich said, “There appears to be a coordinated effort underway aimed at marginalizing and discrediting the serious concerns of our members about the public K-12 education system. This effort is using false allegations and misleading stories - often taken out of context and without any original sourcing.

There is no sourcing in the press release for these allegations.

The reality is that we are Joyful Warriors, passionate defenders of our country, fighting for its survival with a positive and optimistic attitude because we know our children are watching. We reject any accusations of dangerous behavior made against us as false. We strongly reject any attempts to portray our members as violent or threatening. In fact, we have a Code of Conduct for members that instructs them to act professionally and respectfully at all times or they may be removed from our organization. We firmly believe that our peaceful activism and unwavering commitment to the values of democracy and freedom will ultimately prevail.

This joyful warrior business is a real balancing act challenge for M4L (and not just because it also Kamala Harris's tag line), which on the one hand wants to talk about how to work with people they might not agree with, but on the other hand plans to fire everyone and publicly calls people they disagree with groomers and pedophiles. They've roused a lot of rabble and used a lot of rhetoric about taking schools back and tried to pretend to be non-partisan even as they boost Ron DeSantis like crazy. 

It's easier to pull off that balancing act if you can portray yourself as a victim, as someone who's been forced into a corner by Those Others and so justified in striking back to defend yourself and your embattled values. That's more of a challenge when nobody has actually made you shut up, the DOJ has bever actually said so much as "boo" to you, and your members are commandeering school boards with inconsistent-yet-still-alarming frequency. Not since Barrack Obama didn't come to take anybody's guns has such a Cry of the Oppressed been so overblown.

It's a political shell game, and this press release suggests that M4L needs another jolt of money or support or attention, so they refer to the appearance of some coordinated effort to bring up the allegations that the DOJ didn't actually make, but which were some ill-considered words that the people who did use them (the National School Boards Association) quickly backed away from. 

And of course none of this addresses any of the actual issues, like book bans and personal attacks on anyone who dares disagree with them.

It's the kind of maneuver that suggests, once again, that M4L is less about concerned parenting and more about pushing a political and cultural agenda. 

And, as always, when a whole lot of people look at you and say, "Why are you being such a jerk?" there are two possible explanations. One is that a whole bunch of people who are not closely connected have somehow come up with the connections and coordination to pull off a broad batch of attacks; the other is that everyone is noticing that you are being a jerk. Well, there's a third possibility, which is that you're exaggerating how large the crowd of jerk-callers actually is. Pick whichever option feels right this time. 

 

Chester Finn's heretical insights

Can we have both school choice and shared institutions?

That's not my question, but was actually asked by Chester Finn, Fordham Institute honcho emeritus and long-time fan of market-driven school choice. And now, it appears, one of the reformy crowd noticing that their most recent allies are not so much on the same page.

He leads by making sure we understand his bona fides:

I’m a decades-long supporter of school choice in nearly all its forms and likely to remain that way so long as traditional, district-operated public schools ill-serve so many kids, produce such widespread mediocrity by way of achievement, give parents so little say in so many matters, and cater to the interests and priorities of the adults in the system more than the needs and interests of children, taxpayers, and the general public.

This reads like a combination of false premises and versions of "I prefer bicycles, because a vest has no sleeves," because this is not the interesting part. He wants his peeps to know he hasn't changed teams, and it's useful for us to remember the same. 

Finn has always been a genteel kind of guy, and he admits to finding some current trends bothersome.

I’m getting seriously unnerved by how the country is coming apart, by how many people are putting pure self-interest ahead of anything smacking of the public interest, by mounting intolerance of those who are different or who disagree, and by diminishing confidence in the shared values, institutions, principles, and traditions that have held us together as a nation, most of the time anyway, for the better part of three centuries.

And now he's ready to admit the nearly-heretical thoughts. Gonna put these in bold:

Which forces me to wonder whether putting all our education hopes in markets, self-interest, competition, and “invisible hands” just might be contributing to—at least moving in tandem with—other fissiparous forces that are weakening the valuable shared assets that we inherited from earlier generations.

Well, yes. Yes, they are.

The free market and the invisible hand are really good at many things, but uniting people around shared stuff is not one of those things.

The market separates. It picks winners and losers, both among buyers and sellers, and in doing so, it highlights and accentuates those differences. Modern school choice has always insisted that the choice has to be welded to free market (yet taxpayer subsidized) forces. It has treated the endless stream of bad actors, fraudsters, looney tunes, and incompetents as flukes and outliers, when they are in fact a completely predictable feature of an unregulated free market. 

I suspect that folks like Finn figured there was some sort of gentleman's agreement, some sort of cultured understanding that the crew would take a carefully surgical sledgehammer to parts of public schools and not take a torch to Really Important Things like, say, the culture at large. Many of us have been saying all along that this was foolish, that some folks were in the choice camp precisely because they wanted to burn things down. 

When fans of subsidized choice decided to ally themselves with the culture wars, that shouldn't have been a surprise. Hell, the DeVos family was in the culture war camp before it was cool. Nor should anyone be surprised that they were never going to be satisfied by just burning a few careful, select corners of school and culture. The alarm among the more truly conservative choice crowd reminds me of establishment Republicans when they invited the Tea Party into the big tent. "Sure, we'll let you in to swell our ranks; you've coined some really effective rhetoric. Just take a seat quietly in the back and-- no, really just sit quietly and-- wait--no-- oh hell, they really mean all that stuff they said!"

What really got Finn's attention is that survey about Americans walking away from traditionally American values, and I don't want to head down that rabbit hole right now, either--there are many explanations for those results.

Finn nods to the probability that some of this is coming from the lefty side of life. And then, more heresy:

But maybe we who yearn for more and better schooling options for America’s kids should try to do our part. Maybe we should pause for three seconds and ask whether there are ways of furthering choice while also helping to sustain, even strengthen, the shared inheritance.

We’ve known—I’ve surely known—for years now that pure market forces in K–12 (and higher) education do not reliably yield more effective schools and better-educated children. Sorry, Milton F and Corey D and a host of other living colleagues. Too many things go awry in that marketplace, from parents who make bad (if understandable) choices to greedy school operators who don’t care about outcomes, not to mention kids who lack competent adult guides.

Yes, yes, and yes. Finn stops just short of calling public education the foundation of democracy, a phrase that has too many of the Other Team's cooties on it. But right here there is not a single word with which I would disagree. I could have written that--but it would mean far less coming from me than from Chester Finn.

Finn continues to argue for a regulated marketplace, including making sure that vendors are legit and that options produce results. Yet, he also worries that the Other Team is inclined to restrict the market too much. Regulation of the education market, he says, is a "necessary evil," though not one that will necessarily solve the shared culture problem.

It also has to be noted—this really hurts—that we’re seeing mounting evidence that increases in public-sector school choices, charters especially, are bad for Catholic parochial schools and perhaps for other “traditional” private schools that, on the whole, have striven to maintain some of that inheritance via faith, values, morals, and example. Will the spread of ESAs send more kids back into those private schools? Or will more choice result in more coming apart?

He already knows the answer. 

Yes, I want it both ways. I want a plethora of quality school options for families, but I also want our “education system” in its variegated forms to strengthen rather than weaken our shared inheritance and pull us more together than apart.

Finn is stuck because he can't bring himself to let go of that forced marriage between public education and the free market. The solution to everything that is bothering him is to end taxpayer-subsidized, market-based choice. We could have a robust school choice system without ever having to involve the invisible hand or turning education into a marketplace (how we do it is a whole other post that I swear I'll write soon-ish). We just build it all under the roof of the public education system we have.

No, it would not end the various battles over cultural values, but--spoiler alert--nothing will. However, letting everyone go sit in their own bubble will only make things worse. One cultural value worth preserving is the value of functional co-existence with people who believe differently. This is something that market forces are especially ill-equipped to do. The market does not ask us to get along; it promises that we can have things our own way.

Finn also believes that while allowing for curricular diversity, well...

it should be possible to develop a framework of shared curricula spanning big chunks of the main K–12 subjects, curricula that would be acceptable to the vast majority of Americans and could be taught in the vast majority of schools of all sorts. Schools would naturally add and embellish, and in time, perhaps two-thirds of the curriculum might be “common” across almost all elementary and middle schools, maybe half in high school. If it pains you to think of commonality across state lines, we’d get somewhere by pulling it off within them.

You know how I know something like this could be doable? Because we would have to argue about it endlessly, with non-stop eternal debates about what would be in that core. And in education, any time someone says, "Use this answer. It settles everything and we never have to talk about it again," they are absolutely full of it. 

The real solutions in education don't look like solutions at all; they just look like long heartfelt debates and discussions that never, ever end. 

That shared curricular core would be most doable in a shared public system, not a subsidized market ecosystem.

A regulated marketplace and partially-shared curriculum can’t be the whole story. I’m not so bold as to forecast a truce in the culture wars. But what else can we devise that might better balance our hunger for school choice and diversity with America’s need to preserve the best of its inheritance?

Yes, Finn too often seems like a guy yearning for the schools of 1962. But in this piece he makes some legitimate observations and asks some of the right questions. He needs to carry his train of thought through to a few more stations, and it's unlikely that he'll be heard over the culture war yowling of some of his colleagues, but it's still nice to play What If every now and then. 

Website for Tracking CRT Panic Bills

The Critical Race Studies Program at the UCLA School of Law has a useful (albeit depressing) tool for folks trying to track just how far and wide the CRT panic has spread. UCLA has long been at the forefront of CRT studies, so this is a natural fit. 

The project is called CRT Forward, and "is dedicated to utilizing data, policy, and legal analysis to support and advance an accurate representation of Critical Race Theory (CRT)." 

The Tracking Project, CRT Forward’s flagship initiative, identifies, tracks, and analyzes local, state, and federal measures aimed at restricting the ability to speak truthfully about race, racism, and systemic racism through a campaign to reject CRT. The Tracking Project analyzes how these anti-CRT measures, at all levels of government, attempt to limit truth telling within K-12 education, private businesses, non-profits, state and federal government agencies, and higher education.

The project let's you use either a map or a table to see what is going on, not only on the state level, but at the local government and school district level (I prefer the map, because maps are cool). It includes both those proposed and those adopted, with details about the language used. 

It's not encouraging--the current map includes 619 CRT panic efforts floated at the federal, state and local level. But it's an excellent one-stop location for tracking down info on these ongoing attempts to control conversation. Check it out and bookmark it.

Bradley Foundation To Honor Betsy DeVos

The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation is a well established Milwaukee-based right wing money group that periodically honors folks who fit in with their support for "grassroots and faith-based groups that serve individuals, strengthen families, and revitalize neighborhoods by sharing common belief in the self-worth of individuals, the inherent dignity of work, and the need to reduce government dependence." They love freedom and free enterprise and think "America's founders" envisioned a unique and extraordinary form of government. 

This year, one of the honorees is Betsy DeVos. 

The Bradley Foundation is a busy group. Established way back in 1942, it honored Harry Bradley, a charter member of the John Birch Society (the granddaddy of US right wing fringe groups) along with Fred Koch, the father of the Koch Brothers. In the 80s the Bradley's scored big via the defense industry, and they have been spending that money on their vision of the country ever since.

They've backed Scott Walker heavily, denied climate change, put up voter suppression billboards, and given grants to folks like Charles Murray (author of The Bell Curve) and Dinesh D'Souza (author of The End of Racism and that crazy documentary). The foundation also makes considerable use of Donors Trust, a dark money laundering operation that lets rich folks fund their favorite causes without having their names attached. They've funded Richard Berman, a particularly nasty political operative. And they are, of course, big fans of defunding public education via choice programs; Charter School Growth Fund gets a lot of Bradley money. They've funded challenges to voting rights (including the Shelby County case in which SCOTUS decided that racism is no longer a big deal). Of course they're in with ALEC. And they put a whole lot of money into getting everything open again during the pandemic. 

Fun folks.

They award up to four Bradley Prizes each year. Previous winners include Jeb Bush, Roger Ailes, Carcy Olsen (the president of the Goldwater Institute), Larry Arnn (president of Hillsdale College, Mitch Daniels, Charles Murray. You get the idea.

DeVos joins a similarly rightward group.

“Perhaps no single individual has done more to promote educational freedom for families across the country than Betsy DeVos,” said Rick Graber, president of The Bradley Foundation. “Betsy has been a tireless advocate for kids of all backgrounds and circumstances, from advancing policies that allow them to attend schools that best fit their needs to pressing teachers’ unions to stop blocking the re-opening of schools in the wake of the pandemic. The Foundation has been grateful to call her a friend through its decades of work on educational freedom and is proud to award her a Bradley Prize.”

DeVos offers her own blah-dee-blah for the honor

“Helping every child unlock their potential through the opportunity to access world-class educational options has been my life’s work,” said DeVos. “Our nation cannot succeed if we don’t do all we can to help our rising generation succeed. That’s what makes education freedom imperative, not just important. Fortunately, we’re making rapid and historic progress toward ensuring students are hostages to an outdated, broken system no more. It has been gratifying to see so many join the fight for kids, and it’s quite humbling to receive the Bradley Prize.”

The prize  comes with a $250,000 stipend (or as the DeVos family calls it, "couch cushion change") but the point of rich folks gathering to honor each other is to stir up a little publicity and maybe make folks feel warmly enough to contribute some more to this quiet juggernaut of reactionary activity. It's inspirational. Perhaps here at the Curmudgucation Instiutute we will save up enough to start awarding our own prize. We can't quite swing a cool quarter million, but I know a place where I could take you for a really good pizza. 

ICYMI: Easter Edition (4/9)

The list is a little short this week, but you should be busy enjoying the long spring weekend anyway. This is one of my favorite days of the year. May you enjoy it, too, not matter how you spend it.

DeSantis Endorsed School Boards Continue to Wreak Havoc

Sue Kingery Woltanski at Accountabaloney keeping us all up to date on the crazy coming out of Florida, where the governor-backed school board members are just having a hell of a time. 

House preps bill loosening School Board candidate residency requirements for final vote

Next up in Florida--a bill to make it easier for carpetbaggers to do their thing on school boards. It looks like A) a response to a real issue and B) loaded with bad unintended consequences.

Brandon Johnson Beats Paul Vallas to Become Chicago Mayor: What Does This Say about School Reform?

Jan Resseger takes a look at what we might learn from the outcome of the Chicago mayoral election. 

Where Does Your State Rank? Your School?

Nancy Flanagan asking the big questions about how one decides whether a school is food or a state is trying.

Judge orders books removed from Texas public libraries due to LGBTQ and racial content must be returned within 24 hours

At CNN. Sometimes, the readers win.

Better Pay Would Help, But the Issues Facing Teachers Go Much Deeper

Barth Keck with an op-ed about how moral injury runs a bit deeper than poor pay.

Why Did Michigan Repeal Their 3rd Grade Retention Law?

Andy Spears looks at the Michigan rollback of a third grade reading test retention law, and asks if Tennessee can't wise up a bit. 

I was busy elsewhere this week. For the Bucks County Beacon, a look at new research about cyber charters in Pennsylvania (spoiler--they still stink). For Forbes.com. a new lawsuit in Maine that looks to further blast away at the separation of church and state. For The Progressive, a look at a study showing how the cost of voucher programs mushrooms tremendously. 

As always, feel free to subscribe on substack to get all of my stuff easily delivered by email, for free. 

Vouchers As Tax Avoidance for the Rich

The Institution on Taxation and Economic Policy has released a new brief looking at school vouchers-- specifically the tax credit scholarship version. What they found was a great way for the wealthy to avoid taxes.

ITEP is a liberalish outfit that conducts "rigorous analyses of tax and economic proposals and provide data-driven recommendations to shape equitable and sustainable tax systems" and works "to make the case for raising enough revenue to truly meet all our societal needs" as well as "put forth a vision of a more racially and economically equitable tax system at all levels of government." 

Tax credit scholarships are a set-up on which individuals or, in some cases, corporations can donate money to a "scholarship organization." The organization hands out vouchers to schools --usually religious ones(in some states, each scholarship organization is attached to one particular private school)-- and the financial contributor gets a tax credit. Twenty-one states currently have them. 

Voucher fans like this version of voucher because it lets them pretend that no "government money" is being spent on private religious schools. They're technically correct because the money never touches the government's hands, but, as Kentucky's state supreme court noted when they tossed that state's TCS law out, “The money at issue cannot be characterized as simply private funds, rather it represents the tax liability that the taxpayer would otherwise owe.” In other words, the tax credit money might not be in the government's hands, but those tax credits still leave a hole in the state budget that taxpayers must deal with.

ITEP points out that the benefits for those who use these voucher tax credits don't end with the tax credits themselves. 

One dodge that used to be popular with TCS programs was the charitable donation. In this dodge, I contribute, say, $1,000 to the state's TCS program and so get a $1,000 credit for my taxes. Then I turn around and count the $1,000 contribution as a charitable donation on my federal taxes. Ka-ching.

Well, the charitable donation dodge may be over, but ITEP points out that many just like it are in place. Not just in place, but a big part of the marketing done for tax credit scholarships. The report includes many examples:

The Alabama Policy Institute published a brief pointing out that: “A contribution made from a business owner may receive both the standard dollar-for-dollar tax credit as well as a deductible business expense on the federal side. Essentially, business owners may make money from a contribution.”

Decatur Heritage, a Christian school in Alabama, has a video on its website where the narrator gags after saying the word “tax” and urges businesses to “double dip” with state credits and federal deductions. Its website also describes the maneuver as a way to “make money by giving.”

The Georgia GOAL Scholarship Program touts the “double tax benefit” that results from claiming state credits and federal deductions, made possible by the fact that “the IRS regs are generous.” GOAL says the shelter is “too good to pass up!” and presents an example calculation where a business owner receives a tax cut of more than $33,000 in return for a $25,000 contribution, yielding a net profit of $8,393. 

The Opportunity Scholarship Fund in Oklahoma advertises “BIG tax credits and deductions!” in return for contributing and presents a relatively conservative example where the taxpayer can walk away with $400 more than they initially donated. 

And this one is especially juicy:

Fenwick High School in Illinois points out that “The stock market is still trading near all-time highs! Take advantage of double tax savings by contributing long-term appreciated stock to an SGO (thus avoiding capital gains tax).”

ITEP points out, as you have already guessed, that these kinds of tax maneuvers are not being performed by regular folks who got to H & R Block to get their taxes done. In a close look at Arizona, Virginia, and Louisiana, ITEP finds that the vast majority of these credits are being claimed by folks in the $200,000 and above bracket-- 60% in Arizona, 87% in Virginia, and a whopping 99% in Louisiana. 

Tax credit scholarships are not just one more way to privatize education through school vouchers; they're also a way for the wealthy to avoid taxes and bank a little more money themselves. Ka-ching. 

You can read the full ITEP brief here. It's not long, but it's plenty illuminating.